The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Seven (78 page)

Any entertainment that aspires to art should not work with the audience like an advertisement. Trying to please the audience lowers the level of sophistication constantly. That’s what’s wrong with the American marketing system. When you try to always please the audience you have to produce more and more automatic things, more and more plastic, so people don’t even have to walk out of their rooms to make things work. They just press a button and they get entertained.

You see, we have the responsibility of raising the mentality level of the audience. People might have to reach out with a certain amount of strain but it’s worth it. The whole civilization then begins to raise its level of sophistication. It is possible that the first attempt will be a failure. You might not get enough people in the audience to work that way at first, but gradually they will pick it up. That has actually been happening.

The beautiful thing about Buddhism, if I may say so, is that Buddhists don’t try to con you. They just present what they have to say as it is, take it or leave it.

Q:
But if you are creating something for a particular audience, isn’t it good to be aware of them so that you are creating something for them rather than just for yourself?

R:
That is very difficult. If you relate to yourself properly then obviously there are a lot of people like you. In fact, you are the catalyst for the rest of the world. The audience comes to you like to a queen bee. There is less sense of salesmanship or the feeling that you have to con people. Therefore, people will come to you. It is quite possible we might allow too much space and it would not be particularly popular at first. Nobody is going to say “wow, how exciting!” to begin with. It will seem alien at first; one wouldn’t know how to relate to the film. But then, when they change gears, when they see it a second time, next week, next month, it will be different.

You see, if you try to con people, to make money immediately, it becomes prostitution. When we try to meet the immediate demands of the public in their present state of sophistication we have to lower our standards constantly. Whereas, if we allow for some kind of resistance to our work, then they have to jump up higher and higher. They have to work with their patience, they have to work with their sophistication, so the public automatically gets educated. You see, it’s a plot, but a compassionate plot.

Q:
Well, originality always works that way anyway. People first reject it because it is unknown, then they rise to it.

R:
Yes, no doubt. People in this country are very awake, they are looking for something. But usually they get the something they expect. Next time they will be able to get something beyond what they are used to.

I would like to discuss the five buddha principles with you, not only in relation to this particular Milarepa film project, but also for general aesthetic appreciation as well as creative work.

We are trying to get at some basic understanding of seeing things in their absolute essence, their own innate nature. We can use this knowledge with regard to painting or poetry or arranging flowers or making films or composing music. It is also connected with the relationships between people. These five buddha principles seem to cover a whole area of new dimensions of perception. They are very important at all levels and in all creative situations.

We won’t go through the philosophy; we’ll start with the functional qualities of these five principles. It seems they are associated with a sense of composition.

Buddha, being in the middle, is the foundation or the basic ground. But this basic ground is usually rather dull because it is too solid. We have to dig it up and put concrete there or whatever, since it is rather uninteresting as it is. It will be interesting only if we know we are going to construct something on it.

So buddha is in the middle because it is the foundation rather than because it is the most important. Buddha could also be the environment or the oxygen which makes it possible for the other principles to function. It has that sedate, solid quality. In terms of visuals, it is the uninteresting part, the waiting for something to happen. Often the buddha quality is necessary to create the contrast between the other colorful types: vajra, ratna, padma, karma. We need buddha as the moderator, so to speak.

Buddha is somewhat desolate, too spacious. It’s like visiting a campsite where only the stones from campfires are left. There’s a sense of having been inhabited for a long time, but for the time being no one is there. The inhabitants were not killed; it wasn’t a violent move; they just had to leave the place. It’s like the caves where the Indians used to live or like the caves in France with the paintings. There is a sense of past but at the same time it has no particular characteristics. It is very dull, quite possibly in the plains, very flat. It is connected with the color blue.

Vajra is the sense of sharpness, the sense of precision. The color of vajra is white. It is cold and desolate because everything has to be analyzed in its own terms. The expression of vajra deals with objects in terms of their own merits. It never leaves any space, never neglects anything. In that sense it seems to be connected with winter. In a lot of Milarepa’s songs, vajra is connected with karma activities. Vajra is winter, white, austere, black and white. For example, the ground has its own way of freezing and trees and plants have their own way of freezing. The ground carries the snowfall in a distinctive way. Trees, on the other hand, have an entirely different way of carrying snow, depending on whether leaves have fallen off, or if they are evergreens. Vajra is very cold and desolate but it is sharp and precise. It requires a lot of focusing.

Vajra is the cold and desolate winter landscape. Karma is even more hostile. Ingmar Bergman’s movies are very vajra. He gets the all-pervasive winter quality, the sharp quality like a winter morning, crystal clear, icicles sharp and precise. It’s not completely desolate, there are lots of things to be intrigued by. It’s not empty but full of all sorts of thought-provoking sharpness. Vajra is connected with the East, the dawn, the morning. It has those sharp silver qualities, the morning-star quality.

Drawing by Chögyam Trungpa of the mandala of the five buddha families: buddha, vajra, ratna, padma, and karma. Buddha, being in the middle of the mandala, is the foundation or basic ground.

FROM “TIBETAN BUDDHISM AND FILMMAKING,”
FILMMAKERS NEWSLETTER
(DECEMBER 1972): 31–34. © 1972 BY DIANA J. MUKPO.

Ratna is related with autumn, fertility, richness—richness in the sense of pure restlessness. Trees must bear fruit to be an orchard, for instance. When the fruit is ripe and completely rich it automatically falls to the ground asking to be eaten up. Ratna is this kind of giving away quality. It is luscious and extraordinarily rich and open.

Ratna has the quality of midmorning. It is very colorful, predominantly yellow, connected with the sun’s rays and gold. Where vajra is connected with crystal, ratna is connected with gold, richness, amber, saffron. It has a sense of depth, real earthiness rather than texture, whereas we could say that vajra is purely texture—a crispy quality rather than fundamental depth. Ratna is very solid and earthy. In a sense it is not as earthy as buddha which is dull-earthy, uninteresting-earthy. But ratna is earthy because it is rich. It is so ripe and earthy it is like a big, gigantic tree which falls to the ground and begins to rot and grow mushrooms all over it and is enriched by all kinds of weeds growing around it. There is a sense that animals could nest in that big log. Its color begins to turn into yellow and its bark begins to peel off to show the inside of this tree which is very rich and very solid and definite. If you decide to try to take it away and use it as part of a garden arrangement, it would be impossible because it would crumble, fall apart; it would be too heavy to carry anyway.

Padma is connected with the color red. It is connected with the spring season. The harshness of winter is just about to become softened by the expectation of summer. Even the harshness of ice is softened; snowflakes.

It is the meeting of the two situations, so it has a halfway-through sense from that point of view, quite unlike autumn which has definite qualities of ripening and developing things. So padma, in that sense, is very much connected with facade. Padma has no feeling of solidness or texture. It is purely concerned with colors, the glamorous qualities. Padma is concerned with output rather than input, with regards to its health or its fundamental survival. Padma is not concerned with a survival mentality at all. Thus it is connected with sunset. The visual quality of reflection is more important than its being, so padma is involved with art rather than science or practicality.

Padma is a reasonable location, a place where wildflowers can grow, a perfect place to have animals roaming about, like a highland plateau in Tibet. It would be lambing season, with lambs prancing about and eating wildflowers. And there are herbs; it is filled with thyme. It is a place of meadows. There are gentle rocks, not intrusive, suitable for young animals to play among.

Karma, strangely enough, is connected with summer. To a certain extent it is the efficiency of karma that connects it with summer. It’s a summer in which everything is active, everything is growing. There are all kinds in insects, all kinds of discomforting things, and all kinds of activity going on, all kinds of growth. During the summer there are thunderstorms and hailstorms. There is the sense that you are never left to enjoy the summer; something is always moving in order to maintain itself. It’s a bit like late spring, but it is fertile because it sees that things are fulfilled at the right moment. The color of karma is green. The feeling of karma is after sunset, dusk, late day and early night. Let’s go through them again since there are so many things to cover: Vajra is white and water. Ratna is yellow and earth. Padma is red and fire. Buddha is blue and space or sky. Karma is green and wind.

Q:
Karma, being fertile, is different from ratna. Ratna is maturity, like overripe.

R:
Yes, ratna has tremendous confidence where the karma of the summer is still competing, trying to give birth.

There are wisdoms that go with the five families. Buddha is dharmadhatu wisdom, which is all-encompassing space. Vajra is mirrorlike wisdom, reflective, clear and precise, like reflections in a mirror. Ratna is the wisdom of equanimity which is expansive, extending. Padma is the discriminating wisdom of seeing the details of things. Karma’s wisdom is the automatic fulfillment of all actions.

Q:
Rinpoche, would you say that these families can be related to useful substances, things that men use? For instance, I was thinking that padma might be drugs and intoxicants, ratna might be food, vajra might be medicine, karma might be tools, buddha might be building materials.

R:
Well said. You can make up anything you like once you get the idea of it. That is why we are discussing this so that the cameramen and filmmakers can get into it.

Q:
What family is filmmaking? Vajra?

R:
Vajra obviously, with a touch of padma. Vajra because it comes from intellectual speculation. You have to have some metaphysical point of view in order to make a film.

We could work with these five principles by looking at one object from different points of view. We could take a karma scene as a ratna shot, or a padma scene as a buddha shot. If you are willing to explore these principles, the film can have the quality of all these different vibrations.

Often the reason people find a film irritating or repetitive is because the mentality of the filmmaker is seduced by vajra or karma or any one particular principle and the whole thing becomes monotonous. However we can change the structure now. You don’t have to feel threatened by exploring unknown areas because every area is a known area.

Q:
So a good exercise would be taking one object or one landscape and photographing it from the points of view of the different families?

R:
That’s what I would like to do. Just pick up a piece of stone or a twig and approach it from its five different aspects. A whole different perspective will begin to develop and then you have limitless resources. You don’t feel obliged to produce ever more materials because you can make one thing and make it vajra, karma, padma, ratna, or buddha. You can make all kinds of tartan plaids out of it.

Q:
In other words, if you approach any image from one point of view there is a sense of something being left out?

R:
It is true if this is your only inspiration because that way you are approaching the whole situation with poverty in mind. Psychologically you are poverty stricken. You received your check yesterday; you spend it all today. For example, the film
El Topo
is a masterpiece in some sense but the whole film consists purely of a collection of highlights: the gaps between them are completely neglected. There is no way of linking them to each other. In that sense it is an expression of poverty.