The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Seven (87 page)

Robert Newman:
The depiction of sumptuous robes on the lohans gives them a stately quality while the training they represent calls for simplicity. Do they give the sense of both church power and profound simplicity?

Chögyam Trungpa:
I think so. In the traditional story, the arhats were invited to China by the Emperor, who asked them, “What can I offer you?” and an arhat answered, “New monastic robes.” The Emperor felt that it was a very humble request. He began to measure the bodies of the arhats, and the measuring became completely limitless. In trying to make robes, the whole stock of fabrics in the imperial palace ran out, and he had to tax the local people. He told them to bring not only the traditional yellow- and red-color cloth, but to bring cloth of any color. So traditionally lohans don’t have strictly monastic colors in their clothing. And that comes from a story of the arhats performing a miracle.

Sets of arhat statues were also made in Tibet, traditionally. They were usually placed in the shrine of the sangha. There was a shrine of the Buddha, which has the biggest buddha statue, usually off the assembly hall. Then there was the shrine of the dharma, which contained the Tripitaka books. The shrine of the sangha had the arhats and bodhisattvas, particularly the arhats. The hall was huge, and the arhats were set in porcelain caves, made especially to accommodate them.

Robert Newman:
Yes, like sculptural niches.

Chögyam Trungpa:
Sculptural niches, yes.

Robert Newman:
Is it true that in Tibet sometimes the disciples were rendered in realistic portraits, like the I-chou lohans?

I think that there’s a lot of emphasis on the portrait of the guru in the Tibetan tradition of arhat paintings and statues. The same is true of the Eighty-four Siddhas.
³
They usually are depicted like Indian men, with big noses and hair on the chest and unshaven or whatever. There is an element of eccentricity in them.

Robert Newman:
In the Chinese tradition of arhats there are racial mixtures. These I-chou lohan statues seem overtly Chinese but there are definitely Aryan features.

Chögyam Trungpa:
Both in China and Tibet the Aryan features are considered somewhat superior. The Buddha had come from Aryan India, and so Aryan also meant somewhat superhuman. The bodhisattvas are much more stylized than the arhats or the Eighty-four Siddhas. The idea in the portraitlike work is that there is a sense of lineage, a sense of personal connection. I think people take delight in a true story, a living person who attained enlightenment. Sometimes it’s more refreshing than mythical bodhisattvas or other deities, herukas, or dakinis. There’s a sense of freshness in the portraits of gurus because the guru is a link between the buddhas, bodhisattvas, and herukas and the human world.

Robert Newman:
I get the sense that the statues represent a face-to-face situation in the monastery.

Chögyam Trungpa:
I think so. There’s a sense of claustrophobia, mirrors mocking your ego. And there’s also a sense of simplicity. You can’t get away. You can’t play games.

Robert Newman:
The Zen monastic process, you’ve said, wears down the intellectual mind, almost cuts out intellectual mind, cuts down the ego to allow prajna to function.

Chögyam Trungpa:
Yes, I think that’s the point. When we talk about space we aren’t talking only of aesthetic space. We’re referring to someone’s deep loss of ground, which creates real space, real emptiness, and at the same time that brings a sense of dignity and some sense of power.

Robert Newman:
Would you consider the I-chou lohan statues to be definite representations of initial shunyata realization?

Chögyam Trungpa:
Yes. The situation is that when you’ve achieved what is known as the arhat state, you’ve destroyed the enemy, which means you become a conqueror of ego. You’ve destroyed conflicting emotions, which automatically brings the sense of shunyata. The arhat experience is the prajna, the sword, which cuts through ego, bringing the experience of shunyata. There’s a definite link with becoming a warrior.

Robert Newman:
Aren’t conquering self and making friends with oneself interrelated? Doesn’t the process contain self-exposure?

Chögyam Trungpa:
Conquering obstacles of ego is not so much a relief as gaining a new sense of power, a new sense of openness, which brings an all-seeing quality. What is known as mahavipashyana experience automatically becomes the vanguard of prajna experience. The presentation of arhats or lohans here is like a sword with an ornamental handle and guard. However, the sword blade is very naked. I would say that the lohans’ realization is perhaps at the level of the first bhumi, the bhumi of joy. And I think that, from there onward, some of the mahasiddhas would be the images of further realization. There’s a little craziness in the mahasiddha iconography, as there is in this arhat energy. The craziness is there from the first bhumi onward to the vajrayana, which is another development of the iconography.

Robert Newman:
Could you speak of these lohans in terms of the four noble truths?

Chögyam Trungpa:
I think these statues embody the whole thing, the four noble truths. There is a sense of being on the path and a sense of experiencing the cessation of suffering. Knowing the four noble truths simultaneously depends on seeing from all viewpoints. I think the artist achieved this work of art because he’s true to himself. He just executed it as simply and as impressively as possible, from his own experience of the practice of meditation.

Robert Newman:
Do you know of any other works of Chinese art that represent higher mahayana meditation? If this is the level of the first bhumi, can you think of any Chinese Buddhist works of art that represent a higher degree of realization?

Chögyam Trungpa:
Well, there’s one of the kinds of bodhisattva statues that have expressions of compassion and gentleness, but with immovability and solidness. The bodhisattva images are highly ornamented and less monastic. They have a less contemplative expression. There’s more of a kind of inquisitiveness of how to conduct compassion toward a person. An interesting point about the Chinese expression of the bodhisattvas is that they often have Chinese facial structure, bone structure, but at the same time the costume is always Indian. In Tibet, there were eight bodhisattva sculptures carved in a giant rock that was close to my monastery. They were dressed in imperial costumes, actually wearing imperial hats. Eight ancient emperors. The bodhisattvas become interesting. But I think that if a person would really like to work traditionally with the teachings, this lohan imagery should be studied first. First completely understand the arhat sculptures or the principle of the sculptures. Then, after that, probably comes a glimpse of how bodhisattvas work. And then there are the various tantric deities in Tibet and Japan. There’s a continuity in all this.

Robert Newman:
Maybe one last question, about the stillness quality of the lohans. Are the statues expressive of stillness?

Chögyam Trungpa:
I think the sense of stillness comes from the sense of solidness. Although these statues are iconographically informed, with heads turned or holding robes, at the same time there’s a sense of definite solidness, a sense of immobility. If you see a blade of grass, it’s not an image of solidness, because at any moment it can be flickered by wind. But there are statues that have a sense of dignity and power that present a great sense of sanity, of immovability. It could be a very small statue or it could be a big one, and it could have that quality.

1
.
Lohan
is the Chinese translation of the Sanskrit word
arhat
, meaning disciple of the Buddha. It also means a stage or state in the path of meditation.

2
. Shamatha-vipashyana:
Shamatha
(Skt.; Tib.
shi-ne
) means “calm abiding,” “remaining in quiescence.” This is the widely used practice of calming the mind through various concentration techniques, such as following the breath, in order to shift attention from mind to open awareness. From the concentration practices of shamatha, effortless vipashayana meditation naturally arises, a spontaneous “clear seeing,” “panoramic awareness.”
Vipashyana
is the direct practice of “extraordinary insight.”

3
. A siddha (Skt.) is a man or woman who has developed supernormal powers (siddhis) through meditation realization. The Eighty-four Siddhas were Indian Buddhist masters who can be considered the founders of the siddha lineages that passed into Tibet from the eighth through the eleventh centuries. The list of the Eighty-four Siddhas as well as details of their lives varies, like the lohan-arhats of China and Tibet. [“Siddha” is also sometimes termed “mahasiddha,” great siddha.]

A
PPENDICES

INTRODUCTION TO

First Thought Best Thought

As lineage holder in Ear-whispered Kagyü transmission of Tibetan Buddhist practice of Wakefulness, Chögyam Trungpa is “Rinpoche” or “Precious Jewel” of millenial practical information on attitudes and practices of mind speech & body that Western Poets over the same millenia have explored, individually, fitfully, as far as they were able—searching thru cities, scenes, seasons, manuscripts, libraries, backalleys, whorehouses, churches, drawing rooms, revolutionary cells, opium dens, merchant’s rooms in Harrar, salons in Lissadell.

Rimbaud, drawing on the Magician Eliphas Levi & hashishien backalleys of Paris, rediscovered “Alchemy of the Verb” and other Western magics including home-made Colors of Vowels & “long reasoned derangement of all the senses” as part of his scheme to arrive at the Unknown as Poet-seer. His conception of Poet as Visionary Savant is unbeatable ambition no Western poet can bypass, tho as in the lives of Rimbaud & Kerouac, mature suffering, the First Noble Truth of existence, may be the destined end of ambitious magic. Some Reality is arrived at: “Charity is that key—This inspiration proves that I have dreamed! . . . I who called myself angel or seer, exempt from all morality, I am returned to the soil with a duty to seek and rough reality to embrace! Peasant!”

Rimbaud, still a model of the Beautiful Poet, concluded his life’s last year with the following letters: “In the long run our life is a horror, an endless horror! What are we alive for?” . . . “My life is over, all I am now is a motionless stump.” Generations later poets are still trying to change Reality with the Revolution of the Word, a XX Century preoccupation drawing on Western gnostic sources.

Some compromise with Absolute Truth had to be made in XX Century poetics: W. C. Williams thru Kerouac, poets were willing to work with relative truth, the sight at hand, accurate perception of appearance, accurate reportage of consciousness—although Hart Crane & some Rock Poets continued to force the issue of Self-Immolation as means of becoming One with phenomena.

As part of the aesthetics of working with relative truth, an American idiom developed (born out of the spacious pragmatism of Whitman in dealing with his own Ego): The acceptance of actual poetic (poesis: making) behavior of the mind as model, subject, & measure of literary form and content. Mind is shapely, Art is shapely. Gertrude Stein’s style thus merges literary artifact with present consciousness during the time of composition. Put another way: the sequence of events of poet’s mind, accidents of mind, provide the highlights, jumps & Plot of Poetry. As to the Muse, “She’s there, installed amid the kitchenware” as Whitman celebrated the change from Absolute Heroic to Relative Honesty in poetic method. Thus we inherited our world of poetry in XX Century.

Thirst for some Absolute Truth still lurks behind this shift, thus Bullfighting, Drugs, God, Communism, Realpolitik or Revolution, Drink, Suburb or Bohemia, Sex, grassroots communalism, ecology or Amerindian ground, blasts of Eternal Vision, Death’s Skull, even various Apocalypses or Extraterrestrial Paranoias & delights recur as our preoccupation, and have been epic’d. Brave energies of fear, joy or anomia, not much certainty; yet there’s been honest effort to display what can be seen of naked mind, and that’s led to an amazingly open style of Poetry which includes snow-blinding Sierras and rain-diamonded traffic lights, as mind’s-eye does. An international style, based on facts, has emerged, perhaps the most relaxed poetic mode ever. Still, no certainty emerges but ultimate suffering, accelerating change, and perhaps some vast glimpse of universal soullessness. Has the poetic Seer failed? Or perhaps succeeded at arriving at a place of beat bleakness where the ego of Poetry is annihilated?

At last! To the Rescue! Carrying the panoply of 25 centuries of wakened mind-consciousness “where glorious radiant Howdahs/are being carried by elephants/through groves of flowing milk/past paradises of Waterfall/into the valley of bright gems/be rubying an antique ocean/ floor of undiscovered splendor/ in the heart of un happiness.”
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And Whozat? The poet of absolute Sanity and resolution, “having drunk the hot blood of the ego.” The author is a reincarnated Tibetan Lama trained from age 2 in various ancient practices aimed at concentrating attention, focusing perception, minding thought-forms to transparency, profounding awareness, vasting consciousness, annihilating ego, & immolating ego-mind in phenomena: a wizard in control of day-dream, conscious visualization & thought projection, vocal sound vibration, outward application of insight, practice of natural virtues, and a very admiral of oceanic scholarship thereof.

The dramatic situation of someone who has realized the World as pure mind, & gone beyond attachment to ego to return to the world & work with universal ignorance, confront the spiritual-materialist daydream of Western world—and tell it in modernist poetry—provides the historic excitement this book puts in our laps.