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    The Path Is the Goal: A Basic Handbook of Buddhist Meditation
    The Path Is the Goal: A Basic Handbook of Buddhist Meditation
    The Path Is the Goal: A Basic Handbook of Buddhist Meditation
    Ebook171 pages2 hours

    The Path Is the Goal: A Basic Handbook of Buddhist Meditation

    By Chögyam Trungpa

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    About this ebook

    Lessons on the true purpose and power of meditation, from one of the great masters

    According to the Buddha, no one can attain basic sanity or enlightenment without practicing meditation. It is the essential spiritual practice—and nothing else is more important.
     
    In The Path is the Goal, Chögyam Trungpa teaches us to let go of the urge to make meditation serve our ambition; thus we can relax into openness. We are shown how the deliberate practice of mindfulness develops into contrived awareness, and we discover the world of insight that awareness reveals. We learn of a subtle psychological stage set that we carry with us everywhere and unwittingly use to structure all our experience—and we find that meditation gradually carries us beyond this and beyond ego altogether to the experience of unconditioned freedom. The teachings presented here—all in Trungpa's concise, accessible style—provide the foundation that every practitioner needs to awaken as the Buddha did.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherShambhala
    Release dateJun 7, 2011
    ISBN9780834821446
    The Path Is the Goal: A Basic Handbook of Buddhist Meditation
    Author

    Chögyam Trungpa

    Mestre em meditação, professor e artista – fundou a Universidade Naropa em Boulder, no Colorado, a primeira universidade de inspiração budista da América do Norte; o programa de treino de Shambhala. Foi o 11.º descendente da linha de tulkus Trungpa da escola Kagyü do budismo tibetano. Foi também treinado na tradição Nyingma – a mais antiga das quatro escolas –, e era um adepto do movimento rimay ou «não sectário» dentro do budismo tibetano, que aspirava reunir e disponibilizar todos os valiosos ensinamentos das diferentes escolas, livres de rivalidades sectárias. Trungpa foi uma figura significativa na disseminação do budismo tibetano no Ocidente, fundando a Universidade Naropa e estabelecendo o método de Treino Shambhala, uma apresentação do Buddhadharma amplamente desprovida de armadilhas étnicas.

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      Book preview

      The Path Is the Goal - Chögyam Trungpa

      ABOUT THE BOOK

      According to the Buddha, no one can attain basic sanity or enlightenment without practicing meditation. The teachings given here on the outlook and technique of meditation provide the foundation that every practitioner needs to awaken as the Buddha did. Trungpa teaches us to let go of the urge to make meditation serve our ambition; thus we can relax into openness. We are shown how the deliberate practice of mindfulness develops into contrived awareness, and we discover the world of insight that awareness reveals. We learn of a subtle psychological stage set that we carry with us everywhere and unwittingly use to structure all our experience—and we find that meditation gradually carries us beyond this and beyond ego altogether to the experience of unconditioned freedom.

      CHÖGYAM TRUNGPA (1940–1987)—meditation master, teacher, and artist—founded Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, the first Buddhist-inspired university in North America; the Shambhala Training program; and an international association of meditation centers known as Shambhala International. He is the author of numerous books including Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, and The Myth of Freedom.

      Sign up to receive inspirational quotes by Chögyam Trungpa and special offers from Shambhala Publications.

      Or visit us online to sign up at shambhala.com/eoceanofdharma.

      The Path Is the Goal

      A BASIC HANDBOOK OF

      BUDDHIST MEDITATION

      logo-3

      Chögyam Trungpa

      Edited by Sherab Chödzin

      Shambhala

      Boston & London

      2010

      SHAMBHALA PUBLICATIONS, INC.

      Horticultural Hall

      300 Massachusetts Avenue

      Boston, Massachusetts 02115

      www.shambhala.com

      © 1995 by Diana J. Mukpo

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Trungpa, Chögyam, 1939–

      The path is the goal: a basic handbook of Buddhist meditation / Chögyam Trungpa ; edited by Sherab Chödzin.—1st ed.

      p.   cm.—(Dharma ocean series)

      eISBN 978-0-8348-2144-6

      ISBN 978-0-87773-970-8

      1. Meditation—Buddhism.      I. Chödzin, Sherab.      II. Title.

      III. Series: Trungpa, Chögyam, 1939–     Dharma ocean series.

      BQ5612.T78      1995                                                    94-23497

      294.3′443—dc20                                                           CIP

      Contents

      logo-3

      Editor’s Foreword

      PART ONE

      1. The Only Way

      2. Continuing Your Confusion

      3. The Star of Bethlehem

      PART TWO

      1. Me-ness and the Emotions

      2. Recollecting the Present

      3. The Portable Stage Set

      4. Boredom—Full or Empty?

      5. From Raw Eggs to Stepping-Stones

      6. Loneliness

      7. Creating a Little Gap

      Notes

      Glossary

      Transliterations of Tibetan Terms

      About the Author

      Resources

      Index

      E-mail Sign-Up

      Editor’s Foreword

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      This book comprises two seminars given by the great Tibetan guru, the Vidyadhara, Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, both dating from 1974. The first was given in March in New York, the second in September at Tail of the Tiger, a meditation center the Vidyadhara founded in Vermont, which was later renamed Karmê-Chöling. These seminars contain hitherto unpublished teachings of his on the view and practice of Buddhist meditation.

      Traditional accounts tell us that at the time of the Buddha Shakyamuni’s enlightenment, he saw a vast panorama of beings throughout the six realms of existence, suffering in their ignorance through an endless round of attachment and disappointment, birth and death. In the literature of the Buddhist tradition we find other accounts of such visions of human suffering. A recent account concerns the Gyalwa Karmapa, Rikpe Dorje (1924–1982), who was the sixteenth incarnation in a line of enlightened hierarchs, heads of the Kagyü order of Buddhism in Tibet. It recounts an incident in his first journey, in the mid-seventies, out of the medieval Himalayan world he had known into the modern West. His first stop was Hong Kong, where his hosts took him to the top of a skyscraper. Standing on the observation platform, the Karmapa looked out with astonishment and delight at the vast view of the city below. Then, after a moment or two, he began to cry. He had to be helped inside by his attendants with tears pouring from his eyes. Later he explained that at the sight of the huge city with its teeming masses being born and struggling and dying without a shred of dharma to help them—without, as he said, so much as an OM MANI PADME HUM—he had been overcome by grief.

      From these visions, we do not have to come far to arrive at the job description confronting Trungpa Rinpoche in America. The Vidyadhara was himself the eleventh incarnation in a line of enlightened spiritual and temporal rulers from Eastern Tibet. When he arrived in North America as the sole representative of his lineage in 1970, he saw an exciting and vigorous culture, very full of itself, covering a vast continent. He saw at the same time myriads of individual people suffering through ignorance, through entrenched views about life and lots of aggressive speed. As he himself later described the situation, Even with . . . encouragement, from the present lineage fathers and my devoted students, I have been left out in the cold as full-time garbageman, janitor, diaper service, and babysitter. So finally I alone have ended up as captain of this great vessel. I alone have to liberate its millions of passengers in this dark age. I alone have to sail this degraded samsaric ocean, which is very turbulent. With the blessings of the lineage, and because of my unyielding vow, there is obviously no choice (Nālandā Translation Committee/Trungpa, The Rain of Wisdom [Boulder, Colo.: Shambhala Publications, 1980], p. xii). In 1970 the eleventh Trungpa Tülku was scarcely thirty. He had been trained intensively in intellectual and meditative disciplines from early childhood, and was regarded by Tibetans as a meditation master of extraordinarily high accomplishment, in full possession of his heritage of awakened mind. Only a few short years in England separated him from the rarefied, protected life of a Tibetan dharma prince. Now he was a penniless immigrant in America. Where to begin?

      The sitting practice of meditation, the Vidyadhara told his listeners, is the only way. Brilliantly expounding the buddhadharma, he persuaded, cajoled, pleaded, commanded. He rapped the local lingo. He created suitable situations. He did everything he possibly could to get people to apply their bottoms to meditation cushions—except promise results. Only the practice of sitting meditation, as taught by the Buddha himself, could lay the groundwork for an authentic understanding of the Buddha’s teaching. If people could sit, and keep sitting, without looking for results, a gap could be created in ego’s defenses, and unconditional awareness could begin to shine through.

      But ego furiously opposes unconditional awareness. And its key strategy against meditation’s assault, the Vidyadhara taught, is spiritual materialism. This is the attempt to make use of spiritual teachings for our own preconceived purposes. We would like to live longer, be healthier, stronger, more highly competent, more magnetic, more powerful, more highly admired, richer, and more and more invulnerable. What better vehicle toward these ends than profoundest ancient wisdom and techniques of mind training, honed by centuries of application? And if meditation can be tied to ambition, the heart of its power of liberation is gone.

      From the beginning the Vidyadhara fought a pitched battle against spiritual materialism. He never tired of explaining in different ways that the true spiritual journey is that of surrender, the gradual abandonment of the reference point of ego through an ever clearer vision of things as they are. That is why he stunned his audiences over and over by describing, as he does here also, a lonely journey, marked by the painful disappointment of ego’s dreams as much as by the joy and freshness of open mind. From the beginning he asked his students to undertake the full rigors of the path as it really is, rather than pitching to their spiritually materialistic appetites. But once they had begun to surrender the reference point of ego, he encouraged, supported, and nurtured their work on themselves in whatever way he could.

      The teachings given here on basic meditation—shamatha and vipashyana, mindfulness and awareness—provide the foundation that every practitioner needs to awaken as the Buddha did. In addition it was in connection with these basic teachings that the Vidyadhara formulated the overall view of the path of buddhadharma for the first time for Westerners.

      I can only hope that readers of this book will be caught by Trungpa Rinpoche’s iron hook of compassion. Let us apply ourselves genuinely to the path of meditation.

      Sherab Chödzin

      Nova Scotia, 1994

      PART ONE

      New York

      March 1974

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      1

      The Only Way

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      The idea of this particular seminar is to establish a fundamental understanding of the Buddhist approach toward the practice of meditation. Some of you are experienced, some of you are new. In any case, I would like to reteach the whole thing. It is very important to develop a basic understanding of meditation, and it is extremely important for you to understand the fundamentals of the Buddhist way of thinking about meditation. This is extremely important for the work that I am doing and we are doing to establish a firm ground of Buddhism in this country. A firm ground would mean people having no misunderstanding whatsoever concerning basic meditation practice and the Buddhist attitude toward enlightenment.

      A tradition that developed in Tibet, my country, and other Buddhist countries in medieval times is understanding Buddhism in terms of a three-yana process. You begin with the hinayana discipline, then you open yourself to the mahayana level, and then finally you evolve into the vajrayana discipline. So the work we are doing is part of this three-yana approach. I want you to understand the main aspects of this very basic and fundamental process before beginning on the path.

      Those who have already begun to tread the path need to reexamine their journey. It is highly important to begin at the beginning rather than starting halfway through without the beginning. That would be like building your castle on an ice block or setting up your apartment in an airplane.

      The topic we will be dealing with in this seminar is mindfulness and awareness, which is the basic heart of the Buddhist approach. According to the Buddha, no one can attain basic sanity and basic enlightenment without practicing meditation. You might be highly confused or you might be highly awakened and completely ready for the path. You might be emotionally disturbed and experiencing a sense of claustrophobia in relation to your world. Perhaps you are inspired by works of art you have done or the visual and audial aspects of works of art in general. You might be fat, thin, big, small, intelligent, stupid—whatever you are, there is only one way, unconditionally, and that is to begin with the practice of meditation. The practice of meditation is the and only way. Without that, there is no way out and no way in.

      The practice of meditation is a way of unmasking ourselves, our deceptions of all kinds, and also the practice of meditation is a way of bringing out the subtleties of intelligence that exist within us. The experience of meditation sometimes plays the role of playmate; sometimes it plays the role of devil’s advocate, fundamental depression. Sometimes it acts as an encouragement for birth, sometimes as an encouragement for death. Its moods might be entirely different in different levels and states of being and emotion, as well as in the experience of different individuals—but fundamentally, according to the Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha, there is no doubt, none whatsoever, that meditation is the only way for us to begin on the spiritual path. That is the only way. The way.

      Meditation is a way of realizing the fundamental truth, the basic truth, that we can discover ourselves, we can work on ourselves. The goal is the path and the path is the goal. There is no other way of attaining basic sanity than the practice of meditation. Absolutely none. The evidence for that is that for two thousand five hundred years since the time

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