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    Crazy Wisdom
    Crazy Wisdom
    Crazy Wisdom
    Ebook215 pages3 hours

    Crazy Wisdom

    By Chögyam Trungpa

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    The revered Buddhist teacher examines the life of Guru Rinpoche and the awakened state of mind known as "crazy wisdom"

    Chögyam Trungpa describes "crazy wisdom" as an innocent state of mind that has the quality of early morning—fresh, sparkling, and completely awake. This fascinating book examines the life of Padmasambhava, or Guru Rinpoche—the revered Indian teacher who brought Buddhism to Tibet—to illustrate the principle of crazy wisdom. From this profound point of view, spiritual practice does not provide comfortable answers to pain or confusion. On the contrary, painful emotions can be appreciated as a challenging opportunity for new discovery. In particular, the author discusses meditation as a practical way to uncover one's own innate wisdom.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherShambhala
    Release dateNov 13, 2001
    ISBN9780834821316
    Crazy Wisdom
    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

      Crazy Wisdom - Chögyam Trungpa

      CRAZY WISDOM SEMINAR I

      Jackson Hole, 1972

      Pema Gyalpo (Padmasambhava).

      ONE

      Padmasambhava and Spiritual Materialism

      THE SUBJECT that we are going to deal with is an extraordinarily difficult one. It is possible that some people might get extraordinarily confused. Or people might very well get something out of it. We will be discussing Guru Rinpoche, or as he is often called in the West, Padmasambhava; we will be considering his nature and the various lifestyles he developed in the process of working with students. This subject is very subtle, and some aspects of it are very difficult to put into words. I hope nobody will regard this humble attempt of mine as a definitive portrayal of Padmasambhava.

      To begin with, we probably need some basic introduction to who Padmasambhava was; to how he fits into the context of the buddhadharma (the Buddhist teachings), in general; and to how he came to be so admired by Tibetans in particular.

      Padmasambhava was an Indian teacher who brought the complete teachings of the buddhadharma to Tibet. He remains our source of inspiration even now, here in the West. We have inherited his teachings, and from that point of view, I think we could say that Padmasambhava is alive and well.

      I suppose the best way to characterize Padmasambhava for people with a Western or Christian cultural outlook is to say that he was a saint. We are going to discuss the depth of his wisdom and his lifestyle, his skillful way of relating with students. The students he had to deal with were Tibetans, who were extraordinarily savage and uncultured. He was invited to come to Tibet, but the Tibetans showed very little understanding of how to receive and welcome a great guru from another part of the world. They were very stubborn and very matter-of-fact—very earthy. They presented all kinds of obstacles to Padmasambhava’s activity in Tibet. However, the obstacles did not come from the Tibetan people alone, but also from differences in climate, landscape, and the social situation as a whole. In some ways, Padmasambhava’s situation was very similar to our situation here. Americans are hospitable, but on the other hand, there is a very savage and rugged side to American culture. Spiritually, American culture is not conducive to just bringing out the brilliant light and expecting it to be accepted.

      So there is an analogy here. In terms of that analogy, the Tibetans are the Americans and Padmasambhava is himself.

      Before getting into details concerning Padmasambhava’s life and teachings, I think it would be helpful to discuss the idea of a saint in the Buddhist tradition. The idea of a saint in the Christian tradition and the idea of a saint in the Buddhist tradition are somewhat conflicting. In the Christian tradition, a saint is generally considered someone who has direct communication with God, who perhaps is completely intoxicated with the Godhead and because of this is able to give out certain reassurances to people. People can look to the saint as an example of higher consciousness or higher development.

      The Buddhist approach to spirituality is quite different. It is nontheistic. It does not have the principle of an external divinity. Thus, there is no possibility of getting promises from the divinity and bringing them from there down to here. The Buddhist approach to spirituality is connected with awakening within oneself rather than with relating to something external. So the idea of a saint as someone who is able to expand himself to relate to an external principle, get something out of it, and then share that with others is difficult or nonexistent from the Buddhist point of view.

      A saint in the Buddhist context—for example, Padmasambhava or a great being like the Buddha himself—is someone who provides an example of the fact that completely ordinary, confused human beings can wake themselves up; they can put themselves together and wake themselves up through an accident of life of one kind or another. The pain, the suffering of all kinds, the misery, and the chaos that are part of life begins to wake them, shake them. Having been shaken, they begin to question: Who am I? What am I? How is it that all these things are happening? Then they go further and realize that there is something in them that is asking these questions, something that is, in fact, intelligent and not exactly confused.

      This happens in our own lives. We feel a sense of confusion—it seems to be confusion—but that confusion brings out something that is worth exploring. The questions that we ask in the midst of our confusion are potent questions, questions that we really have. We ask, Who am I? What am I? What is this? What is life? and so forth. Then we explore further and ask, In fact, who on earth asked that question? Who is that person who asked the question, ‘Who am I?’ Who is the person who asked, ‘What is?’ or even ‘What is what is?’ We go on and on with this questioning, further and further inward. In some way, this is nontheistic spirituality in its fullest sense. External inspirations do not stimulate us to model ourselves on further external situations. Rather the external situations that exist speak to us of our confusion, and this makes us think more, think further. Once we have begun to do that, then of course there is the other problem: once we have found out who and what we are, how do we apply what we have learned to our living situation? How do we put it into practice?

      There seem to be two possible approaches here. One is trying to live up to what we would like to be. The other is trying to live what we are. Trying to live up to what we would like to be is like pretending we are a divine being or a realized person, or whatever we might like to call the model. When we realize what is wrong with us, what our weakness is, what our problems and neuroses are, the automatic temptation is to try to act just the opposite, as though we have never heard of such a thing as our being wrong or confused. We tell ourselves, Think positive! Act as though you’re okay. Although we know that something is wrong with us on the level of the actual living situation, on the kitchen-sink level, we regard that as unimportant. Let’s forget those ‘evil vibrations,’ we say. Let’s think the other way. Let’s pretend to be good.

      This approach is known in the Buddhist tradition as spiritual materialism, which means not being realistic, or to use hippie jargon, spacing out. Let’s forget the bad and pretend to be good. We could classify as spiritual materialism any approach—such as Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, or Christian—that provides us with techniques to try to associate with the good, the better, the best—or the ultimately good, the divine.

      When we begin associating ourselves with the good, it makes us happy. We feel full of delight. We think, At last I’ve found an answer! That answer is that the only thing to do is regard ourselves as free already. Then, having established the position that we are free already, we just have to let all things flow.

      Then we add a further touch to reinforce our spiritual materialism: everything that we do not know or did not understand in connection with our spiritual quest we connect with descriptions in various scriptures about that which is beyond mind, beyond words, ineffable—the ineffable Self, or whatever. We associate our own lack of understanding about what is going on with us with those unspoken, inexpressible things. This way our ignorance is made into the greatest discovery of all. We can connect this great discovery with a doctrinal supposition; for example, the savior or some interpretation of the scriptures.

      Whereas before, we didn’t know anything at all, now we know something that we actually don’t know. There is something ahead of us now. We cannot describe it in terms of words, concepts, and ideas, but we have discovered that, to begin with, it is a matter of twisting ourselves into the good. So we have this one thing to start with: we can directly and deliberately translate our confusion as being something that is not confused. We do this just because we are seeking pleasure, spiritual pleasure. In doing it, we affirm that the pleasure we are seeking is of an unknowable nature, because we actually have no idea what kind of spiritual pleasure we are going to get out of this maneuver. And all the spiritual interpretations of the scriptures referring to the unknowable can be applied to the fact that we do not know what to do spiritually. Nevertheless, we are definitely involved in spiritual conviction now, because we have suppressed our original doubts about who we are and what we are—our feeling that perhaps we might not be anything. We have suppressed that; we may not even know about it anymore.

      Having suppressed this embarrassment of ego that provided us with stepping-stones to the unknown, the nature of which we did not understand, we end up with two games of confusion going on: a game of the unknown and a game of the transcendental unknown. Both of these are part of spiritual materialism. We do not know who or what we are, but we do know that we would like to be someone or something. We decide to go ahead with what we would like to be even though we do not know what that is. That is the first game. Then on top of that, in connection with being something, we would also like to know that there is something about the world or the cosmos that corresponds to this something that we are. We have a sense of finding this something that we want to know, but we actually can’t understand it, so that becomes the transcendental unknown. Since we can’t understand it, we say, Let’s make that bigger and more gigantic confusion into the spirituality of the infiniteness of the Godhead, or something like that.

      This should give us some understanding of spiritual materialism. The danger of spiritual materialism is that under its influence we make all kinds of assumptions. First, there are the domestic or personal-level assumptions, which we make because we want to be happy. Second, there are the spiritual assumptions that are made because that transcendental, gigantic, greater discovery is left mysterious. This brings further great assumptions: we do not know what we are actually going to achieve by achieving that unknown thing, but nevertheless, we give it some vague description, such as being absorbed into the cosmos. And since nobody has yet gone that far, if anybody questions this discovery of absorption into the cosmos, then we just make up further logic or look for reinforcement from the scriptures or other authorities.

      The result of all this is that we end up confirming ourselves and confirming that the experience we are proclaiming is a true experience. Nobody can question it. At some stage, there’s no room left for questioning at all. Our whole outlook becomes completely established with no room left at all for questioning. This is what we could call achieving egohood, as opposed to achieving enlightenment. At that point, if I would like to practice my aggression and passion on you and you don’t accept that, then that’s your fault. You do not understand the ineffable spirituality, so you are at fault. The only way left for me to help you is to reduce you to a shrunken head, to take out your brain and heart. You become a mere puppet under my command.

      That is a rough portrait of spiritual materialism. It is the first of the two possible approaches: trying to live up to what you would like to be. Now let’s talk about the second possible approach, that of trying to live what you are.

      This possibility is connected with seeing our confusion, or misery and pain, but not making those discoveries into an answer. Instead, we explore further and further and further without looking for an answer. It is a process of working with ourselves, with our lives, with our psychology, without looking for an answer but seeing things as they are—seeing what goes on in our heads directly and simply, absolutely literally. If we can undertake a process like that, then there is a tremendous possibility that our confusion—the chaos and neurosis that go on in our minds—might become a further basis for investigation. Then we look further and further and further. We don’t make a big point or an answer out of any one thing. For example, we might think that because we have discovered one particular thing that is wrong with us, that must be it, that must be the problem, that must be the answer. No. We don’t fixate on that, we go further. Why is that the case? We look further and further. We ask, Why is this so? Why is there spirituality? Why is there awakening? Why is there this moment of relief? Why is there such a thing as discovering the pleasure of spirituality? Why, why, why? We go on deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper, until we reach the point where there is no answer. There is not even a question. Both question and answer die simultaneously at some point. They begin to rub each other too closely and they short-circuit each other in some way. At that point, we tend to give up hope of an answer, or of anything whatsoever, for that matter. We have no more hope, none whatsoever. We are purely hopeless. We could call this transcending hope, if you would like to put it in more genteel terms.

      The hopelessness is the essence of crazy wisdom. It is hopeless, utterly hopeless. It is beyond hopelessness. (Of course, it would be possible, if we tried to turn that hopelessness itself into some kind of solution, to become confused again, to say the least.)

      The process is one of going further in and in and in without any reference point of spirituality, without any reference point of a savior, without any reference point of goodness or badness—without any reference points whatsoever! Finally, we might reach the basic level of hopelessness, of transcending hope. This does not mean we end up as zombies. We still have all the energies; we have all the fascination of discovery, of seeing this process unfolding and unfolding and unfolding, going on and on. This process of discovery automatically recharges itself so that we keep going deeper and deeper and deeper. This process of going deeper and deeper is the process of crazy wisdom, and it is what characterizes a saint in the Buddhist tradition.

      The eight aspects of Padmasambhava that we are going to discuss are connected with such a process of psychological penetration, of cutting through the surface of the psychological realm and then cutting through a further surface and infinitely further surfaces down through ever further depths of further surfaces, deeper and deeper. This is the process we involve ourselves in by discussing Padmasambhava’s life, the eight aspects of Padmasambhava, and crazy wisdom.

      In this context, we see that the Buddhist approach to spirituality is one of ruthlessly cutting through any chance we might have of confirming ourselves at any particular stage of development on the spiritual path. When we discover that we have made some progress on the spiritual path, that discovery of progress is regarded as a

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