The Bodhisattva Path of Wisdom and Compassion

by Chogyam Trungpa

We realize that we cannot grasp onto anything properly and fully, so the only thing we can do is to take off our fixation on things as they are. Doing so begins to plant a seed in our mind, known as buddha nature. Without fixation, things are seen as they are, and there is some kind of basic intelligence taking place. Things are seen to be both colorful and empty of conceptualization.

  AVOIDING RED TAPE

  Ultimately, anything that you use to perceive shunyata, any way you try to understand shunyata by means of something else, does not work. The idea is to try to avoid such red tape; the whole thing has to be direct. The study of shunyata takes place in your mind, but what is your mind? Who made your mind? Who is your mind? What is your mind? Where is it coming from, and where is it going? Why do you want to study shunyata at all? What’s going on in your mind? Where is the background of your mind? What is your mind doing there? It may seem like a vicious circle, but if you spin enough, if you get dizzy enough, you might come to some kind of sense. That is the trick used by the madhyamakans, and it is still used in the Zen tradition of koans. The idea is that the vicious circle has to break down sometime. If you put enough discipline into it, finally you are spinning completely, so you lose track of trying to get hold of something workable, and you give up the whole project.

  CONNECTING KÜNDZOP AND TÖNDAM

  Töndam, or absolute truth, is connected with the perception of shunyata, and with shunyata, you are relating with reality. We are not talking about absorption into the highest spiritual level or any kind of gift of God, but about a very simple, straightforward, and direct rediscovering of yourself through the inspiration of buddha nature.

  Töndam is a higher level than kündzop. But you cannot be born as a full adult all at once. You first have to be a baby and a teenager, and then you can become an adult. So placing a higher value on töndam does not mean that it is something you can reach directly. It may have higher value as far as the progression is concerned, but nobody can reach that level without first going through the earlier yanas.

  Kündzop is actually very powerful. Kündzop is the thread or continuity that runs through both the yogacharan and the madhyamakan approach. The activities of the bodhisattva are based on skillful means and wisdom working side by side, like the two wings of a bird: skillful means is kündzop, and wisdom is töndam. So you have to be a good baby, a good teenager, and then a good adult. You have to do all three properly: you can’t be a bad baby, a good teenager, and then a bad adult. Töndam is madhyamakan style, and kündzop is yogacharan style. It is Zen style, the appreciation of things as they are. Quite possibly the yogachara teacher Asanga was a greater artist than Nagarjuna.

  Although we say that the mahayanists experience the twofold truth completely, it is not necessarily true. Each experience of truth leaves a footprint, which still must be shed. As we go along the path, there are constant footprints, which become lighter and lighter until the attainment of vajra-like samadhi. So even at this level, there is still a footprint of the ego of dharmas. The ego of dharmas is very hard to overcome completely, and the egolessness of dharmas is very hard to go along with. It is necessary to realize that all this does not happen in one sudden flash, but it is a slow thinning-out process.

  The Samadhiraja Sutra says that dharma does not have letters or language. But if there are no letters and no words, it might seem that there is nothing worthy of discussion. Since everything is nonexistent, what is listening and what is teaching? Why do we teach and why do we study? We can listen and we can teach because that unchanging nature has been exaggerated. In order to teach the absolute truth, we can create a kind of “tripless trip.” In other words, we have to exaggerate. In Tibetan it is said that we have to attach more feathers to the unchanging truth so that people can listen and be taught. The Heart Sutra builds up concepts such as no eye, no ear, no nose, and the rest in order to show how shunyata is absent of concepts. It is like the old remedy that goes: if you have water caught in your ears, you can get it out by putting in more water.

  The connection between kundzöp and töndam is compassion. No matter how much people confuse things, there is a quality of compassion and the desire to work together. That seems to be the link. In terms of kündzop, or relative truth, as long as we breathe the same air, inbreeding is happening. We may regard each other as being individually born and not particularly brothers and sisters under one heading, but that inbreeding is pretty intense. It is like tons of maggots crawling all over one another. Sitting practice is the only way to get away from such inbreeding. You cannot actually get rid of that process unless you stop. In terms of töndam, or ultimate truth, having already experienced your closed and inbreeding world, you try to inject new blood all the time. Ground madhyamaka is based on the fact that the only working bases we have are relative reality and ultimate truth, which can work together. That is the starting point: relative and absolute truth can work together.

  SAMSARIC PERCEPTION AND RANDOM LABELING

  We approach the world the same way all the time. There is a whole spectrum of possibilities—there are big issues and small issues of all kinds, such as making love, taking a shower, brushing our clothes, or combing our hair—but whatever goes on in our life has the quality of stupidity and aggression. However, we cannot say that drinking a cup of tea is bad. That is not a problem, and it is not particularly anti-dharma—it is simply relative truth, or kündzop. So if we have a cup of tea to drink, we should go ahead and drink it. But interestingly, the way that we do so is a samsaric version of drinking tea.

  The term for the samsaric style of going about our business is küntak, which means “random labeling.” Kün means “all,” but in this context it has the sense of “random,” and tak means “labeling,” or “pigeonholing”; so küntak means “random labeling.” Küntak is random because it is opportunistic. We don’t really know what we are doing, so we are always trying to latch onto situations. Küntak covers both the ego of dharmas and the ego of individuals. It is that which makes us hang on to things, to ourselves or to the world. That is what we do in the samsaric world. We apply küntak in the confused, neurotic, and mercenary way that we try to make friends with somebody, in the way we try to con them. We apply küntak by attaching ourselves to a certain idea, and then trying to perpetuate it so that the world will appear the way we want it. Politically, that seems to be the approach of capitalism as well as communism. Küntak is mercenary and opportunistic, and it is a form of fixation. Fixation may seem to be the opposite of randomness, but before you become fixated, you randomly choose what you will become fixated on. You scan the room, and you zero in on one particular area. So you randomly pick something, and then you fixate.

  The idea of küntak is that when you react, there is no basis for your reaction. Things are just a fabrication of reality, a fabrication of so-called reality, rather than actual reality. The point is that anything that goes on within the level of küntak is not really going on at all. It is pure fabrication, just a big scheme to try to occupy ourselves for no reason. It is a big deception. We deceive ourselves so that we could have a very cozy world in which things overlap. We want to have a so-called great time, which is actually duhkha, or suffering. Sometimes you see one thing and you react to many things, and sometimes you see many things and you react to just one thing. All such situations are not founded on anything solid; they are fabrications. Shunyata does not just mean emptiness, it means being free from fabrications. If you have no eyes, you can see without fabrication. Having no eyes does not mean that you go blind. In fact, you can see better because your eyes are not clogged up with fabrications.

  When we remember something that happened and see that none of it was real, we see how we made the whole thing up. That is why we put so much emphasis on how you get confused right at the beginning, how you split off from your tathagatagarbha, your buddha nature, how you separate yourself from others. You and your wakefulness have different opinions altogether. It is very important to understand how the whole thing goes
wrong at the very beginning. If you understand that, then you understand the whole thing. And that split is not a “once upon a time” story—it happens all the time in your everyday life.

  In whatever we do, we have lots of küntak. At the level of küntak, having a cup of tea is a big deal. You are very particular about the whole thing. But while you are drinking your cup of tea, ignorance and passion are happening along with it. If you were free from küntak, having a cup of tea could be very simple, no big deal. You could simply have your tea, made out of water and tea leaves. So when you drink your cup of tea, you could do it badly and aggressively, or you could do it gently. When you remove stupidity and aggression, softness and gentleness remain. That softness is known as shunyata and compassion. Gentleness always exists; it goes on all the time.

  The shunyata doctrine tells us to disbelieve in küntak, to go beyond it. This does not mean that if you have a fixation on your piano, you should burn it in order to transcend küntak. It is much more subtle than that. You only need to discover your küntak and to understand how it works in order to see that it is no longer real. When you understand küntak, you realize that territory and aggression are not real.

  I would like to make one theme quite clear: when you perceive situations samsarically, you do not perceive them properly. You may think that if you transcend all your samsaric desires, you will not be able to make your own cup of tea, or cash your check at the bank. But in fact, it is because of your samsaric desires that you are unable to cash your check properly or make your cup of tea. If you get beyond samsara, you can cash your check much better. You can make your monthly payments on time and make a great cup of tea as well. The idea that giving up samsara means leaving behind the pragmatic world is absolutely ludicrous, and does not correspond in the least to the buddhadharma. In the madhyamaka approach, practicality is not regarded as worldliness. If you have to evict your tenant because they didn’t pay the rent, you just do it. It is not regarded as a samsaric act, particularly; you are just responding to the situation. It is not evil; you are just doing what needs to be done.

  The Buddhist way of working with our perceptions, with our bodies and minds, is not to annihilate them or to regard them as a curse. We have our bodies, we have our perceptions, we have our mental attitudes, and we have to refine them. We have to work with them properly. That is why it has been said that true kündzop should be respected. We are not talking about running away from the world. We should actually keep up with what is going on in the world, but we should do that purely and properly.

  OVERCOMING KÜNTAK

  Traditional madhyamaka logic talks about four ways of overcoming küntak: examining the cause, examining the effect, examining both the cause and effect, and examining the nature of the whole thing. These contemplations can be applied to both psychological states and factual states. They are dialectical, direct thinking.

  Examining the Cause

  The first contemplation is looking at how küntak arises. Looking at the cause is called the vajra clamp, or diamond clamp. For example, in terms of yourself and others, when küntak arises, what causes it to arise? Does it come from your self or from others? If it appears that it came from you, you ask yourself the straightforward question: “Where in my self does it come from?” When you do so, usually you will not find any background or place of origin. Therefore, you think that it must be the fault of others. You try to pigeonhole it as coming from someone else. But who are those “others” anyway? They also come from you; they come from your view of others. And finally, if the cause of küntak comes from neither of the two, if it is not initiated by you or others, then nothing is actually happening. So a cause does not seem to exist, particularly; it does not seem to happen.

  The point of examining the cause is that the root of küntak cannot be found. Küntak does not come from anywhere. You did not really provide the ignorance at the root of the whole situation; you did not create such strong ignorance in yourself. Ignorance is like snowfall; it is not particularly solid. The samsaric fixation of küntak is neither your fault nor the fault of others. In fact, it doesn’t really exist.

  Examining the Effect

  The second means of overcoming küntak is looking at the effect or the fruition. For instance, a fruit comes from a seed. But if a seed is a seed, how can it be a fruit? And if the fruit is a fruit, how can it be a seed? In other words, if the seed is constantly being a seed, it cannot bear any fruit. And if the fruit is constantly being a fruit, then it cannot be a seed. A seed is different from a fruit. So what is the continuity? What is the solid connection between the two?

  We usually look forward to the fruit or product of situations. For instance, when we want to go to sleep, we would like to go ahead and fall asleep rather than talk about how to do it. We think that the fruition, falling asleep, will already be there if we desire or yearn for it. From our küntak perspective, we look forward so much to fruition that the fruition has no means of becoming actual. We become so vague and so numb by expecting fruition that the fruition never happens. We are constantly covering things up, but there is nothing underneath, so we are making a big deal out of nothing.

  Examining Both the Cause and Effect

  The third means of overcoming küntak is looking at both the cause and the effect, the seed and the fruit. You see that one concept can create many products. Does the one expand by itself? If it does so, then one becomes many. But how can one be many? If one is one, how can one become two?

  When you examine things in this way, you are unable to conjure up or seize your confusion on the spot. You may be able to do so theoretically, or cook up a few ideas about it, but on an actual experiential level, you cannot grasp it. When “Aah!” has occurred in you as you are looking at the phenomenal world, as you are relating with both here and there, that “Aah!” does not mean anything. You might make a big deal out of feeling that “Aah!” but nothing has actually happened; it is panic without any root. That “Aah!” does not produce any result or solidification. Both the cause and effect of your panic are insubstantial; they do not exist. You have just made them up.

  Examining the Nature of the Whole Thing

  The fourth means of overcoming küntak is looking at the nature of the whole thing. When you don’t find something to blame, your usual trick is to conjure something up. But if you look fully and thoroughly into your magic tricks, your devious tricks, none of them have any real, solid logic. You could write a whole book about how solid your tricks are, but if you genuinely look at where all these tricks come from, you see how you build your castles on ice. If you look at how you go about your business, you begin to find that your so-called talent, your professional acting out of the role of samsaric gentleman, samsaric lady, or samsaric powerful person, doesn’t quite make it. It is fundamentally full of holes.

  We could call these four topics the four exposés of küntak.

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  Awakening Unfabricated Perception

  By virtue of having developed maitri for ourselves and karuna for others, the ground of our existence begins to thaw and the samsaric world begins to flake. We realize that there is no reason for us to hold a grudge against others, or for that matter, ourselves. . . . So we begin to let go, to open further. This quality of openness and gentleness is not a naive or love-and-light approach because it is combined with prajna, or discriminating awareness. . . . When both letting go and prajna take place at the same time, we experience fundamental softness in our view of ourselves and the world.

  VIEWING THE WORLD WITH LOVING-KINDNESS AND COMPASSION

  When we begin to perceive the phenomenal world from the viewpoint of bodhichitta, we find something quite different from what we are samsarically accustomed to: we begin to have an understanding of things as they are. When we perceive the world according to shunyata and madhyamaka logic, it is necessary to understand that our whole being, our basic essence, is connected with wakefulness. At this point, we may have already practiced and come to that realizat
ion, but we still have to shed a lot of obstacles and uncover a lot of things on our journey—and we begin to ask questions as to how we can go about that.

  By virtue of having developed maitri for ourselves and karuna for others, the ground of our existence begins to thaw and the samsaric world begins to flake. We realize that there is no reason for us to hold a grudge against others, or for that matter, ourselves. We have no grudge against our world. So we begin to let go, to open further. This quality of openness and gentleness is not a naive or love-and-light approach because it is combined with prajna, or discriminating awareness. So our perception is based on a very interesting balance between letting go and prajna, or intelligence. When both letting go and prajna are taking place at the same time, we experience fundamental softness in our view of ourselves and the world.

  Prajna is of absolute, utmost importance in Buddhism. As you are progressing on the path, even if you are not yet enlightened, there are always glimpses of prajna. Prajna discriminates between entities very clearly. It distinguishes between what is and what is not, but it does not promote or reject anything. If you are either rejecting or wanting to propagate something, you no longer have prajna. You have allied yourself with that and this, with liking and disliking, with good and bad. With prajna, everything is even and equal. It is almost a gray world. Prajna cuts things into pieces; it distinguishes what is appropriate in order to see the vision of shunyata.

  In talking about our perception of the phenomenal world, the term phenomena refers to whatever you hear, see, or feel. It refers to whatever you relate with: your lover, your husband, your wife, your in-laws, your book, your table, your food, your sheets, your toilet—all those things. According to the Heart Sutra, all phenomena are empty. What does emptiness mean? We should look into that.