The Bodhisattva Path of Wisdom and Compassion

by Chogyam Trungpa

  Being disciplined is quite a cheerful situation, but sometimes we might find that it is not so cheerful, because we do not have any chance to play games with ourselves or to plead for sympathy from our friends. Being disciplined is how to remain a happy, healthy person. The paramita of discipline does not mean you grind your teeth and work yourself to death, or meditate yourself to death, or find at the end of aeons that you are a dried-up little meditator. Instead, you discover that you are a reasonable person, able to exchange yourself for others. You are completely connected with the dharma. You possess two legs; therefore, you can walk on the path. You can step beyond busyness, preoccupations, claustrophobia, and paranoia about potential attacks on your survival. Finally, you can relax.

  BASIC GOODNESS AND SELF-CONTROL

  Shila paramita is geared to the notion that you have something to offer. Once you begin to control your lack of discipline, you discover basic goodness. You do not find candy right away; first you have to find the vending machine and put your money in. Likewise, with discipline, first you practice and refine your discipline, then you find the goodness.

  When you do the tonglen practice of exchanging yourself for others, you can begin by thinking of basic goodness. You have lots of good things to breathe out to others; you have lots of goodness, lots of sanity, and lots of healthiness to give out. And all of that comes straight from the basic awakened and enlightened attitude, which is alive and strong and powerful. So what you give out is no longer purely imagination, or something that you have to crank up. You realize that you actually have something good to give out to others. In turn, you can breathe in what is painful and negative. The suffering that other people are experiencing can be brought in because, in contrast to their pain, you have basic healthiness and wakefulness, which can certainly absorb anything that comes to it. You can absorb suffering because you have a lot more goodness to give.

  That seems to be the basic point of paramita practice altogether, to build up that sense that you have something to offer. You have something absolutely good and wonderful to give out to others. You can do it! You have it! The only question is, do you know that you have it? In this discussion of the mahayana, we have not talked about anything that you do not already have, or that you have to crank up. You do not have to imagine that you have it. Not at all. We have been discussing qualities that you have; you just have to realize that you have them. You do have to dispel problems, but beyond dispelling the problems, you don’t have to crank up anything. You have it already, so you don’t need to create anything artificially. This particular approach is not a manufactured one. It is very real and very definite. We all agree that we can be this way.

  The notion of tsültrim includes such things as good table manners and basic decency in the very ordinary and simple sense. The analogy of the wish-fulfilling jewel means that everything could happen when you begin to behave properly. So discipline is a question of learning to behave properly and to appreciate yourself. You are learning to appreciate the way your hair is arranged, the way your clothes are tailored, the way your shoes are shined, the way you eat your food, the way you hold your knife and fork, the way you say hello, the way you shake hands, and the way you look at somebody.

  Such forms may seem to be very trivial and ordinary. They are not often introduced by the leading North American spiritual disciplines. In Zen, there are Oriental forms that tell students how to eat, how to sit, and so forth. But Zen does not work in the same way with Occidental forms such as table manners or dress. Beyond dressing up in their robes, American Zen students are left to find their own way. However, we do not make any distinction between the traditions of Occident and Orient. We are working toward a blanket policy, an umbrella policy. With that blanket approach, we can demonstrate our discipline, our bodhisattvahood, and the awakening of tathagatagarbha. In terms of discipline, some behavior patterns make more sense than others. They actually work. They might be regarded as outdated, according to our nuclear, plastic world, but certain medieval styles of dealing with the world are always up-to-date.

  When you become a generous person and develop your dignity and wealth, if you do not have control over your existence, generosity goes down the drain. Control means that the way you relate with your sense perceptions and the world of pleasure has to be modified. A purely generous person might say to you, “This is an excellent pastry. I have tried it myself, and it is very good. Why don’t you have some?” If you kept accepting what people offered you and ate all that pastry, you would begin to gain weight and feel slightly heavy and sloppy. The logic of control is that when you are offered pastries, you have to learn to control your desire to eat them. At the same time, you can appreciate the generosity of the person who offered you the pastry. You have to learn when to give a sign that you appreciate someone’s generosity, and when to say, “No, thank you.” The same principle applies when you are the offerer of the pastry. In that case, it becomes a question of how much you should control yourself in offering pastry to your guests. The discipline of controlling the sense perceptions is the basis of all virtues. It is like the earth: if there were no earth, there would be nothing for us to walk on.

  The basis of discipline is the behavior pattern or psychological state of not thinking of yourself as the star of the world. You do not come first. In the mahayana tradition, in any case, you do not come first. A noncentralized existence brings proper conduct. When your life is centered on yourself as a central theme, you are usually telling a white lie of some kind in order to avoid something. The idea of discipline is that you cannot do that and you should not do that. Physically, unless your health has really broken down, you cannot use your body as an excuse. Discipline means controlling the faculties of your body as well as your mind.

  Discipline is said to be the basis of all virtues because of the evenness of temper, the evenness of existence, and the trustworthiness of experience that it produces. When your temper and your existence become predictable, then you become a basis of virtue. You do not organize your life purely according to your moods. Your senses are controlled, and you create predictability for yourself and for others.

  INTENTIONS AND ACTIONS

  At the mahayana stage, discipline gets somewhat more complicated, more psychologically oriented. In terms of threefold logic, the ground is your individual commitment to a practice, the path is actually working with a practice, the fruition is that you continue with that practice until it is fulfilled properly and completely.2 Hinayana practice is mainly a matter of ceasing to cause problems for yourself, but in the mahayana, your practice includes both yourself and others. The mahayana is a two-dimensional situation of yourself and the world around you. The mahayana view of the precepts differs from that of the hinayana: in the mahayana, discipline is formed around your intention, together with how you follow up on that intention. With the precept against killing, for example, the thought of rejecting somebody else, ignoring their existence, or trying to get rid of them, is breaking the precept as much as actually killing them. A similar logic applies to drinking alcoholic beverages: if your intention in drinking alcohol is to change the environment of your life by substituting one thing for another, it is breaking the precepts. With that intention, you are failing to relate with alcohol or with your existence altogether. You are rejecting the possibility or potentiality of things that could happen.

  It is said that keeping the hinayana precepts is like dusting off your mirror: while you are dusting, more dust might be landing on it. But keeping the mahayana precepts is like keeping dust away from the mirror in the first place. In the mahayana, you reach the phase in which the slightest intention of breaking a precept destroys the purpose of your life and of living as a human being. But you could be without such an intention—and if an intention arises, you could label it “thinking.” When you notice a thought of breaking a precept arising, you could cut that thought.

  THREE TYPES OF DISCIPLINE

  Traditionally, tsültrim is divided in
to three types: binding yourself, gathering virtuous dharmas, and benefiting sentient beings.

  Binding Yourself

  The first type of discipline is the discipline of binding yourself. In Tibetan, it is dom-pe tsültrim. Dom means “binding,” and pe makes it a noun, tsültrim of course is “discipline”; so dom-pe tsültrim is the “binding factor of discipline.” You are binding yourself to the discipline and to the dharma. This does not mean punishing oneself and being a hermit, or running away from the world, but rather that you are not indulging the neurotic aspect of sense pleasures. Dom-pe tsültrim cuts the nervousness of mind; it cuts discursive thoughts and unnecessary preoccupations. It allows your mind to dwell in one particular place, which puts your mind at ease. You are bound by your authentic, genuine commitment.

  Traditionally speaking, dom-pe tsültrim is practiced by becoming a monk or nun, but the basic point of the binding factor of discipline is taming the mind. It is related to the refuge and bodhisattva vows that you take. You are bound together with your particular world, with your immediate family and friends, as well as with the vaster world. With dom-pe tsültrim, you keep the discipline of not being a nuisance to yourself, and beyond that, the discipline of not being a nuisance to others. The aspirations you had when you took the bodhisattva vow are actually taking place. So with dom-pe tsültrim, you become a decent person. When you respond to and fulfill the needs of others, you begin to fulfill your own needs as well. In relating to yourself, you learn to give up ego-centeredness and relate much more to the notion of maitri, or loving-kindness. In relating to others, you develop the notion of karuna, or compassion—and beyond that, mahakaruna, or great compassion.

  One of the qualities of dom-pe tsültrim is that it brings stillness of mind. You are controlling your mind whether you are prone to agitation or to laziness. Both laziness and excitement are controlled by dom-pe tsültrim. Through discipline, you are controlling your system altogether.

  Dom-pe tsültrim is similar, in a sense, to the popular and very ordinary concept of social graces. If you are having an elegant cocktail party, for instance, you don’t yell at the top of your voice. Maybe that is a rather low-level example, but the idea is that it is possible to be constantly even all the time. In that way, you are bound by basic, good behavior throughout your life. Through breakfast, lunch, and dinner, from the time you get up, as you go through the day, until you retire in the evening—throughout the whole day—you maintain basic uprightness all the time. You are free from laziness and free from too much excitement, frivolity, and emotionalism. That allows your mind to settle down.

  At the beginning, the discipline of dom-pe tsültrim could be a tremendous strain. You feel that you have to behave like a zombie, the same from morning to evening, and you cannot even express yourself. Particularly in modern culture, people are supposed to scream and shout. So you might think that disciplining yourself not to do that would be absurd and terrible, that you would not have any chance to show your characteristics or your particular color and beauty. But if you think about it further, you will see that your basic goodness is showing throughout the whole thing. Your good aspects are being cultivated, and your wicked aspects are being subjugated. In turn, you will find that being in your company becomes pleasurable to yourself and to others. You become a decent person twenty-four hours a day. Through dom-pe tsültrim, you have bound your frivolity, which is usually allowed so much room.

  Gathering Virtuous Dharmas

  The second type of discipline is known as gathering virtuous dharmas, or gathering goodness. In Tibetan it is ge-we chödü. Ge-we means “goodness,” or “virtue.” To express this from a negative point of view, ge-wa is nonaggression, and from a positive point of view, ge-wa is a sense of expansion, relaxation, sympathy, and benevolence. That is the definition of virtue in Buddhism altogether, and it also applies here. Chö is “dharma,” and dü means “gathering”; so ge-we chödü is the “way to gather in the goodness of dharma.” It is the discipline of ripening and developing oneself.

  With ge-we chödü, there is an emphasis on the idea of intellectual study: hearing, contemplating, and meditating. There is also an emphasis on realizing the value of your teacher, which comes from hearing, contemplating, and meditating on what the teacher has said. Ge-we chödü is also connected with mindfulness. You become a very tamed person, as well as a heroic, bodhisattva-like person.

  Gathering virtuous dharmas, or the discipline of ripening or developing yourself, is the only way for dharma to mix with your mind and your existence so that your mind and dharma are one. With this view, you begin to listen to the dharma, to think about it, and to practice it. Furthermore, you respect your teacher, who only exists because of the teachings. Recognizing the value of the teachings through the practice of ge-we chödu allows you to realize how to appreciate dharma twenty-four hours a day, and how to put your dharma practice into effect. You are interested in understanding the meaning of dharma, and you are also interested in how the world functions. The way the world functions becomes a message of dharma each time, so whether you are in Grand Central Station or an airport in Tokyo, you are inspired. You are never off guard. You understand that everything that happens in your life, whether your rice burns or your milk boils over, is an expression of dharma. Seeing that whatever happens in your life is dharma takes enormous discipline.

  The meaning of gathering dharmas is that you are making your whole being ripe for the dharma. You are trying to become a completely dharmic person, as opposed to someone who is purely learned. You may know the terms and ideas, but if you do not apply the dharma to yourself personally, it remains foreign to you. By means of ge-we chödü, you become thoroughly soaked in the dharma—in passionlessness and egolessness. You are soaked in the softness, gentleness, and reasonableness of the dharma. When you become a dharmic person, your whole being is completely ripened with dharmic capability, like a fully ripened fruit.

  We can actually see the differences between a dharmic person and a non-dharmic person. A dharmic person speaks with awareness, mindfulness, and softness, whereas a non-dharmic person shouts, or jumps up and down, and is always nervous. It is quite literal. It is obvious in the way people walk, in the way they conduct themselves, and in the way they talk to others. Becoming a dharmic person through ge-we chödü is not just a tale or myth; it actually takes place.

  Benefiting Sentient Beings

  The third type of discipline is the discipline of benefiting sentient beings. It is called semchen tön-che. Semchen means “sentient beings”; sem means “mind,” and chen makes it “those who have a mind.” Tön means “benefit,” or “purpose,” and che means “doing it”; so semchen tön-che is “fulfilling the purpose of those who have a mind,” which simply means benefiting others. Semchen tön-che also means making others worthy, preparing them for the dharma. It includes bodhisattva actions such as relating with relatives and friends, business partners, bosses or subordinates, people who may not have any connection with the dharma.

  Benefiting sentient beings means that you are willing to spend time working for someone else, whether it is your own child, your parents, or, for that matter, a stranger or someone you do not particularly like. There is always work that needs to be done. Discipline is not moralistic; you do not work with others because it is good for you to do. You do it automatically because of your interest. Working for others means propagating the message of gentleness, which seems to be the core of the Buddhist approach altogether.

  The basic idea of semchen tön-che is that you bring together your mind and the dharma, so there is no conflict in performing the actions of both absolute and relative bodhichitta. Both bodhichittas come along right at the beginning, and then continue through all the paramitas. Relative bodhichitta is like a flashlight with a beam of light coming out of it: in order to use the light, you have to hold the flashlight properly. Holding it properly and making it work for you so that the light will shine wherever you need it is absolute bodhichitta.r />
  With semchen tön-che, you are able to produce psychological harmony for others. When you are practicing this particular shila, you do not create a disturbance when you walk into a room. Instead, when you enter a room—whether you are working at Western Union, or the post office, or in a factory—there is a feeling of harmony. When you enter a particular situation, there is a good feeling about the whole thing. That is what is known in the texts as organizing the discipline of harmony.

  With semchen tön-che, you can create harmony, and beyond that, because of your virtue, you are also able to cut through other people’s neurosis. You can benefit people by your good presence in any situation. For example, if a person is creating chaos, you should have enough power and strength, wisdom and control, to say or do what is needed to cut through that person’s confusion and destroy their neurosis. When you see that someone is doing something neurotic, the first thing to do is stop them, and not even bother to tell them why you are stopping them. Later that person may realize that it made sense for you to stop them. They may have a second take on the whole thing. At that point, if they are interested, you can tell them why you stopped them. That is our Kagyü style. We stop people first—we don’t talk it over with them through our lawyer.

  If you want to reach people, you have to take positive action. People in samsara always do harmful things. Quite literally, they hang themselves up and kill themselves. So there is no room to philosophize. It is a very immediate situation, like walking into the emergency room of a hospital. You see that same kind of craziness everywhere. From a bodhisattva’s point of view, the whole world is a giant emergency room. You have to stop people from harming themselves. As a would-be bodhisattva, that is what you have to do. You cannot just leave, and hope somebody else will come along and do the job for you. You have to be the person who does the job, who actually saves somebody. The responsibility is on you. You should be willing to use the corrective mechanism of telling the truth; from the minute you wake up, you should be willing to speak up if there is a problem. The discipline of working for others applies to everything you do.