The Bodhisattva Path of Wisdom and Compassion

by Chogyam Trungpa

  Whenever you feel the quality of me-ness, you should think of these sayings. Whenever you feel disgust, you make it your property, and whenever you experience vision or upliftedness, you give it to others. So there is a sort of black-white contrast. There is a flip of black and white, nausea and relaxation, feeling ugly and feeling pretty. That flip takes place very simply. When there is “I,” you take it, and when there is “am,” you give it.

  The phrase “loss and defeat” does not refer to fundamental pain. It is just that you did not get what you wanted, so you feel somewhat irritated. It is about relating with the little things that go wrong in your life, like losing your money or crashing into a car. When we do not get what we want, we are always frustrated. We are resentful of something or somebody, or even resent ourselves. That is not really pain, it is just hassles. So in the mahayana, we are dealing with all kinds of hassles and transmuting them. We are working with them as a journey toward enlightenment.

  It is a fantastic idea, that we are actually, finally, fearless people, that profit goes to others, and loss goes to ourselves. That is great! Fantastic! We may not always find it to be so, but it is actually true that a lot of things that we tend to blame others for are our own doing. We can employ a lawyer to prove that we are right and somebody else is wrong, but that is a lot of trouble to go through. And hiring a lawyer to attain enlightenment is not possible. Buddha did not have a lawyer himself.

  In the mahayana, the opening process is not necessarily painful. One of the problems of the Occidental mentality is that we make a big deal of everything and unnecessarily complicate things. But the process of opening is not a big deal. It is an exchange; it is like a game. You are finally putting your name on the dotted line, which is a lighthearted situation, including death. You could keep that in mind; you could even make a slogan out of it: “Whatever takes place, do not take it all that seriously.” You should not regard any problem as the ultimate, final problem, but as just a temporary flare that comes and goes. If you regard something as a big deal, it will become that way, but if you regard it as purely a dance that you are responding to, it will be okay.

  To work with slogans such as this, you obviously need a lot of understanding and training. You cannot just practice it without having planned the journey and worked with your state of mind. There is also a need for an understanding of the shunyata experience, because when there is no ground, anything that takes place in the groundlessness becomes workable.

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  Begin the sequence of sending and taking with yourself.

  In this slogan, the idea of “first thought” continues. The way we often express this is by the phrase “First thought, best thought.” Usually we have the feeling that this happens first, then other happens. So the idea of this slogan is to start with this. Whenever anything happens, the first thing to do is to take on the pain yourself, and afterward you give away anything left, anything pleasurable. By “pleasurable” we do not necessarily mean feeling extraordinarily good, but anything other than pain. So anything other than pain is given away. You do not hold on to any way of entertaining yourself or giving yourself good treatment.

  This slogan has to do with giving up passion, as it is passion that makes you demand pleasure for yourself. Therefore this slogan is connected with the paramita of discipline very vividly and closely. You begin to realize that the demands of wanting and not wanting are based on the desire to possess and to not give out. This slogan is not based on masochism or self-destruction, but on opening your territory completely, letting go of everything. If you suddenly discover that a hundred hippies want to camp in your living room, you let them do so—but then those hippies also have to practice.

  The practice of this slogan is actually very joyful. It is wonderful that human beings can do such a fantastic exchange. It is wonderful that people are willing to let go of even little corners of secrecy and privacy, so that their holding on to anything is gone completely. People’s willingness to invite undesirable situations into their world is very brave. We could certainly say that it is the world of the warrior from the bodhisattva’s point of view.

  1. Trungpa Rinpoche referred to the current period of history as a dark age (Skt.: Kali Yuga): a time of spiritual degeneration when wisdom and compassion are in short supply, life is difficult, and there are many obstacles to dharma practice.

  2. Vajradhatu International was the name of the Buddhist spiritual community founded by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. He also founded the Nalanda Foundation, which focused on education, social service, and the arts. The Nalanda Foundation included such programs as the Naropa Institute (now Naropa University) and Shambhala Training. Under the leadership of Trungpa Rinpoche’s son and successor Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, Vajradhatu and Nalanda were combined into one entity called Shambhala International. Naropa University is separately incorporated.

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  Point Three: Transformation of Bad Circumstances into the Path of Enlightenment

  Without this world, we could not attain enlightenment. There would be no journey. If we rejected the world, we would be rejecting the ground and the path. . . . All our experiences are based on others. . . . Without them we could not attain anything. We would have no feedback, absolutely nothing to work with. So the irritations and problems in our world are crucial.

  THE SIX slogans of the third point of mind training are about carrying whatever occurs in your life onto the path. In Tibetan, this is known as lamkhyer. Lam means “path,” and khyer means “carrying”; so lamkhyer means that whatever happens in your life should be included as part of your journey. This group of slogans is connected with the paramita of patience. Patience doesn’t mean biding your time and trying to slow down—it means that whatever happens, you don’t overreact. The obstacle to patience is aggression. When you are too sensitive and don’t have any way to deal with your environment, you become very touchy and impatient. Patience is described as being like a suit of armor: there is a quality of dignity and forbearance, and you are not easily disturbed by the world’s aggression.

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  When the world is filled with evil, transform all mishaps into the path of bodhi.

  This slogan presents the basic approach of this section of mind training, which is that all problems—environmental problems, political problems, psychological problems, or any other problems in your life—should be transformed into wakefulness. In other words, you do not blame the environment or the world political situation, and you do not use any mishaps that take place in your life as sources of resentment. Instead, all mishaps and problems are transformed into a wakeful state of mind. That wakefulness results from the practice of shamatha-vipashyana and from your understanding of soft spot, or bodhichitta.

  Some people react to what is happening in the world by writing poetry or sacrificing their lives for a social cause. The Vietnam War era produced a lot of such poets and philosophers who were purely reacting against the evil in the world, regarding that evil as material for their writing. But they were not able to transform mishaps into the path of bodhi, so their work was not in keeping with the mahayana. Transforming mishaps comes from your sitting practice and your general awareness. Whether or not the world is filled with evil, such mishaps should be transformed into the path of bodhi, or wakefulness.

  In our ordinary life, our environment is not necessarily hospitable. You might feel that you are inadequate because you have a sick father and a crazy mother and you have to take care of them, or you may have money problems. Even if you have a successful life and everything is going all right, you might still feel inadequate because you have to work constantly to maintain your business. There are always problems and difficulties, even for those who feel that their lives are successful. You may have become the president of the country, a millionaire, a famous poet, or a movie star, but even if your life goes according to your expectations, you will still have difficulties and obstacles. That is something everybody experiences. You could regard such obstac
les as expressions of your own timidity, cowardice, poverty mentality, fixation on loss and gain, or competitiveness. But according to the slogan, any obstacles or mishaps that occur should be transformed into the path of bodhi.

  Besides being connected to the paramita of patience, this slogan also has a lot to say about the practice of generosity. The very powerful and direct message of the paramita of generosity is that you do not need to feel poverty-stricken all the time. Having experienced the possibility of absolute and relative bodhichitta and having practiced sending and taking, you should begin to build confidence and joy in your own richness and resourcefulness. You should feel that you can deal with whatever is available around you. For instance, if you are abandoned in the middle of a desert and want to lie down, you can find a moss-covered rock to use as a pillow and have a good sleep. That quality of resourcefulness and richness seems to be the essence of generosity.

  Many people relate with everything in their lives purely on the level of pennies, tiny stitches, drops of water, or grains of rice—but you do not have to do that. You can expand your vision. You can give something to others without always having to receive something back. You do not need to “make it” first in order to give something away. You can let go of anything. You can develop a feeling of wealth, free from desire and attachment.

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  Drive all blames into one.

  This slogan, as well as the next one, “Be grateful to everyone,” has to do with the relative bodhichitta level. It is also connected with the traditional guide for bodhisattvas, known as “The Forty-Six Ways in Which a Bodhisattva Fails.”1 It deals with relative truth, with our ordinary experience. No matter what appears in your experience, however interesting or powerful, you should not have any expectations. When you are kind to somebody, you should not expect any reward. The problems and the complications that exist in your practice, realization, and understanding are not somebody else’s fault. Although you might try to come out clean, the blame always starts with you.

  We prefer to blame our problems on somebody else, whether those problems are political, environmental, psychological, domestic, or spiritual. You may not have a particular individual to blame, but you still come up with the logic that something is wrong and somebody else is at fault. You might complain to the authorities, your political leaders, or your friends, and demand that the situation be changed. Or your complaint might be purely individual: if your spouse falls in love with somebody else, you might ask him or her to give up their lover. But you yourself feel completely pure, good, and blameless; you never let any blame touch you. Your spouse may be brave enough to challenge you and say, “Isn’t there some blame on your side as well? Mightn’t you also have something to do with it?” But if you are told that it is your problem and it is you who has to change, you do not like it at all.

  A lot of people seem to get along in this world and make quite a comfortable life by being compassionate and open, or seemingly compassionate and open. Yet although we share the same world, we ourselves get hit constantly with problems and troubles of all kinds. So we become resentful. It may feel that somebody is playing tricks on us, but actually we ourselves are provoking such things, so all the blame is on us. We might have entirely the same lifestyle as somebody else; we might be sharing an apartment, eating the same food, and sharing a similar schedule. However, although we have exactly the same situation, our friend manages to handle everything okay, while we are stuck with obstacles and resentment. But who did that to us? We could say that everybody hates us. But why do they hate us? That is a very interesting question. Every blame, every mishap that happens to us, is our own doing.

  We could blame the organization, we could blame the government, we could blame the police force, we could blame the weather, we could blame the food, we could blame the highways, we could blame our cars or our clothes. We could blame an infinite variety of things, and we could build up all kinds of philosophies to back up our complaints, but it is we who are not letting go, we who are not developing enough warmth and sympathy. We cannot blame anybody else.

  This practice goes very far. Driving all blames into oneself applies whenever we complain about anything, even that our coffee is cold or the bathroom is dirty. We may think that we are the voice of the world, that we are speaking on behalf of others, but we are simply speaking on behalf of ourselves. According to this slogan, everything is due to our own ego fixation, which makes us very vulnerable. Consequently, we provide an ideal target. We get hit, but nobody meant to hit us—we are actually inviting the bullets.

  The reason you have to drive all blames into yourself is because you have been cherishing yourself so much, even at the cost of somebody else’s life. You have been holding yourself so dearly, and although you might say that you don’t like yourself, you are just paying lip service. In your heart of hearts, you know that you like yourself so much that you are willing to throw everybody else into the gutter. You are really willing to do that. And who are you, anyway?

  Driving all blames into one is the essence of the bodhisattva path. Even if somebody else has made a terrible mistake and blamed it on you, you should take the blame yourself. In terms of power, it is a much simpler and more direct way of controlling the situation. In addition, it is the most direct way of simplifying complicated neurosis into one point. If you look for volunteers around you to take the blame, there will be no other volunteers but yourself. So by taking the blame on yourself, you reduce the neurosis happening around you. You also reduce people’s paranoia so that they might have clearer vision. You can actually say, “I take the blame. It’s my fault that such and such a thing happened and that such and such took place as a result.” It is easier to talk to somebody when you have already accepted the blame because that person is not in a defensive mood. Then you can clarify the situation, and quite possibly that person, who might be the cause of the problem, will recognize their own wrongdoing. It helps that the blame, which is now just a paper tiger, has been taken on by you.

  In organizations, individuals and particularly leaders can take the blame themselves and let their friends off the hook so they can continue their work. That will help the whole organization to function much better. When you say, “No, I didn’t do such a thing, it was you who did it,” the whole thing gets very complicated. You begin to find this little plop of dirt bouncing around in the bureaucracy. Each person says, “That’s not my creation—it’s your creation,” so it becomes like a football flying back and forth. And if you fight over it too much, you will have tremendous difficulty resolving that problem. So the earlier you take the blame, the better. And although it may not fundamentally be your fault at all, you should take it as if it is yours.

  In international politics also, somebody is always trying to put the blame on somebody else. The communists say it belongs to the capitalists, and the capitalists say it belongs to the communists. But throwing the blame back and forth doesn’t help anyone. So even from the point of view of political theory, it is important for individuals to absorb unjustified blame and to work with that.

  Your original intention in driving all blames into one may be based on wanting to enter into the bodhisattva path. But later, at the level of vipashyana, you do so based on experiencing the real, visible, logical result of doing otherwise. You see how aggression and neurosis are expanded if you drive all blames into somebody else. That seems to be the point where aspiring and entering come together.2

  If you don’t allow a little bit of blame and injustice to come to you, nothing is going to work. Everybody is looking for someone to blame, and they would like to blame you, not because you have done anything, but because they think you have a soft spot in your heart. They think that if they put their jam or honey on you, you actually might buy it and say, “Okay, the blame is mine.” But once you begin to take the blame, it is the highest and most powerful incantation you can make. You can actually make the whole thing functional. If you can absorb the poison, the rest of the situat
ion becomes medicine.

  This slogan does not mean that you should not speak up. However, in confronting political, environmental, or social issues, you could speak out in the form of driving all blames into yourself. Obviously, there are social problems, but the way to approach them is not as “I, a rightful political entity,” or as “Me, one of the important people in society.” When you speak to the authorities, usually you come at them in an aggressive way, but that approach only solidifies the authorities even more. There could be a better and more intelligent way of approaching things. For instance, you could say, “Maybe it’s my problem, but personally I find that this water doesn’t taste so good.” You might gather your friends and the people in your neighborhood who agree with that, and together speak out very simply, straightforwardly, and gently.

  In a more extreme example, if somebody was about to press the button on the atomic bomb and “poof” the planet, I would kill them without any hesitation in order to save millions of people’s lives. If there were no choice, and somebody were about to do something that bad, I would kill them and take the blame. I would take delight in it! However, it would be too dangerous for most of us to go that far. As long as we know what we are doing, it may be okay. But often, that sort of approach only tends to escalate the warfare.

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  Be grateful to everyone.

  Once we drive all blames into ourselves, we begin to realize that if other people didn’t exist to hassle us, we would not be able to drive all blames into ourselves. Without others, we would have no chance to develop beyond ego. So being grateful to everyone follows automatically. We feel grateful that others are presenting us with obstacles, challenges, even threats. Without them, we could not follow the path.