The Bodhisattva Path of Wisdom and Compassion

by Chogyam Trungpa

  The idea of being grateful to everyone is founded on real situations. If someone punches you in the mouth and says, “You are terrible,” you should be grateful that such a person has actually acknowledged you and said so. You could respond with tremendous dignity by saying, “Thank you, I appreciate your concern.” In that way their neurosis has been taken over by you, taken into you, much as you do in tonglen practice. There is an immense sacrifice taking place. If you think this is ridiculously far-fetched, you are right—in some sense it is. But if somebody does not begin to provide some kind of harmony and sanity, we will not develop sanity in this world at all. Somebody has to plant the seed so that sanity can happen on this earth—and that person is you. As an inspired Buddhist, you have the truth, the conviction, and the power to transplant the root of compassion into the land where you belong, the land where you were born.

  Being grateful to those who harm you does not mean that you have to expose yourself to being hurt. That would be martyrdom. But when you come up with such a situation, you could apply this slogan. It is not that you have to stage the whole thing. You do not have to avoid painful situations and you do not have to cultivate them. You just lead your life, being very sane and not hurting anybody else. But if someone happens to hurt you, you know what to do. It is very simple. We are not talking about deliberately jumping on a sword; that would be a misunderstanding. Instead, you are making a close relationship to the person who is hurting you.

  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 past history, all our neurosis, is related with others. All our experiences are based on others. As soon as, or as long as, we have a sense of practice and the realization that we are treading on the path, every one of those seeming obstacles becomes an essential part of the path. 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.

  Without others, we cannot attain enlightenment. In fact, we cannot even tread on the path. If there is no noise outside during our sitting meditation, we cannot develop mindfulness. If we do not have aches and pains in our body, we cannot meditate. If everything were lovey-dovey and jellyfish-like, there would be nothing to work with. Everything would be completely blank. Because of these textures around us, we are enriched. We are so enriched by all these things that we can actually sit and meditate. We have a reference point; we have both encouragement and discouragement.

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  Seeing confusion as the four kayas is unsurpassable shunyata protection.

  This slogan is about how to carry everything onto the path at the absolute bodhichitta level. It is based on understanding your mind by studying and watching yourself, and by practicing shamatha and vipashyana. By practicing those disciplines, you begin to realize that the essence of your mind is empty, that the nature of your mind is light and clear, and that the expression or manifestation of your mind is active. That realization can only come about when you have developed mindfulness and awareness. Only on the meditation cushion can you see that your mind has no origin. You see that there is no place from which thoughts arise, and you have no idea where your thoughts go. Furthermore, you have no idea where your thoughts actually dwell. Thoughts just arise and vanish; they disappear.

  As you continue to practice mindfulness and awareness, the seeming confusion and chaos in your mind begins to seem absurd. You see that your thoughts have no real birthplace; they just pop up. You see that your thoughts don’t go anywhere; they are unceasing. You also see that no activities are really happening in your mind. So the notion that your mind can dwell on anything begins to seem absurd, because there is nothing to dwell on. The point of practice is not to make your mind a blank. Instead, as a result of super-mindfulness and super-awareness, you begin to see that nothing is actually happening—although, at the same time, you think that lots of things are happening. Therefore, realizing that the confusion and the chaos in your mind have no origin, no cessation, and nowhere to dwell is the best protection.

  According to this slogan, perception has four stages. First, there is waiting or openness. There may be uncertainty as to how to perceive things, and you do not know how to make a particular situation graspable. Second, you develop a clear idea of the situation and how to organize things. Third, you begin to make a relationship between those two. Finally, you have a total experience of the whole. Those are four states of mind or four mental processes we go through. Those four processes are related with what are called the four kayas: dharmakaya, nirmanakaya, sambhogakaya, and svabhavikakaya.

  The dharmakaya aspect is basic openness. Our reaction to the world is uncertain and bewildered, and strategies and planning have not yet formed. In the nirmanakaya aspect, the second stage of this process, there is some clarity. We have a general grasp of the situation. In order to make a link between the openness and clarity, we have the third aspect, or sambhogakaya. The sambhogakaya bridges the gap between the dharmakaya and the nirmanakaya, and joins them together. According to my tradition, that is the realistic way of looking at things. The more common way of categorizing the three kayas is to start with dharmakaya, followed by the sambhogakaya and the nirmanakaya.

  The fourth kaya, svabhavikakaya, is the whole thing, the total panoramic experience. When we begin to flash our mind to an object, when we have a grasp of it, when we realize the link between the three kayas, that totality is known as svabhavikakaya. The svabhavikakaya is a state of mind that is known as transcending birth, cessation, and dwelling. Transcending birth means that the thought process does not come up. There is no such thing as the birth of a mind or the birth of a thought taking place in our state of being at all—there is simply existing and opening. Transcending cessation means that thoughts do not actually subside, unless they are replaced or overlapped by something else. Nondwelling means that thoughts do not actually dwell anywhere, although there is a kind of temporary halt or occasional something. So the idea is to see beyond the birth, subsiding, and dwelling of the thought process.

  The reason the four kayas become a great protection is that we begin to realize the way our mind functions. Thoughts do not really come up as such; they just emerge. You cannot watch their birth—they are just there. In other words, everything is nowness nature. Thoughts die; they just [snaps fingers]. They don’t dwell, they just [snaps fingers again]. It is a natural process. We realize that whatever comes up in our mind is always subject to that flow, that particular case history, that nature. Sudden pain, sudden anger, sudden aggression, sudden passion—whatever might arise always follows the same procedure, the same process. So everything is always in accordance with the four kayas. Although we might not regard our own mind as all that transcendent, awake, or enlightened, the pattern is still that of the four-kaya principle.

  This protection is called shunyata protection, because it cuts the solidness of our beliefs. We have all sorts of solid thoughts. We think, “This is my grand thought” or “My thought is so cute.” We might think, “The star men came down and talked to me,” or “Genghis Khan is present in my mind,” or “Jesus Christ himself appeared.” Or we may think, “I have thought of a tremendous scheme for how to build a city, how to write a musical comedy, how to create a gigantic movie project, or how to conquer the world.” Our thinking goes from that level down to “How am I going to earn my living?” or “What is the best way for me to sharpen my personality so that I will be visible in the world?” or “How I hate my problems!” But you realize that you are not the greatest artist and you are not any of your big ideas—you are just authoring absurd, nonexistent things.

  All of those schemes, thoughts, and ideas are empty. If you look behind them, it is like looking behind a mask and seeing that it is hollow. There may be holes for the nostrils and the mouth, but if you look behind the mask, it no longer looks like a face—it is just junk with holes in it. Realizing
that is the best protection for cutting confusion. With shunyata protection, you no longer have anywhere to dwell—you are suspended in shunyata.

  This slogan is a very clever way of approaching egolessness. Instead of approaching egolessness directly, you are trying to work out your protection—and finally you might find yourself being egoless, and realize that there is nothing actually to protect. The protection is groundlessness. This is a very clinical approach, in a sense, for if you have no ground to collect germs, there will be not be any.

  The idea of the four kayas in this slogan is not particularly tantric; it is mahayanist high thinking. But the kayas also appear in the Uttaratantra of Maitreya and in the Diamond Sutra,3 so at the same time, they are tan-tric. Although slogan practice is based on mahayana principles, there is an undercurrent throughout of techniques borrowed from the vajrayana.

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  Four practices are the best of methods.

  This slogan is about engaging in special activities and practices in order to transform bad circumstances onto the path of enlightenment. It includes four practices: accumulating merit, laying down evil deeds, offering to the döns, and offering to the dharmapalas.

  Accumulating Merit

  The first practice is accumulating merit. Merit does not mean collecting something for your ego. It has to do with the basic twist of how to punish your ego. The logic is that you always want pleasure, but what you always get is pain. Why does that happen? It happens because the very act of seeking pleasure brings pain. So you always get a bad deal because you started at the wrong end of the stick.

  The point of this application is that you have to sacrifice something, rather than purely yearning for pleasure. You have to start at the right end of the stick from the very beginning. In order to do so, you have to refrain from evil actions, and cultivate virtuous ones. And in order to do that, you have to block out hope and fear altogether. You do not hope to gain anything from your practice, and you are not fearful of bad results.

  This slogan is based on having complete trust in what are called the three types of encouragement, or three reminders. Since the slogans themselves are reminders, these sayings are reminders for the reminders. The three lines of encouragement are:

  Grant your blessing so if it is better for me to be sick, let me be sick.

  Grant your blessing so if it is better for me to survive, let me survive.

  Grant your blessing so if it is better for me to be dead, let me die.

  That is the ultimate idea of creating merit. Before you beg, your begging bowl has to be empty, otherwise nobody will give you anything. Similarly, in order to receive merit, there has to be a quality of openness, giving, and surrendering. Who are you asking to grant those blessings? Not any cosmic entity—you are talking to yourself. But reciting those lines and invoking the possibility that such things could happen to you helps you to realize the path. You are talking to yourself, but you are inspired by the lineage, which has also done that. There is such accuracy and genuineness in saying, “If it is right for me to be either dead, sick, or recovered, let it be so.” And it will happen if you have directness in your approach. You could apply this to anything that is tricky and sticky. By doing so, you actually begin to cheer yourself up by giving in and jumping into the ocean of mud. It works very well. You could do that instead of taking aspirin and occasional shots of coffee.

  When you say, “Grant your blessing so if it is better for me to be sick,” basically you are saying, “Just let it happen.” You are not talking to anybody. It is more like saying, “Let the rain fall” or “Let the earth shake.” It is like reciting magical words. Something actually might happen when you do that, but you are not talking to anybody in particular. You are simply letting things be. And whatever comes up, you are grateful.

  So the idea is: whatever happens, let it happen. You are not particularly looking for pleasure or for pain. If diving into an ice-cold swimming pool in the middle of winter is what is best for your constitution, you go ahead and do it. It is a very direct approach, a simple and direct link with reality without any scheming. In particular, if there is any desire or fear, you act in the opposite way. That is, you jump into your fear and you refrain from your desire. This is the same approach as taking on other people’s pain and giving them your pleasure. It should no longer be any surprise that we have such a strange way of dealing with things, but it usually works. We could almost say that it works one hundred percent.

  You also accumulate merit by creating statues, building stupas (dome-shaped Buddhist shrines), or making offerings to the sangha. You can donate your money and at the same time try to let go of your possessiveness. So the idea of donation goes further than surrendering only your money. You are letting go and opening yourself completely to the situation. You may regard this approach as naive, but in fact it is extremely intelligent. Basically, you are not accumulating anything for your own ego, but you are trying to relate with what is sacred or holy. You are connecting with the sacred areas of reality, with the very idea of the teachings, the dharma, and basic sanity. That sacred quality is represented by works of art, images, statues, paintings, books, and all kinds of symbols and colors. By associating yourself with that kind of thing and by veneration, you are creating merit.

  In letting go of your holding back, intelligence is very important. You cannot just have blind faith; you need intelligent faith. Holding back creates a kind of business mentality: “If I don’t get my money’s worth, then I will have to sue the Buddha, the dharma, and the sangha. If I don’t get something in return, then I have been cheated.” But in this case, it is not tit for tat. Instead when something comes up, you think, “Whatever has happened, I would like to let go of this problem of holding back.” It is extremely simple and realistic.

  You cannot accumulate merit if you have pride and arrogance. It is not that you have collected a pile of virtue and you are going to collect more. You have to be humble and willing to give rather than to collect. The more you are willing to give, that much more effective is the accumulation of merit.

  Laying Down Evil Deeds

  The second of the four practices is laying down your evil deeds. As a result of accumulating merit, and because you have learned to block out hope and fear, you develop a quality of gentleness and sanity. Having done so, you look back and you say, “Good heavens! I have been so stupid and I didn’t even realize it!” Because you have reached a certain level of sophistication, when you look back you see how sloppy and embarrassing you have been. The reason you didn’t notice it before is because of stupidity of some kind. So with this application, the point is to look back and realize what you have been doing and not make the same mistake all over again.

  This practice is sometimes described as the confession of sins. However, the word sin has all kinds of connotations for people raised in the Judeo-Christian traditions. In the world of Christianity, in particular, the concept of sin is all-pervasive. The Tibetan word dikpa does mean “evil deeds,” or “sin,” but its meaning is more psychological than ethical. Therefore, we have at times translated dikpa as “neurotic crimes,” since neurosis is its backbone, and frivolity is its activities. It is because of neurosis that you end up with all kinds of crime and destruction. So basically what we are confessing is the underlying neurosis. In the Buddhist style of confession, there is no church to go into and no priest to hear your confession. It is not quite like the Christian idea of confession, but more a way of relieving yourself of your own neurotic crimes.

  Traditionally, confession is done in a fourfold style: regret, refraining from evil actions, taking refuge in the Buddha, dharma, and sangha, and letting go of hope and fear.

  The first step of confession is regret. It is getting tired of your own neurosis. That is important, for if you were not tired of doing the same thing again and again, if you were thriving on it, you probably would not have a chance to do anything about it. But once you begin to get tired of it, you think, “I shouldn’t have don
e that” or “Here I go again” or “I should have known better” or “I don’t feel so good.” These are the kinds of remarks you make, particularly when you wake up in the morning with a heavy hangover. That’s good. It is a sign that you are actually ready to confess your neurotic crimes. When you can come back and remember what you did, it is so embarrassing and you feel so terrible. You feel like not getting out of your bed. You don’t want to go outside or face the world. That real feeling of total embarrassment, that feeling that your whole gut is rotten, is the first step. That kind of regret is not just social regret, but it is also personal regret. That shameful feeling begins to creep through your marrow into your bones and hairs. The sunshine coming through the windows begins to mock you. Such regret is regarded as a very healthy first step.

  The second step of confession is refraining from evil actions. You say that from this time onward you are not going to do such actions. You think about what you have done and how it made you feel. Although you might still want to do it or think it is fun, you decide that it is better not to. So you refrain from it and prevent yourself from doing it again.

  The third step of confession is taking refuge in the Buddha, dharma, and sangha, which means completely surrendering. You have to give up the crime rather than hoping that the crime will be forgiven. You have to give up your self, your stronghold. Nobody can wipe out your neurosis by saying, “I forgive you.” The criminal has to give up rather than the crime being forgiven.

  When someone forgives you for a wrong you have committed against them, it does not help, and it may even encourage you to sin further. Alternatively, if you are attacked and you forgive your attacker, although that person may not harm you again, they may try to harm somebody else. So from the Buddhist perspective, forgiveness is not all that helpful, and it may even lead to further crimes. It does not help unless the whole crime has completely subsided. The actions themselves are less important than the factors that lead a person to commit a crime. So if people are in jail, they need to be reformed so that they do not go back to their crimes. However, Buddhists do not usually have jails. It is said that the Buddhist emperor Ashoka actually denounced the use of them.