The Bodhisattva Path of Wisdom and Compassion

by Chogyam Trungpa

  The Paramita of Wisdom

  The paramita connected with the tenth bhumi is jnana, or wisdom. But this wisdom is not quite at the level of the five buddha-family wisdoms of the vajrayana.8 With jnana, even the slightest notion of a journey is finally freed, except for a faint recollection. That faint sense of recollection remains until one attains enlightenment, which is the eleventh bhumi.

  Wisdom does not seem to have any categories. It is free from the kinds of psychological problems that exist within even the subtlest level of samsara. In the earlier bhumis, bodhisattvas still have a path to achieve, a journey to make—but this bhumi is journeyless. There is only a faint memory left over, like the fragrance left in an empty bottle of perfume.

  According to the scriptures, at this stage the bodhisattva sees the phenomenal world in a very brilliant way, like the brilliance of a full-moon night, or seeing the mountains in the moonlight. It seems to me that sunlight would be much more brilliant, but that is the traditional image. The idea is that what you have seen previously is partial, and finally you are able to see fully, as in full-moon light. Ironically, this particular bhumi is also often symbolized by the sun, because the quality of wisdom is all-pervasive, all-comprehensive, and open.9

  Empowerments

  The tenth-bhumi bodhisattva receives all kinds of abhishekas, or empowerments. You are enthroned by the buddhas or by your spiritual friend, and empowered with omniscient wisdom and enormous confidence. Since you were a samsaric person for a long time, you still need to be encouraged, initiated, and enthroned. The final enthronement is called the enthronement of the light, in which it is proclaimed that the bodhisattva is a great being, a mahasattva. You are proclaimed to be a child of Buddha and a would-be buddha.

  At this point, the only thing you have left to develop is your confidence. The last problem before the attainment of enlightenment is poverty mentality. It is not having the confidence to work with your inspiration. The bodhisattva has ground and knows their heritage and their richness. But like ordinary successful people who have a fear of being unsuccessful in spite of their fame and wealth, there is a faint fear that they might go wrong. There is still fear of losing one’s ground, so the development of confidence becomes very important and powerful. That is why empowerment is necessary.

  On the tenth bhumi, the bodhisattva is completely prepared and willing to take responsibilities. You have some idea of how it should be done, but the question is where to begin. It is like a young professor giving a talk to their class for the first time, not knowing how to handle it or what to say first. That kind of shyness, that leftover from past experience, that desire to hold on to security, remains an obstacle until the bodhisattva achieves vajra-like samadhi.

  THE JOURNEY THROUGH THE BHUMIS

  The details of the ten bhumis are definite, but the journey is guesswork. Supposedly, some people stay in a certain bhumi longer, and others pass through quickly. Particularly up to the eighth bhumi, your journey is very slow, because the first seven bhumis are still impure. The bhumis from the eighth bhumi on are called pure bhumis, and you advance much more quickly. Because psychological time is less strained, you go faster. But for most people, the experience of the bhumis is an extremely gradual process. Nonetheless, enlightenment is possible, and traditionally one tends to get certain warnings of that possibility.

  Although the bodhisattva path can be divided into levels, you cannot really distinguish exactly where you are within each bhumi. However, as a person goes through the bhumis, there is a very slow and ordinary, almost insignificant, change. But you only become aware of that change when you look back at what was, rather than by what you see at any one point.

  You might feel the bhumis are on the level of storytelling. But even if you are only a beginner, you can still experience how they work. On the other hand, you might feel that you already have some experience of the bhumis, but that does not mean that you have overcome the fetters of the kleshas, or achieved realization. Nonetheless, things are hap-pen-ing constantly, even at an ordinary person’s level, let alone the bodhisattva’s level.

  In the mahayana, enormous suggestions of vajrayana begin to happen. Although it may feel as if the whole path is programmed, there is the possibility of joy. Such joy is the vanguard of the mahasukha, or great bliss, described in the tantras. The more you develop on the path, the more you have such warnings or vanguards. The vajrayana approach to the bhumis is that you could achieve buddhahood on the spot, and at the same time you have to go through a process. But that process is not so drastic. You do not have to change your behavior patterns or your physical shape, and you don’t have to glow with light or perform miracles. The bhumis represent an extension of the human condition, so you can actually do it. Tathagatagarbha, or buddha nature, is possible. It is not just possible; it is so.

  In Tibet one day, when we were discussing the reality of all this, someone asked Jamgön Kongtrül if any of us could do this, or were the bodhisattvas just mythical people? I remember Jamgön Kongtrül saying that you can get a glimpse of the tenth bhumi when you are on the first bhumi. He said that even if you are on the path of accumulation, you may get an occasional glimpse. But those glimpses are not a sign that you have actually reached that state. As a beginner, you may find such glimpses reassuring. You could identify them from your own experience, but that does not mean that you are at that level. You must not get carried away. However, once you join the path, the attainment of enlightenment is becoming a strong possibility.

  As ordinary lay mahayanists, or potential bodhisattvas, the way to work on the bhumis is by practicing the paramitas. For instance, whenever any stinginess comes up, you do the opposite: you are generous. For impatience, you have patience; for laziness, you have exertion; for distraction, you have meditation; and if you feel stupid, you have prajna. But the opposites of the paramitas are not regarded as pitfalls. Instead, those seeming pitfalls are regarded as reminders that come from working with reality. They act as messengers. In fact, there are no pitfalls, there is only continual growth. It is like aging: you can never return to being sixteen years old, and you cannot suddenly regress to age one. It would be physically and psychologically impossible to do so.

  In general, you try to practice whatever is called for by the situation. Paramita practice is like military training, in which you pretend to be attacked by somebody in a tropical area, and then you pretend to be attacked in the mountains or in a city. So rather than seeing the paramitas as a linear development, which becomes very limited, you try to apply all of them at once. A bodhisattva evolves in that way. It is not a question of deliberate, conscious effort, but it becomes very natural. Bodhisattvas do not have to check their notes.

  Each time you go up to the next step of the path, there is a layperson’s level and a professional’s level. By layperson, I am not simply referring to someone who is not a monk or a nun—not at all. Basically, I believe that anybody who has taken the refuge and bodhisattva vows is no longer a layperson. When practice is no longer just a part-time job, it becomes real practice, and a person ceases to be a layperson. So a professional is somebody whose life is involved full-time with practice. The distinction between layperson and professional is very subtle. The more sane you are and the less distracted, that much more professional you become.

  On the bodhisattva path, you are constantly being helped by the spiritual friend, or kalyanamitra, so the journey is no longer one short journey made by one individual. From the time you take refuge, you are relating with a spiritual friend, so the bodhisattva path is a mutual journey between your teacher and yourself. Buddha was very clever. He realized that physical manifestations are very tricky and can be easily faked. So he did not say that as you progress on the path your face will be glowing or you will perform miracles. He never mentioned such things. Instead, he talked about psychological development, and in the psychological development of the bodhisattva path, you have your kalyanamitra working along with you all the time. Someone at the
level of the seventh bhumi no longer needs the spiritual friend’s heavy-handed approach, but until you reach the tenth-bhumi level, you still need the watchful eye of the kalyanamitra. The sambhogakaya buddhas will take over from there.10

  The teachings describe the process of sickness and recovery, rather than the treatment, which is very good. It is a fantastic approach, in that there is no possibility of following the whole thing completely and totally by yourself, no possibility of latching onto spiritual materialism. The whole thing is so beautifully worked out—and it was thought of twenty-six hundred years ago!

  1. Traditionally the fifth bhumi is called “difficult to conquer,” implying that a bodhisattva at this level cannot be defeated by any worldly deity.

  2. Cool boredom is a term Trungpa Rinpoche uses to refer to a meditation experience that is at once solid and transparent. Such an experience is one of both absolute hopelessness and well-being. See volume 1 of the Profound Treasury, chapter 26, “Breathing Out.”

  3. The twenty mountains of ego refer to the five components or backbone of ego, or the five skandhas, interpreted and reinterpreted four different ways—as the self, as the possession of the self, as within the self, and as the environment for the self—thus totaling twenty aspects altogether. Also referred to as twenty elements of samsara, or twenty things to be abandoned. These twenty are (1) grasping at self, (2) grasping at others, (3) grasping at one’s life force, (4) grasping at people as active agents, (5) grasping at the impermanence of sentient beings, (6) grasping at the permanence of sentient beings, (7) grasping at duality, (8) grasping at various causes, (9) grasping at the five skandhas, (10) grasping at the dhatus, (11) grasping at the ayatanas, (12) grasping at the three worlds, (13) grasping at the kleshas, (14) discouragement with the path of dharma, (15) grasping at the Buddha and the attainment of nirvana, (16) grasping at the dharma, (17) grasping at the sangha, (18) clinging to morality and ethics, (19) dissension with emptiness, and (20) grasping at the conventional and emptiness as contradictory. See The Jewel Ornament of Liberation.

  4. In The Jewel Ornament of Liberation, this is referred to as abandoning twenty kinds of attachment to self. You finally destroy that whole landscape. Previously you were still putting your own dwelling place in that landscape, but at this point you destroy all that completely.

  On this bhumi, you begin to see that a hinayana understanding of the three marks of existence—suffering, impermanence, and egolessness—is still perpetuating ground, still supporting ego. You realize that you can use your understanding of suffering, impermanence, and egolessness as a way of establishing dharmic ground. You see through all that completely. Instead of using your understanding in that way, you use the three marks of existence as a bomb to explode the mountain ranges of ego, as a kind of mantric power. You begin to realize that even the understanding of the nonduality of dharmadhatu, or no subject-object division, is flawed, and that the idea of nonduality is also part of ego’s mountain ranges. You see through that falsification as well.

  5. In discussions of the six paramitas, the first five combined are also referred to as skillful means, and the sixth, or prajna, is referred to as knowledge. According to Trungpa Rinpoche, skillful means as the particular paramita connected with the seventh bhumi is no longer simply a technique or a device, but a state of total understanding. The paramita of skillful means needs to be taken in and become a part of your body, a part of your basic being. It is like medicine: when you take medicine, it cures you, but it must be taken internally. You have to swallow it, chew it, or drink it. Once the medicine becomes part of your body, it begins to cure your sickness. It is the same with the paramita of skillful means: it must be taken in and become part of you rather than used as an embellishment. The traditional simile for the seventh bhumi is the spiritual friend; medicine is usually associated with the sixth bhumi.

  6. Trungpa Rinpoche discusses materialism in terms of three levels: basic materialism, psychological materialism, and spiritual materialism. In the first, you cling to objects; in the second, you cling to ideas, identities, and ideologies; and in the third, you cling to religiosity and spiritual accomplishment.

  7. The eight great treasures are (1) recollection, (2) intellect, (3) realization, (4) retention, (5) brilliance, (6) doctrine, (7) enlightenment, and (8) accomplishment.

  8. The five buddha-family wisdoms represent different styles of awakened mind. They include the wisdom of all-encompassing space, mirrorlike wisdom, the wisdom of equanimity, discriminating-awareness wisdom, and the wisdom of all-accomplishing action.

  9. The simile for this bhumi is the song of dharma.

  10. In the mahayana and the vajrayana, it is said that in order to teach sentient beings buddhas manifest in terms of three bodies, or kayas: nirmanakaya, sambhogakaya, and dharmakaya. The kalyanamitra would be an example of an “embodied buddha,” or nirmanakaya. Sambhogakaya is translated as “bliss body,” or “energy body,” and dharmakaya as “truth body.” This reflects the fact that teachings can be transmitted through physical connection, through speech or energy, and through a meeting of minds (body, speech, and mind). As one progresses on the path, it becomes possible to access teachings at all three levels.

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  Complete Radiance: The Eleventh Bhumi

  The completely radiant and luminous path of this particular bhumi is backless, and there are no hidden corners, so you see in all directions simultaneously. It has no front, because there is no manipulation of perception whatever you see is seen as the working base for dealing with the phenomenal world. It is all-pervasive enlightenment without direction.

  HAVING GONE through the ten bhumis and the first four paths, you finally reach the fifth path, the path of no more learning. The fifth path is buddhahood. It is the level of breaking through the vague and nearsighted vision of the tenth-bhumi bodhisattva. At this stage, the bodhisattva of the tenth bhumi decides to give up the ascetic approach to life and development. You begin to let go of your nearsightedness, the punishment of your body, and the restriction of your emotions.

  The eleventh bhumi, or küntu ö, means “always luminous,” or “complete radiance.” Küntu means “always,” or “all,” and ö means “light,” or “luminosity”; so küntu ö means “always luminous.” The eleventh bhumi is the equivalent of buddhahood. On the tantric level, higher levels of spiritual achievement and further aspects of buddhahood are described, but at this point we are just touching on the eleventh bhumi. On the tenth bhumi, you were still a journeyer. You were inspired to sit and to practice, but you had not settled down—you were still maintaining your traveler’s approach.

  THE BIRTH OF ENLIGHTENMENT

  The enlightenment flash of the eleventh bhumi does not take place by acting, but by sitting. Previously you may have focused on actions, on working with sentient beings, and on developing a compassionate attitude, and so forth. But at the actual time the birth of enlightenment takes place, you decide to sit, just like Gautama Buddha. The point at which enlightenment occurs is not so much while you are sitting as a discipline, but when you begin to sit for relaxation. For instance, after Gautama Buddha was offered rice pudding, he decided to make himself more comfortable by collecting kusha grass to make a mat to sit on. He sat underneath a shade tree called a pipal tree and began to relax—and with that level of relaxation, enlightenment took place instantaneously.1 Gautama Buddha, or Prince Siddhartha, achieved enlightenment at that point.

  For the young Buddha, who just became Buddha that morning, it was a shock. So much was cut through, and so many changes took place in him as he discovered his new abilities and existence and being. Gautama Buddha was completely amazed at his achievement. After such struggle and effort, he was amazed to find himself enlightened one morning. He then spent seven weeks thinking about the best way to proceed from that day onward. Maybe he was thinking about how he could communicate with other people, how he could explain his experience. Maybe he was wondering how to show that it is workable and that people
could understand it. Or maybe he was thinking that he should just retire and resign from the whole thing. He spent a week walking up and down the Nairanjana River, and another week gazing at the site of his enlightenment.

  Enlightenment is such a shock—it is not a shock of the present, but a shock of the past. Somehow, after so much expectation, suddenly nothing happens, and everything is right there in your hands. Suddenly you become a king or queen, a universal monarch. The question of how to proceed from that day onward seems to be very challenging.

  It is said that there is only going to be one buddha in each kalpa, but that raises a lot of questions. Does that mean that you could never become a buddha, never attain enlightenment? How about the one-lifetime attainment of buddhahood in tantric discipline? How about the sudden enlightenment of the bodhisattva path? It is also said that in the reign of one buddha, there cannot be a second buddha. In our era, Shakyamuni became the Buddha without first becoming a Buddhist. He made his whole journey and attained enlightenment with no label or discipline. There may be millions of buddhas after that, but they are Buddhist buddhas who follow the path that he taught.

  It was Gautama Buddha who proclaimed the truth, no one else. He has the copyright, so to speak. But many buddhas have been churned out from Shakyamuni’s teaching—many dharmakaya buddhas, in fact, let alone nirmanakaya ones. Such enlightened beings did not manufacture the doctrine, however, which is good. Otherwise they could become like so many little gurus, trying to figure something out by taking a pinch of Hinduism, a pinch of Buddhism, or a pinch of Zen, and trying to make their own enlightenment programs. Since practitioners of Buddhism cannot become the primordial leader of this spiritual discipline, that takes away a lot of unnecessary egotism.