The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa Collected Works: Volume Two by Chogyam Trungpa, Chögyam Trungpa Read Free Book Online Page A

I’m so afraid I won’t get what I’m hoping for. I’m so concentrated on getting something. It seems only when I give up hope, just for a minute, that I have any choice or any room.
    Trungpa Rinpoche: Well, giving up hope is also an act of hope. You have been encouraged to take that path of hopelessness, so it is actually more of an encouragement.
    Student: Does energy exist or love exist? Or are they just myths?
    Trungpa Rinpoche: I hope they exist. Better if they exist. But maybe they don’t exist. Maybe love doesn’t exist, but it is . Love is. Energy is. Rather than “exist.” It’s the same kind of distinction as: if you don’t exist, you are. If energy doesn’t exist, energy is. If love doesn’t exist, love is.
    Student: How does one work on oneself?
    Trungpa Rinpoche: One just begins at the beginning. It’s very simple. There’s no how. When you ask how you should do things, it’s like trying to buy a pair of gloves, so you don’t have to touch, so you don’t have to stress your hands. One doesn’t have to think about how, one just does it.
    Student: Rinpoche, if there’s no self, no enlightenment, no thought, and no memories, then how is it that you’re able to tell us what you’ve experienced and what you know?
    Trungpa Rinpoche: Because they don’t exist. Seriously. Because things don’t exist, things are . In fact, actually it might be more correct dharmically to say, things is . It’s not quite grammatical, but things is. There’s enormous clarity out of nonexistence.
    S: What perceives that nonexistence?
    TR: By itself.
    Student: It came to me that all the three yanas are happening simultaneously. So then, does one have to isolate the hinayana from the mahayana and vajrayana in order to reach the goal of the hinayana?
    Trungpa Rinpoche: I think it would be safer, much safer to begin at the hinayana level, because we need a lot of training. A lot of students have to start with the path of accumulation, which is the level of the ordinary person. At that level, just learning to be an ordinary person plays an important part. That’s the starting point, and one has to start in one place at a time. It’s like having to chew properly before you swallow. Of course, if you chew efficiently, maybe you can chew and swallow at the same time, but that depends on your experience.
    S: Is it possible, though the hinayana is where one starts and that is one’s focus, that the rest may be happening anyhow, though that is not one’s concern?
    TR: Anyhow, yes. There is a star of Bethlehem anyhow. There is enlightenment. It actually does exist, and people have achieved it. It is real. You could experience it.
    Student: What is the difference between the hopelessness you have described previously and the hope that you talk about now?
    Trungpa Rinpoche: Same.
    Well, friends, we should close our seminar. I have to go out to New Jersey and perform a wedding at a Jewish country club. But before I go, I would like to emphasize that it is worthwhile to think very seriously about the fact that if you are interested in treading the path of meditation practice, before you learn any gimmicks, you have to get yourself together. Renunciation and desolateness and aloneness or loneliness is very all-pervading. But at the same time, you cannot have a sense of renunciation, a sense of the spiritual path, without that openness of crisp, clear, winter-morning air. From the point of view of openness, meditation is not regarded as either particularly pleasurable or particularly painful. And by no means is it regarded as a magic trick that will give you instant enlightenment or instant bliss. It is a very manual experience, a very personal experience. One has to explore. One has to sit and discipline oneself constantly, all the time. Which occupies twenty-four hours of one’s day.
    I would like to mention that I have written a book called Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism , and it is worthwhile getting that book, which is