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

a kind of extended seminar of the type we have had here. A lot is written there about what we have discussed, and it is particularly suited for a Western audience. Another very powerful book is The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa , translated by Garma C. C. Chang. Also the late Suzuki Roshi of Zen Center in San Francisco has written a book, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind , which is a very powerful book, very direct, very domesticated, very personal experience. His is a fatherly voice of some kind, which is very powerful and important. My other book Meditation in Action , like Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind , tries to communicate very simple ideas to people about the spiritual path. Also, if you have further interest in the techniques of shamatha, vipashyana, and satipatthana, there is a book called The Heart of Buddhist Meditation by Nyanaponika Thera.
    It is very necessary to do these readings to establish a knowledge of the fundamentals of buddhadharma. People in the past have worked hard and put a real and definite effort into their practice, their discipline. They have worked very hard for you people, ourselves. We should appreciate those people who worked hard on their discipline in order to be able to transmit energy and wisdom to us. They are worthy of admiration. Thank you.

Part Two
    BARNET, VERMONT
     
    SEPTEMBER 1974
     

ONE
     
    Me-ness and the Emotions
     
    W E ARE GOING to discuss the meaning of “awake,” which is connected with the practice of vipashyana, or insight, meditation. As a starting point, in order to work with the process of meditation, we have to understand our basic psychological makeup. That could be a long story, but to be concise at this point, let us say that mind has two aspects. One aspect is cognition. That is to say, there is a sense of split between I and other, me and you. This basic sense of split helps us to identify who we are, what we are. Conveniently, we are given names—I am called John, or I am called Michael, and so forth. In general we have no idea beyond the names. The names given to us are so convenient that we don’t have to think behind them. We just accept ourselves as being named so-and-so. If someone asks you, “Who are you?” and you say, “I am Tom,” that’s regarded as a very smart answer, and usually nobody asks, “Well, who and what is Tom?” But if you are asked further questions, the next thing you go to is, “I am a banker” or “I am a cab driver.” You shift to your profession. You end up jumping back and forth among those external identifications, and usually you never get back to the “me” level. That’s the way we usually handle our life. But this time we are going to go beyond the names to the basic mind. We are actually going to find out who we are and what we are. This is the starting point for understanding the mind.
    Our mind has this quality of “me-ness,” which is obviously not the other, not you. Me-ness is distinct from you, other, the rock, the tree, or the mountains, the rivers, the sky, the sun, the moon—what have you. This me-ness is the basic point here.
    There is a general sense of discomfort when you refer to yourself as “me,” which is a very subtle discomfort. We usually don’t acknowledge or notice it, because it is so subtle, and since it is there all the time, we become immune to it. There is a certain basic ambivalence there. It is like dogs, who at a certain point begin to relate to their leashes as providing security rather than imprisonment. Animals in the zoo feel the same thing. At the beginning they experienced imprisonment, but at some point this became a sense of security. We have the same kind of attitude. We have imprisoned ourselves in a certain way, but at the same time we feel that this imprisonment is the most secure thing we have. This me-ness or my-ness has a painful quality of imprisonment, but at the same time it also represents security rather than just pure pain. That is the situation we are