The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Five by Chögyam Trungpa Read Free Book Online Page B

practice?
    There seem to be two possible approaches here. One is trying to live up to what we would like to be. The other is trying to live what we are. Trying to live up to what we would like to be is like pretending we are a divine being or a realized person, or whatever we might like to call the model. When we realize what is wrong with us, what our weakness is, what our problems and neuroses are, the automatic temptation is to try to act just the opposite, as though we have never heard of such a thing as our being wrong or confused. We tell ourselves, “Think positive! Act as though you’re okay.” Although we know that something is wrong with us on the level of the actual living situation, on the kitchen-sink level, we regard that as unimportant. “Let’s forget those ‘evil vibrations,’” we say. “Let’s think the other way. Let’s pretend to be good.”
    This approach is known in the Buddhist tradition as spiritual materialism, which means not being realistic, or to use hippie jargon, spacing out. “Let’s forget the bad and pretend to be good.” We could classify as spiritual materialism any approach—such as Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, or Christian—that provides us with techniques to try to associate with the good, the better, the best—or the ultimately good, the divine.
    When we begin associating ourselves with the good, it makes us happy. We feel full of delight. We think, “At last I’ve found an answer!” That answer is that the only thing to do is regard ourselves as free already. Then, having established the position that we are free already, we just have to let all things flow.
    Then we add a further touch to reinforce our spiritual materialism: everything that we do not know or did not understand in connection with our spiritual quest we connect with descriptions in various scriptures about that which is beyond mind, beyond words, ineffable—the ineffable Self, or whatever. We associate our own lack of understanding about what is going on with us with those unspoken, inexpressible things. This way our ignorance is made into the greatest discovery of all. We can connect this “great discovery” with a doctrinal supposition; for example, “the savior” or some interpretation of the scriptures.
    Whereas before, we didn’t know anything at all, now we “know” something that we actually don’t know. There is something ahead of us now. We cannot describe it in terms of words, concepts, and ideas, but we have discovered that, to begin with, it is a matter of twisting ourselves into the good. So we have this one thing to start with: we can directly and deliberately translate our confusion as being something that is not confused. We do this just because we are seeking pleasure, spiritual pleasure. In doing it, we affirm that the pleasure we are seeking is of an unknowable nature, because we actually have no idea what kind of spiritual pleasure we are going to get out of this maneuver. And all the spiritual interpretations of the scriptures referring to the unknowable can be applied to the fact that we do not know what to do spiritually. Nevertheless, we are definitely involved in spiritual conviction now, because we have suppressed our original doubts about who we are and what we are—our feeling that perhaps we might not be anything. We have suppressed that; we may not even know about it anymore.
    Having suppressed this embarrassment of ego that provided us with stepping-stones to the unknown, the nature of which we did not understand, we end up with two games of confusion going on: a game of the unknown and a game of the transcendental unknown. Both of these are part of spiritual materialism. We do not know who or what we are, but we do know that we would like to be someone or something. We decide to go ahead with what we would like to be even though we do not know what that is. That is the first game. Then on top of that, in connection with being something, we would also like to know