Chogyam trungpa 1974 seminary, hinayana mahayana (1975)

1974 Seminary
Hinayana

Mahayana

Ch6gyam Trungpa, Rinpoche



1974
SEMINARY
HINA Y ANA - MAHAYANA

Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche

This is a transcript of talks given by Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche
at the second Vajradhatu Seminary, a twelve-week period of
intensive meditation and study, held at Snowmass Village,
Colorado, September-November 1974.


Copyright 1975 by Chogyam Trungpa. All rights reserved. No part of this
manuscript may be reprinted without the written permission of the author.


TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Talk One: Shamatha

1

Unl!_;;ual opportunity of attending seminary. Relation of study and
meditation. Two approaches to sitting: strict discipline of breath vs.
improvising. Boycotting the breath. Posture. Thoughts. Walking
meditation, Sense of recollection when we finish sitting. Simplifying everyday life. Eyestrain. Falling asleep while sitting.

Talk Two: The Development of Mindfulness

12

The question of mindfulness. "Touch and go." Using meditation as
a way to avoid problems. The dualistic approach (sitting-nonsitting;
jail-vacation) vs. the big blanket approach. Conversation and chatter.
Everything as thinking process.

Talk Three: Taming the Mind

24

Three types of learning: discipline, meditation, and knowledge. Making friends with the four aggregates of neurotic mind: ignorance, not
being aware, emotional upheavals, and not having enough devoion.

Talk Four: Loneliness

30

Recollection and knowing. Aloneness. Six categories of process of
aloneness. Sense of aloneness brings one-pointedness and discriminating awareness of dharma. Discipline. Being a hermit.

Talk Five: Motivation for Practice

39

Motivation and training. Joy of change of schedule. Complaining.
Ultimate complaint from sense of having no joy. Basic faith in what
we are doing.

Talk Six: Freedom from Ill birth

45

Freedom from illbirth and distortion. Shamatha as purification. The
three lower realms. Relaxation and being without defense mechanisms.
Mind as a sieve vs. mind as an iron cauldron. Importance ofjethop, the
post-meditation experience. Just being, without preconceptions. The
shadow.

Talk Seven: Vipashyana

56

Vipashyana as a link between sitting practice and intellectual learning.
The learning process of non-ego. Attitude of scholarship. Six topics
of the knowable. Practicality of Buddhist approach. Restless mind
vs. intellect.

Talk Eight: Open Space
The world contains its own intelligence: vipashyana-to tune into that.
Fixed concepts fuel for fire of awareness. Self-perpetuating awareness.
Emptiness-basic space. Shadow and echo.

66


Talk Nine: Awareness and Suffering

72

Egolessness. Awareness of totality and sense of no-self. Relation of
awareness and suffering. Grudge against the world.

Talk Ten: The Origin of Suffering

79

The origin of suffering. Set patterns in life which form basic constituents of the origin of suffering. The two extremes of nihilism and
eternalism.

Talk Eleven: The Cessation of Suffering

86

Preventing the origin of suffering. Liberation as personal experience.
Trying to become buddha, awake and blossoming. The three categories of samsara.

Talk Twelve:, The Path

96

The path that's already been built for you vs. the path you construct
yourself. Characteristics of the general path. The five paths. Hypocrisy of pretending we aren't trying to attain enlightenment.

Talk Thirteen: Categories of Vipashyana

104

Concluding discussion of vipashyana. Seeing the Buddhist world
entirely dependent on vipashyana experience. Categories of vipashyana:
higher, lower; clarity, immovability; infant level, equal taste, seeing
things as they are. Hallucinations of emptiness. Egolessness.

Talk Fourteen: The Bodhisattva Path

114

Importance of shamatha. Greater vision and greater action of mahayana. Sense of appreciation. Bodhicitta compared with buddha nature.
Two signs of properly trained student. Two types of bodhicitta. Threefold purity.

Talk Fifteen: Sunyata

126

Ways of looking at sunyata. Three-fold purity. No reference point.
Giving up attachment to awareness. Development of awareness into
warmth and nonreference point. External, internal, and absolute
emptiness. Seven riches of supreme being.

Talk Sixteen: Bhumis: One-Five

137

The first five bhumis: joyful, spotless, illuminating, radiating light,
difficult to accomplish. Paramitas of generosity, discipline, patience,
exertion, and meditation.

Talk Seventeen: Bhumis: Six-Ten

153

The last five bhumis: experiencing reality, far gone, not moving, good
intellect, and cloud of dharma. Paramitas of knowledge, skillful means,
inspiration, power, and wisdom. The basic sense of devotion throughout mahayana. The seven mahayana exercises.

Talk Eighteen: The Achievement of Enlightenment
The eleventh bhumi, always luminous. Learning to relax. The vajralike samadhi. The three kayas. Importance of the historical Buddha.

162


Appendix: Lists in order of appearance in the text

175

Index of Tibetan Terms

179

Index

183

TALK ONE

Shamatha
Welcome. At this point we have finally made it to the beginning. There is a
great possibility that we'll make it to the end. The question of what we are going
to do now that we are here has dawned on people. We heard what happened last
year at the seminary and we have had all kinds of struggles to earn money, and to
get onto the list of seminary participants. We've had certain expectations, reaching
the anxiety level in some situations. But we are here, and my first encouragement
is: please try to be here. There are some situations which might inspire you to
take off and go back to the good old world, but I don't think that would be
possible; I don't think that would be very healthy. The good old world that you
might want to go back to won't be so good and aged any more. It will have become
a brand new world, which consists of a lot of sharp edges. Once we are here we
must stick with what we are doing. We have to stick with it, not only for your
own sake, but for the sake of all sentient beings. We mustn't create any chaos or
possible history of chickening out for future practitioners. So we have a double
role.
I hope that everybody's well settled as far as their own reference point
of comfort or daily schedule is concerned. I chose every one of you with personal
friendship, personal understanding, so you and I know each other, everyone in this
entire hall. We have some personal relationship going, and some understanding of
the need for this particular situation. We worked hard on choosing this particular
group of people for the seminary, and finally we came to this conclusion. I felt
personally, and also my colleagues felt very much, that we should co~bine a
certain collection, a certain chemistry of people. This year is a very timely
situation. You are unusually and specially privileged to be here, if you would
like to put it that way, in that we have turned away hundreds of people. In order

1


to include one of you we had to turn at least three people away. So hopefully you
will make a good job out of it on behalf of those other three people. I'm sure you
will. [Laughs.]
Without special circumstances, such as this seminary, it is very hard for
individuals to get into extremely concentrated situations. You might take a retreat,
but then have to come back to your job, your career or whatever. Holding this
seminary for three months has created a very special situation. Those of you who
have careers or jobs had to abandon them, temporarily or permanently. That
allows you to settle down, relax, and open yourself to the actual practice, nothing
but practice, which is very powerful and very important. So this special situation
is created purely so that the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism, the nine-yana approach,
can seep through your entire system, even your bones and marrow. You ~an be
completely and properly soaked in it, and you can actually experience the whole
thing-discipline actually means discipline; learning means real learning.
In this community we have a lot of people who are worn out by
administrative jobs. They've been answering telephones, having constant meetings
and 'Yriting reports. This seminary is very compassionate; it's kind of a vajra
vacation for them, so that they can get into the practice properly before they
become hypocrite officers or hypocrite administrators. The same thing may apply
to the ordinary students who are not particularly into administration, so that they
also don't become hypocritical members of the Vajradhatu scene. We are doing
what we are doing, and we have a purpose to live life through, to experience other
people and the world. Everything becomes very personal. So this particular situation,
I would like to remind you again, is very special and very fortunate.
Maybe this is just beating a dead horse, but I would like to tell you again,
I want you to keep in mind that this particular situation is unusual and very special.

In order to make it worthwhile, needless to say, there is your practice and discipline.
We have a tradition which developed last year at the seminary in Jackson, Wyoming.
We have developed certain programs for the day-to-day living situation, for serving
meals and for having days off, having study periods and sitting-practice periods.
We learned something from last year.'s experience, so we are trying to implement
things in the same way. We would like to make a tradition out of it.
Basically, the schedule has a pragmatic purpose. There is time to have a
rest, time to have meals, time for sitting practice, time to study and so forth-all
carefully worked out. And needless to say, the basic point is the practice of
meditation. It is the primary purpose of all this. And the meditation practice is
based on intense experience-blocks of intense sitting practice and blocks of intense
learning practice. That seems to be much better than mingling them together. So
for the first few days we're going to have a chunk of intensive sitting practice, which
is an important opening. People have a chance to catch up with themselves. If
people have been doing less sitting before they carne here, or if they have gone sour
in sitting, this is the time to renew their practice by creating an intense situation of
sitting meditation.
The duration in hours and minutes of each particular sitting is not predictable.
That's part of the approach, which is the same as with nyinthuns. The length of each
sitting is unpredictable, and each day has a particular schedule which is not released

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to the public, so to speak, except for the timer. Therefore, you are not preparing
yourself to fight through that long hour's sitting, expecting that long tea break, or
whatever. So things can be worked out as a life situation. The basic idea is to
dissolve the sharp edges between sitting and non-sitting so that ongoing awareness
practice is developing, so that awareness happens constantly.
There is sitting practice involved with the study period. But the study

period is also for experiencing and concentrating meditatively, so to speak, on booklearning and intellectual learning, which is very important at this point. You don't
want to become a dumb meditator or a crazy intellectual. In order to avoid those
extremes, you have to be an intelligent meditator, a scholar and a practitioner at
the same time. We have talked about that many times in the past. In this situation,
learning is not so much booklearning alone, but something that you can relate to
yourself. You can identify yourself with what you're going to study and you can
actually relate with what you're learning. The topics that are being presented are
very congenial to that situation; everything is applied to sitting practice and personal
experience. So this is an experiential situation rather than a chemistry laboratory.
I would like you to participate fully in the study periods, rather than
saying, "I'm not the type; instead I'll take a walk in the mountains, or I'll just go
to the meditation hall and meditate, purely by myself. I don't care about
booklearning; that's not my kettle of fish." That's not quite the attitude to take.
The attitude to take is that there is basic pressure, so to speak, coming from
community participation. Not only is your own participation in learning important,
but you should inspire your colleagues and your friends as well so that the
inspiration of prajiia is created in. the atmosphere.
So we have prajiia and dhyana,study and meditation created alternately,
but somehow they mingle together at the same time. This program is supposedly
ideal. And as far as I'm concerned, nobody has ever created programs like this
before, so therefore it is ideal.
From tomorrow onward you will be sitting a lot-sitting practice is
regarded as the heart of Buddhism, also as the heart of the nontheistic tradition
of meditation. All of you have received instructions from me; we have created
personal interviews and we have all talked to each other. It's amazing that there
are so many "interviewees" here. In the past we discussed two approaches to
sitting practice: one is the strict discipline of following the breath, and the other
one is a sense of just improvising, trying to sit and feel what happens with you.
These are the two categories that were developed in my interviews with individuals
here as far as I can remember. But at this point I would like to make a blanket

policy, which should be much better and more workable. Also, if you are going to
sit for long periods of time with such a number of people, there is more demand on
your state of being, and in fact, on your basic existence. So I would like to suggest
following the basic practice of shamatha at the beginning of your sitting period,
strict shamatha practice-well, it's not exactly strict. Certain schools make a very
primitive practice out of shamatha. What we are doing is not primitive practice,
but strict practice; there is a lot of difference between the two. What we are going
to do is not primitive practice based on the peasantry level, but strict practice, in
the sense that there's no way to move around, no way to jiggle around, no way to

3


maneuver around your practice. You do what you are told to do. That seems to be
one of the basic points. If there's no way to relate with discipline then there's no
way to develop yourself; you are constantly swirling around and you find yourself
drifting into all kinds of situations.
The sitting practice of meditation here is basic mindfulness practice. We are
not doing awareness practice as such-that might come later-we are. doing mindfulness practice as opposed to awareness practice. Some of you might feel you are
regressing and going back to the A-B-C-D level, rather than moving on to something
more advanced and glorious, but it is necessary to do it this way, to develop your
meditation at the mindfulness level.
To begin with, shamatha practice has a lot to do with your posture. It is
recommended that you sit crosslegged as opposed to hanging out in any convenient
posture. You might say, "Suppose I lie down and meditate, wouldn't that still be
valid? " Somehow it doesn't seem to be so. Not because there is a rigid rule that
says so, but, due to practicality-once you sit, you sit properly; you have a straight
spine, your breath doesn't have any strain, and your neck doesn't have any strain.
Sit upright, crosslegged. You can change your posture and rearrange yourself. There's
no point in punishing yourself, constantly trying to strain yourself and your posture.

But sit properly so there's no strain on the breath. If you sit properly, you are there.
Your breathing follows naturally.
It's the difference between animals and human beings. Animals find relaxation by being horizontal. Horses cari sleep that way, they could even meditate that
way if anybody taught horses to meditate. Snakes and lizards and horses and cows
could meditate that way, horizontally. But human beings don't walk on four feet.
At this point of evolution we have no chance of going back, so we've got to walk on
our two feet. That is why the vertical posture always happens, even when we sit.
If you want to eat, you can't eat horizontally. You would find it very uncomfortable to be eating horizontally on the dining room table. You would want to sit up
in your chair and eat that way. It's the same thing with your meditation, it is avertical process rather than a horizontal one. This is a given situation for us; we can't
do otherwise. Since we are formed this way, we should do it this way. The Buddha
sets an example for the human being; the Buddha sits upright in the meditation
posture. It's not particularly anthropocentric, in the sense that human beings are
regarded as the highest beings particularly. In this case it's a question of what our
make-up is-we go along with our make-up.
So posture is very important. In contrast to the animal style it's upright, and
not too tense in the neck. You just sit up very simply. I've noticed that when people
first see something very interesting happening on the movie screen, everybody sits
up in perfect posture. And when things get slightly dull and uninteresting in the
movie, people begin to do all kinds of things. But in the first instance they have perfect posture. That's an example for us. I mean it is happening; it is your life; you
are up and you are breathing. It is very personal and very direct. You are sitting;
you are sitting upright; your head is forward, neither up nor down, but erect. So
posture is regarded as very important, extremely important in this case.
The attitude towards the breath in meditation is that there is breath coming
out. Once you are set properly in your posture, there is breath coming out of you.

4


The shamatha approach of relating with the breath is that as the breath comes out,
you become the breathing. You try to identify with it completely, rather than just

watching it. You are the breath, the breath is you. So breath is coming out of your
nostrils, going out and dissolving into the atmosphere, into the space. You direct a
certain energy and effort toward that. As for inbreathing, should you try to breathe
in and that way deliberately try to draw things in? That's not recommended. You
should just boycott your breath, boycott your concentration on the breath. When
your breath has gone out, boycott it; let it dissolve; just abandon it. So inbreathing
is just space. Physically, biologically, you do breathe in, obviously; but it's not a
big deal. Then another breath goes out; be with it. So it's out, dissolve, gap; out,
dissolve, gap; out, dissolve, gap. You are constantly opening, abandoning, boycotting, something of you that wants to follow through. So boycotting in this case is
a very significant word. If you hold onto your breath, you are constantly holding
onto yourself. Once you begin to boycott the end of the outbreath, then there's
no world left-except that the outbreath reminds you to tune in with it. So you
tune in, dissolve; tune in, dissolve; tune in, dissolve.
Thoughts arise in the midst of this practice: "Well, back at home-How can
I do my calligraphy? -How can I compose another article? _:_How can I finish Loka
magazine? -What's happening in the financial scene at Karma Dzong? -I hate so
and so who was terrible to me.-I would love to make love if such-and-such a person
were only here.-What's the story with my parents? " All kinds of thoughts begin
to arise, naturally. If you have lots of time to sit, there are endless thoughts happening constantly.
The approach to thoughts is actually no approach. When I feel an ache in
my neck, okay, I think "ache in my neck." Reduce everything to the thought
level rather than getting involved in the concept. Usually what happens is that if
you have mental chatter, you just call it your thoughts. But if you have very deeply
involved emotional chatter or fights and struggles in your mind, you call that emotions and you usually give it special prestige. You think that it merits special privileges by being called emotion.
"I'm actually angry; it's more than my thought! feel so horny, it's more than my thought." Somehow, in the realm of the actual
mind, things don't work that way. All of them are thoughts; all of them are
thoughts, all of them. It's just thinking-you're thinking you're horny; you're
thinking you're angry. It's a thinking process which takes place all the time.
So the idea of shamatha practice is to depersonalize the thoughts. Your
thoughts are no longer regarded as VIP's in your life, in your meditation. You

think, you sit; you think, you sit; you think, you sit. You have thoughts, you have
thoughts about thoughts, you have thoughts about thoughts about thoughts. Let
it happen that way; call them thoughts. You are thinking; you are constantly
thinking, nothing but thinking. You are not really getting angry-you may have
physical repercussions from it, but still it's the thought process making you do
that. You might have erections in the middle of your sitting, but still it's your
thought. Your mind gets erected first; your body becomes erected afterwards.
Usually that's the pattern. So there is a constant thinking process, constant thought,
nothing but thought and thought pattern.
But there is a limit at some point. If you strain yourself, your leg, your
back or something because of not rearranging yourself, that is going too far. By

5


thinking and thinking and thinking of thinking, you can impose intensity on your
body, which undermines it. In other words, you regard the body as your little brother; you tell him, "Shut up. Big brother is more important. I have to deal with
that." In this case, that is not really a good thing to do. Rearranging your posture
is necessary; at some point it's good to do. But at the same time, it too is a thinking
process. Relate to it as a thinking process.
The next problem, or challenge, rather, is walking meditation practice. Last
year when we had walking practice in Jackson, a lot of people treated it as an opportunity for dramatic display. Jean-Claude had his style, and Ruth Astor had her style.
Actually, everybody tried to compensate. When you sit, you can't do very much.
When you stand and walk, you can at least exercise your self-existence. That became
a very troubled and problematic situation. Walking was regarded as comic. relief, when
you could do something extraordinary, self-exploratory or self-expressive. The poets
walked their way, the theatre people walked their way, the freaked-out people walked
their way. J think that's not particularly advisable. Since we have a chance now to
review what happened last time, we can bring this issue to the surface.
Walking practice is the same as sitting practice except that you're walking.

Instead of paying attention to your breath, in the walking practice you work with
the movement of your legs. Your body is still in good posture. Y()U raise your right
leg, swing out, touch your sole, and press it on the floor. The left leg is released from
its tension, swings across, touches, and presses, and the right leg swings across, touches,
and presses. It's a very natural walk, a very ordinary walk. Often there's an attempt
to run around and beat everybody, or to walk very slowly. All ofthis is unnecessary
affectation. You should be careful to notice that your awareness has changed, to
n()tice the shift in your awareness. In fact, walking meditation is very important; it
relates to your everyday life situation much more closely than sitting practice. Walking meditation means that you are getting up from your meditation cushion and
beginning to get into walking in the street, speaking and working. Therefore walking
practice is regarded as very important preparation. It's a transitional period, although
in this case it's still part of sitting practice. So you have to pay heed to it. Hopefully
you can do it somewhat deliberately, but at the same time freely.
The next question is: When we finish sitting, what should we do? How
should we handle ourselves? Should we just tiptoe, or walk on eggs trying to hold
onto the baggage of our mindfulness? Should we just make a big splash and come
right out? Or should we be somewhat dumb and hesitant and try to play along
with other people's energy? Those three choices are the passion, aggression and
ignorance syndrome that usually happens. In this case I think the point is not that
you should tiptoe, or make a big splash, or be hesitant. But you should try to continue the sense of meditational awareness that has developed in your state of being;
just continue that way. This doesn't mean especially working with your breath and
working with your walk. But there's a flash of awareness, the memory that you sat
and that you are committed to this particular course during the seminary. You set
your purpose, and your being here is part of that. It's not particularly moralistica question of behaving like good boys and girls-but just the basic recollection of
why you are here. You are here; you sat and meditated-very simple flashes.
That recollection should continue during mealtimes. The general recommendation-it is very heavily recommended as a matter of fact-is to minimize unnecessary

6

chatter. You might be thinking about the philosophy of the Madhyamikas, or the
y ogacarins, or you might be talking about your life history and psychological

experiences of all kinds. Whatever the issue is that comes up in this mental chatter,
it is not regarded as valid or particularly valuable. The idea is to simplify the everyday living situation as much as you can. "Pass the salt" is good. "Don't you think
this tea is cold?" is okay. "The meals seem to be good," or "The food is terrible,"
or "Would you like to sit here? " Pragmatic discussions seem to be much better
than discussing the level of dharmakaya.
The point here is to bring things down to the everyday living situation as
much as you can, and to make things very real and personal. The whole process of
shamatha praCtice, which we will discuss more tomorrow, is to develop a detailed
experience of things as they are and to become very direct in relating with details
of personal experience. That seems to be one of the basic points.
On the whole the attitude is that what you are doing is very personal-something which applies to you. At the same time it could be shared with your
colleagues.

If you have any questions we could discuss them.

Q:

Would you please explain the boycott of the breath again?

R:
Boycotting the breath happens when you have a relationship with your
breath, when you identify with it. Identifying with the breath could possibly
develop into a grasping relationship in which you don't want to let go of the breath:
the breath goes out, the breath comes in, and you want to go along with it. But the
idea here is just to go out, and then to leave off, take a leap so to speak.

Q:

You mentioned sitting crosslegged. Do you have any comments about
using meditation benches?
R:
Well, I think that depends on the individual. To my mind a meditation bench
usually means a person has a problem with their legs, or a case history of an accident,
so they don't want to strain themselves. I don't see any particular problem with
that. Sitting crosslegged doesn't mean that you have to sit in the lotus position, or
vajra posture-a half-lotus is fine as long as you are on the ground properly. If you
have a problem with a leg that has a case history, it's better not to strain yourself,
because we need you. [Laughs.]

Q:

There seems to be a tendency when there's a lot of discipline for everybody
to get really heavy, kind of morbid and solemn. Then all of a sudden it breaks,
people start giggling, and it gets really frivolous. Can you say something about that?
R:
I think we could mix them together. You could be frivolous but solemn
and solid at the same time. If we could put them in a blender and mix them together,
it would create a beautiful mixture: you are straight and solemn but at the same
time you are full of life. I think the only way to relate with that is to catch one's
impulse. Being solemn means being somewhat depressed or feeling pious. Feeling
frivolous, being silly, and bursting into giggling and laughter is some kind of hysteria.
In both cases you are missing the point. So I think if you take a look at what's
happening, it's not all that bad and solemn, and it's not all that hilarious either.

7


But you can keep up with it, relate to it directly, somehow. If you have feelings of

guilt about it, that just presents a further problem. So I think it's a question of working with yourself. You can work with yourself; you don't have to let go in that way.
Letting go doesn't mean being frivolous in either direction.

Q:

Rinpoche, usually we see the Buddha sitting in upright posture. What about
the reclining Buddha? Is there any symbology attached with that?
R:

Well, that's how Buddha dies.

Q

But he's always pictured smiling, you know.

R:
That's the artist's affectation. The reclining Buddha is called a parinirvana statue.
Parz"nirvana is a euphemism for the death of Buddha--well, you can c:to that at the end.

Q:
I have a question about the speed of walking. At Pearl Street it always seems
like there are a lot of people who walk very, very slowly. It's like a race to see how
slowly you can go. I guess that's thought to increase one's awareness of the very
minute muscle movements in the leg, the toes, or whatever. I'm not exactly sure
what's going on.
R:
Well, I think it should be not too slow and not too fast. It's somewhat like
your breath. You breathe out, you breathe in; you walk, walk, walk. It has something to do with the natural breath. The scriptures give an analogy for the ideal way
to walk. It's compared with a person who has had a relatively good meal, but has
rested well afterwards. At the same time he has no emotional problems. He is an

ideally healthy person. When he breathes, he just breathes naturally. The walking
pace should be that way, just out and in, out and in. Not too fast, not too slowyou walk, walk, walk.

Q:

You mentioned before that when you go o_ut with the breath the world disappears. What happens with me is that the world seems more solid, or the room does.
I'm wondering if I'm doing it wrong. You said that you come out with the breath,
you leap and then the world might possibly disappear or something. What happens
to me is that the worldR:
It doesn't matter. Just leave it that way. I mean, the world doesn't particularly disappear or become solid. It doesn't really matter; it's there anyway. It's
purely a phenomenological experience. We are not into Don Juan at this point; we
are into Buddhism. So we could save ourselves from being too impressionistic, and
just deal with this tartan rug. It's going to be there. When you open your eyes it's
always there. Work that way.
Another thing I would like to mention is the focus of the eyes when you are
looking at things. Sometimes if you are paying too much attention to visual details
of colors and everything, you find you're getting a tight neck and a headache, because
the expenditure of visual energy is much greater than your physical expenditure. In
ordinary life, we walk, we move our bodies, and we look, so the whole thing is balanced.
In this case we are sitting still, so the only thing we have to do is listen and look. And
there's not much noise outside to listen to either. Therefore everything's concentrated
in your vision alone. So there is tension. The idea is not to focus too much in the

8


visual situation, but just to open your eyes and see. You may look at it, but the
point is not to manipulate your visual hallucination.
Q:
Could you give some suggestions on how to deal with the desire to sleep

during sitting?
Well, I wouldn't recommend sleeping in here, but at the same time, I wouldn't
R:
recommend trying to fight it. Quite possibly in the early stages of sitting practice,
for at least the first week here, people will have intense problems with sleeping and
drowsiness. That's inevitable. Life finally and suddenly slows down. Enormous
open expenditures of energy are no longer required. You just hibernate. Quite
possibly the animals who hibernate do the same kind of trick. They begin to slow
their thoughts; they begin to meditate. And then they begin to slow down their
pulses and really begin to hibernate, not in the Buddhist way but maybe in an animalistic way. So a suggestion of hibernation comes out in meditation which might be
described as going through the animal realm, actually. At the same time, I think
there's no particular answer about how to wake up. The only way to wake yourself
up is to become intensified and introduce some kind of excitement-which doesn't
exist. So I would recommend: just keep sitting, just keep sitting. If you have a
guilty conscience about falling asleep, that's also a problem, which produces further
drowsiness. But keep sitting and awake. On the other hand, if you begin to snorewe have had people in the past who have done that-it might be problematic [laughter].
Your neighbors might remind you that you're snoring. I think it's a very personal
thing.
You see, what happens here when you sit is that all of your trips begin to
come out. It's like churning out all kinds of vomit, all kinds of diarrhea. Your whole
stomach opens, your whole brain opens in front of everybody else, and everybody
exposes their trips to you at the same time. So a lot of exposed charnel ground appears. That's necessary, as long as you don't make it into a trip, thinking how glorious
you are and beginning to love your shit. But I think there are possibilities of accepting the charnel ground. That seems to be the basic point of having a group of people
here together at the same time. Some kind of bond could develop among a hundred
and twelve people, each of whom knows everybody else's trip. That is an immense
feast. So let it be that way. You can't get away. Everybody's going to bulge out in
some way or other. You can't keep your privacy at this point. I think part of the
celebration of the special situation happening here is that a hundred and twelve
people ru_:e sitting together, and everything's open to every one of them. You are
exposing yourself a hundred and twelve times to everybody else and in turn they are

doing it to you. Maybe that's the real meaning of sangha, everybody understands
you and knows you, and you know them as well. So there's nothing to hide, nothing
to be kept secret. Everything's everywhere.
Q:
Rinpoche, I have a problem with not following the inbreath. It's like the
idea of being told not to think of an elephant. So I breathe out and I think, "Don't
follow your inbreath," and then I watch my inbreath.
R:
Well, I think if you work with the outbreath fully, you probably will find
that there's a little vacation you can take. Work, vacation, work, vacation-try it.

9


Q:

You mentioned something about not focusing the eyes.

R:
I didn't say not focusing, particularly, but not paying too much attention to
details of visual manipulation. Just look and be it.

Q:
At times, it's been said to look ahead to the horizon, or at times to have your
eyes down. I have trouble with that.
R:

Well, traditionally you look down during meditation. The ancient texts talk
about looking down the length of an ox yoke in front of you.

Q:

Would you compare that to a car length or something? [Laughter.)

R:

I don't know. Well, an ox yoke is probably about 2 1/2 yards long. But that's

a hypothetical measurement.

Q:

During the inbreath, does your attention just stay out in front of you?

R:
I think it does. Yes. Or all over you. That's a good one. It's a question of
where outside is. Usually the exit that we have is towards the front rather than to
the sides or to the back. That's the idea for the exit. According to tantric disciplines,
East is regarded as in front, which is the exit, South is on the right, West is in back,
and North is on the left. So the exit of your mandala is that way [gestures to the front) .
Q:

You mentioned two different types of meditation. I usually practice the awareness type, or I think I do, and I usually find that comfortable; whereas I find trying to
follow my breath an imposition in some way. I'd like to change that idea, somehow.
Could you offer any suggestions?

R:

Do it.

Q:
I've been trying to ask you this for a year. If you have some physical breathing
problems, like heart-muscle things, difficulty catching your breath, and you're a mouth
breather both in and out.
I've tried to practice what you just told us to do, but my
breathing is as irregular as everything else I do. I can't breathe in and I can't breathe
out. And I have what they call a deviated septum, which is an obstruction of the nostrils, soR:
Go ahead. It doesn't have to be regular. This is not particularly a military
drill. It doesn't have to be left, right, left, right, left, right. You know, you can have
a long out, long in, short out, short in. It doesn't really matter. I wouldn't worry
about the regularity. I would just do it whenever it comes. I'm sure you can do it.

Q:
When you talk about breath dissolving in space, is that almost a visual thing,
or is it more just a feeling?
R:

It happens, usually.

Q:
But for me it actually gets visual sometimes. I almost hallucinate. It helps
me to keep my mindR:

Yes, if you Jike. Well, when you asked me the question, what did you say?

Q:

Basically, is it okay to go ahead and somewhat visualize it rather than just feel

10

almost naturally how far out your breath would go and where it would dissolve?
R:
You breathe out; it dissolves. It's the same thing. When you asked the
question you were breathing out, right?

Q:

Mm-hmm.

R:
And you dissolved. [Pause.] There's a gap. Then you're listening to what
I have to say, which is breathing out again. [Pause.] Then there's a gap. I think it's
very personal. Gesundheit.

Q:

How should this gap occur in the walking meditation, or does it?

R:
Well, I think once you press your foot on the floor there's a gap, a very short
gap taking place. Right, swing, touch, press, gap; left, swing, press, gap. There are
little gaps, but I don't think you have to make a big deal about it. It's connected
with your everyday life situation. You are already extroverted, in a sense. There
are no problems with that.
Thank you for being here. Hopefully you could make a good job out of
this. If you make a bad job, that's fine too. Thank you.

11

TALK TWO

Th,e Development of
Mindfulness

The question of mindfulness. To begin with we could discuss the attitude that brings
about possibilities of mindfulness. This attitude is not particularly an opinion. When
we talk about attitude, we are talking about awareness of mind, which is precisely
what mindfulness is. Awareness of mind means that your mind is aware of yourself.
In other words the basic point is that you're aware that you're aware. The suggestion
here is that you're not regarded as mechanical; you are an individual person relating
with what's happening around you. And mindfulness in this case is the sense of being.
We could use the phrase "touch and go". You are in contact; you are touching
the experience of being there, actually being there; and then you let go. That applies
to awareness of your breath and also to your day-to-day living awareness. The point
of "touch and go" is that there is a sense of feeling. "Touch" is a sense of existence,
that you are who you are. You have a name and you feel a certain way. And you
are that way. When you sit on the cushion, you feel you are sitting on the cushion
and that you actually exist. It doesn't need too much encouragement to develop
that kind of attitude. You are there, you are sitting, you are there, you are sitting.
That's the "touch" part. The "go" part is that you are there and then you don't ,
hang on to it. You don't sustain your sense of being, but you let go of even that.
Touch and go. There's a sense of individuality, a sense of person. We are actually
here; we exist.
We might question what will happen to us at that level. What about the
Buddhist attitude towards non-existence, egolessness, the current issue of spiritual
materialism which seems to be such a big deal? What's going to happen to us if we
just do that? Aren't we going to fall into some kind of pitfall? Maybe we are.

Maybe we are not. There's no guarantee since there's no guarantor. However, it is

12


possible that we could do just this. I would recommend that you don't worry about
future security, but just do it, directly and simply. The rest of the problem will be
taken care of by the sangha and the guru. Somebody is there to mind your business,
somebody unshakeable. You can't shake them off. It's happening anyway. Since
you are committed, since you are into it, that means you've already asked somebody
to mind your business anyway. That is happening or could happen very heavy-handedly. So let us not feel too much concern about future security. Let us do the "touch
and go."
There is a further "touch" that is necessary. Touch applies not only to the
awareness of a sense of being, but it also happens at the level of mindfulness of
situations. That is, one's mental state of aggression or lust has to be acknowledged.
Those states should not just be acknowledged and pushed off, but actually looked
at. There's no suppression or shying-off involved. You have the experience of being
utterly aggressive, utterly lustful, whatever. You don't just say, "Oh, it's okay. This
is what's happening," and very politely say, "Hi. Goodbye. Nice seeing you again.
You are okay; I want to get back to my breath." That's like meeting a friend who
reminds you of the past and saying, "Well, excuse me, I have to make my next appointment, and catch the train." That's somewhat deceptive. So in the shamatha approach,
you don'tjust sign off. You acknowledge what's happening and then you also look
at it.
The basic point is not to give yourself an easy time so you can escape the
embarrassing and unpleasant moments, the self-conscious moments of our life. Such
thoughts could arise in terms of meri:wries of the past, painful experience of the present or painful future prospects, what you're going to do after this seminary. All
those things happen, and you experien~e them, look at them, and then come back
to your breath. This is very important. Extremely important.
There is the possibility of twisting the logic all the way, of relating to sitting
and meditating and coming back to the breath, as a way of avoiding problems-that

is a problem. You might feel good, that you are sanctioned by the Buddha, that you
have the technique of mindfulness. You feel that's something extremely kosher, good,
sensible and real. You don't have to pay attention to all those little embarrassments
that happen in your life. You can regard them as unimportant and just come back
to the breath. You create a patchwork, bottling up further problems ,and keeping
them as your family heirloom. Since this kind of attitude can develop, it is very
important to look at those embarrassments, and then come back to the breath.
However, there's no implication that if you just look at them it's going to be an
expression of freedom, or that that's the end of the game at all.
In fact, most of the problems in your life are not so much because you are
an aggressive or lusty person. The greatest problem is that you would like to bottle
those things up and put them aside. You have become an expert in deception.
Meditation practice, sitting practice, is supposed to uncover any attempts to develop
a more subtle, sophisticated, deceptive approach. That's a basic point, which is extremely important to realize and work with.
I think that we need some kind of rigidity, some strict discipline in our sitting
practice. Your posture should be correct. Your walking is a straightforward walking
practice. Apart from that there's no problem, except when you have a spare moment

13


out of the meditation hall, during eating and during the hanging-out period. We should
do something about that, otherwise the whole approach becomes non-existent. It
becomes like workin,g in a factory, putting on bolts and nuts-which are the out and
in breaths. Then when you finish your job you sign out and come back home, take
off your clothes, take a shower and watch television. You feel some sense of relief:
"Thank heaven that today's over; now it's time to be floppy." That is exactly the
same pattern as when somebody works in a factory. It may be slightly different for
a psychiatrist or somebody working in an office with papers. But meditation is like
being in a factory, dealing with one thing after another, one breath after another.

You're putting together plastic Johnny Walkers [laughter] . What I'm trying to say
is that maybe we could transcend that factorylike situation, that factory worker's
attitude.
That brings us to the subject of mealtime. Mealtimes, as I have observed,
become like the company cafeteria; there's a moment of release, a moment of freedomwhich is u.nnecessary in our case. I think we can approach it differently. We can
approach the whole thing very directly and precisely. One problem is unnecessary
chatter. Another one is a sense of gap in the negative sense: you are drinking water
maybe, and eating wholeheartedly, having no doubt a relatively pleasant time, and
you regard all this as completely outside of the rest of what we're doing here. There's
a big dichotomy, a shockingly big gap. That is unnecessary. If we develop such a
gap during.mealtimes or just during free time-"this is free time, time to release
energy"-then obviously your sitting practice is going to be like imprisonment and
you are creating your own jail. You feel that the meditation hall is where serious
things take place. When we get out of the door, then everything's okay, back to normality or something. And even though the physical situation is somewhat restricted,
still, we can improvise with our free time. By doing that you're developing hatred
towards this room, so that it becomes a jail, while the other time represents freedom
and having a good time.
So the suggestion here is that we could even out the whole thing and have a
good time all over the place: this is not so much a jail and that's not so much a vacation. Everything should be evened out. That could be our basic attitude; if you
sit or if you stand, it's the same thing; if you eat or if you squat it's the same process.
It's the good old world·. You are carrying your world with you in any case. You
can't cut your world into different slices and put it into different pigeonholes at all.
Sq, for the sake of good practice and for the sake of good eating, which I think eating
should be, I would like to recommend this to you very strongly. You should taste
your food better. Particularly during the seminary, food should taste much better.
Moreover we've been putting effort into developing a decent menu, and hopefully
it's working. I think we are trying our best even if it doesn't work [laughter]. But
the basic point is that there is openness and some kind of continuity taking place,
which is extremely important. The purpose of this practice is to develop a fuzzy
edge between sitting and non-sitting, eating and sitting, sleeping and sitting, and

everything.
I suppose it'_s a cultural habit particularly in the Western world, to look for
a change of mood. Every event in your life is a surprise. In Victorian England, even
though you know that you are going to have four o'clock tea, when the maid actually
comes with your tea, everybody says, "Ah, there comes the maid, there comes the tea.

14


Oh, let's have tea. Let's invite someone for tea. Please help yourselves to the cake."
When dinner comes, "Ah, here's dinner time." Now that unfinished or badly handled
part of our life in the late afternoon is being cheered up by having dinner. Life is
worth living once more. Well then, it's bedtime. "You should get some sleep; you
could have cocoa or hot milk if you like." As they say in England, "Have pleasant
dreams." There's another shift of gear. There's a constant attempt to please instantly.
In the morning when you wake up, they say, "Did you have a good night? Here's
breakfast. There's fruit juice." Usually they eat outside on the porch, which gives
it a different dimension. So there is the pathetic gesture of trying to cheer oneself
up each moment. When you come down the staircase you have to climb up; then
you Come down and then you climb up and then come down-one never faces life.
It's very pathetic and in fact it drove people mad [laughs].
Maybe you should understand the difference in attitude in our case. As far
as we are concerned, life is a big blanket. It covers the whole area. Maybe there are
occasional bumps, but still it's a blanket. Awareness is a big blanket too, and it's
also a pleasant blanket all over the place. It's good and healthy all the way, rather
than having to scale down and then cheer ourselves up, back and forth. The basic
point is that we're getting away from our inherited tradition, somewhat. But such
a tradition is not particularly necessary. I don't think anybody here would like to
get back to Victorian life. They would feel somewhat claustrophobic. Although
some reminiscence of such an approach still carries on, drinking a cup of tea in the

late afternoon is not a lifesaver. It's just drinking a cup of tea in the afternoon.
Having dinner is okay, a slightly bigger deal I must admit. But still it's just eating
dinner, not a particularly extraordinary event. We have lost the meaning of celebration and ceremony by holding little ceremonies which don't actually exist in
reality, but are attempts to cheer ourselves up. That's a problem, and it's quite
possible that the socializing and unnecessary chatter come out of that. So I would
like you to study this and think about it. Sitting and studying are one blanket
approach, a gigantic pancake stretched over your life.
The point is that we don't have to be so poverty-stricken about our life. We
don't have to try to get a little chip of chocolate from our life. When we approach
life this way, all the rest will be sour. That little chip is just a dip in pleasure. If
your body is hot, and you dip your finger in ice water it feds goo<;! and so painful
at the same time. If you really know the meaning of pleasure in the total sense, this
approach is further punishment, an unnecessary trick that we play on ourselves. Actually the practice of meditation is not so much concerned with a hypothetical attainment of enlightenment, but with leading a good life. In order to learn how to lead
a good life, a spotless life, we need continual awareness that relates with life constantly, directly, very simply. We will see what happens when I get back.
Maybe we should have a question period.

Q:

Is there a difference between chatter and conversation?

R:
A great deal, yes. Conversation is something that applies to that very moment,
and chatter is something that doesn't apply to the moment but is comic relief of
some kind.

15


Q:
Could you say more about the difference between chatter and conversation

and the place of silence or non-conversation or non-chatter?
R:
Well, I think with conversation, you're already conversing with somebody,
something is valid. Either you and your friends are under the weather, or else there's
a common glory that you're sharing together. Or there is some kind of mutual experienceyou're in the same building, in the same situation and drinking out of the same pot of tea,
eating your soup out of the same cauldron. It's very direct.
But chatter is actually gossip. There is almost no difference between the two.
It's beating the bush; you want to chat with somebody and so you talk about your
neighbors and you talk about the weather, and you talk about if somebody had a
bad time or somebody had a good time and you expand from there. Usually people
in the social world converse first and then slowly move into a chat. So you entertain
your guests and they have a good time. The guests probably don't notice the shift,
only the host, who is instigating the whole thing, does.
In this case nobody is the host and nobody is the guest, so we don't have to
maneuver. If you try to maneuver in this situation, it's purely trying to kill one's
boredom, which is unnecessary; one gets bored anyway.
So chatter is the reflection of past, present, and future possibilities, and conversation reflects just right now, the present. "Pass the salt," or "I have a bee in my
soup." That's very direct and simple. We don't have to chat about that; we just say,
"I have a bee on my plate." It's simple, it's direct and it's sharing some experience.
Chattering has a sense of barking like a dog. It's perching as opposed to sitting. If
you sit properly, you sit; but if you don't sit properly, you perch. Usually chatter
happens when you perch. You perch. You chatter like a bird. You chirp. So I
think there is an enormous difference between the two. It's the difference between
reality and phenomena, or something like that [laughs] .

Q:
Do you think there's a possibility that we could become overindulgent in
relating to our thoughts and emotions in meditation or life in terms of really experiencing them and just degenerate into a mass of neurosis that is totally out of
hand?
R:

I don't think so, but wait and see what happens.

Q:
Didn't you mention that it was an expression of freedom to relate directly
with these emotions and thoughts?
R:

I think it's saying the same thing. There's no particular problem with that.

Q:
Maybe it's the same question, but how do you acknowledge and look at your
emotions, like lust, without dwelling on them or in them?
R:

When you dwell on it, you don't look at it. You dwell on it.

Q:

What's the difference?

R:

The difference between looking at your horse or riding on your horse.

Q:

When I get through with looking at these various phases you're talking about,

16

a whole lot of chatter and entertainment comes up, and I wondered if you had any
suggestions as to how to get rid of that. I go back to my breath, but in between
there's this chatter and garbage coming up in my mind. I don't even know what it
is half the time.
R: That's okay, come back to your breath. We don't have to get rid of those things
particularly. They are not our enemies.

Q:

Will that go away eventually sometime, if-

R:

No. You will never get rid of it.

Q:

No?

R: No. You have to put up with it, you have to accept that, you have to transmute
them, work with them.

Q:

Well, isn't this an interference to your meditation?

R: I don't think so. As long as you think you're going to get rid of them, they
come up more, like swarming flies on your food.

Q:

Could you say something about guilt with regard to chatter?

R:

What do you mean?

Q: When you're acknowledging your indulgence in chatter and there's an attendant
feeling of guilt.
R:

Guilt about what?

Q:

Perhaps a feeling that you're putting something over on yourself.

R:

Well, just look at that.

Q:

You think the guilt is like a pointer then?

R: Guilt is not guilt, guilt is a thought, the same as anything else. You know, we
don't have pigeonholes for anything, except that everything is a thought, a thinking
process. So all the concepts don't make any difference. You might think that you

are the Buddha himself; that's just a thought. You might think you are in the realm
of h~ll; that's just a thought. You feel guilty; that's just your thought.
That's one of the problems presented by the Christian approach: every thought
pattern that occurs in the mind is labeled as good thinking or bad thinking. You
have a hierarchical bureaucracy saying that such-and-such a thought is a good thought,
such-and-such a thought is semi-good or semi-bad. Then all kinds of problems develop. But even guilt is just a thought. You don't try to get rid of the guilt, you
don't try to be non-guilty and try to feel that you're doing something worthwhile.
That's not the approach. Guilt should be regarded as purely a thinking process.
It's a thought; you have a guilty thought. So what? You have a guilty thought.
And if it comes back, say: "You have a guilty thought, you have a guilt, and you
have guilt. This is your thought, this is your mind. It's happening."

17