I had posted the first two talks last week, and not the third one is available - all three can be found at the
Chronicles of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche site. Talk four, entitled
Vipashyana, will be posted on Saturday, December 26th.
About Meditation: The Path of the Buddha
From a study guide prepared by Carolyn Gimian
In 1974 during the inaugural session of The Naropa Institute, Chögyam Trungpa presented this course on meditation. In addition to attending the class, students participated in meditation sessions throughout the week and attended discussion groups with his assistants. His course became the basis for the introductory meditation class that was given for many years at Naropa to incoming students. The course was held weekly during the same period of time that Rinpoche was teaching The Tibetan Buddhist Path, which will be presented on the Chronicles starting in January 2010.
Summary of Talk Three: State of Mind
Original date of the talk: June 24, 1974
Body of talk: 40 min. Overall Length: 72 min.
Chögyam Trungpa discusses sems, lodro, and rigpa—aspects of intelligence, or the mechanics of mind, as well as the development of ego through the five skandhas. He also talks about working with these aspects of mind in one’s meditation practice.
Ground: Understanding our state of mind, or the mechanics of mind, helps us to see how we relate with our own world and the phenomenal world in general.
|  | When we talk about mind, we are referring to different levels in the state of consciousness. These are not higher or lower but rather the different functions of mind. |
| | Sems The first function is literal mind, the simple everyday thought process that takes place. Before you drive, you check to see that you have the car keys. Basic intelligence functions in everyday life situations. You organize things so that you don’t encounter unexpected chaos and problems. This sense of making sure that everything’s under control is called sems in Tibetan, which means “whatever can communicate to the object world.” |
| | Lodro Looking into unexplored areas of learning and working out the logics is another area of mind. We might have a mental blockage, thinking that we can’t understand something, but if we push ourselves, we usually can learn things and become a scholar. That use of intellect is called lodro is Tibetan or mati in Sanskrit. Lo means “intelligence,” and dro is “warming up” the intelligence. There is a sense of heat or warmth and we don’t chicken out. We can use our mind or our intellect to understand the logic of things. |
| | Rigpa Beyond intellect, there is another layer of mind that is connected with fundamental intelligence. In Tibetan this is rigpa; in Sanskrit it is vidya. Rigpa means “knowledge that can comprehend subtle scientific experiences and demonstrations.” Rigpa is experience as well as referring to specific disciplines, such as the rigpa of scientific knowledge. It is very sharp, precise and proud of itself. It is like a computer, not of mathematics, but of self-respect, wholesomeness and command. Rigpa comprehends the fundamental sense of survival. It sees dualism and the sense of pattern. It comprehends a sense of being. Professor Guenther refers to noetic mind, which is rigpa or vidya. You have a sense of the actuality of being, which brings relaxation and less fear of existence. It is the pride of ego. |
Path: The Five Skandhas
| | The mind also relates to or is divided into another five processes, the five skandhas. Skandha means heap. We don’t actually exist as one entity but we are a collection of things jumbled together, a heap, like a heap of garbage. |
| | Skandha of Form: The first skandha, the skandha of form, is basic uncertainty, basic bewilderment. Who is this being? Who or what are we? We think we exist, but we have no idea how or why and we experience this uncertainty all the time. We don’t feel good. We feel clumsy and uptight. That is actually our state of being all the time. It’s not that something has gone wrong. It’s like a self-existing Danish blue cheese that is constantly fermenting itself. We don’t really exist but we are trying to make ourselves exist. |
| | Skandha of Feeling: We try to hold onto the bag of sand in our hands, even though we know it’s made out of many grains of sand. This is a primitive state of emotion, in the sense of feeling out the texture of life to see which are going to be kind and harmonious. The chaos and non-entity are trying to create a bag or a container, a territory of some kind. |
| | Skandha of Impulse: There is a desire to communicate, to make a leap. We try to communicate with the message of our existence coming back at us. If the message is aggressive, we try to fight. If it’s yielding, we include it and celebrate it. We are looking for reinforcement, a response to our situation. |
| | Skandha of Concept: We try to name and conceptualize the shade of impulse that come to us. We give authority to our impulses, making them a secretary or a general. We begin to label them so that they will protect us. We choose a particular diet or behavior to reinforce ourselves. |
| | Skandha of Consciousness: To maintain ourselves, we hold onto subconscious gossip, discursive thoughts, glimpses of the past and future expectations. The thought process acts as a screening process for what is let in. You finally have your castle of ego and you become the king or queen of the ego realm. |
| | The five skandhas happen in every moment of experience. This process of building our ego takes place all the time. |
Fruition: The practice of meditation is a process of undoing the skandhas step by step. Meditation is the only way to deal with such a vast subject as our state of mind. There is no other way to work with the big project of mind than through the practice of meditation.
This project has been the battlefield of enlightenment and samsara for billions of years. It has become the heart of spirituality. We should work on the big project first rather than looking for little side tracks to occupy us. We can use our naked hand to deal with our naked mind, very directly and precisely.
The attitude is not so much to destroy ego but to work with that situation as a stepping stone. The only material we have is ego at this point. There’s not another way to work with spirituality. So we should celebrate that we have ego.
We have some hope of attaining enlightenment, because we have ego, which is the starting point. That is the attitude of a warrior. We see the practice of meditation as an undoing, unlearning process.
Audience Question and Answer
| 1) |
| Do all perceptions, actions, thoughts and feelings arise from a state of bewilderment? |
| 2) |
| What thoughts should I entertain? |
| 3) |
| Should we try to perfect the three aspects of mind: sems, lodro, and rigpa? |
| 4) |
| Are these three parts of mind like functions of the five skandhas? How do the two relate? |
| 5) |
| Is good diet purely a concept? |
| 6) |
| Is there some way we can make use of the will? |
| 7) |
| Vidya still comes from a sense of duality or survival, so how can it lead to enlightenment? |
| 8) |
| What is the difference between cutting through ego and destroying the ego? |
| 9) |
| Is there any place for entertainment? |
| 10) |
| When I sit my subconscious gossip is screaming, ranting and raving. How can I deal with that energy? |
| 11) |
| I get sleepy when I sit. Is it ok to use coffee or other stimulants? |
| 12) |
| Can you tell me how prajna fits into this? |
| 13) |
| Where does boredom fit in the system of the skandhas? |
Suggested Readings:
“The Spiritual Battlefield,” in The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa, Volume Two, pages 461 to 469, is an edited version of this talk.
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