The Bodhisattva Path of Wisdom and Compassion

by Chogyam Trungpa

  Mental gymnasticism seems to come from the idea that you have to do something because it is good for you. It’s like health-food fanatics who very aggressively try to develop peace of mind by eating the right food, and are very pedantic about what should and should not be eaten. There are many versions of gymnasticism. You could be carried away by an ideology and think: “The hinayana path is the only way,” “Vipashyana is the only way,” or “Shamatha is the only way.” You might think that if you do this push-up called mindfulness, you are sure to have good health. The problem with that approach is not with the practice, but with your attitude. With any practice on the path, how you relate with it makes an enormous difference. If you become dogmatic and snobbish about a practice, thinking it is the higher way, it may become a problem.

  NONREFERENCE POINT

  Experientially, emptiness is described as complete threefold purity. So in that sense, the practice of shunyata does not exist. There is no reference point: no this, no that, and no this-and-that together. The problem is that you either have allegiance toward that or you have allegiance toward this—this being the notion of “me,” and that being the rest of the phenomenal world—and you can’t play both sides. By breaking down the this-and-that reference point, this and that become it. So in the actual shunyata experience, there is no longer any discrimination. However, you would still distinguish between the disciplined and the undisciplined state of being. When you were disciplined, you would simply be disciplined, and when you were not, you would know it.

  Nonreference point comes from openness, friendliness, and warmth. It comes from compassion, which is absolutely necessary, and compassion comes from awareness. So we have to refer back to vipashyana, for if you have not developed awareness, you will not develop friendliness, and you will not develop nonreference point either. It is a natural process. In order to let go and open in all directions—to open to this, that, and the actions taking place between this and that—you have to develop trust or warmth. In order to have warmth, you have to have an awareness of thisness and the nonexistence of thisness, and an awareness of thatness and the nonexistence of thatness.

  MEDITATION WITHOUT TECHNIQUE OR GOAL

  At the same time, shunyata is a meditative experience that regards neither the awareness nor the achievement of awareness as important. Your mind is not focused on any technique; there are no techniques whatsoever, not even techniques of awareness. Your mind is just open, simply open, simply being—or nonbeing. So the shunyata experience is not awareness as such; it is just being open. Awareness is still a reference point of some kind, in that you are aware of something. With the egolessness of vipashyana, you are more aware of the doctrine, but once you get into shunyata, you are less aware of the doctrine. It is just a question of being.

  Nagarjuna quite rightly said that if people viewed shunyata wrongly, if they viewed it with very little prajna, they could be devastated.1 If there is little experience of vipashyana awareness or prajna-like wakefulness, then the shunyata experience becomes just a bundle of vague nothingness, which doesn’t mean anything. Therefore, it is necessary to know that from awareness comes warmth, and from warmth comes nonreference point. That process is very important to know and appreciate. The point is that you can’t begin with nonreference point. If you try to do so, you are simply making it up.

  It is very difficult to grasp a principle such as shunyata. It is not something you can do. However, awareness or mindfulness practice is something you can do. When awareness is no longer a battle, warmth arises as a natural process. You develop warmth through dissolving the possessiveness of you being aware and the world being strange. Having experienced that warmth, you begin to realize that you don’t have to label it as belonging to a certain territory. So warmth brings nonreference point. As it is said in the Heart Sutra, there is no path and no goal. Your accustomed reference point has been completely cut through; it is gone forever.

  Nonreference point does not mean just going berserk and getting so confused that you don’t know who is who or what is what. Nonreference point is an intelligent perspective in which you begin to see that nothing is its own primary spokesperson. You see that everything is a repetition of something else, so things do not speak for themselves; they are just an echo of themselves. The experience of nonreference point is not a process of collecting reassurances so that you could be nonreferential. It is just simple and straight nonreference point—absolutely open.

  Actually, you may find yourself very confused, wondering what to do. But instead of asking, “What does one do in meditation?” you just do it. There is an absence of technique, absence of reference point, absence of any purpose and goal. You just sit like a rock. You can do that; you can just sit there and do it. It is like the Zen shikantaza technique of just sitting. The spiritual desire to attain enlightenment accompanies the entire bodhisattva path, and there is also the desire to help other people. But those ideas are based on the perspective of nonreference point, so it is not at all personal. The whole thing is based on impersonality.

  Without the background of shamatha and vipashyana, you cannot actually experience the shunyata state of meditation. If you did not have any experience of awareness or mindfulness, you could quite possibly have problems if you tried to jump ahead into the mahayana jargon of shunyata. You might try to imitate the shunyata experience, to make it up without going through it. You might think, “Wow, that’s a great idea,” and expect some kind of direct confrontation with reality. But somehow it is not all that direct, and it is not warfare. It is a very simple personal experience.

  The craving for sudden experience could instead lead to sudden nuttiness. It is like the story of the meditator who was trying to see that everything is empty and nonexistent. He was trying to subjugate his invented perceptions, his perceptual obstacles or demons. One evening when he was in retreat he went out for a walk, and while he was gone his sister brought him a pot of yogurt. She waited and waited, and finally she got tired of waiting so she left the pot of yogurt in his meditation cell. When the meditator came back from his walk and entered the room, he saw the pot of yogurt. It was getting very dark and hazy, and he saw this huge eye staring at him. He said to himself, “I’m going to have combat with this. It is obviously an obstacle to my path, some kind of demon.” So he hit the pot of yogurt with his shawl, and the yogurt began to splatter all over the cave. The whole cave became filled with eyes, and the more he hit the pot, the more eyes he produced.

  THREE TYPES OF EMPTINESS

  The shunyata state of meditation is described as externally empty, internally empty, and absolutely empty.2 Externally empty means that the phenomenal world and the sensory perceptions are seen as equally empty, although they may be vivid and colorful. Internally empty means that the internal world of emotions is also seen as empty, vivid maybe, but still empty. Absolutely empty means that there is nothing particularly to do. There is nothing to work on, no one to make a reference point, nothing whatsoever.

  1. From the Mulamadhyamakarika: “Shunyata wrongly conceived destroys the dimly witted. It is like a snake grasped by the head.” Quoted in Nancy McCagney, Nagarjuna and the Philosophy of Openness (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997).

  2. Traditionally, eighteen types of shunyata experience have been described based on external, internal, and absolute emptiness. Chandrakirti’s Madhyamakavatara lists sixteen kinds of emptiness. The first set of four includes inner emptiness, outer emptiness, emptiness of both outer and inner, and emptiness of emptiness. The second group includes emptiness of immensity, emptiness of the ultimate, emptiness of the compounded, and emptiness of the uncompounded. The third set includes emptiness of what is beyond extremes, emptiness of what is endless and beginningless, emptiness of what should not be spurned, and emptiness of essential nature. The fourth group includes emptiness of all phenomena, emptiness of defining characteristics, emptiness of the unobservable, and emptiness of nonthings. To that list can be added the emptiness of the nature
itself and the emptiness of transcendent quality, to make eighteen in all. See Padmakara Translation Group, trans., Introduction to the Middle Way: Chandrakirti’s Madhyamakavatara with Commentary by Ju Mipham (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2005).

  19

  Discovering a World beyond Ego

  You have possessed youthful qualities all along, but your involvement with preconceived notions of society, tradition, concepts, and ideas has made you old. So in a sense, the bodhisattva path is a path of regaining your youth.

  DEVELOPING EGOLESSNESS: THE HINAYANA FOUNDATION

  The mahayana, like the hinayana, is based on the development of egolessness. In general, the various levels of the path have to do with your relationship to ego and your understanding of egolessness. The mahayana realization of twofold egolessness is dependent on the hinayana in that you first need to develop the egolessness of individuality as well as the first half of the egolessness of dharmas. You might have the intention of attaining the state of twofold egolessness, and you might aspire to the benevolence and gentleness of the compassionate path, but before such things take place, it is absolutely natural that you first go back and develop individual salvation.

  Individual salvation means working with yourself. It is based on the idea of renunciation, and in turn, renouncing the renunciation itself. In the hinayana, you take refuge in the Buddha, dharma, and sangha, and begin to overcome the ego of individuality. Once you have accomplished that, you are on the brink of the ego of dharmas. You begin to question why you are doing all this, and you discover the karmic chain reaction of the twelve nidanas. And as you study the nidanas, or interdependent co-origination, you realize that you have to reverse that process in order to cut through it.

  All this helps you to develop the egolessness of dharmas, but there are still little uncertainties left behind. You have managed to work on the gross level of your experience of dharmas, or things as they are, but you still perceive primarily in terms of opinion and attitude. At a gross level, your attitudes, perceptions, and opinions about the ego of dharmas have been cut through by your experience and understanding of the twelve nidanas. In relating with things as they are in their solid form, you have worked with the crude world of the twelve-nidana chain reaction process up through the ignorance level. But at a subtle level, you have not reached a full understanding of where all those things come from. The source is not yet cut through. So you are back to square two: to the source of the ego of dharmas.

  The ego of dharmas comes from fixation on the “am” of “I am.” As a practitioner on the boundary between hinayana and mahayana, you have liberated the “I,” but you still have not completely clarified the level of “am.” You are still fixated on “am” and on where the “am” came from. The gross level of “am” has been related with, but the primordial “am” still has not been completely clarified.

  The primordial “am” comes from some kind of “I am,” but not from the original “I am.” That situation has already been overcome at the shravakayana level. But at that level, and even at the pratyekabuddhayana level, the ego has not been completely cut through. In fact, pratyekabuddhas regard the little ego that’s left as useful and necessary in order to go further. They would probably say that if you completely cut through everything, there would be nothing left to practice with. There would be no reason to go on and no purpose to life, which is quite true. In other words, pratyekabuddhas are afraid of the prajna principle; they are both afraid of it and attracted to it.

  In entering the mahayana, you are giving up and letting go. You are letting go of your fixation on individual salvation and you are letting go of your righteousness and religiosity. The last hold of the ego of dharmas is cut through. Everything is regarded as attitude, but it is not attitude that is being cut through—attitude has been cut through already. Rather, it is the “attituder” or the experiencer of attitude that is cut through, which is the second half of the ego of dharmas. When the experiencer of mind’s creation has been cut through, you realize that everything is understandable and perceivable. You have cut through twofold ego by realizing that the seemingly subtle mental grasp of “am” is really very gross.

  When you begin to overcome the fixator, the philosopher, and the conceptualizer, you begin to develop an appreciation for the absence of twofold ego. Although it is not so easy, and may not have happened completely, you still feel that you have overcome something, that you have cut through. At that point, the dawn of mahayana, or the dawn of the absence of twofold ego, occurs in your mind, and you begin to feel that something is worth celebrating. It is quite cheerful; nothing is depressing. The vast action of the bodhisattva begins to develop, and you experience the dawn of mahayana as luminosity and brilliance.

  DIFFERENTIATING TECHNIQUES AND EXPERIENCE

  The development of egolessness is a progressive process, not a sudden attainment. Shamatha is the basic technique. On the basis of shamatha, vipashyana is the practice that leads to the realization of the first egolessness, which is the egolessness of self, and then to the realization of one-and-a-half-fold egolessness, which is the egolessness of self and the first half of the egolessness of dharmas. Vipashyana practice culminates in prajna, the technique that brings the complete experience of twofold egolessness, or shunyata. So first there is the tool, and then there is the experience. We should be absolutely clear about that, and not confuse technique with experience. You cannot have mahayana without vipashyana—it would be like a tree without a trunk. The whole thing is ancestral. Prajna gives birth to the shunyata experience of the buddhas, and vipashyana is the stone that sharpens the sword of prajna. You could not experience twofold egolessness just with vipashyana, because you could not do it without prajna—but if you abandon vipashyana, you don’t get anywhere at all.

  Prajna is a technique as much as vipashyana or shamatha: shunyata is what you get, and prajna is what you are going to get it with. Shunyata is like death, and prajna is like a deadly weapon. That may sound rather morbid, but in terms of overcoming ego, I am sure you will understand what I mean. Prajna can be regarded as a microscope, and shunyata as what is on the slide. That is why the Heart Sutra places an emphasis on prajna, but little emphasis on shunyata. Shunyata is discovered in the phrase, “No eye, no ear, no nose,” and so on, but prajna is actually more important. Sharpening and cleaning your instrument is more important than what you see with it. You cannot cut with shunyata, as if it were a weapon. That would be absurd, because shunyata happens after the fact. Since prajna is the instrument with which you discover shunyata, shunyata is regarded as the child of prajnaparamita, of the perfection of wisdom.1

  LOSING YOUR EGO AND REDISCOVERING YOUR YOUTHFULNESS

  In the early stages of the path, your journey could be seen as an actual journey—you think that you are getting somewhere. But as soon as your commitment has been made and you have begun to practice and to work on your mind, your journey becomes a nonjourney. Instead of a journey outward or higher, the journey becomes inward and deeper. In the mahayana, that deeper journey takes place by means of compassion. You are willing to give, willing to open and extend yourself. Because of that inward journey, that encouragement within yourself, you can afford to open out to others. You do not constantly have to complain about this and that; instead, you could do something. And the more you are willing to open and to extend yourself to others and the world, that much deeper is your inward journey, and that much more apparent, definite, and real it becomes.

  The first step of the journey takes place when you commit yourself to mahayana principles and ideals by taking the bodhisattva vow. The bodhisattva vow brings you much closer to being enlightened. You begin to find that dedicating yourself to others brings you much closer to the idea of basic sanity, enlightenment, tathagatagarbha, buddha nature, or whatever you might call it. You are not concerned with dogma or with reference points. All that is in the background, and your case history has already been dropped. Because of your respect and surrendering, yo
u are no longer trying to hang on to your old hats. What you are getting into—if anything—is a new hat.

  Old preconceptions, old ideas, and old trainings that might encourage you to hold on to your stronghold of ego, such as religion, spirituality, theology, or craftsmanship—all of those have to be abandoned in order to rediscover yourself. Those things from your past have become obstacles. You may have lived with them and wanted to work with them, but you still have not made heads or tails out of anything. You have not begun to realize who you are or what you are. You have not discovered the continual, inexhaustible, exuberant youth you possess within yourself. Such youthfulness has nothing to do with chronological age. You have possessed youthful qualities all along, but your involvement with preconceived notions of society, tradition, concepts, and ideas has made you old. So in a sense, the bodhisattva path is a path of regaining your youth. But we need to be very clear that this has nothing to do with looking for eternal life.

  The approach of regaining your youthful quality is apparent in both the mahayana and the vajrayana. In the mahayana, rediscovering your youthfulness is based on both inspiration and loneliness. When you have lost the grip of ego, you can no longer entertain and indulge yourself in your usual ways. You begin to discover a new and clearer perspective toward the phenomenal world.

  Your phenomenal world is old hat: you have studied it, written stories about it, painted pictures of it. You have fought with it and struggled with it, and it is fighting back. Your own autobiography keeps popping up all the time. You may try to censor it, but when that censorship fails, your old stories keep coming back. In the mahayana, you are not trying to forget the past, as if it were a failure or redundant, but you are including the past. You are including it not as a saving grace, a reference point, or a bank of quotations, but you are looking at that old-hat world with the perception newly gained by jumping out into the open and becoming a bodhisattva. By taking the bodhisattva vow and becoming a potential bodhisattva, you are beginning to find a new approach to that old-hat world.