The Bodhisattva Path of Wisdom and Compassion

by Chogyam Trungpa

  If there is not such cultural uptightness, not only is shunyata teaching appropriate, but further vajrayana teaching becomes appropriate as well. At the same time, it is still necessary to have some kind of culture or tradition. But as long as you realize that you are not functioning on fixed ground, as long as ego’s territory has been eliminated, mahayana practices such as the paramitas do not become new forms of cultural fixation. You realize that you are building those disciplines on an ice block, and that if you have a fixation about generosity or morality or patience, sooner or later it is going to melt away.

  BODHISATTVAS, PRAJNA, AND EMPTINESS

  Bodhisattvas develop prajna not only by meditation, but by actions, by relationships, by working with the world. They begin to work for sentient beings; they act as laborers. The bodhisattva tradition possesses immense practicality. Bodhisattvas are not just sitting on their meditation cushions, but they are doing something; they are relating with the world and helping people. Bodhisattvas are not stuck in absorption, but they are doing something all the time.

  Bodhisattvas do not have to use their own concepts to judge somebody else. Their realization is beyond the conceptual-framework mentality of dealing with reality. What you say might be conceptual or padded with all kinds of ideas, but bodhisattvas can see through you because they do not have to use double vision. Bodhisattvas are just there without anything, without any tools. They can see with the naked eye, which makes things much clearer. In their communication, bodhisattvas can make use of the concepts you are generating, which is very embarrassing. Since they do not have any concepts that you can play back to them, they are just there, very naked, very open, just looking at you. Bodhisattvas do not have any preconceptions or anything of that nature—and you keep building up your little paddings, which keep falling apart. When you communicate with a bodhisattva, that is usually what happens.

  A CONTINUAL AWAKENING OF PRAJNA

  The confirmation of the spiritual journey at the hinayana level is the experience of awakening from samsara into nirvana. And what runs through the hinayana and gives you hope of continuing on the Buddhist path of non-ego is the continual development of prajna. Prajna is constantly cutting through and providing further inspiration to practice. Prajna occurs right at the beginning and continues through the middle, right up to the end. Prajna brings about further prajna, so you experience a continual awakening of prajna.

  In the mahayana, prajna is regarded as a tool, and egolessness or shunyata is regarded as the product uncovered by that particular tool. Egolessness, shunyata, and compassion are what prajna exposes. You take the bodhisattva vow because you realize that continuing on the path of fixation is problematic. You begin to wonder about fixation and what is beyond fixation, and you begin to get an answer to your question. You hear that fixation comes from not believing that you are already impregnated by enlightened power. Because you realize that enlightened power or buddha nature is in you already, you can enter the bodhisattva path. For hinayanists, that realization is frightening because they detect a whiff of tantra and the possibility of something coming up that they cannot handle. That kind of fear and hesitation has always happened; a lot of people have had that combination of arrogance and cowardice.

  Prajna, the weapon you have been using all along, is a legitimate weapon, but up to this point you had no idea what was behind that weapon. But when you become a bodhisattva-like person, you begin to realize where that weapon is inherited from, which is bodhichitta or buddha nature. Buddha nature is what makes you a legitimate person to carry the sword of prajna from the beginning of the hinayana path on through the mahayana. You can inherit that sword, but in order for you to do so, you need devotion—and devotion comes from renunciation, which comes from the recognition that you are already impregnated with buddha nature.

  1. Logical debate and dialogue are often used in teaching students about madhyamaka and shunyata. Appendix 4, “Prajna Dialogues,” contains three short exchanges taken from Vajradhatu Seminary question-and-answer periods as illustrations of the use of dialogue to awaken a student’s prajna.

  2. A reference to verse 155 of the Uttaratantra, a treasured four-line verse on emptiness and buddha nature. In the English translation by Rosemarie Fuchs this verse is translated as: “The element is empty of the adventitious [stains], / which are featured by their total separateness. / But it is not empty of the matchless properties, / which are featured by their total inseparability.” See Rosemarie Fuchs, trans., Buddha Nature: The Mahayana Uttaratantra Shastra with Commentary by Arya Maitreya (Ithaca, N.Y.: Snow Lion, 2000). This translation includes a commentary by Jamgön Kongtrül Lodrö Thaye as well as an explanation by Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche. For a commentary on this verse by Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche, see Arya Maitreya, Buddha-Nature: Mahayana-Uttaratantra-Shastra (New Delhi: Siddhartha’s Intent, 2007).

  21

  Realizing the Emptiness of Ordinary Reality

  The enlightened ones just experienced it on the spot, but we can experience shunyata only by contrast. When you have powerful emotional threats and extreme messages of all kinds being presented to you, as extreme as such events become, that is how much shunyata could be experienced.

  GROUND MADHYAMAKA

  There are three levels of madhyamaka: ground, path, and fruition. The study of madhyamaka begins with ground madhyamaka, which has to do with our basic approach to reality. Ground madhyamaka is based on understanding the two truths, the absolute and the relative. In ground madhyamaka, there is not particularly any leap into the realization of shunyata. There is no leap and no flash. It is more a matter of realizing logically and dialectically that what you are doing is useless and senseless. To begin with, you have to see that completely and fully.

  In path madhyamaka, there could be lots of leaps. You are taking leaps of generosity, discipline, patience, exertion, meditation, and prajna. You are taking leaps at the pragmatic-action level.1

  Ground madhyamaka is based on a contemplative approach. The question is, how much can you hang on to this reality? It is already rotting and it does not make any sense, so it is about time to come to your senses. That is what the Heart Sutra is supposed to do to you—to make you come to your senses. The problem is that by now it has become a familiar classic, old language, so when you read the Heart Sutra, it does not make the same impact on you as it did for people in the past. The idea is that when you realize the concept of shunyata, when you actually experience it, then what you are already involved in—your ideas, concepts, theories, and philosophy—does not hold up. So with ground madhyamaka, the approach is basically intellectual in nature.

  In Buddhism, we have practice first, and then study. We do not discuss the philosophy right at the beginning, beyond the bread-and-butter level. So if you want to become a Buddhist, you have to sit. Buddhism is less apt to impose a philosophy on you than many other traditions, because Buddhists are practitioners. They are monastics and laypeople who have actually renounced their particular environment of entertainment. They lead a complete life of sitting meditation practice, they come to some conclusions, and they begin to pronounce them—and they have handed that down to us.

  KÜNDZOP IS ONE GIGANTIC WORLD OF INCEST

  There are two levels of perceiving shunyata: superficial prajna perception and transcendental prajna perception. Traditionally, these levels are known as relative truth and ultimate truth. The Tibetan term for the concept of two truths is denpa nyi. Denpa means “truth,” or “reality,” and nyi is “two”; so denpa nyi means “two truths.”

  The relative truth comes first, so we will begin our discussion of the two truths with relative truth, and then move on to discuss ultimate truth. “Relative” is a convenient English translation of kündzop, but actually kün means “all,” and dzop means “outfit”; so the meaning of the Tibetan term is more like “an outfit that fits everything.” It has a quality of superficiality, like ketchup, which goes with any kind of food.

  Kündzop is
the phenomenal world, which is an outfit, a self-existing show. The phenomenal world is a performance, living theater. As the perceiver, you would like to see things in your own way, in a certain fashion, so the performance shifts around: you could be the audience or you could be the show. If you are a cook, for instance, the people who want to eat could be the show and you the audience, or you could be the show and the people who are going to eat could be the audience.

  The idea of kündzop implies that different people would have different perspectives on the world. When we try to discuss reality, we have disagreements. Every one of us has a different attitude about water and a different attitude about food. For instance, in the six realms of being, the perceptions of people in the various realms have been programmed, and these perceptions have slowly degenerated into different forms of neurosis or psychosis. So when people from the hell realm see water, they regard it as extraordinarily threatening, thinking that it is melted iron or something terrible. People from the hungry ghost realm would have an entirely different attitude to water, craving it to quench their thirst, and people in the realm of the gods might see water as the elixir of life.

  Every one of us has entirely different ideas, different attitudes, and different approaches at all kinds of levels. People might think that the water in New York is terrible, or that a mountain stream up in the highest world of Everest is fantastically fresh. Some people’s visions or concepts might be more accurate, and other people’s approaches might be very gross and wrong. We can make that judgment, that division between psychosis and neurosis, but that whole approach is questionable. The edges of neurosis and psychosis begin to dissolve, and they may come so close together that we are not able to distinguish between the two. With kündzop, the distinction between unreasonable and reasonable logic begins to break down into a series of expectations and preconceptions.

  Kündzop is a show-off, a bluff. There is no substance, but there are still a lot of things going on. However, kündzop should not be looked down upon. In fact, we have a lot of problems realizing kündzop and relating with the world. The dressed-up world is actually very hard to work with. To realize the truth of kündzop, you need to transcend neurosis and psychosis. When you have become sane through your relationship with the spiritual friend, and when you have experienced twofold egolessness, you see that the real world is actually the real world. You see the world of reality completely and fully without any problems and without any big deal.

  Kündzop, the ordinary and popular world’s truth, is said to be empty of itself and by itself. Kündzop is empty of its own nature; it is based on constantly filling gaps of all kinds. But whatever we experience at the kündzop level eventually runs out of steam. When there is no new ammunition, we run out of energy, and even seemingly new energies have limitations.

  Kündzop is known as relative truth because it is not absolute. Not only that, but it is known as relative truth because it is its own relatives. It is like an amoeba, which does not need a mate to reproduce, but mates with its own self. Relative truth is self-perpetuating. It has intercourse with itself, and produces its own child and eats it up. It is its own relatives: it is its own grandfather, its own grandchild, its own wife and husband. So relative truth is continuous. It is one gigantic world of incest.

  Practically, that is why we are in trouble. We are in a world of incest, like old European royalties who had too much interbreeding. In such a world, things begin to get slightly chaotic, but nobody can solve it. We keep having to return back to our own selves, the kündzop world of incest in which things keep reproducing and there is no way out and no way in.

  SELF-PERPETUATING MENTAL PIGEONHOLING

  The idea of kündzop can seem very complicated and difficult. Trying to understand it solely by means of the madhyamakan approach may be a bit too vague, so I have decided to do something outrageous. I have decided to borrow from the yogachara, or mind-only, tradition. Yogachara is very powerful and insightful. It has had a great influence on the Zen tradition, although some scholars may disagree with that. Yogachara is very accurate, and in fact quite beautiful. It has produced fantastic works of art such as calligraphy, poetry, flower arrangement, and architecture, particularly in Japan and China.

  According to yogachara, kündzop is actually your state of mind. It is like the popular liquor ad that says, “Bombay Gin is a state of mind.” Yogacharans say that the relative world is made out of your mind. When you see something for the first time, you know how to react to it immediately. Why? Since you have not seen it before, do you have clairvoyance or a premonition that such a thing is going to confront you? No, you don’t. But you still know how to handle new situations. You know how to relate with new food, new tastes, new visions, new sounds, new concepts, and new ideas. You automatically put them into your preconceived pigeonholes. You do that all the time; such preconceptions are always there. So when you see something new, it is not really new, because you already have expectations about it. Shapes and sizes are not really new to you, and the five colors are not really new to you. You know about them already. Movements such as fast, slow, and medium are not particularly new to you either. You know all that too. Those basic assumptions are already in your mind; your mind is already programmed. Therefore, you know how to act and how to relate with things. Everything is recorded in your brain system. That is why it is called kündzop.

  Why are the things we see perpetuating themselves? Aren’t new things happening all the time, every day? It seems that every day is new, not the same old day. Although you might have the same schedule, different things happen every day. So aren’t new days and new things happening? It seems that fresh blood is coming in, that it is all relatively fluid. But according to the yogacharan tradition, that is not true. There is no fresh blood coming in at all.

  If we look at the kündzop aspect of reality as it is, simply and directly, we realize that kündzop is a manifestation of its own incest. That incestuousness can be overcome by realizing that a trick is being played on us constantly, but that trick doesn’t quite work. We see that kündzop perception is just another Disneyland, another area of deception based on entertainment of all kinds.

  The whole thing is constantly inbreeding. You might think that you had an idea for the first time. The fantastic idea of sudden enlightenment may have occurred to you by seeing a grasshopper jumping or a dog shitting. The first time you see such a thing, it is a fantastic experience. But you know dog, and you know shit, and you know that a dog shits—and if you put all those things together, there is nothing really new. With combinations that occur unreasonably, beyond your expectations, you know how to put things together very quickly and speedily so that everything fits into its own socket, so to speak, and nothing is missing. We manage to put everything into our mental preconceptions and pigeonholes all the time.

  TRUE KÜNDZOP AND FALSE KÜNDZOP

  There are two types of kündzop: realistic or true kündzop, and perverted or false kündzop. Realistic kündzop is what you see, and perverted kündzop is what you imagine. If you see that your dog is a dog, that is true kündzop. However, if you think your pet dog is a lion, and you perceive it in that way, that is false kündzop. It is not true. False kündzop is the psychosis level, and true kundzöp is the neurotic or relatively true level. It is the level of practicality, the fact that it is good to vacuum your floor and wash your dishes, little things like that.

  False Kündzop

  False kündzop includes the psychotic dimension of building up mental images, such as thinking the CIA keeps following you and trying to kill you. It is the way the world really looks to a psychotic, or to a person under the influence of a drug, a dream, strain, or tiredness. If a psychotic comes up to you saying, “Are you drinking blood?” you reply, “No, I’m drinking coffee.” It is very simple. In psychosis there is an immense exaggeration of reality, but even though the psychotic thinks you are drinking blood, you actually are drinking coffee. That is the reality, the simple truth.

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bsp; The traditional analogy for perverted kündzop is seeing a rope as a snake. Whether it is caused by bad eyesight or bad lighting or by some other condition, you see the rope as a snake. As far as your mind is concerned, it is true, but it is still perverted. That is what we mean by saying the psychotic world is a kind of kündzop, or truth. Although it is not all that true, it cannot be denied as false because, after all, it is what you are experiencing on the spot. So even though it is a lie, it is a true lie, because it is experienced as the truth. It is true false reality.

  Pure Kündzop as Ordinary Sanity

  With the first level of pure kündzop, you are not suffering any kind of hallucination, you are not under the influence of drugs, and you are not involved in metaphysical or religious fantasies. You just see blue as blue, and white as white, very simply. You see a snake as a snake, and a rope as a rope. Real things are seen as they are. This kind of kündzop is a so-called sane person’s attitude to reality. It is ordinary sanity. Ordinary sanity means seeing things very directly, seeing things as they are. You no longer have visions of elephants in your cup of tea. Black is seen as black, and white as white. It is absolutely direct and simple.