The Bodhisattva Path of Wisdom and Compassion

by Chogyam Trungpa

  Seeing pure kündzop is what we mean by being grounded or earthy. There is no superstition. You just see water as water, and fire as fire. Pure kündzop is like acquiring a new pair of eyeglasses that makes it completely clear how to relate with regular, ordinary life. You might think that this is not all that profound, that anybody can do it. But usually it is impossible to experience real kündzop. Most people cannot see things as they are properly and directly at all. Although true kündzop is still considered to be neurotic, there has to be that kind of simple truth, otherwise we could not do anything in our life. We need to take care of our physical world, to have a sense of what is reality and what is not reality. It is quite simple and basic.

  Pure Kündzop as Enlightened Sanity

  The second level of pure kündzop, or enlightened sanity, is slightly different. It is how you see once you have started on the bodhisattva path and are able to develop twofold egolessness. Only someone who has been able to cut through twofold ego is able to see things as they are in their fullest and most real sense. People possessing twofold ego, random people in the street are all wrapped up in their preconceptions, memories, dreams, and fantasies. Because of that, their attitudes toward water, fire, black, blue, and white are distorted.

  People are usually very nervous about experiencing the bright and colorful world, although the degree of nervousness varies. People either love the world or hate it, or lukewarmly love it or hate it. But nobody can see this level of true kündzop without having cut through twofold ego, because there is still a little attachment. People may see blue as blue, but at the same time, they use that to reinforce their idea of how blue affects their state of mind. Whether they regard things as powerful, good, nice, or threatening, there are always psychological implications behind the colors, forms, noises, and physical sensations they perceive. There is always some implication behind the whole thing. True kündzop is very difficult to experience, although it is very ordinary. But once you have attained the second level of pure kündzop, it is no longer possible to relapse to the first level of kündzop. Once a person has experienced smallpox, they never have a recurrence.2

  Relating with kundzöp is an expression of prajna, but it is not particularly an experience of shunyata. Here, the prajna is in seeing kündzop as it is. Any perception that clarifies things is a form of prajna. If you are able to see kündzop, you know that if the kettle is whistling, you have to turn down the heat. If you are going to the supermarket, you know how to buy proper things at proper times and get a good bargain. You may not be working toward enlightenment, but you are keeping track of reality. You are relating with reality step-by-step. And if you go further with prajna, you can see how you are coloring reality. You can begin to see through kündzop.

  KÜNDZOP AND EMPTINESS

  The shunyata experience of the bodhisattva path comes from shamatha, vipashyana, and egolessness. The shamatha possibility of shunyata comes from kündzop experiences presenting themselves colorfully, but without any personal, emotional attachment being made. There is no clinging to the phenomenal world, although the phenomenal world continues to be colorful and vivid. That lack of fixation brings in the element of absolute truth as well. It brings about harmony and gentleness, because we do not have to fight for anything. That is the first point, the shamatha experience of shunyata.

  With vipashyana, you begin to understand how to see things as they are in a very simple, nonaggressive way. You begin to see things as an illusion. This does not mean that you are being fooled or seeing a mirage, but that you are seeing things as a self-existing game that does not apply individually or personally to you or others. You are beginning to realize the mirage-ness of the situation in a very simple way; you see that things are not all that good, not all that bad, not all that entertaining, and not all that nonentertaining. Things are being seen as they are on a very basic and fundamental level.

  On the whole, there is no substance, although there is seeming substance. If somebody is not helping you to pay your phone bills, or if somebody doesn’t give you your dinner, or the dinner is badly cooked, such things may be touchy situations for you. But at the same time, it is because you are so touchy and intensely emotional that new possibilities begin to occur to you. 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. Because things are so extraordinarily intense; therefore, they are so ordinarily a mirage because of the intensity. In other words, human beings are unable to experience shunyata as the enlightened ones experienced it a long time ago. The enlightened ones just experienced it on the spot, but we can experience shunyata only by contrast.

  You might have thought that shunyata would be purely a meditative experience, but that is not quite the case. Actually, according to the traditional Kagyü-Nyingma teaching of our lineage, it is said that shunyata is also a postmeditation experience. Extreme situations happen all the time. Somebody steals your last dollar, and you can’t do anything about it. Somebody runs away with your girlfriend or boyfriend, and you are left so despairing, so lonely. For that matter, somebody scoops out a huge spoonful of ice cream from your dish, so you don’t have much left to eat. But what is there to do about it? How much can you blame the phenomenal world for playing tricks on you? Because you have fixated so very powerfully on one thing or another, and then somebody comes along and takes that thing away from you, that tends to bring about some kind of flash between two contrasting situations. That experience of contrast actually makes a lot of difference.

  The contrast between immense grasping and immense loss of that grasping brings about a feeling of loss and gain at the same time. So when you begin to realize shunyata, there’s a twist in that realization. You feel that you have lost, but at the same time you feel that you have gained. It is simultaneously absolute loss and absolute gain, simultaneously hot and cold. At that point, you can no longer tell the difference. It is not just on the cheap or simpleminded level that you can’t tell the difference between good and bad, and it is not because you are so freaked-out. Rather, it is because there is an intelligence that experiences the departing situation and the coming situation as one experience. That experience cuts through the birth of crude and subtle fixations altogether by allowing you to realize the truth of the dharma.

  Usually this experience comes in a sequence. First there is loss; then when you realize that you have lost, it becomes gain; and finally there is both loss and gain at the same time. It takes three steps: one, two, three. This is an ongoing process, and the stopping point is not experienced except at the vajrayana level. At the mahayana level, this process is said to develop genuine devotion and sympathy, so that you finally manage to fall in love with all sentient beings through your dedication.

  In looking at how to bring about or click into shunyata, we could refer back to the hinayana and the experience of the blind grandmother. You realize that you cannot teach your blind grandmother the dharma, and you cannot talk her out of her opinions. Whatever you try with her doesn’t help. She’s blind, she’s on her way to being deaf, and she loves you a lot. She not only loves you a lot, but she possesses you. She regards you, her grandchild, as her possession completely. So how can you let go of that blind grandmother? By feeling good, feeling happy, or any way at all? There is no way. The only way is to abandon your blind grandmother, to let her go by not feeding her any further food of neurosis. The absence of that blind grandmother is the shunyata experience.

  1. Trungpa Rinpoche discusses ground madhyamaka as an understanding of the two truths, and path madhyamaka as paramita practice. He follows Jamgön Kongtrül in approaching fruition madhyamaka in terms of the ten bhumis. For a discussion of the bhumis, or stages of the bodhisattva path, see part 8, “The Bodhisattva’s Journey.” Every teacher will define ground, path, and fruition madhyamaka a bit differently, depending on context. For instance, some teachers say that the fruition of madhyamaka is emptiness, an
d others say that it is freedom from elaboration.

  2. In discussing true kündzop, Trungpa Rinpoche seems to be referring at times to the view of true kündzop as simply correct relative truth, and at other times to the view of kündzop as a highly accomplished and more ultimate view of the phenomenal world.

  22

  Experiencing Reality in Its Fullest Sense

  Töndam exists by itself, a cosmic orphan. That is why töndam is said to be empty of other. Töndam does not need to refer to other to make itself empty—töndam is empty of any reference point; therefore, it is empty. But at the same time, töndam is somewhat full. It is full by itself, and completely unique.

  THE GROUNDLESSNESS OF ABSOLUTE TRUTH

  The second of the two truths is absolute or ultimate truth, or töndam. Tön means “meaning,” and dam means “superior,” or “ultimate”; so töndam means “absolute truth.” It is the real truth as opposed to the relative truth, and quite difficult to explain. One of the definitions of töndam is that it is experiencing reality in its fullest sense, without regarding any individual style as tangible from the ego-clinging point of view.

  In discussing absolute truth, I have decided to drop the yogachara viewpoint and approach it from the point of view of the madhyamakans. The yogacharans are very good at relative truth. If you want to understand relative truth, you cannot help but see it from the yogacharan point of view that everything is about your mind, how your mind boggles and how your mind bucks and kicks. However, I don’t think you can experience absolute truth properly from the yogachara point of view.

  Absolute truth is that we have no truth. In talking about absolute truth, I do not want to discuss hypothetical theories about absolute truth, but to build some kind of ground for experiencing the groundlessness of absolute truth. Just knowing about absolute truth does not help you, particularly. The question is, how do you know it is absolute truth?

  SHUNYATA AND BUDDHA NATURE

  Fundamentally, the meaning of shunyata is “emptiness,” and the nature of shunyata is being able to see the phenomenal world in the absence of dualistic fixation. The function of shunyata is to see that dualistic fixations are not particularly appropriate and valid. By realizing the negativity of its own nature, we could see further positivity. The awareness of shunyata could act as memory, in the sense that its presence is never lost. It is a present memory rather than a past record. From shunyata’s point of view, everything is present.

  Questioning whether we really know what things are, whether we really know what blue is or what green is, is a way of trying to cut through conceptual mind. We discover that we cannot actually find any permanent, fundamental, satisfying ground on which to stick our concepts or to nail them down. Things seem to be arbitrary, but we see that our perceptions also are arbitrary. Because such dualistic fixations are just temporary, they do not play a very important part in our understanding.

  On the whole, we can say that shunyata is emptiness. The reason shunyata is emptiness is because our perceptions of the phenomenal world have no characteristics of any substantial nature. They are arbitrary, and dependent on our particular state of mind. Therefore, they are detachable; they are a lie.

  How does the shunyata experience function? What does it do to us? By realizing such a thing, by seeing through such lies and falsity, we begin to understand groundlessness, or the egolessness of totality. That could be called a glimpse of vajra-like samadhi,1 or the true experience of buddha nature.

  We could say that even the realization of the wakeful quality of enlightenment is empty. The definition of buddha nature, or tathagatagarbha, is that it is free from preconceptions. The quality of buddha nature is that we contain enlightened wakeful qualities in us that are free from dualistic obstacles. The function of buddha nature is to awaken us to the actual buddha nature itself, so that we can realize greater wakefulness, or buddhahood.

  If there were any concept attached to buddha nature, then it would no longer be the realization of enlightenment. So things are fundamentally empty, basically empty. If you have a sudden flash of emptiness, it may be temporary, particularly if you are trying to possess that experience as a great flash of insight. But if you actually make a link with the wakeful quality of buddha nature, the realization of emptiness could be said to be permanent, although the concept of permanence does not really arise. Buddha nature is self-existing; it is your own nature. Realizing your buddha nature is like realizing for the first time that you are a Jew or an Arab. It is like realizing something that is part of your makeup and that you cannot get rid of.

  FREEDOM FROM NAMES AND CONCEPTS

  There is not very much you can say about ultimate or absolute truth. It is freedom from fixation, and freedom from fixation means being free of names and concepts. But if you take out name and concept, what is left? There is the shadow of name and concept, but is that real? It is not real, but pure shadow. Is the name real or the concept real? You could give someone a name—you could decide to call your son “George.” Is he actually “George”? Maybe he is not just “George,” he is “George Smith.” Is he actually “Smith”? That is just a name you decided to call him for lack of an alternative. You have to call him something; you have to put him in school, and you have to get him a passport if he is going to travel in foreign countries—and he should know who he is, so if somebody asks, “Who are you?” he can answer, “My name is George.” Everybody has done that to us for generations and generations and generations. So we have begun to regard giving our children names as a very ordinary thing to do. But where did that come from? It came from all kinds of misunderstandings that took place over a long period of time, from the time we grunted and wore animal skins and carried stone weapons. From then onward, our human society developed. We began to be smart enough to call somebody “George” or “Tim.”

  “My son, George Smith” is a concept. “I am George Smith” is a concept too. Where did that come from? How did we do that? We call this “bread,” and we call that “pot.” So “bread” is always connected with something you can eat, and “pot” with something you can cook in. The concept of “bread” does not have any background as such. Do we actually have a real feeling of the word bread in our mind before we have been told that something is bread, before we have decided to call something “bread”? We call something “bread,” and it actually performs its function as bread properly, fully, and completely. But we never think about those things, we just think, “I had bread.” It has gone down and out to the sewage system by the time we think about it.

  Photo 3. Chögyam Trungpa next to one of his brush calligraphies, an art form that combines into a single gesture emptiness, compassion, and awareness. Photograph © Andrea Roth.

  There is something very empty about the whole thing. It is actually very hollow, full of all kinds of hoaxes. We think very cleverly; we even think up all kinds of philosophical terms, beyond bread-and-butter language. We think of all kinds of fantastic words, which we call our beliefs: “I believe in the blah-blah. I believe in this. I don’t believe in that.” But what do we really mean by those things? Do we really know the language completely? And what is language, anyway? Sometimes we get panicky about that. We decide to call language something deeper, such as a mantra, or an utterance that comes from above us. But then again, what do we mean by “above us”? What do we mean by “deeper”? The hollowness still goes on; it goes on all the time. Whatever we do, whatever we say, there is always something fishy happening. Something really stinks.

  Some kind of rumor has been built up for centuries and centuries, and we decided to believe that fantastic rumor—we decided to call it reality. But who created the rumor? It is said that somebody who has jaundice will see a white conch shell as yellow. So if a whole people or a whole nation were subject to jaundice, with generations and generations of jaundice cases, everyone would see anything white as yellow. That is actually what has been happening to us, although maybe not at such a gross level. Seeing white thing
s as yellow goes against relative logic; it is confused kündzop. How do we know that we are not doing that at the ultimate level, the real level? What do we mean by “red,” what do we mean by “green” or “yellow”? How do we know that we share the same experience? Somebody has conveniently put these things together, and we have been programmed since our childhood so that we believe in certain things. But how do we know that we are all not color-blind? Your red could quite possibly not be my red at all. I may see an entirely different red than yours, although we appreciate redness mutually because we have been programmed that way from childhood. That makes things very scary.

  Our perception, our approach to reality, could be entirely different than someone else’s. On the whole, there is kind of a hole there; there is some kind of leak. Something does not hold together in how we experience our life. We say, “I love you” or “I’m your friend,” but what do we really mean by that? What is behind the whole thing? Do we actually say it, or is it just kind of a facade—not even kind of a facade, but an all-around facade? A big hole or big leak is taking place. Things do not seem to be as solid as we think, and it is not really fixable. Things are actually very shaky underneath.

  Due to our lack of sanity, we have no idea what we are doing at this point. Maybe everybody is mad; that is possible. You might say, “Of course I’m not mad.” But maybe you are mad. Because you said you are not mad, it is possible that you are one of the maddest of all. How do we know? There is complete hollowness.