The Bodhisattva Path of Wisdom and Compassion

by Chogyam Trungpa

  The Gift of Fearlessness

  Once they have received material generosity, people want more. They are still terrified, therefore you give them the second kind of generosity, the gift of fearlessness. People have to learn how to develop fearlessness so that they can help themselves, rather than coming back to you all the time saying that they need more food. With fearlessness, they become respectable; they are no longer welfare cases. You give people fearlessness so that they, in turn, can give it to others.

  The gift of fearlessness is not purely psychological. It does not just mean saying nice things to people in order to make them feel better; rather, you make them work. By doing so, people begin to understand that they can actually survive and maintain themselves. So they begin to feel good about themselves and to have dignity. They realize that they do not have to constantly be beggars or poor people, but they could develop their own capital.

  When you have developed dedication to others and passionlessness, you are no longer afraid. Therefore, you can afford to be arrogant in the positive sense. If people need security, you can give the gift of fearlessness. You can reassure others and teach them that they do not have to feel completely tormented and fearful about their existence. You can help them to see that there is basic goodness and spiritual practice, that there is a way for them to sustain their lives. To those who feel afraid of the dharma, afraid of their teacher, afraid of their sangha, afraid of their food, or afraid of their companions, you can give the gift of fearlessness. You let them know that fearlessness can be proclaimed, and you show them how to develop it. Your fearlessness can comfort their fearfulness.

  The Gift of Dharma

  The third level of generosity is the gift of dharma. You could present the dharma at a very basic, ordinary, and reasonable level so that it does not panic anybody. You could teach people about discipline, meditation, and knowledge. Dharma makes people’s minds grounded so they do not experience instability. Having heard the dharma properly and fully, they begin to trust in themselves, as well as in the dharma. It is said that in order to engage in bodhisattva action, first you have to have good conversations with people, then you should charm them and make a connection, and finally you might present the dharma. You should take time with people.

  As long as you are following the bodhisattva path, you should be practicing all three types of generosity at once. It is quite a lot of work. Through all three types of generosity, you can open up people’s minds so that their closedness, wretchedness, and small thinking can be turned into larger vision. That is the idea of mahayana altogether: to let people think bigger, think greater. At the first stage of the bodhisattva path, you begin to become generous and genuine. You become somewhat opulent by giving expensive gifts; you become somewhat arrogant by giving the gift of fearlessness; and you become somewhat righteous by giving the gift of dharma as basic sanity.

  REHEARSING BEING GENEROUS

  In the paramita of generosity, giving comes first, and from that a sense of vision and richness arises. According to the bodhisattva manuals, you can actually rehearse being generous. For instance, you can hold a precious object in your hand, and practice giving it away by extending your arm. Then you pull your arm back, and give it away again. You can learn to stretch your arm and give. The word for extending your arms is tongphö, which means “daring to let go.” Tong means “letting go,” and phö means “daring”; so tongphö is “daring to let go.” It is a challenge as well as a delight.

  Many people do not want to extend at all. They want to bring everything back to themselves. It is a very simple psychological practice to extend your arms and give, but in many cases you do not want to do that. You get frightened, particularly of giving to strangers. You do not know exactly who is going to receive what. You think that somebody might take everything you have, that a stranger might do anything! But the attitude of this practice is precisely the opposite: you invite all strangers. If they do anything strange, that is their problem. But as far as you are concerned, you have to extend yourself and invite them. You have to extend yourself as much as you can.

  You can also rehearse your generosity by literally handing something over to somebody. When you are eating a delicious meal, in the middle of enjoying the good food, you could take a piece out of your mouth and give it to your pet. You could give some of your food to a beggar. You shouldn’t always consume the whole meal and take it all into your system.

  The richness of generosity is not smug. It is not the experience of self-snugness; it is going from here to there all the time. Although you may not feel generous, you just have to do it. That is what is meant by rehearsal. But you also have to be very careful about the object of your generosity. You should not be generous to the wrong cause. For instance, you should not be generous to somebody who is producing an atom bomb to kill all human beings.

  To begin with, everything is a rehearsal. However, as long as you willing to go along with the practice, such manufactured generosity seems to be okay. If you are purely trying to find out whether the dharma works or not, if you do not have faith in the dharma, you might give up the whole thing. But you need to keep working with people. That is the whole point: you keep trying to work with people all the time. You can be inspired by mahayana vision. You can afford to open yourself and join the rest of the world with a sense of tremendous generosity, goodness, and richness. The more you give, the more you gain. But that should not be your reason for giving. Rather, the more you give, the more you are constantly inspired to give—and the gaining process happens naturally and automatically.

  1. The notion of a treasury of wealth is one of twenty-two traditional similes for stages of a bodhisattva’s development. See the chart “Stages of a Bodhisattva’s Development and Corresponding Similes.”

  2. Trungpa Rinpoche has taken the hinayana term individual salvation and interpreted it in mahayana style to mean salvation from your self, or egolessness.

  3. Mara refers to the tempter who appeared to the Buddha as he approached enlightenment. More generally, the term applies to the evil influences and difficulties a person encounters on the path.

  28

  Discipline

  The basis of discipline is the behavior pattern or psychological state of not thinking of yourself as the star of the world. You do not come first. In the mahayana tradition, in any case, you do not come first. A noncentralized existence brings proper conduct.

  THE SECOND paramita is discipline, or shila paramita. The paramita of discipline is described as a perfume infusing good discipline all over, and as being free from passion. It is connected with vipashyana. If generosity is not met with discipline, it can become sloppy. Discipline in Sanskrit is shila. In the Tibetan translation it is tsültrim. Tsül means “proper behavior,” and trim means “rules,” “norm,” or “way”; so tsültrim means the “proper way to behave,” or “proper conduct.”

  The difference between the hinayana and the mahayana approach to shila is that on the mahayana level, you are working much more for others. At the hinayana level, individual salvation is being emphasized. The idea is that in order to save others, first you must save yourself. Even the airlines use that logic: when you fly in an airplane, the flight attendant announces that in case the cabin pressure changes, you should put on your mask first, and then do it for your children.

  It has been said in the Madhyamakavatara that even if you have an excellent practice of dana paramita, if you do not practice shila paramita as well, it is as if you have no eyes and cannot see, as if you have no legs and cannot walk. The paramita of generosity is like gathering seeds to sow, and the paramita of discipline is like plowing the field in order to be able to sow the seeds. If the field is not properly cultivated, no good fruit or good harvest can come about. So the paramita of discipline is very important.

  Discipline in the ordinary sense of the word has a quality of tightening up. You are supposed to behave in a certain way, and you either go along with it or you do not. But in
this case, discipline is slightly different than conventional morality. In the Buddhist tradition, discipline is said to be like possessing a pair of eyes: when you don’t have eyes, you don’t see anything. Similarly, if you do not have the eyes of tsültrim, you do not see dharmas properly. If you are exceedingly speedy or absentminded, you do not see clearly. When you are driving, if you have no awareness of what you are doing, you just keep speeding along, and you experience what is known as an accident. Much of the confusion you experience in your life is due to your being unable to see dharmas properly. So tsültrim does not mean simply obeying the rules of the party or the church. Tsültrim is definitely intelligent discipline. When you begin to see dharmas very simply and clearly, you realize that you can actually perform your discipline properly and fully, without any contradictions.

  MAINTAINING SIMPLICITY

  Dharmic discipline does not necessarily mean saying mantras all the time; it could mean washing your kitchen floor. Shila paramita is regarded as a way of making yourself available to the practice or discipline of whatever you are doing, rather than punishing yourself because you have been a bad boy or girl, or trying to correct yourself. This kind of discipline is much more pleasurable and much more rewarding in the long run. You should enjoy having discipline. You can enjoy making a good cup of tea, pouring it into your cup without spilling it, drinking the tea, and then finishing up properly and nicely, so that there are no mishaps. Discipline is very much a question of properness. Usually the word properness implies some sort of stuffiness, but in this case “being proper” means being in accordance with the laws of nature. You are simply being where you are, with things as they are.

  The analogy for discipline is that of the wish-fulfilling jewel. According to Indian mythology, if you place a wish-fulfilling jewel on the top of a banner and pray, it brings many more jewels. Tsültrim is like a wish-fulfilling jewel because it is the basis of all kinds of virtues. So discipline is seen as a general sense of richness, rather than as a tightening up.1

  In the beginning, however, discipline is not always very pleasant. It is embarrassing and awkward and tight. You begin by gritting your teeth; that is how you have to start, and that is how I was brought up myself. But once you get used to it and begin to give in, you make your home in it. You find comfort in the discomfort. Eventually, you may find a little bit of the elixir of life between your teeth, which gives you strength. At that point, discipline is no longer effort oriented—it is effortless.

  The practice of discipline is like spending time in a cave. Obviously, the first time you stay in a cave, it is very harsh, particularly when there is lots of snow and cold air coming in. But after a while, you begin to settle down in your cave. It is your home, your practice place, and you begin to take pride in it and praise it. The great yogi Milarepa spent many years living in caves. Toward the end of his practice, a gang of local demons came along to tempt him, but that just inspired him to praise the place where he was meditating. He sang a song in praise of his cave, the mountains, and the whole environment around him. He began to appreciate the whole thing, including the climate. It began to feel good and natural. So nothing is all that comfortable and ideal at the beginning. You should not approach discipline as if you were getting new teeth from the dentist, where you get put to sleep and then wake up with new teeth. That is a twentieth-century approach.

  Discipline is based on awareness, which brings appreciation and a proper relationship with the phenomenal world. Proper conduct is to maintain what you have, to stick to the bare minimum. Its nature is simplicity. The link between generosity and discipline is that having given up your usual flashy, exhibitionistic, and colorful attachments, you end up with the bare minimum and you stick with that. You do not borrow anything unnecessary, and you do not need to buy anything unnecessary. Discipline means constantly continuing with simplicity.

  An important point about discipline is that you are not looking for signs of improvement. You do not expect that you have paid your penalty by being simple, so now your rank should be changed and you should be put on a higher level. Discipline is said to be the counterweight for happiness and the terminator of suffering. If you are dancing in happiness, discipline brings you down; if you are rotting away with suffering, discipline lifts you up. Both suffering and happiness keep you company—and discipline keeps you from both extremes with a big hammer, up and down. Finally there is no chance to get carried away with anything, either happiness or sadness. You are basically stuck with what you are, which is very hard discipline.

  Having already stripped off attachments, you end up as a simple, straightforward, naked child without companions. Discipline makes you a lonely person. You cannot cry to anybody because nobody will come to get you, and you cannot ask for milk because there are no nipples. So discipline is a real appreciation of loneliness. You have an appreciation of your own discipline, but you do not make a big deal out of it or use it as company.

  STEPPING BEYOND PREOCCUPATIONS AND BUSYNESS

  Without discipline, your preoccupations become much more intense. You are much more involved, more frustrated and busy with the complexities of your own neuroses. Even though you are in the human realm, you could become enslaved in the hell realm, the hungry ghost realm, the animal realm, the jealous god realm, or the god realm. You could re-create these realms and manifest them in all sorts of ways. Without discipline, it is difficult to free yourself from such preoccupations.

  When you are busy and preoccupied, you feel hassled by your own existence. You torment, torture, and busybody yourself. You are so busy that you think that you do not have any time to spare for your practice. Such torment and busyness seem to be monumental or historic, but that is not the case. As far as we are concerned, that kind of torment is absolutely ordinary. As you begin to work on that, you realize that the inconvenience, discomfort, and anguish that you experience is no more than anybody else experiences. So your experience is no longer regarded as monumental—no more than if you step on a cat’s tail, and the cat cries out, “Wooaaaoow!” However, it is still a problematic situation. Therefore you need to practice the paramita of discipline, which overcomes that type of preoccupation altogether. You begin to realize that preoccupations are garbage; they are worth flushing out so that something real could come up. Then paramita activity begins to make sense, and you begin to act in a more genuine way.

  Basically we are trying to put a stop to frivolity of any kind. Frivolity is an interesting word. It can mean being crazy and indulging unnecessarily in a very crude fashion, but it could also mean indulging in something in the name of humor and overdoing it slightly. If you are embarrassed to deal with a particular subject, you find another subject to discuss. If you are tired of drinking vodka, you switch to sake. If you are bored with talking to one person, you switch to somebody else. Frivolity is anything that creates further confusion, or the longing for further confusion. Confusion may seem luxurious: when you no longer have it, you begin to miss that confusion, and you would like to re-create it. It is like going back to an adult bookshop and getting more magazines. But with discipline, you control any form of potential escape from reality.

  The paramita of discipline undermines the attempts to make small things big, and it allows big things to be made quite small. Our habitual tendency is to exaggerate small things into large things, so that the small neuroses grow into larger neuroses. But with discipline, you begin to see that whenever neurosis arises, it can be regarded as workable. If you have a little ache on the bottom of your spine as you begin to sit on your gomden, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have cancer of the spine! It may seem funny, but those kinds of thoughts come up and are very real. The idea is to overcome the busybodyness of excuses, no matter what comes up, and to concentrate on your discipline. Even if you have a disability, you could still practice meditation. The reason we practice discipline is to train ourselves fully and properly, so that eventually we will be in a position to exchange ourselves for others�
� misery and pain, as best we can.

  By engaging in unnecessary preoccupations, we have become enslaved to ourselves—and by overcoming such unnecessary preoccupations and complaints, we begin to liberate ourselves. The paramita of discipline is said to be the ground of all the virtues taught by the Buddha. It is said in the sutras that shila paramita is the ground of life, the basis on which animate beings and inanimate objects can survive. It is very fundamental and important: without discipline, we do not have any basis for practice at all.

  Freedom means that you are free from being belabored and enslaved by your own mind. You are free from preoccupations, free from that kind of imagination. Being free from unnecessary preconceptions is the basis of all virtues. It means constructively organizing your life as creatively as possible. Creativity is regarded as a virtue: you are not destroying and you are not on the side of death, but you are working toward healthiness. You are not obsessed with death, thinking that you might die or catch some terrible disease anytime you sneeze or chew the wrong kind of rice. All sorts of things could happen, but in this case nothing happens, which is the basis of virtue.

  Virtue means healthiness and wholesomeness. You do not give in to paranoia of any kind, particularly paranoia as to your own survival. That begins to cut down the possibilities of passion, aggression, ignorance, jealousy, arrogance, and all the rest. You begin to attain what is known as jnana, or wisdom, which is the essence of the practice and the source of the attainment of enlightenment. Wisdom seems to be the source of the discipline that leads us into enlightened reality.