Born in Tibet

by Marco Pallis

  Several influences explain the revolution he was to bring about, which would leave an indelible mark on the way Buddhism is taught in the West, even while his own style remained inimitable. First, one of his masters, Khenpo Gangshar, taught him to compose poems and speeches spontaneously. This apprenticeship offset the more scholarly nature of the education he had received. Chögyam Trungpa was also profoundly interested in the seminars given in the Theravada school, the Buddhism of Southeast Asia. There, monks give teachings on various subjects in return for the food they receive. Chögyam Trungpa was struck by the way his spiritual friend the Zen meditation master Shunryu Suzuki gave seminars in a free, spontaneous way. Finally, his education in Oxford from 1963 to 1966 provided him with an example of teaching methods that are extremely different from those used in Tibet.

  It is difficult to determine which of these various influences was most important in the development of the distinctly personal style that Chögyam Trungpa now adopted. His simplicity and closeness to his students were striking for the period, even more so than the content of the teachings themselves. People felt the warmth he had for them all and were deeply affected. For the first time in their lives, they discovered what being loved really meant. Chögyam Trungpa manifested a love that, without asking anything in return, recognizes and welcomes the person we are deep down. It was the force of this love that allowed him to break through everything that makes genuine encounters impossible. He identified these obstacles as “spiritual materialism.” This notion has become so closely bound with his teaching that the two are often identified as one. We must now try to set it in its context.

  4. Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism

  The retreat in Bhutan and the realization of the universality of spiritual materialism

  A retreat that Chögyam Trungpa took in Bhutan in 1968 was a decisive moment in his life. For years, in Tibet, India, and then Britain, he had experienced intense frustration at the widespread corruption of true spirituality and at his own inability to reveal Buddhism in all its authenticity.

  This is the darkest hour of the dark ages. Disease, famine, and warfare are raging like the fierce north wind. The Buddha’s teaching has waned in strength. The various schools of the sangha are fighting amongst themselves with sectarian bitterness;15 and although the Buddha’s teaching was perfectly expounded and there have been many reliable teachings since then from other great gurus, yet they pursue intellectual speculations. The sacred mantra has strayed into Pön [Bön], and the yogis of tantra are losing the insight of meditation. They spend their whole time going through villages and performing little ceremonies for material gain. On the whole, no one acts according to the highest code of discipline, meditation, and wisdom. The jewel-like teaching of insight is fading day by day. The Buddha’s teaching is used merely for political purposes and to draw people together socially. As a result, the blessings of spiritual energy are being lost. Even those with great devotion are beginning to lose heart. If the buddhas of the three times and the great teachers were to comment, they would surely express their disappointment.16

  Chögyam Trungpa’s attempts to confront this distressing situation can be seen throughout his work. At the beginning of his retreat, everything seemed ordinary. But Chögyam Trungpa felt increasingly frustrated because he was searching for spiritual inspiration, and nothing seemed to be happening. He had no idea what to do to arouse energy. Then suddenly, one night, he experienced a profound spiritual inspiration and started writing The Sadhana of Mahamudra Which Quells the Mighty Warring of the Three Lords of Materialism, whose introduction has just been quoted. This retreat altered him profoundly. He could now face up to the distressing trend of our times, which he had seen at work in both the East and the West without being able to name it or deal with it. The obstacle that had constantly stopped him from being able to present Buddhism correctly was spiritual materialism.

  Many observers have, with good reason, denounced the materialism of our times. For example, the French metaphysician René Guénon, in The Crisis of the Modern World (1927), stated that in our day everyone’s preoccupation has turned toward the material.17 In his definition, to be materialistic was to be consciously centered on the material world and related preoccupations: “Modern civilization is truly what might be termed a quantitative civilization, which is another way of saying that it is a material civilization,” Guénon wrote. “If one wants to be further convinced of this truth, then it is sufficient to examine the immense importance the world of economics has in the existence of both peoples and individuals: industry, commerce, finances; it would seem that they alone matter, which confirms my earlier point that the sole social distinction that remains is based on material wealth.”18

  Chögyam Trungpa knew that it was necessary to root out materialism in its more subtle and dangerous forms than those based purely on material comfort.

  The Three Lords of Materialism

  In his book Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, published in 1973, Chögyam Trungpa distinguishes three aspects of materialism, called the Three Lords of Materialism. We are constantly being deceived by the Lord of Form, the Lord of Speech, and the Lord of Mind. These three figures are metaphors for our relationship with the world.

  The Lord of Form corresponds to all our efforts to gain comfort and security. It involves “manipulating physical surroundings so as to shield ourselves from the irritations of the raw, rugged, unpredictable aspects of life. Push-button elevators, prepackaged meat, air conditioning, flush toilets, private funerals, retirement programs, mass production, weather satellites, bulldozers, fluorescent lighting, nine-to-five jobs, television—all are attempts to create a manageable, safe, predictable, pleasurable world.”19 Such efforts are expressed in the constant pursuit of wealth. But extreme asceticism is also a manifestation of this aspect of materialism: you can deprive yourself of many things and impose an extremely harsh lifestyle on yourself without necessarily renouncing egocentrism, and with the sole aim of acquiring greater comfort. Such materialism is based on the desire to control the world and to avoid all possible sources of irritation in our physical environment.

  The Lord of Speech is the use of intellect to control our universe better. We adopt concepts as if they were levers we could use to control phenomena. We see the world only through them. They become filters that block any direct perception of reality. In order to maintain a world in which we feel secure, we seek to understand everything. With this intention, any ideology or doctrinal system can become materialistic: nationalism, communism, existentialism, Catholicism, Buddhism. All these “isms,” when seen as panaceas for our ills, become the instruments of this Lord.

  But the most sophisticated Lord, the Lord of Mind, does not restrict himself to the rather flagrant maneuvers of the previous two. He perverts the spiritual desire to become more conscious and aware. Many forms of meditation and spiritual practices in general are used with the sole aim of reaching a state of pleasure or happiness, in the attempt to “live up to what we would like to be.”20 On the contrary, genuine spirituality is based on a realistic approach to oneself and to the world.

  Analysis of these three Lords shows that everything can be used in the service of materialism, and that it is not so simple as “the reign of quantity,” to use Guénon’s term characterizing our degenerate age. The desire for a certain material comfort, the intellectual effort to understand the world or a spiritual experience, are not intrinsic problems. They only become problematic if what motivates us is the desire to make ourselves invulnerable and to avoid fear or insecurity. Materialism consists in thinking that our existence should be improved. We ask ourselves how we can let go of ego and open up, but “the first obstacle is the question itself: ‘How?’ If you don’t question yourself, don’t watch yourself, then you just do it.”21

  The three forms of materialism derive from the effort the ego makes to reassure itself of its own existence. In Buddhism, the word ego does not have the same meaning as it does in West
ern psychology. It is an illusion that sets out to prove the solidity of its existence. In this sense, the ego is not a true entity, but instead an accumulation of habits and confusions, a set of hopes, fears, and dreams. Our entire relationship with the world thus passes through this filter, which checks out whether what is going on is advantageous to us or not. In such a perspective, undertaking a spiritual quest is merely the personal desire to gratify our ego, whereas it should, on the contrary, open us ever more deeply to what truly exists and provide “a way of subjugating or shedding our ego.”22

  One of Buddhism’s most basic teachings shows the pointlessness of all the efforts we make to satisfy the Three Lords. As Pema Chödrön, one of Chögyam Trungpa’s students, put it: “There’s a common misunderstanding among all the human beings who have ever been born on the earth that the best way to live is to try to avoid pain and just try to get comfortable.”23 Being honest and recognizing the reality of our suffering is the only way to break with the process. The spiritual way can then turn into personal experience.

  The catastrophe of our time is that it has become difficult to distinguish between authentic spirituality and materialism. The confusion between them is a sign of the times.

  The persistence of spiritual materialism

  Spiritual materialism is an obstacle to any authentic spiritual path: “There are numerous sidetracks which lead to a distorted, ego-centered version of spirituality; we can deceive ourselves into thinking we are developing spiritually when instead we are strengthening our egocentricity through spiritual techniques.”24

  Such criticism is not aimed uniquely at the West. Many Tibetans and Westerners have presented an idyllic image of Tibet, where so many people were supposed to be following the path of enlightenment. But Chögyam Trungpa, while remaining profoundly attached to his native land, often spoke of the corruption that was rife there. In 1975, in a seminar devoted to The Sadhana of Mahamudra entitled “The Embodiment of All the Siddhas,”25 he explained: “We definitely had a lot of spiritual problems in my country. People just conducted their little spiritual business affairs: they conducted marriage ceremonies; they conducted funeral ceremonies; they conducted ceremonies for the sick; they conducted ceremonies for the unfortunate. But there was no real practice going on; it was a big racket.”26 Materialism, especially in its spiritual form, is just as present in the East as in the West.

  In the United States, the situation in the 1970s was like a huge supermarket where you could go in and pick whatever captured your fancy: watered-down versions of authentic traditions, drugs, fake gurus and other assorted charlatans, a taste of Zen or Hinduism, even Tibetan Buddhism, freshly delivered. Many masters of the time, particularly those from India, followed this trend. They thus established their own territory and confirmed that of their disciples. To their followers, they promised ultimate well-being. They thus formed a mutual conspiracy that was denounced by Chögyam Trungpa. As he put it on arriving in the United States: “Spiritual interest is coming out more strongly in people now because of the character of this century; the river of materialism has overrun its banks. Not only are there endless gadgets and machines, but there is pervasive spiritual materialism under which the great traditions have become just so much milk in the marketplace. The twentieth century is the age of ego.”27

  Chögyam Trungpa felt that many of the spiritual masters who had come to the United States did not offer a true discipline that would allow us to rid ourselves of our constant egocentricity. Their approach was incomplete. He even denounced those who claimed to exemplify a discipline by, for example, wearing white robes, being vegetarian, or speaking softly. All of these approaches could easily be just a means to conceal spiritual arrogance.

  Chögyam Trungpa thus undertook a campaign that deeply marked the first years of his teaching. As early as the first issue of his magazine Garuda,28 which came out in 1971, he devoted an important article to this subject, entitled “Transcending Materialism.” Whatever the circumstances, he never hesitated to attack materialism. When answering a questionnaire sent to him through the mail about what he thought of the “Age of Aquarius,” he said, “I have heard this expression, but I don’t think that it has any particular significance. It would be presumptuous to predict the future, but it seems that what is happening is that this New Age will develop a height of supermaterialism and that during this time, man’s search will continue beyond that state.”29

  Everywhere, he cut through the mystification he witnessed. Once, over dinner, an extremely elegant lady was foolhardy enough to ask him: “Rinpoche, my guru has taught me the practice of White Tara, but he hasn’t explained what it is. What is White Tara?” Chögyam Trungpa replied: “It’s cottage cheese.” Then, after a few moments of silence, he pointed at another dish in front of him and added: “And Green Tara is spinach.”

  5. From Cynicism to Gentleness

  No more “trips”

  With ruthless accuracy, Chögyam Trungpa cut through everyone’s “trip.” This expression is typical of the hippie culture of the time. It suggests that we leave on a trip each time we depart from reality with a sensation of “spacing out.” The aim of his teaching, Chögyam Trungpa explained, was to shatter these trips and bring the student back face to face with reality—which can be a painful process, especially for those who mistake their trips for reality. Without any hesitation, but not without humor, Chögyam Trungpa destroyed people’s illusions. During a visit from a student who had already met several Tibetan gurus and who, following Tibetan custom, bowed down before him, Trungpa looked at the floor and asked, “Have you lost something?” On another occasion, during a lecture in New York, a student who seemed to be on drugs stood up and started asking an extremely long, intellectually convoluted, and clearly meaningless question. While the student was still speaking, Trungpa bent toward the microphone and blew a long ffff into it. Rather surprised, the student stopped. Then he took a breath and started up again. So Chögyam Trungpa interrupted him again with another even longer fffff, which, this time, finally brought the student to silence.

  Chögyam Trungpa opened people’s minds. He made fun of anything that was too serious, pinpointing the precise spot where it most hurt.

  In his teachings, he explained that those who think they have found a spiritual path and are on the side of truth have simply fallen into the huge trap of looking for a savior and thus fleeing their own experience: “It’s not so much that the doctrine has converted you, but that you have converted the doctrine into your own ego.”30 The aim of the teachings is for us not to learn to be “right,” but instead to be ever more open to what is.

  Meditation

  Confronted as we are with the rampant spiritual materialism all around us, the practice of meditation is the only weapon we possess. This practice consists in looking at who we really are, thus providing us with a naked experience of our state of mind, but without trying to reach any particular goal. Meditation is not a religious practice: “The practice of meditation is based not on how we would like things to be, but on what is.”31 Given that the characteristic of the ego is to view everything in a competitive, aggressive manner, it is starved to death by meditation, which aims at nothing.

  In other words, the sole alternative to the confusion created by spiritual materialism is to face up to our own experience in the present, in what Chögyam Trungpa termed “nowness.” To achieve this, the only advice he gave was to practice regularly. He often repeated: “Everybody who is interested in any kind of pursuit of spiritual discipline should sit and meditate first.”32

  Embacing the situation that he found on arriving in the United States, Chögyam Trungpa did not ask anyone to become vegetarian, take monastic vows, or adopt any particular beliefs. It was simply necessary to meditate and learn to be here, just as we are.

  The second phase: open your heart

  Within two years, Chögyam Trungpa had created a genuine community of practicing Buddhists, both at Tail of the Tiger and in Boulder. He had als
o established a close relationship with each of his students. He had learned to appreciate them. The complete trust that he had in them is one of the most striking aspects of his approach. He adapted himself to their energies, their difficulties, and their personalities. He did not set out to transform them; instead he encouraged them to develop themselves and become what they really were. During one of the seminars he regularly held in the community, he told the participants: “I am sorry to be so crude, so emotional, but I feel I would like to make love to everybody in the community, and I feel that you can understand what I’m trying to say. . . . I am putting my trust in you.”33

  On June 16, 1972, Chögyam Trungpa gave a seminar entitled “Phase Two.” He remarked that the initial step of his teaching had been marked by a growing cynicism, based on the refusal to accept anything without close scrutiny. Cynicism, he explained, is a way to unmask everything that is preordained or doctrinal, everything that is imposed from the outside, such as the set of habitual mental reflexes we have developed ourselves, our own “school of thought” in which we are locked. His students were indeed ready to question everything that was explained to them and believe nothing. Together, they had put together a series of critiques on the various spiritual approaches then present in the United States so as to expose their materialism and hypocrisy.

  However, too much cynicism means we turn self-destructive. So it was now time to start the second stage of implanting Buddhism in the West and thus create the possibility of establishing honest relationships among people. Mutual help was required: “we have to develop a kind of romanticism. This is equally important as the cynical approach we have been taking up till now.”34