Chogyam
Trungpa and Jiddu Krishnamurti once had a dialogue/debate with
one another about traditionalism and anti-traditionalism in
the field of Meditation. The Krishnamurti people
published this dialogue/debate in a book entitled Questioning
Krishnamurti (Thorsons, 1996) with the idea that
Krishnamurti had put Trungpa "in his place" as a pathetic Eastern
guru-figure foisting a cultural conditioning (Tibetan Buddhism)
on to hapless, gullible Westerners in the name of "meditation". Yet
the book names Trungpa as, "Tibetan Buddhist meditation master,
and founder of the Naropa Institute, Colorado. " We are
going to look deeply into this dialogue/debate from the Shambhala
position of Universal-Cosmic- Evolutionary-Truth, which position
is neither traditional nor anti-traditional. In this
position, which any reader/seeker/pilgrim/student of all this
will intuitively understand in his or her own deepest inner
truth, both Trungpa and Krishnamurti are contributing perspectives
on deep issues. Their clash becomes therefore a generative
Hegelian Clash that lends itself to the resolving position,
which in this case indicates that in the meaning and use of Meditation we
will understand the necessity of neither clinging-to nor
rejecting any particular culturally rooted self-development
technique or identity. The dilemma of Tradition-versus-Anti-Tradition
is to be resolved through an enlightened synergy.
Nobody
fully "won" the clash between Trungpa and Krishnamurti! But
important issues were brought out that never got properly discussed
and resolved because both parties were in an immature, incomplete
state about those issues. We should therefore say a little
about the personal background of both these popular semi-mature
individuals before we proceed any further into the depths of
their dialogue/debate.
Chogyam
Trungpa became popular in the West because he had been given
spiritual authority by the Tibetan Buddhist tradition as a
child when "recognized" as the reincarnation of a Tibetan meditation
master, a Naljorpa or advanced Siddhayogi. The Karanahitta,
reincarnational consciousness, of Trungpa knew itself to be
deliberately reincarnating in a Tibetan body. Spiritual
authority of Chogyam Trungpa in the West was not from Westerners
perceiving and recognizing directly the identity and reincarnation
of the Chogyam Trungpa Karanachitta,
but through accepting the glamour and exotic spiritual authority
of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition with its many circulated
tales of the miraculous abilities of Tibetan Yogis, Naljorpas
and Lamas. The Westerners who flocked to hear Trungpa
and sit at his feet to listen to his lectures and sometimes
commit themselves to following him and developing an emotionally
satisfying exclusive identification with Tibetan Buddhism were
virtually saying to themselves, "Hey, this man is one of those
certified Miraculous Big Guns from Occult Tibet, so maybe he
can help us become a Super-Aware Miraculous Tibetan type of
individual!" This natural occult excitement and greed, coupled
with wanting to belong to something occultly and spiritually
important and decisive, was clearly driving the naive and gullible
followers of Chogyam Trungpa. But it turns out that in
many ways Trungpa had some personal faults, karmic obstructions
and misunderstandings of his situation as a Tibetan Buddhism
propagator in the West and America in particular. He
also simply did not have the all-out miraculous abilities of
a Padma Sambhava, so he always had to fall-back on his traditionally
sanctioned pedigree and the glamour that surrounds that kind
of societally upheld "spiritual authority". Yet this
does not mean that Chogyam Trungpa had nothing going for him
in the realm of spiritual evolution of human beings. He
contributed many wonderful insights based on his own unique
understanding and cultural perspective.
Jiddu
Krishnamurti got his outer spiritual authority in a similar
manner to Chogyam Trungpa, for he, Krishnamurti, was "recognized" by
the leading authorities of the Occult Western Tradition of
Theosophy that was and still is headquartered in South India. Charles
Leadbeater and Annie Besant had decided that young Krishnamurti
was "The Vehicle of the World Teacher", which meant that Krishnamurti
was not the direct incarnation personally of their idea of "The
World Teacher", but was to serve as a kind of advanced medium
or channeler of "The World Teacher". For years and years,
even after he had supposedly thrown-off the Theosophical authorities
and their new occult tradition or social movement, he would
write and report about "the other" coming over him and sending
him into states of heightened awareness unexpectedly through
no effort of his own as unexpected blessing from the entry
of a vaster awareness into his own consciousness. His
personal energy (his Kundalini, in fact) would rise up at these
times with effects in his body and brain which he would call, The
Process. Because of the traditional authorization
from Theosophy, people would flock to his lectures hopefully
that he would bring them to a higher state of awareness themselves,
and indeed, people who would sit before him would often "get
high" on just listening to him talk, even if they could not
remember the complexities of various insights he would expound
in his own unique manner of channelling and alternately explaining "The
Other". But all the years of his life, he did not know
his Karanachitta, which was the reincarnation
of the American naturalist philosopher, Henry David Thoreau,
and previous to that a Theravada Buddhist meditation master. Yet
his whole double tendency in his writings was to expound on
the beauties of outdoor nature coupled with the idea of a clear
meditative state without "ego". Now, since I am myself
The World Teacher, I clearly remember overshadowing Krishnamurti
from time to time, communing with his inner consciousness and
helping him to develop meditative insights in heightened states
of awareness and energy as his "Inner Guru". He has been
and still is one of my most advanced students, I am not ashamed
to say. But he was incomplete and still has much work
to do in future incarnations. But, at any rate, I can
also clearly remember when I took my present physical body
to Walden Pond near Boston in America back in the early 70's
and deeply reviewed Krishnamurti's incarnation as Henry David
Thoreau, which I felt and still do feel was very important
for natural meditation and sensitivity in a world that is becoming
more and more unnatural and insensitive. After around
1960, I overshadowed Krishnamurti less and less because my
present incarnation and its problems were occupying too much
of my inner attention, my own Karanachitta. This
body was eighteen years of age in 1960. I
myself of course was never "recognized" by any traditional
authorities, so I am operating more normally and straightforwardly
as an anonymous human being on our planet Earth here. But
my Karanachitta is much more ancient,
advanced and developed in Truth than the causal bodies of Krishnamurti
or Trungpa. I was Adam, Father of the Aryan race in Eden
on what is now the island of Cyprus, which body also became
known as Shiva to the Hindus of India
and Odin to the Vikings, as well
as Poseiden to the Greeks and Neptune to
the Romans. That body is still preserved in a secret
chamber within Mount Kailas in Tibet, which chamber is closed-off
from random pilgrims so as to not disturb it. There are
still sacks with my old personal belongings there in that cavern,
including some hand-carved map-pins made of ivory. I
was very fond of those map-pins! At any rate, I am disclosing
all this because just like any Tibetan reincarnating spiritual
master, I am prepared to prove that I am personally Shiva by
showing and even predicting my personal items from that previous
life.
Of course I have also reincarnated in other bodies
and cultures since then, many of which are quite famous historical figures, and
I can prove all those as well if and when it might become useful to the advanced
seekers of this world on the outer social plane. But, and this is the issue,
such outer recognition is also a phenomenon of Maya and
superficial glamour. It is always a mere shadow or reflection of genuine
spiritual maturity, which means that the best and deepest recognition of the
Advanced and therefore Helpful human soul or Inner Being comes when it is the
Inner Divine Self-nature recognizing the Inner Divine Self-nature by direct intuition
without silly outer authority of figures who are themselves flawed and incomplete. So,
in listening to the following dialogue/debate of Krishanmurti, Chogyam Trungpa
and my own commentary on their statements, you will naturally let your own Inner
Truth be your guiding light and arbiter of spiritual authority as it may or may
not apply to you personally. It is after all your life and no one else's
that is at stake over who or what you decide is a valid channel of ideas, techniques,
inspirations or blessings. Also keep in mind, that if you were a Westerner
your last life, you will tend to believe that Krishnamurti is better for you
than Trungpa, but if you were a Tibetan or Far Eastern Buddhist, you might resonate
more deeply with someone like Trungpa about important matters of awareness and
meditation. At the same time, if you were a Hindu Yogi or Jnyani-Sage,
you will tend to realize that the things I myself am saying here about all this
are far more crucial and significant no matter how we cook it. But my present
body is Western and I have also been a Tibetan Yogi and a Chinese Zen Master,
so I am in the inwardly privileged position of being able to identify with virtually
any cultural or universal position on this Earth and some other planets in our
Galaxy as well, for I have also personally been an Extraterrestrial. With
all this inner evolutionary experience, I have been pressed into service at this
time to function as Rudra Chakrin and the current World Teacher or Jagadguru. I
for one feel that there are infinite other and more advanced beings than I who
could have gotten into this task, but I was trained for it from the days of Adam
Shiva and it is a culmination of my own karma circulating in my Karanachitta. Therefore,
what is a strenuous curse and suffering for me to have to be here on this even
more cursed and suffering planet with its evil, abusive and perverse government
leaders is potentially your own blessing and uplift if you will be receptive
to what I am saying and doing lately. You can attune yourself to an effectively
composite message of the essence of all the World's spiritual traditions and
even Shamanic breakthroughs in spirit and consciousness. But keep in mind
that I do not function as a publicly available guru-figure and do not have a
cult, ashram or social movement with adherents or followers. I am a travelling
businessman who lives in more than one location. I teach through telepathic
communion with my advanced disciples, who are themselves teachers or advanced
meditators who are not at this time teaching, but carrying out more advanced
duties and developments. If you are inspired by what I am saying and doing,
then let it help you through Inner Guidance. A personal meeting with me
is a rare thing and I do not encourage it, nor do I have some hidden situation
in Shambhala or other Hidden Valleys that I am willing to bring outsiders to. Those
situations are under attack right now from the Evil New World Order of Black
Demonic Karma and it is quite enough where they can simply survive and carry-on
under the protection of Extraterrestrial forces. If you want to get into
a more peaceful and uplifiting circumstance, create it yourself from within your
own labor and advances in your Meditation and Yoga. The more your inner
life advances, the more your outer karmic situation improves and liberates your
life-pattern. Destiny-control is from within outward, not from outward
to the within.
We
now proceed to the dialogue/debate between Chyogam Trungpa
and J. Krishnamurti, which is called in the Questioning
Krishnamurti book, What Is Meditation? My
comments will simply be called in each case, Comment. Keep
in mind that sometimes Krishnamurti made many different assertions
before Trungpa would respond, so most of the dialogue belongs
to Krishnamurti, who in the book was given the long first words
and long last words. I will therefore inject comments
on various little sections of Krishnamurti's long-winded assertions
and challenges.
What Is Meditation?
Krishnamurti: You know,
sir, in all the organized religions, with their dogmas, beliefs,
traditions and so on, the person and personal experience have
played a great part.
Comment: They have indeed
played a great part in creating and renewing spiritual traditions,
for undeveloped, spiritually inexperienced and unhappy human
beings are attracted to miracle-working, spiritually experienced
and happy human beings who demonstrate by their very state
and way of life that they are more advanced in evolution than
the average person in the situation of that language and culture. But
only those minority of people who themselves actively aspire
to be developed, spiritually experienced and happy are attracted
to such advanced personages. The majority of human beings
have always tended to personally rot and live out a crude,
undeveloped pattern of life with a veneer of outer religious
ritual or even materialistic denial, remaining selfish, unhappy,
complaining and increasingly sick to the end of their days
without concern for genuine self-improvement or the development
of higher states of meditative awareness that we see in either
a Krishnamurti or a Chogyam Trungpa. So "organized religions" in
all cultures have always tended to be superficial and hypocritical
on the whole. Advanced Yogis and Siddhas or Godmen have
always been followed by only a minority of people with an even
tinier fraction of those fully successful in their development
and liberation. So we cannot put all religious and spiritual
activity on the same level in any culture or civilization on
Earth or anywhere else in the Universe. The same is true
of the value of any given individual's reported spiritual experiences
or states or demonstrations of unusual ability.
K: The person has become
extraordinarily important, not the teachings, their reality,
but the person.
Comment: He is saying that
people are more attracted to the miraculous and the occult
and to unusual states of consciousness than they are to the
overarching Truth of the different dimensions and possibilities
of life and consciousness. He is saying that Awareness
and Spiritual Truth are beyond powerful, impressive personalities. However,
his concern about Impersonal Truth can easily become a mere
intellectual pursuit of the material brain rather than the
Evolutionary Development of being guided and energized by a
highly developed human being, a Sadguru. How advanced
a Teacher actually is will always be urgently important, regardless
of the philosophical or cosmological doctrines and arguments
floating around in the region or culture of the time. Who
do we need to listen to the most: the academic logician who
is concerned about philosophical arguments or the advanced
mystic who is coming from higher states of consciousness and
personal development? There is the Lesser Truth that comes
from intellectual study and thoughtful deductions, but the
Greater Truth that comes through revelation from Higher Seers
and Experiencers. This has always been true whether in
Tibet or America, whether in the Tibetan language or the English
language. But the Cult-of-Personality can and often does
lead to persons dogmatically and exclusively following incomplete,
half-baked spiritual figures who have had some experiences
and some higher developments of psychic
capacity. This leads to great misleading errors in the
Greater Truth that could sometimes be corrected by astute and
clear thinking in the extended Lesser Truth. Without
a trained intellect plus higher intuition, the spiritual quest
breaks up on the hard rock of logical intellectualization or
drowns in the foolish whirlpool of emotional belonging and
dogmatic belief within a cult surrounding an incomplete spiritual
teacher who is himself or herself probably indulging in the
vanity and dogmatism of cultural and religious prejudice. The
advanced Tibetan Incarnation can deny the advanced Hindu Yogi
or Islamic Sufi, the advanced Hindu Yogi can easily deny the
advanced Tibetan Incarnation or Islamic Sufi and the advanced
Islamic Sufi can deny the advanced Hindu Yogi or Tibetan Incarnation. A
Baba Muktananda would therefore say, "Forget about Chogyam
Trungpa, Idries Shah and Krishnamurti. They will not
get your Kundalini up and running like my advanced Shaktipat
Intensive. " And Idries Shah would say, "Do not dilute
your correct development with the fragmentary teachings of
people like Baba Muktananda, Chogyam Trungpa, Krishnamurti
and other guru-ist cults. Only Our tradition has the
complete human development. Of course, if you want their results,
follow them, but if you want Our results,
follow Us. " Chogyam Trungpa would also say, "If you try
to get seriously into teachings like the Sufis, Hindu Yoga
and Krishnamurti or Theosophy, you will just confuse yourself
and create a mental junk shop of grotesque items you cannot
make personal real use of. You are much better off to
just choose one tradition or school and concentrate exclusively
on it for the rest of your life as an intelligent, discriminating
choice and get advanced enough in it that you can reincarnate
personally in that exclusive tradition life after life and
never investigate or make use of anything from anywhere else
no matter what its relative value might be. " And, of
course, what Krishnamurti was always saying was essentially, "Pay
no attention whatsoever to Chogyam Trungpa, Idries Shah or
Baba Muktananda because you do not need the Six Yogas of Naropa,
Complete and Balanced development on a basis of service and
anonymity or Kundalini Shaktipat energization from an advanced
practitioner. All you need to do is assume that I am
saying the most advanced Truth that has ever been spoken and
you should not let anyone influence you or teach you about
anything except where I need to influence and teach you, though
I am not a teacher and you should be totally independent and
never make efforts to improve yourself or get into higher experiences
or developments except where they happen accidentally when
you are not trying, but alert. " The person is thus rightly
or wrongly "important", but where all the persons are behaving
like hawkers of merchandize in a bazaar and putting down one
another's products, hoping to create "customer loyalty", surely
it is more an exercise in social marketing than
Spiritual Truth.
K: Human beings throughout
the world have emphasized the person of the teacher.
Comment: The vast majority
of human beings throughout the world deny and disparage spiritual
evolutionary teachers and followers of teachers, and this ugliness
from society is directed blindly at random with no concern
whatsoever as to the relative truth, value or level of human
development of any teacher or student anywhere in anything. So
it is only a tiny and beleaguered minority of people "throughout
the world" who Krishnamurti wants listening to him and nobody
else!
K: The person represents
to them tradition, authority, a way of life, through him they
hope to attain or reach enlightenment or heaven or whatever.
Comment: People listen to
Krishnamurti in hope of getting into an enlightenment, a higher
state of awareness, a liberation from painful psychological
states and so on. They hope that by merely listening
to Krishnamurti and avoiding efforts of self-improvement they
will achieve a superior state of being that will not have to
understand and make use of spiritual traditions, teachings
or advanced people in their own achievement of Transcendental
Awareness and Spontaneous Ecstasy as described by Krishnamurti. So
Krishnamurti represents an authority, a way of life, an attitude
or policy, and that through him they will come to a higher,
better state. He is trying to deny that he is on the
same basic social footing as Chogyam Trungpa, but unfortunately
he is and this is complicating things already as Krishnamurti
carries on in his diatribe.
Another important issue here is that most people
who take up a traditional path of higher human development are not merely trying
to "go to a heaven of belief after death". That is a superficial assessment
of genuine evolutionary aspiration. We must not confuse superficial outer
religion with the deeper and more thorough spiritual and evolutionary aspiration
of a human being who truly wants to work to improve their character, their level
of being and their ultimate state of consciousness. This puts personal
performance, development and experiencing way beyond mere beliefs and rituals
of outer religion, language and culture. To put all this on the same level
by Krishnamurti is a basic category error that will not do. There is a
world of difference between what Buddhist Siddhas were doing in their private
cave-or-wandering lives and a public ritual ceremony performed by Lamas with
the Dalai Lama presiding, just as there is a similar world of difference between
what Krishnamurti was unfolding on his solitary walks and what people in Rome
get from a Mass presided over by the Pope. Krishnamurti forgets that he
is talking to a Tibetan Meditation Master, not the Dalai Lama or the Pope!
K: And most people seek
personal experience and that in itself has very little validity,
because it may be merely a projection of one's own intentions,
fears and hopes.
Comment: Actually, and this
should be obvious, most human beings are all too content with
their shallow level of sensate, selfish, distracted and superficially
busy or indulgent living and do very little about cultivating
higher personal experiences and developments. Only very
rare individuals fully and intelligently dedicate themselves
to Yoga, whether universal or traditional. Real Meditation
and Heightened Awareness are far from the overwhelming majority
of self-stagnating and ignorant human beings of this planet.
If some people were not seeking higher states of
personal experiencing and awareness, they would not read or listen to people
like Krishnamurti or Chogyam Trungpa. To say that such seeking has no validity
because it may "be merely a projection of one's own
intentions, fears and hopes" or any other secondary motivation of emotionally
disturbed outer ego of the social self does not mean that any and
all seekers and cultivators of higher, subtler experience and awareness
are stupidly and crudely motivated in a wrong way that will tend to undermine
or defeat the longed-for higher states and experiences. This is a matter
of maturity. Not all are on the same level of evolutionary maturity or
readiness. And the fact that Krishanmurti carefully says "may" in reference
to immature psychological projectors implies that he knows he is on shaky footing
in his assertion about all and everyone. But indeed we each need to ask
ourself, "What am I actually trying to achieve with my being and consciousness
and why am I trying to achieve it?" If we are shallow
believers projecting some socially or culturally conditioned hopes or fears,
we are certainly going to have to wake up from all that. This is where
someone like Krishnamurti may be a little more helpful to our higher evolution
than someone like Trungpa who is stuck in Buddhism and its cosmological assumptions,
hopes and fears.
K: So personal experience
has very little validity in religious matters. It really
has no value at all where truth is concerned.
Comment: The lack of "validity
in religious matters" is mostly true, because the human brain,
conditioned by the propaganda, beliefs and expectations of
an external cultural conditioning will shape the imagination
and visionary experiences that keep the true intellect deficient
and the subtle developments locked into too low a plane of
consciousness. One needs to be very aware of the limitation
on Consciousness that comes with conditioned religious beliefs,
with its cosmological incompleteness and ignorance. In
terms of the Kashmir Shaiva tradition, this problem is called
the Mayiya-mala that clogs and pollutes the Chit or Consciousness
and keeps Consciousness stuck in the limited state of Karanachitta,
the Causal Dualistic Consciousness that is a mere reflection
of Real Consciousness or what should perhaps be called Divine
Superconsciousness or Universal One Mind of Buddha-nature. So
prejudicial, dogmatic belonging to an outer religion and culture
is a dark clogging and dullness of both the intellect and the
Transcendental Spirit beyond. We do need to be very clear
about this. Higher quality spiritual experiences cannot
unfold where there is this darkness and clogging in the Consciousness
and Superconsciousness. But we need those experiences
and their unfolding, their sustained development, their completion. Hence
the true "religious matter" is a matter of direct, personal
divine experiencing and not mere worship, prayer, hope or belief. We
need divine self-realization beyond limited religions, cultures,
beliefs and conditionings of the brain and body.
Not all personal experiencing
is "without validity where truth is concerned". Krishnamurti himself wrote
many inspiring accounts of his own experiencing of states of higher sensitivity
and awareness that can be very useful at a certain stage in our development or
to renew those aspects of our evolution where Krishnamurti's personal insights
are pertinent. In actual fact, it is ultimately one's own direct experiencing
that is most urgent where Spiritual Truth is concerned, for otherwise one is
merely adhering to this or that authority and trying to live on vicarious experiences
reported by others. What we merely believe or disbelieve about the assertions
of others is wholly secondary to our own direct experiencing and awareness. Yes,
we must "think for ourselves", but more importantly we need to awaken Heightened
Awareness and Energy personally in our own system and consciousness, both physically
and beyond, spiritually.
K: Now, to negate personal
experience is to negate the "me", because the "me" is the very
essence of all experience, which is the past;
Comment: In the plane of
the lower mind, the subtle body and imagination, which is getting
its experiences shaped below, physically, from the culturally
conditioned brain and nervous system, it is clear that a false
ego of the mind, the psychological and emotional "me", is being
sustained by all the physical memories of one's personal accumulated
history in the present physical body. This is a very
physical, organic cognitive predicament where Superconsciousness
is blotted out completely and the Karanachitta or empirical
consciousness is utterly sunk down into the lower mind and
body through constant use of the conditioned physical brain
and the things read, experienced and interpreted by that same
physical brain. Hence, when chitta,
consciousness, through an ignorant and fallen intellect or buddhi,
is identifying itself with a particular religion or culture
and caught up in the kind of personal visions or experiences
one can get based on that identification, it is caught up in
biological roboticism like a living machine that has no real
conceptual ability on the causal level of consciousness beyond
the physical and subtle levels and certainly no genuine activation
and experiencing of Superconsciousness or Divine Awareness
beyond the causal level of causal reincarnational ego. Hence
the accumulated experiences of one's personal history on the
physical and subtle or dream levels of existence must be suspended
and transcended in higher states of consciousness and superconsciousness. It
is the evolutionary duty of the true intellect to seek universal
spiritual truth beyond all dogmas and cultural conditionings,
which wipes out Mayiya-Mala or dirt-of-illusory-beliefs, and
the evolutionary duty of the Purusha, Atman, Self-nature or
Godself to awaken beyond causality and self-limiting Anava-Mala
or dirt-of-self-limited-identification. So Krishnamurti
is very correct in what he says here, but only in reference
to the physical and subtle planes where he is correct. I
have to say this because it is an actual fact that the Dharmakaya
or fully awakened and clarified Karanachitta has
an intellect that neither clings-to nor rejects any traditional
teaching on Earth or anywhere on any planet in any Universe. The
ability to understand and appreciate teachings and methods
for their relative value and applicability to any particular
individual's evolutionary progress is an aspect of Bodhichitta,
truly awakened or illuminated consciousness. Wherever
there is exclusive clinging and assumption of cultural superiority
on the one hand or intellectual rejection of foreign or alien
cultures and their teachings, whether on Earth or beyond, there
is pettiness, imbalance and excess of Karanachitta in
the lower causal body faculty of ahamkara,
ego-building, where the social influencer or outer spiritual
or intellectual influencer is getting carried away. Social
glamour and sense-of-superiority will always lurk and plague
us all for as long as we are incarnated on a causal, subtle
or physical level because of the natural tendency of ahamkara to
want to expand its social territory and dominate lesser, weaker
causal egos. That is why even the most ignorant and undeveloped
human beings will be proud and self-defensive and overestimate
their own social importance, making them impossible to teach
or help for the most part. The animal pride of the lower
consciousness coupled with a deficient intellect makes each
person on Earth believe they have the superior cultural conditioning
and the highest judgements or opinions about everybody and
everything. It is on this basis that horrible wars are
fought and the humanity kept troubled with international conflicts
and misunderstandings.
K: and when religious people
go on missions or come over to the West from India or elsewhere,
they are really doing propaganda and that has no value with
regard to truth, because then it becomes a lie.
Comment: Truth of what?
What truth is in jeopardy from various traditions and cultures
offering their best teachings and methods of human development
to people who in foreign cultures may find them valuable and
useful? The Tibetans were driven out of their own country by
the aggression of Communist China. Where were the Tibetans
and their Buddhism and their most advanced Yogis or Sages supposed
to go? The survival of their hundreds of years of valuable
spiritual teachings and practices became dependent on an appreciative
welcome in both India and the rest of the world. Was
Chogyam Trungpa being told by Krishnamurti to return to Tibet
and try to help Chinese Communists understand Tibetan teachings
about Yoga, Meditation and Higher Awareness? How was that supposed
to work and on what basis?
But the even deeper issue here is that not all
spiritual know-how in Tibet or any other cultural tradition is necessarily mere "propaganda" for
converting people to an exclusive religion, such as Buddhism. If shallow,
gullible people get converted to a foreign religion, it does not mean they would
not be just as shallow, gullible and petty within their own local dogmatic religion
of their birth and childhood. At the same time, some of us can appreciate
and make good use of spiritual teachings and methods from foreign parts without
becoming "converted" or caught-up in an exclusive language and culture that appears
to be superior in the social spiritual field. A mature intelligence does
not try to become more and more socially authentic in adopting a particular language
and culture as exclusively one's new social self, like when we have decided our
new Hindu, Tibetan or Arabic name is our New Spiritual Self and so on, which
is obviously a heavy game of the ahamkara, social-ego-builder.
To go further, however, we must see the obvious
fact that a lot of immature, incomplete and even entirely misleading figures
have been creeping for years all over the West touting a social spiritual identification
with their own projected traditional culture of their home countries without
the slightest attempt to coordinate and understand one another's offerings. This
has resulted in a chaotic hodge-podge of misprojected, fragmentary and misunderstood
teaching and methods of self-improvement floating around in a consumerist atmosphere
of shallow social marketing, a battle of tribal and Eastern cults for supremacy
over one another in the New Age bookstores and festivals with their little stalls
and advertisements in New Age magazines. As if advanced human development
would somehow ensue from the kind of attractions and choices one makes in a state
of window-shopping. A Sufi Teacher once put all this perfectly when he
said, "Do not seek the Way in places where the unworthy expect to find it. "
K: So if one puts aside completely all
the experiences of human beings and their systems, their practices,
their rituals, their dogmas, their concepts - that is, if one
can actually do it, not theoretically but actually wipe it
all out - then what is the quality of the mind that is no longer
held in the matrix of experience?
Comment: That is exactly
what the Chinese tried to do, actually, literally, not merely
theoretically, completely wipe out the culture and language
of Tibet and Vajrayana Buddhism. Is this what Krishnamurti
wants: the total destruction of all cultures and religions
on Earth? Who is going to do all that destruction? Whether
it is a nation or an individual who destroys or utterly ignores
another people, culture or language, does that actually leave
a clean slate, a table rasa, in the human brain?
No! It simply leaves the original conditioning and propaganda without alternatives,
without wider and more promising perspectives. I do not wipe out my basic language
of English just because I do not want to speak Tibetan, think in Tibetan or
work with Tibetan concepts. The language and culture of our conditioning
is not a clean and pure Transcendental Awareness beyond all languages and conditionings. In
actual fact, the more languages and alternative cultures
we can enter into and commune with, the more universal and transcendental our
own thinking and awareness will tend to be. So let us not be in a hurry
to be exclusive and conditioned when we need to learn to be inclusive and less
conditioned. If we cannot suspend the brain entirely, we cannot achieve
awareness beyond the brain, but that does not mean we stay in our native tongue
and conceptual frameworks. Suspension is not destruction. If we
have our brain surgically removed, as with a lobotomy, that is hardly a liberation
of consciousness as such, but simply a debilitation or deliberate dysfunctionality. So
lets have less talk about rejection and destruction, but rather look at silencing
our physical cognition and rising into voluntary states of free awareness beyond
our conditioning, but keeping the brain and its education in a good, comprehensive
and universal condition with multilingual and multicultural skills.
"What is the quality of the mind that is no longer
held in the matrix of experience?" This is a valid and important question that
we each need to experiment with directly. It is not a merely intellectual
question. The active brain is the cognitive matrix in question and therefore
cannot answer it. If the brain actively tries to answer the question of
what happens when its activity is suspended and transcended, the answer will
be a superficial and clever concoction without validity. Indeed, any supposedly
higher state or method of "meditation" that merely reinforces brain-conditioning
and identification with a particular culture, whether one's native culture or
one that one has converted to, is obviously immature and self-deceptive. The
only valid response to Krishnamurti's challenge is to undertake one's own experiencing
of awareness beyond cogitive activity of the brain and imagination activity of
the emotional mind as well. In Rajayoga this is called, Nirvikalpa
Samadhi.
K: Because truth is not
something you experience, truth is not something towards which
you gradually progress; you don't come to it through infinite
days of practice, sacrifice, control, discipline.
Comment: This is an assertion
that did not begin on Earth with Krishnamurti, but with the
advent of Zen Buddhism in Ancient China where a debate took
place between the advocates of Gradual Enlightenment through
personal disciplines and sitting in meditation and the advocates
of Sudden Enlightenment, which is Zen beginning with Bodhidharma
and which reached its fullest formulation with the expositions
of the Sixth Patriarch, Hui Neng. In one famous Koan/Kung
An, Hui Neng's successor, Haui Jang explained to his successor,
Ma Tsu, that trying to achieve enlightenment gradually through
sitting in meditation was like trying to polish a tile to make
a mirror. Later in his life, Krishnamurti heard this
Koan and liked it because it supported what he was always saying
about the futility of gradual awakening of awareness through
disciplines and practices. But by acknowledging that
Koan he was also trying to discover that his idea on meditation
and discipline is not a World First and that the traditions
of Chinese Buddhism have been working on the issue of "Sudden-versus-Gradual" for
long ages. In Japanese Zen, it is recommended that we
sit still in Zazen, but not to "gain
Enlightenment" but as an expression of Enlightenment. This
is a rather clever ruse for cultivating the gradual discipline
approach in the name of "Sudden Awakening".
Chogyam Trungpa was
aware of the teachings of Chinese Buddhism and even more importantly of his own
deep tradition of Mahamudra stemming from the Indian Buddhist Siddha, Tilopa. In
Tilopa's verses on Mahamudra, "The Great Position", we hear:
-
-
The practice of Mantra and
Paramita,
-
Instruction in the Sutras
and Precepts,
-
And teaching from the Schools
and Scriptures
-
will not bring Realization
of Innate Truth,
-
For if the mind when filled
with some desire
-
Should seek a goal, it only
hides the Light.
-
- Whoever clings to mind sees not
- The truth of what's beyond the mind.
- Whoever strives to practice Dharma
- Finds not the truth of Beyond-practice.
- To know what is Beyond both mind and
practice,
- One should cut cleanly through the
root of mind
- And stare naked. One should
thus break away
- From all distinctions and remain at
ease.
Tilopa
was teaching the Great Position (of natural awareness)
beyond disciplinary practices of traditional meditation
hundreds of years before the arising of Krishnamurti. Krishnamurti
therefore begins to read like a commentary on Tibetan Mahamudra
and Chinese Zen. Take away the cultural veneer of
Buddhism as such and the issues and principles are revealed
as the same, which is what all this is really all about. So
Krishnamurti's clash with Trungpa is a superficial misunderstanding
for the most part. Trungpa is not against the fundamental
principles of Mahamudra or Krishnamurti's inadvertent commentary
on Mahamudra because those principles are part of his own
tradition and yogic praxis, part of his own realization
over two lifetimes in Tibetan bodies.
So, whether in terms of Krishnamurti or Mahamudra,
what is the truth of the assertion, "Truth is not something you experience?" The
implication is that of Truth-Awareness as Meta-experiencing beyond lower order
cognition and experiencing in body and mind. There is still a Transcendental
Someone there who is one and the same by nature with both Truth and Awareness. Who
indeed are the teachings of Mahamudra and Krishnamurti really for? Who benefits
from taking to these recommended transcendental attitudes, positions and policies
about effort and non-effort, gradual and sudden? The paradox of suddenly relaxing
into total effortless awareness is that it is the most intense effort possible. It
is an effort so subtle, so spiritual, so transcendental, that outwardly it appears
as a complete cessation of effort or experiencing in any ordinary cognitive,
emotional or intellectual sense of effort-making or going through an experience. This
transcendental approach is what the Ancient Taoists of China called Wei
Wu Wei, "Doing-Without-Doing", which shows how well prepared for
the marriage of Mahayana Buddhism and Taoism China was, for the symbiosis or
synergy that became Zen.
K: What you have then is
'personal experience', and when there is 'personal experience'
there is the division between the 'me', the person, and the
thing that you experience, and though you may try to identify
yourself with that experience, with that thing, there is still
division.
Comment: Transcendental
non-duality beyond dualistic causal division of "personal experience" of
a dualistic reincarnating ego, a "me", is the sudden emergence
of Superconsciousness in and as the Atman, the Spirit beyond
duality and causality of karmic efforts and results. This
ecstatically intense state is on the Divine plane of existence
beyond the causal, subtle and physical planes of existence. However,
if the body and brain are pure and silent, they can like a
mirror reflect this lofty state of nondual Awareness and Bliss,
as when one is totally relaxed and clear in a beautiful, natural
place. Hence Tilopa said to his disciple, Naropa in the
Song of Mahamudra:
-
- Meditate in woods and mountains.
- If without effort you remain
- Loosely in the "natural state,"
-
Soon the Great Position
you will win
-
And attain the Non-attainment.
Krishnamurti's statements
against the personal pseudo-spiritual efforts and experiences
of the everyday social self or "me" are not in fact separate
from Chogyam Trungpa's warnings to his students in America
about Spiritual Materialism of the Ego. He
also pointed out very deeply in one of his lectures that his
students should try to see the utter hopelessness of
their mediocre ordinary attempts to achieve a superior state
through the spiritual ambition and hopefulness of their usual
cognitive and psychological self. So, again, with or
without Buddhism or "tradition", the issues and principles
shared by Krishnamurti and Trungpa are remarkably the same. If
we understand Krishnamurti, Tibetan
Mahamudra, Chinese Zen and Taosim, and Hindu Rajayoga and Vedanta,
as well as the instructions given by Juan Matus to Carlos Castaneda
on "Stopping the World" through cessation of one's internal
dialogue, we will have to see that all these instructions are
all like signposts pointing into the same Fundamental Place
of Transcendental Awareness in Our Own Being Beyond, which
is for us to discover directly in the light of the issues and
principles shared across all those teachings. Without
clinging to any particular signpost, we look into the vector
where they are all pointing. We thus go beyond them all
without disregarding their indispensable pointing-out function. We
do not "choose" one or another of those teachings nor become
an emotionally belonging "adherent" or social show-off "representative". Like
Tilopa or Krishnamurti, we wander off away from the common
herd of social seekers and directly unfold The Real Thing,
walking, as it were, on the Path of the Void in the Great Unknown
where Cosmic Nondual Being, Superconsciousness and Innate Bliss
unfold freely and get reflected in soul, mind and body. When
we do that basic and direct Ultimate Good for Ourself, We are
thankful toward all Great Teachers on Earth and in the Universe
who pointed it out in a variety of interesting and useful ways.
K: Seeing all this, how
organized religions have really destroyed truth, giving human
beings some absurd myth to make them behave, if one can put
all that aside, what place has meditation in all this?
Comment: What sort of "truth" is "destroyed
by organized religions"? Religions are no doubt filled with
the projected ignorance of stupid, emotional and neurotic human
beings conditioned in various cultures. How can a prejudiced
mind see God or attain to Cosmic Consciousness? Krishnamurti
tells us the fact of ignorant prejudice, of erroneous belief,
but he does not tell us the unknown cosmic facts that pertain
to the truth of life, consciousness and evolution on various
planes of Existence. If we set aside our prejudice, our
belief-system, our assumptions about God or Non-God, about
what is or is not the Ultimate Level of Being, we will be in
a state of open-minded meditation where Great Truth can be
revealed, both through one's own direct experiencing and through
listening deeply and carefully to the reports of advanced honest
other experiencers. Identification with a culture and
its unquestioned dogmas, its beliefs and imagery, its particular
heros, gods and demons, its own limited language, its terms
and concepts, no doubt disallows any truth or cosmic facts
that are not within that particular culture with its insular
religion and philosophy. At the same time, that same
culture and in particular its deepest esoteric tradition, will
contain special perceptions and insights that may be very hard
if not impossible to find elsewhere. So, someone with
Trungpa's spiritual background, however limited by certain
prejudices stemming from exclusive mental and personal identification
with Tibet and its brand of Buddhism, can contribute certain
important elements to people outside of Tibet and Buddhism
if he wants to take the trouble to learn a more global language,
such as English, and learn to think in terms of the more global
and Western perspective. So Tibetan Buddhism, however
bound to tradition, may contribute to the quality of meditation
of an individual with a universal and cosmic perspective. It
would only be a constriction or distortion of meditation if
the individual becomes emotionally identified with Tibetan
Buddhism and excludes all other teachings and perspectives
from yet other traditions that may also have important elements
to contribute.
K: What place has a guide,
a guru, a saviour, a priest?
Comment: What place has
a Krishnamurti, whether coming from
a particular culture to his own culture or to people of another
culture? Various teachers and advanced people can be helpful
influences, even good trainers, coaches or guides, in whatever
they have become expert and personally developed in. Numberless
are the areas and dimensions where a teacher or guide can indeed
be helpful. If we want to attain a personal state akin
to a Krishnamurti, we read and listen and try to interact with
someone like Krishanmurti. If we want the attainment
of whatever Chogyam Trungpa has going for him, then listening
to him and interacting with him can help one get into a similar
state of one's personal evolution in the total universe. People
listen a lot to someone who has gotten into a state that is
hard to get into. Trungpa talks about "basic goodness" in
his Shambhala teaching, so we do not read and listen to Krishnamurti
to connect with our potential for "basic goodness". On
the other hand, Krishnamurti talks about "choiceless awareness",
so we do not read and listen to Trungpa to connect with our
potential for "choiceless awareness". If we are going
to meditate outdoors in nature, Krishnamurti wants a meditation
with awareness of nondualistic beauty, whereas Trungpa wants
us to be more aware of drala, which
is the subtle magical essence hidden within and around everything
in nature. Actually, we need both kinds of awareness
and other aspects as well that are not mentioned much by either
Krishnamurti or Trungpa. So, the place of any particular
guide, guru, saviour or priest is usually limited but useful
in some way. If we will only pay attention to an absolutely
unlimited being, we may find that it is virtually impossible
to encounter such a being for many lifetimes until one has
qualified oneself to meet such a being and benefit from the
teaching, guidance and energetic power of such a being. How
well we learn from limited sources will have a lot to say with
how well we will eventually learn from an unlimited source,
in so far as there is any such thing as an absolutely unlimited
source. And if Krishnamurti tells us to sweep away all
teachers and guides, are we not then clinging exclusively to
him, to Krishnamurti, as our teacher and guide? This dilemma
needs resolving again and again when dealing with an influencer
such as himself. And are all human beings on the same
level of potential that they all share an equal need or non-need
for the function of a guide, guru, saviour or priest? Some
people try to function as their own lawyer, but that is not
always advisable. The same is true with certain medical
problems where perhaps one needs a surgical operation one cannot
perform on one's own body even if one is oneself an expert
surgeon.
K: Recently I saw somebody
from India preaching Transcendental Meditation; you attend
his class and practice every day and the idea is you will have
greater energy and ultimately reach some kind of transcendental
experience. It is really - I can't put it too strongly
- it is really a great calamity when such things happen to
people.
Comment: Transcendental
Meditation has both its enclosing limitations, its assumptions
and stupid superficialities, but also its particular benefits
and opening up of an inner channel for higher experiencing
and awareness. To either reject TM or cling to it exclusively
is a tremendous misunderstanding of all the issues in and around
human consciousness and higher spiritual consciousness or heightened
intelligent awareness. That there are thousands of ignorant
people doing TM who cannot understand the ideas on all this
by someone like Krishnamurti simply means they are still immature
and will only make slow progress in their personal evolution. By
the same token, there have remained thousands of people who
cling dogmatically to Krishnamurti's particular assertions
about effortless meditative awareness and who try to avoid
self-reform and self-improvement, who are in a state of unevolved
personal stagnation as Krishnamurti adherents. They imagine
they are transcendentally enlightened from adhering to Krishnamurti's
lectures and personal interviews. If they could learn
to do both TM and Krishnamurti Outdoor Sensitivity Meditation,
they might learn what the Tibetans have known for hundreds
of years: that the Path of Means (active self-realization yogas)
and the Path of Liberation (Mahamudra, Zen or Krishnamurti
Awareness) are not a contradiction or either/or proposition,
but two sides of the same coin of human development where on
the one side the emphasis is on the quality and intensity of
Prana, Life-energy, and on the other side the emphasis is on
the quality and vastness of Chitta, Conscious Awareness. The
quality of mantric breathing effects our Life-energy; the quality
of our inner silence effects our Conscious Awareness. Both
have a combined effect on our Being. A Tibetan Yogi is
more likely to understand this better than either a Hindu mantric
breathing expert or a Krishnamurti choiceless awareness adherent. So
an even bigger calamity than someone clinging exclusively to
TM would be someone clinging to Krishnamurti and unable to
appreciate Tibetan perspectives on improving both Prana and
Mind as a balanced approach.
K: When they come from India,
from China or Japan to teach people meditation, they are doing
propaganda.
Comment: There is a vast
difference between religious or philosophical beliefs and the
techniques of Yoga and Meditation. The principles of
Yoga and Meditation are fundamentally neither for nor against
the cultural containers that have been carrying them for hundreds
and even thousands of years. To put all this on the same
level is itself an ignorant and irresponsible statement, just
as it is ignorant and irresponsible for any expert on Yoga
or Meditation coming from a foreign culture to demand exclusive
identification and involvement with that particular culture. Yogis
and Meditation Masters from the East are not necessarily doing
propaganda in the West, and even when they are, that may not
be all they are doing if one can
appreciate it. A Tibetan Siddhayogi with an advanced
development based on the balance we were speaking of above
in the previous comment may have a lot more to contribute to
our development than a Krishnamurti even if he is more caught-up
in tradition than Krishnamurti. If the tradition has
more going it for it intrinsically than some sort of anti-tradition,
then we better learn to be traditional where we need to be
traditional, at least for awhile, and yet remain non-traditional
where we need to be non-traditional. Do all dimensions
of our existence have the same requirement about tradition
and non-tradition, about specific expertise and general perspective?
K: And is meditation a thing
that you practice daily, which means conforming to a pattern,
imitating, suppressing?
Comment: Again, this is
pitting the Path of Liberation against the
Path of Means, which is an unbalanced approach. What
pattern of living are Krishnamurti adherents conforming to
in their avoidance of deliberate, systematic yoga or techniques
of self-reform and self-development? In their supposedly unpatterned
style of living do we find them becoming Immortal Divine Adepts?
Not at all. Most of the ones I have encountered over
the years are rather flat, boring and dogmatic individuals
who are unwilling to properly discuss the issues of things
like meditation except along the lines of Krishnamurti's outdoor
hiking and sitting around trying to be sensitive and aware
without effort while having to avoid understanding the cosmological
issues surrounding human evolution in the total universe. In
getting rid of Theosophy, Krishnamurti also got rid of the
issues Theosophy was rightly trying to address, even if Theosophy
was getting some of it wrong and creating some rather silly
illusions along the way. Also, if we are injecting a
mantra into our breathing with spinal circulation visualization,
such as in Taoist Immortality Yoga, Agastya Siddhayoga of South
India or the Kriya Yoga transmitted by Herakhan Baba Gorakhnath
to Lahiri Mahasay in North India, we are not necessarily "imitating" anybody
nor are we "suppressing" something. In fact we may be
actually releasing something, which
is our Life-energy, from its usually constrictions and limitations. This
release is called Pranothana, release-of-life-energy!
This leads to the heightening of quantum energy in the atomic
structure of the cells of the human body, which is called "raising
the level of Kundalini". So both Prana and Kundalini
become less "suppressed". So,
what "suppression" is Krishnamurti worried about? Is he afraid
we might suppress one or another of our bad habits and fail
to indulge it? Is he afraid we will give-up something bad for
our body, such as smoking, coffee or meat? Is he afraid we
will "suppress" our anger and violence or our acts of nasty
remarks that needlessly hurt other people? What kind of "unsuppressed" living
does he recommend as optimum for developing higher states of
intelligent awareness? Perhaps beyond both suppression and
non-suppression is something we each need to deeply discover
as our True Will or what Mexican Sorcery calls Intent. What
and when in our personal habit-nature to suppress or release
is a very deep art and science of Life-Mastery that cannot
and should not be approached rigidly, dogmatically, but indeed
with extensive awareness, understanding and self-knowledge
as to what our life in our body is really about and what is
possible beyond our usual way of going about our daily habits
and routines. Taking up better habits to replace more
impure and self-harming habits can save our life and our future
even at risk of a little "suppression". So, what is rigid
and sterile suppression in an immature ascetic might be a deeply
flexible yoga of self-liberation in a mature man or woman of
the Path of Tantra.
K: You know what is implied
in conformity. Can such conformity to any pattern, it
doesn't matter what it is, ever lead to truth? Obviously not.
Comment: He wants us to
get to what he calls "truth", whatever he thinks "truth" is,
but if our idea is to get to heightened levels of energy in
our body and mind and to expand our consciousness beyond its
usual limitations into heightened states of ecstatic awareness
such as he himself describes for himself throughout his cheerful
outdoor meditative life, then we are attempting to go beyond
mere "truth" to a higher level of being and functioning, which
will reveal vast and cosmic vistas beyond becoming merely more
universal and Western in the Post-modern philosophy that is
sceptical against all religions and metaphysics. Meta-Truth
in Superconsciousness of the Spirit is way beyond arriving
at truth in consciousness operating in the intellect and the
material brain. Krishnamurti helps us get to the Krishnamurti
level of truth, which does take us beyond religious prejudice
and immature clinging to our cultural conditioning, but it
is not yet developmental truth of the Spirit nor the full art
and science of the yogic transformation of body, mind and causal
ego, which are called in Buddhism, the Nirmanakaya,
Sambhogakaya and Dharmakaya of
Buddhahood, which is also the Triple Transformation that Sri
Aurobindo so beautifully elucidates in his writings on Integral
Yoga. So it is just not true that all this
automatically implies dogmatic conformity to a rigid formulation
that negates important truth. But if we cling to
Buddhism or Aurobindo exclusively
in the manner of belonging to a cult or tradition, we may never
get at the full cosmic and evolutionary Triple Transformation
that we so deeply and urgently need.
K: Then, if you actually
see, not just theoretically, but actually see the falseness
of practicing a system, however absurd, however noble, that
it has no meaning, what is meditation?
Comment: I have already
answered this. It is then that meditation which is called
Mahamudra by Tilopa and the insights which are contained in
the Path of Liberation. But there is still a helpful,
supportive and extensive meaning to
the practice of the right system or Tantra. The
actual level of understanding and development of the individual
practitioner or non-practitioner is also going to be decisive
in what is going to happen. The right emphasis of systematic
practice or spontaneous non-practice will vary from level to
level of human beings. According to the Sufis, Gurdjieff
and others, there are fundamentally seven levels
of human being evolving on the Earth and yet other planets
everywhere out there. Krishnamurti seems to want to put
everybody on the same level with the same evolutionary requirement
as to what is the next big step for any individual. This
cannot work. No individual on any level should sacrifice
his or her potential to either a rigid system on the one hand
or a sloppy and stagnating do-nothing approach on the other
hand. There are the right times and seasons of practice
and non-practice in the human development. Timing is
the issue. And who authoritatively decides what is "absurd" or "noble" for
whom?
K: What, first of all is
traditional meditation? - whether it be Christian, Hindu, Buddhist,
Tibetan or Zen, you know all the varieties of meditation and
their schools. For me, all that is not meditation at
all. Then what is meditation? Perhaps we could discuss
that?
Chogyam Trungpa: Yes, I
think so.
Comment: Krishnamurti has
just said to Trungpa that Trungpa is a false and absurd being,
a Tibetan going about teaching Tibetan Meditation, but that
if Trungpa will agree totally with Krishnamurti to stop being
a Tibetan and stop teaching Tibetan Vajrayana Tantra and Meditation
then Krishnamurti is willing to discuss his ideas on Meditation
and get Trungpa up-to-speed about it all. So, when Trumgpa
said, "Yes, I think so," can we say that he was agreeing to
reform his consciousness in accordance with Krishnamurti's
aggressive and unsympathetic requirements? Not at all. He
was simply willing to hang-in there with Krishnamurti and help
Krishnamurti extend his perspective on what Meditation is really
all about, whether one is a Tibetan or a non-traditional person
who adheres to no particular school or tradition. Weathering
Krishnamurti's dogmatic barrage could not have been easy for
our Tibetan Meditation Master, but he stayed cool and must
have felt some strange fascination with the conscious presence
of someone like Krishnamurti, which was a kind of person he
had never before encountered. So, there is going to emerge
not just the Krishnamurti perspective on Tibetan Meditators,
but the Tibetan Meditator perspective on Krishnamurti. The
Trungpa perspective is immediately courteous, non-combative
and non-committal, just deeply watching whatever is going to
unfold. So, he is basically saying to Krishnamurti without
words, "Go ahead, you first, and make all the assertions you
feel you need to make about all this so that you become more
focussed about what you believe you are trying to accomplish
with me. Maybe at some point you will actually hear what
I might want to say, but we have not arrived at that point
yet, so there is not yet anything for me to expound or explain
to you. As things stand right now, you consider me to
be what you consider is a typical piece-of-shit doing an Eastern
propaganda thing in the West that has nothing to do with Meditation. So
what I am to say to you whether I stay here with you or just
walk out now before you become even more insulting and discourteous?
So, I will be the polite, courteous person here and you can
be the self-assumed superior authority ego-trip. We will
let those who are perceptive in the audience decide which way
of being is most admirable for their purposes. All this
is basically beyond words and assertions anyway. "
K: Why should one make meditation
into a problem? We human beings have enough problems, both
physically and psychologically, why add yet another one with
meditation?
Comment: If a physically
heavy and impure body and brain attempt meditation, it is not
going to go very well. There will be inner darkness,
a lack of inner subtle experiencing, coupled with tension,
discomfort and restlessness. If the mind is psychologically
disturbed, upset, worried, obsessed with sexual frustration
or ambition for money, fame and secular power, then the period
spent for meditation will be internally wasted on worrying,
planning and rehearsing the personal future of the body. An
impure, neurotic mind cannot have depth, quietude and clarity
necessary for meditation, even if the body is being kept in
an unhealthy and tense rigidity hoping for some miracle to
take place. So there is no doubt that heavy, dull, impure,
tense and neurotic people should first do something serious
about their physical and mental condition before attempting
meditation. If silly attempts are made to "meditate" when
one is in no suitable condition for it, it will just add another
problem to a life already filled with problems indeed.
K: And is meditation a way
of escaping from one's problems,
an avoiding of what actually is, and therefore no meditation
at all?
Comment: Again, if the body
and mind are heavy, impure, restless and neurotic, then attempts
at systematic meditation will be extremely immature, fanciful
and escapist, which is on the same level as taking drugs. In
fact, impure people will sometimes try to combine drugs with
forms of meditation to try and get a miraculous breakthrough. Unfortunately,
whatever we get with drugs and meditations in an impure state,
we cannot keep. What goes up artificially and forcibly
must come down. The more often this is done, the less "up" things
go in the bodily energy with eventual need for recuperation
and repair from such adventures. However, things experienced
in this way can give a glimpse of spiritual possibilities that
might encourage self-reform, yoga and meditation. It
all depends on the inner maturity of a person who is presently
caught up in physical and mental impurities and imbalances
as to whether a temporary "escapist" episode is put into its
proper perspective with an awakening of correct self-assessment
of one's predicament and possibilities. So, when Krishnamurti
sometimes says about the immature trying meditation systems,
repeating mantras and so on, that they "might as well take
a drug, it is much quicker," he is quite right. But if
we are talking about a mature human being with a purified body
and mind, then different principles apply as to what is useful
to the inner progress through yoga and meditation.
K: Or is meditation the
understanding of the problem of living? Not avoiding but understanding
daily living with all its problems.
Comment: Any kind of self-development
process or meditation undertaken without the right foundation
must fail to attain the desired higher and subtler spiritual
development or access to higher planes of existence, so correct
self-assessment of one's actual state, physically and mentally,
is indispensable. We can shift into clarity about the
truth of humanity, about the state of the world, and about
one's own polluted body and disturbed mind, which mind is confused
about evolution and the possibilities for future well-being
in a better circumstance. This basic awakening of clarity,
of sanity, is foundational meditation of a truly human being. If
we do not face the real nature of our problems, our confusion,
our learning disabilities, then we cannot do anything valid
about all that, we cannot correct the problems or improve our
possibilities of personal and spiritual evolution or transformation. This
basic decision to shift into clarity beyond our usual confusions,
escapes and merely keeping busy will enable us to learn how
to learn. We will see that we can stop stagnating and
degenerating. We will stop going the way of the common
herd, the masses of sheep being led over the cliff by their
political leaders.
K: If that is not understood,
if that is not put in order, I can go sit in a corner and follow
somebody who teaches me transcendental or some nonsensical
meditation and it will have no meaning at all.
Comment: It is true that
a lot of false gurus have come over from the East and sell
courses on meditation to impure, unqualified and unworthy escapist
Westerners. Swami Muktaanda used to give Kundalini Shaktipat "intensives" indiscriminately
to anyone who would pay money for it and built a silly cult
empire for himself in America and India. Eventually he
was punished for this with a terrible stroke that quite debilitated
him. So, we cannot argue with Krishnamurti's pointing
out of the silly wretchedness of all this exploitation of hopeful
but immature Western seekers and escapists on the part of cunning,
predatory pseudo-gurus from India, Tibet, China, Japan and
the countries of Islamic Sufism, not to mention all the Native
American and other tribalistic and shamanic trips offered to
titilate the occultist miracle mongers and escapists who would
go looking for Don Juan in Mexico or hook up with some mushroom
eating maniacal witch-doctors. So, he is in fact probing
Trungpa as to Trungpa's intentions in America and the West. He
is asking Trungpa, quite severely, "Are you here in the West
to really help out or are you just another expoliter after
occult fame, money and sexual opportunities?" Of course, Krishnamurti
is assuming all too much that Trungpa is automatically dishonourable
and will not face what this is really all about.
K: So what is it to you
to meditate, what does it mean? I hope I have not made it too
difficult for you to answer because I deny all that kind of
meditation, the practice of constantly repeating a word, as
they do in India, in Tibet, as they do all over the world,
Ave Maria or some other words, repeat, repeat, repeat, it means
- nothing. You make the mind more absurd and grotesque
than it is.
Comment: He is aware that
he is prejudging and attacking Trungpa so heavily that it is
virtually impossible for Trungpa to say anything or get in
a word edgewise, so he says, "I hope I have not made it too
difficult for you to answer. . . " The fact
that Trungpa has not really said anything yet is weighing heavily
here.
One can affect one's state of mind, life-energy
and even the atomic structure of the body with the right mantras or intoning
of cosmic sounds, especially if only mentally repeated with one's breath and
life-energy, one's prana. That is why it is important to learn Cosmic Language,
as with Weilgart's AUI, Language of Space. There is a universal spiritual
science that goes beyond the mere uttering of words that reinforce one's religious
conditioning in a particular culture. This subject is however deeper than
either Krishnamurti or any culture-bound teacher from the East wants to go. Some
Secret Yogis in the Himalaya have occasionally gone beyond Sanskrit as such and
explored the true Twilight Language or "Speech of the Gods", which borders on
Cosmic Language and Mantra. When Krishnamurti says, "You might as well
repeat Coca Cola," he is really speaking of what happens
to immature Western minds that try to take up a mantra or zikr from
an Eastern religion. But even there he is not totally correct, for any
statement repeated with higher intention can have an uplifting affect on the
personal system. It all depends on who is doing it with what intention. That
it is generally the hopeful efforts of a silly, immature consciousness is however
all too often the case. The culture-bound gurus are of course not helping
much either. To equate culture-bound language conditioning of the semantic
net in a prejudicial brain with the "Sacred" is obviously the ignorance of a
mechanical cognitive system. "My language is holier than yours (or theirs)," is
clearly bad thinking about all this. But we can hardly believe that Chogyam
Trungpa is going to answer by saying, "Nonsense! You better start repeating OM
Mani Padme HUM or you will never get up to my advanced level of
being. "
K: So if we may, together,
inquire into this question. Is it because there is a
long established tradition that you must meditate? When I was
a small boy I vaguely remember that being a Brahmin we went
through a certain ceremony, we were told to sit quietly, close
our eyes, meditate, think about something or other - the whole
thing was set going.
Comment: He is saying to
Trungpa, "I started out in the East, just like you. They
tried to condition me to culture-bound ritual and meditation. But
I got free of all that. Are you still trapped in the
culture-bound childhood training you were given by Tibetan
religious elders? Are you just another pseudo-advanced self-assumed
superior personality operating on the West as a culture-bound
biological robot?" So there is real heat of a certain level
of cognitive truth being applied to Trungpa about all this. Does
Trungpa have an awakened cosmic intelligence beyond prejudicial
religious conviction? However vehemently ruthless, insulting
and discourteous Krishnamurti is behaving about all this, he
does have a real point, a real question here that deserves
a real answer. He is going for Trungpa's jugular without
beating around the bush.
K: So, if we could together
examine and share what is meditation, what the implications
of it are, why one should meditate at all. Because if
you make meditation into another problem, for God's sake avoid
it!
Comment: Who is immature
and who is mature? Who is creating a problem with attempts
at meditation and who is solving a problem with genuine meditation?
Again, this issue is not all on one level. What is a
ridiculous self-deception for the average person trying to "meditate" could
be a profound self-realization for a certain level of understanding
and spiritual focus within Meditation and Samadhi as in Rajayoga.
K: So could we go together
into this? Seeing the traditional approaches, and seeing their
absurdity. Because unless the human being becomes a light
to himself, nothing matters: if you depend on somebody else
then you are in a state of perpetual anxiety. So could
we examine this traditionally first. Why should one meditate?
Comment: He is really trying
to get Trungpa to say something now, to respond to the challenge. If
we read the books of Castaneda and his dependency on the Nagual
Juan Matus for learning Mexican Seership, he was obviously
going through a lot of personal anxiety for years and years,
yet without the Nagual's rigorous instructing and handling
it is doubtful that Castaneda would have attained to the powerful
subtle developments that unfolded within his consciousness. There
are some things worse than dependency on a Teacher or Guide. One
of those things is the mediocre false independence of imagining
one is solving one's evolutionary predicament without the higher
knowledge and energy that a true teacher possesses and can
transmit. If one is just stubbornly clinging to a lot
of bad habits and ordinary routines in a nasty mood of pompous
opinions asserting on the basis of some occult or spiritual
books one has read, one is not a true thinker or a genuinely
free will or spirit. A real evolutionary Guide or Sadguru
is not some half-baked exploiter from the East or from some
tribe who is trying to dominate large groups of followers for
his own vainglory and pleasure. The actual motives and
abilities of both Teacher and Student are the critical issues
here, not whether just anybody should try to follow just anybody
who seems impressive. As a great Sufi has pointed out,
the existence of charlatans is no argument against the real
adept. That most oysters are empty and do not contain
pearls does not mean that we should throw away all are freshly
collected oysters. Instead, we should open them all until
we find the one with a big pearl inside it. This requires
thorough persistence, investigation and the right motive in
our evolutionary quest. Cheap and easy one-sided answers
are never good enough in life in any dimension. Who does
and does not need a Guide, Instruction or Energization-from-beyond
for what is not an issue that is
going to go away just because Krishnamurti is totally against
the issue, just as it is not necessarily going to be resolved
satisfactorily through an emotional identification with Tibetan
Buddhism and Chogyam Trungpa or any other magnetic and reasonably
advanced individual, such as Idries Shah of the Sufis or Swami
Rama of the Himalayan Nath Siddha sampraday or
tradition. There may be solid, valid reasons to get engaged
with a traditional development technique or one or another
of these teaching masters of their traditions, so we cannot
just throw it all out. Let us collect the pearls from
those oysters that actually do in fact possess pearls. So
what pearl might Chogyam Trungpa possess in response to Krishnamurti's
onslaught?
CT: Don't you think meditation
happens as part of the living situation of a man?
Comment: There is the pearl!
There is something fundamental, something basic within any
human being, which is a desire to be unconfused, to really
know what to do, to somehow get things cleared up so things
can turn out better, regardless of how vague, confused, prejudiced
or otherwise debilitated the human being may be. It does
not matter what culture one is, there is this very basic need
within the human spirit, the inner man, the inner woman. To
recognize this and work with it is going to be very important
for any teacher and any student. Trungpa does not deny
that there is this very fundamental situation which is the
seed-potential for meditation and enlightened higher awareness.
Right there he understands Krishnamurti's concern, but does
not agree that advanced meditators from Tibet cannot help out
if they will carefully connect in a meaningful, intelligent
way with the disturbed Westerner who is in a very materialistic
and virtually hopeless state. So there is this very basic
element of something like a preliminary meditation. If
a human being is an actual human being, then there is the essential
human spirit within, and that reincarnational soul is essentially
made of the substance or essence of intelligent meditation,
however weak, asleep and hypnotized by the world it may presently
be.
K: Sir, a human being has
innumerable problems. He must solve those first, mustn't
he? He must bring order in the house in which he lives, the
house that is the 'me' - my thoughts, my feelings, my anxieties,
my guilt, my sorrow - I must bring order there. Without
that order how can I proceed further?
Comment: Krishnamurti did
not hear what Trungpa was saying, so he speaks blindly at cross-
purposes, somewhat uselessly. However, if we look carefully
at the basic inner position of the human soul or spirit, the
inner essence-of-intelligence, we see that there is this fundamental
meditative presence that indeed must awaken and put the whole
psychological self of the lower emotional dream body and the
whole physiological self of the brain, heart and body into
a purified, clear and orderly state of sanity and health. This
is a very basic situation. But all depends on what level
we are coming from. If we do not come from our innate
clarity, but from our neurotic psyche or our habitual brain
thinking and automatic self-defensive life-habits, then it
will be a confusion that is trying to bring order. If
there is no fundamental meditative awareness and intelligence
awake there, then action to improve will only be something
mistaken that creates further problems, further disorder. So
Trungpa quite intelligently and clearly says to Krishnamurti:
CT: The problem is that
if, while trying to solve the problem, you are looking for
order, then doesn't it seem to be looking for further chaos?
Comment: Again, from what
place within ourself are we looking for order, for things to
somehow get better? This a big issue that Trungpa is bringing
up here. Who or what is the order-maker? If it is the
false, neurotic ego of spiritual materialism,
further confusion will be found instead of order.
K: So I do not look for
order. I inquire into disorder and I want to know why
there is disorder, I do not want to find order, then I have
all the gurus and all the gang coming in! I don't want order,
I only want to find out why in one's life there is such chaos
and disorder. A human being must find out, not ask someone
else to tell him if there is disorder.
Comment: The First Noble
Truth of Gautama Buddha was, The Truth of Disorder. The
Second Noble Truth of Buddha was, The Truth of
the Causes of Disorder. Whether we understand
this basic human predicament from Buddha, Krishnamurti or Chogyam
Trungpa the Tibetan, it is a very basic, fundamental challenge
to awaken clarity about disorder, which is actual human suffering,
and the causes of disorder or actual states of mental and physical
discomfort, pain and suffering. Each of us must basically
shift into our awakened inner clarity and see the whole thing
directly for ourself. Buddha pointed this out thousands
of years before J. Krishnamurti. So, is it a matter
of being merely caught up in Krishnamurti's conclusions and
assertions about all this? If one conditions one's brain and
intellect to either Krishnamurti, Buddha or anyone else, there
will not be genuine direct clarity and perceptive awareness. So
Trungpa quite rightly points out:
CT: Well, you can't find
out intellectually.
Comment: A higher faculty
within the human spirit must awaken and find out what is really
going on. That higher faculty is called in Tibetan Buddhism, Bodhichitta,
Awakened Consciousness. In the West, it is sometimes
called "Intuition" as the faculty that is higher than mere
intellect with its efforts and opinions working in and through
the material human brain. The Sufi's call it Ruh,
the subtle organ of Spirit. Same
thing. In Indian Yoga Vedanta, it is called Prajna,
Wisdom, as the essential nature of the causal body, the Third
Attention, which in most human beings is in a deep sleep or
hypnotic stupor of believing in the ordinary world and its
limited conditionings. Ordinary intellect working in
the human brain is just spiritual darkness and endless confusion
covered up with false certainties and all sorts of illusions
created by prejudice.
K: Intellect is part of
the whole structure, you can't deny intellect.
Comment: Again, he is not
really listening to Trungpa adequately here. Trungpa
was pointing out a crucial spiritual truth about all this,
but Krishnamurti doesn't want to give him that, so he tries
to make an unnecessary correction to Trungpa's idea. However,
it is also true that the inner clarity will have to make use
of intellect to bring the situation to it and to carry out
the actions of bringing real order, real sanity and health,
which cannot originate from the level of intellect and brain
as such. So, again, Krishnamurti is speaking at cross
purposes because he insists on believing himself to be Trungpa's
teacher. This is so painfully obvious, I have to say,
but it does pain me to say it because of my great affection
for Krishnamurti and the usefulness of so many of his great
insights. His reaction to this issue of the intellect
is not at all to the point, so Trungpa rejoins with:
CT: But you can't use intellect
to solve intellectual problems.
Comment: Bravo! Krishnamurti
has to get with it! The intellect, which normally operates
through the impure, heavily conditioned human brain, only stirs
up more doubts, hesitations, contradictions and confusions
no matter what calculations, formulations and opinions it tries
to assert. The intellect is part of the problem! That
it is "part of the whole structure" is correct, but only in
the sense of also being an organ of further disorder. The
order it tries to bring always turns out to be a disorder. That
is why our anxious brain thinking and worrying about this or
that problem never solves it, but only gives us a headache
from the smoking and coffee-drinking we like to do when worried. That
whole biological robotic cognitive approach to our problems
has to stop! It will never bring the missing clarity and awareness
that can actually see what is really going on and initiate
the right response. That is why we often do better with
our problems by simply giving them a rest and taking a walk
outdoors to "clear our head" as it were. When we get
into a more relaxed and open state of being, when we are more
naturally meditative, an awakening of clarity can take place.
K: No, you can't solve these
problems at any level except totally.
Comment: That's better!
Now it is Krishnamurti who stands corrected by our Tibetan
Meditation Master. This confrontation has taken an unexpected
turn. One wonders how many Krishnamurti adherents gave
deep attention to what just happened here.
CT: Quite, yes.
Comment: Graciously, Trungpa
simply acknowledges that Krishnamurti has corrected himself
and getting back on a more promising track with possibilities
of a rich dialogue rather than the superior authority sorting
out the pitiful conditioned exploiter from Tibet.
K: That is, sir, to solve
the human problem of disorder, does that need meditation -
in the ordinary accepted sense of the word?
Comment: The "ordinary accepted
sense of the word," 'meditation' is shallow and trite. Trungpa
would never agree that he is trying to promote such a thing,
whether as a Tibetan Buddhist thing or something else. So,
he says,
CT: I wouldn't say in the
ordinary, conventional sense of meditation, but meditation
in the extraordinary sense.
Comment: Fantastic! Krishnamurti's
own pettiness about the subject of meditation is now fully
exposed and Trungpa knows this.
K: What do you mean by that,
if I may ask?
Comment: Trungpa is now
the teacher and Krishnamurti is tacitly admitting that the
ground has gone out from under him. Krishnamurti is losing
the debate at this point and Trungpa is gaining more and more
ground on the real issues in and around meditation.
CT: The extraordinary sense
of meditation is to see the disorder as part of the direction.
Comment: The way of the
essence of the human spirit, the inner man or woman, is to
get involved in the karmic worlds and levels of confusion,
disorder and suffering for greater awakenings, learnings and
provocation of higher developments. This deeply human
inner journey is the innate way, path or direction implied
by the whole adventure of birth and death repeatedly in bodies
and minds over and over again. It is an evolutionary
learning project that we must each learn to recognize and work
with in ourself when we awaken our higher intelligence, our Bodhichitta.
K: To see disorder.
Comment: Krishnamurti is
kicking up a fuss again. He wants to get rid of the idea
of "the direction", which he does not understand. He
wants to focus everything only on his particular speciality
of "seeing disorder".
CT: To see disorder as order,
if you like.
Comment: Profound insight. In
the greater order or path of consciousness through the Universe,
all episodes of disorder are anticipated and included as items
and elements of necessary learning. It is like a fuel
that is taken in and burned by the fire of awakening meditation,
which transmutes disorder into order. Krishnamurti needs
to come to grip with this contribution from Tibetan Buddhism. But
will he? Oh my, no! He thinks he has to refute it!
K: Ah, no, to see disorder.
Comment: Again, he wants
to bring it all back to his usual theme of "seeing disorder" as
if there is no deeper and vaster overriding issue in all this. Krishnamurti
is out of his depth and is desperately trying to get the kind
of angle where he can control the discussion. Yet again,
Trungpa has to try and help Krishnamurti wake up to the greater
issue, so he says:
CT: Well, if you see disorder
it becomes order.
Comment: Seeing, again,
utilizes disorder as fuel on the Path of Seeing, which transmutes
order into disorder. In the Mahamudra teaching within
the Tibetan tradition, this is called the Utilization
Exercise. Trungpa is well-versed in this
aspect of higher awareness over two lifetimes from his own
practice of Mahamudra. He is now showing anybody who
wants to see it, that Mahamudra takes what is best in Krishnamurti
and then takes it further, higher and deeper. Krishnamurti's
predicament at this point in the confrontation is rather weak
and dogmatic because he keeps refusing to take the next step
in understanding on the deep issue that has emerged through
Trungpa. I myself deeply practiced Mahamudra and Utilization
in my Tibetan life and I am eternally grateful to Tilopa and
the entire lineage for the great boost this gave to my progress
in meditation. My own experience therefore tells me that
Krishnamurti should listen more carefully to what Trungpa is
saying, but Krishnamurti wants to keep it all within his more
limited version of "seeing disorder" as a flat, one-dimensional,
one track sort of meditative awareness that does not know what
purpose the disorder is serving in spite of itself, so he says:
K: First I must see it.
Comment: Trungpa never said
that we are not to have clear seeing of disorder. What
he said, which Krishnamurti does not want to hear, is that
we must also clearly see what that clear seeing is actually
doing to disorder, how it is making use of disorder, transmuting
it into order, fuelling itself with it as "the direction",
the Inner Way of the Essence-of-being-human. Krishnamurti
is out of his league on the real issues here regardless of
how "Tibetan" Trungpa likes to be! Who but the Tibetans can
teach us the Utilization Exercise?
We obviously cannot learn it from Krishnamurti, though he helps
us get into position for it.
CT: See it clearly.
Comment: Trungpa is saying, "O. K. ,
let's fulfil your seeing-of-disorder trip. If you really see
disorder, will you not see what happens to the disorder when
you are seeing it if you are really fully seeing it?"
K: So that depends, then,
on how you observe disorder.
Comment: Krishnamurti is
getting closer, but cannot get through his internal barrier.
CT: Not trying to solve
it.
Comment: Intellect tries
to solve it, but real awareness transmutes it. Trungpa
is trying to keep the inner door open for Krishnamurti to walk
through, but Krishnamurti cannot get there, so he says:
K: Of course not. Because
if you try to solve it, you solve it according to a set pattern. . .
Comment: Now he is back
on his favourite theme of believing that Trungpa wants to impose
some sort of Tibetan Buddhist "set pattern" on to meditative
awareness and thus kill it. So Trungpa can only rejoin
with:
CT: A set pattern?
Comment: He sees that Krishnamurti
is hardcore on his theme and can't get off it. Trungpa
is up against a stonewall. He cannot fathom what 'a set
pattern' has to do with the way awareness transmutes disorder. He
was perhaps a little stunned at this point that he cannot get
a real dialogue with Krishnamurti on some of the deeper issues
and implications of meditative awareness.
K: . . . which
is the outcome of your disorder, the opposite of your disorder. If
you try to solve the disorder it is always according to a preconceived
idea of order. That is, the Christian order, Hindu order,
whatever order, socialist order, communist order. Whereas
if you observe entirely, what is disorder? Then there is no
duality in that.
CT: Yes, I see.
Comment: Trungpa is clear
that the best policy at this point is to just go along with
Krishnamurti's theme and be very clear as to what the theme
is about. He is being very gracious again. He realizes
that he is there in Krishnamurti's scene and wants to be helpful,
so he is now encouraging Krishanmurti to just be at his best
and we will all see what there is there to see.
K: How is one to observe
this total disorder, in which human beings live? The disorder
when you see the television, the commercials, the hectic violence,
the absurdities. Human existence is a total disorder
- killing, violence and at the same time talking about peace. So
we come to the question: what is observation of disorder?
Comment: There is all this
evil, violence and disorder in the stupid masses of humanity
and their leaders. That is obvious, but that is not all
happening because a tiny minority are trying out Eastern teachings
on meditation.
K: Do you see it from the
'me' as separate from the thing that is disorder?
CT: That is already disorder.
Comment: It is already established
that the everyday 'me' operating as intellect through the impure,
disturbed and noisy little material brain is an entity of disorder
when it attempts to evaluate the state of the external world
of humanity, the global problematique.
K: Isn't it! So do I look
at disorder with the eyes of my prejudices, my opinions, my
conclusions, my concepts, the propaganda of a thousand years
- which is the 'me'? Or do I look at disorder without the 'me'?
Is that possible? That is meditation.
Comment: Krishnamurti has
now regained a little ground and his hammering Trungpa again
about the mechanical, biological conditioning of the brain
as a Tibetan 'me'. He is asking how a Tibetan Buddhist
belief system can be actual Bodhichitta,
Awakened Consciousness. This is a valid point and deserves
a serious answer.
K: You follow, sir? Not
all that rubbish they talk about. To observe without
division, to observe without the 'me', who is the very essence
of the past, the 'me' that says, 'I should, should not, I must,
I must not. ' The 'me' that says, 'I must achieve, I must
gain God,' or whatever it is. So can there be an observation
without the 'me'? You see, if that question is put to an orthodox
meditator he will say, 'there can't' because the 'me' is there. So
I must get rid of the 'me'. To get rid of the 'me' I
must practice. ' Which means I am emphasizing the 'me'!
Through practice I hope to deny practice, through practice
I hope to eradicate the result of that practice, which is still
the 'me', so I am caught in a vicious circle.
Comment: This is a valid
point. If I believe in the Buddhist teaching of eradicating "ego" through
believing and practicing in accordance with the beliefs and
systematic theories of Buddhism, my very efforts to eradicate
the Buddhist theoretical "ego" through Buddhist meditation
practices will only strengthen the cognitive conditioning of
being a Buddhist 'me' intellectually within the brain.
K: So the traditional approach,
as one has observed in the world, emphasizes the 'me' in a
very subtle but strengthening way - the 'me' that is going
to sit next to God - which is an absurdity! The 'me' that is
going to experience Nirvana or Moksha or heaven, enlightenment
- it means nothing. So we see the orthodox approach is
really holding the human being in the prison of the past, giving
him importance through his personal experience. Really
it isn't a 'personal' experience. You can't personally
experience the vastness of the sea, it is there for you to
look, it isn't your sea.
Comment: An orthodox meditator
trying to meditate in conformity to a tradition is existentially
nothing but a social unit, a node of a collective unconscious. Such
a being does not have authentic individuality. This is
quite true. Such a social unit is a prisoner of its past,
its conditioning, so it is caught up in shallow curiosity,
restlessness and idle chatter, as Martin Heidegger has pointed
out in Being and Time. Professor
Aresteh brings out this same distinction in deeper Sufism between
the Social Self and the Cosmic Self
in his book, Rumi the Persian, where
he shows that the genuine Sufi is that Dervish who has transcended
his Islamic religious conditioning and attained to a Universal
Truth state. Juan Matus, the Mexican Seer, describes
the social self as "the Tonal" and
the spirit self as "the Nagual" in
Castaneda's book, Tales of Power. In
original Chinese Zen, this is learning to transcend the "Guest-position" of
the conditioned intellect and shift into the "Host-position" of
the illuminated essence-of-consciousness, which is the Dharmakaya of
Buddhahood. So no tradition as such owns this insight. How
could that be? At the same time, it is certainly yet again
not a "world first" with Krishnamurti. Any collective
unconscious is truly a vast and dark sea that owns its nodes,
its conditioned members who have no real individuality or awakened
causal essence of inner truth and therefore cannot own or truly
perceive that vast and dark sea. A tiny little wave of
spiritual darkness or mass hypnosis is not an individual having
a "personal experience".
K: If you put that aside
then the question arises: is it ever possible to see without
the 'me', to observe this total disorder of human beings, their
lives, the way they live, is it possible to observe it without
division? Because division implies conflict, like India and
Pakistan, like China and America and Russia, all that. Division
politically breeds chaos, division psychologically breeds endless
conflict, both inwardly and outwardly. Now to end this
conflict is to observe without the 'me'.
CT: I wouldn't even say
observe.
Comment: Trungpa is now
trying to fall back on his previous insight about the transmutational
quality of awakened awareness, but unfortunately he is himself
now avoiding the seeing of the fact of attempting to be meditatively
aware through a brain conditioned according to a tradition,
such as Tibetan Buddhism. He is not prepared to step
out of his conditioning at this point, which is rather sad
when we can see that his tradition understands things that
Krishnamurti does not understand, but cannot actually understand
Host-position of the Spirit Self. So now it is Krishnamurti
who is the teacher in this respect.
K: To observe 'what is'.
Comment: One cannot really
see what is going on if one is looking according to a culture,
a conditioning.
CT: Well, when you oberve
then you are judging.
Comment: Now Trungpa is
losing the debate in the area of Krishanmurti's real understanding
of something important. Krishnamurti means real, unconditioned
seeing, not observing in accord with a conditioned cognitive
perspective of a culture brain that judges in accordance with
its belief system. Now it is Trungpa who has a blind
spot and is just not getting it. So he speaks at cross-purposes
himself, obviously rattled suddenly by what is happening on
the issue of cognitive conditioning, the implication of being a
Tibetan as a social self, a 'me', a Tonal, a
mere Guest-position. He does not want to let go off an
identification with Tibet and his cultural mission to the West
on behalf of his people, so to speak. So he is putting
Mahamudra into subservience to the tradition that has carried
it. He is "chewing the glass rather than drinking the
wine", as a Sufi Master has put it.
K: No, that is not what
I mean. You can observe through criticism, through evaluation. That's
partial. To observe totally, in that there is no evaluation
at all.
Comment: Krishnamurti rightly
corrects Trungpa on Trungpa's erroneous conclusion that "when
you observe then you are judging. " Obviously, genuine
observation or awareness is not in accordance with intellect
and brain-conditioning with their prejudices and judgements,
their automatic beliefs and disbeliefs.
CT: A total observation. Then
there is no observer.
Comment: Now Trungpa wants
to bring everything back to the Buddhist belief in non-self,
that in truth awareness there is no Self, whether cosmic or
social. This relapse into Buddhist dogma is woefully
inadequate in the context that Krishnamurti has raised up. An
observer who has risen in Spirit to a higher and truer position
of unprejudiced observation is still a very subtle observer. Trungpa,
like all Buddhists is dogmatically blind to the subtleties
of selfhood on various levels of conscious being.
For every vehicle or body of consciousness in any dimension on any level of
existence there is always the experience of selfhood through memories and experiences
pertaining to the level or body in question. Theoretically there is no
upper limit to the subtlety of Self. What is a Host to a lower level
of Guest is a Guest to the next upper dimension of Host. Neither Krishnamurti
nor Trungpa understand this, which keeps their debate somewhat bogged-down
in scope.
K: Therefore what is meditation
then?
Comment: He wants Trungpa
to now admit that fully awakened consciousness or inner truth
or observational awareness is beyond intellect, brain and cultural
conditioning of a meditator identified with Buddhism, Hinduism,
Islam or any other religion, tradition, school or culture. But
Trungpa refuses to take such a dramatic step. He is too
heavily, personally invested in his Master Tibetan social adventure,
which is Maya. With all he
has going for him from his practice of Yoga and Mahamudra from
his previous life, this is a real shame. He could have
done more for Tibetan Buddhism through waking up beyond it
without losing essential principles of Yoga and Meditation,
just as Idries Shah would have done more for the Sufi Way by
waking up beyond it. And by this, I do not mean in the
manner of Pir Vilayat Khan, who includes other traditional
contributions as if they are mere subsets of the Sufi persuasion. But
to get back to our debate of Chogyam Trungpa Tibetan Buddhist
Meditation versus Krishnamurti Non-Traditional Meditation.
CT: That is meditation.
Comment: He means according
to the Buddhist dogma of "no observer". He imagines he
is now cleverly contradicting Krishnamurti and scoring one
for Buddhism and the gang back home.
K: That is meditation.
Comment: Neither one is
actually agreeing as what they are both seemingly affirming
about meditation. And even Krishnamurti, an unconscious
previous Buddhist, likes the idea that there is "no observer. " They
are both stuck at this point.
K: So, in observing disorder,
which is essentially meditation, in that observation there
is order, not the order which the intellect creates.
Comment: Oops! Why doesn't
Krishnamurti then draw the obvious previous conclusion Trungpa
had brought up that real awareness of disorder transmutes it
into order? But at least Krishnamurti is almost accidentally
getting there.
K: So meditation is not
a search for personal experience.
Comment: In real meditation
there are stupendous personal experiences! But that does not
mean looked-for experiences in accordance with a belief or
tradition. The projecting of experience in accordance
with imagination shaped by illusion, by belief, only veils
and inhibits higher extensive experiencing. So meditation
as such is not an argument against personal experiencing as
such.
What is the point of Great Meditation if you cannot directly experience it
but only have a theory or belief about it in accordance with Krishnamurti or
Tibetan Buddhism? We must go beyond mere beliefs and theories to direct realization. To
see or experience for oneself is ultimate potency of personal experiencing
which can and will unfold wonders in the subtler realms of existence.
K: Meditation is not the
search for some transcendental experience that will give you
great energy to become more mischievous.
Comment: A genuine Transcendental
Experience does not make one "more mischievous". The
greater energy that emerges through Transcendental Experience
is activated Divine Power within and through us. Divine
Power is a blessing for all. It uplifts everyone and
everything in the immediate personal environment. The
more Transcendental Experiencing going on in human beings,
the better the world is going to be. The real ugly mischief
comes from those who deny Transcendental Experiencing or ignore
it altogether in their pursuit of their selfish, conditioned
and wrong aims in life. Krishnamurti is on very stupid
ground here when we consider his endless descriptions of his
own "transcendental experiences" when he hears owls hooting
in the valley late at night and so on. If such experiences
are not desirable, why does he endlessly describe his experiences
of heightened energy of awareness to us? I have always been
inspired by his experiences to unfold my own. The real
issue is how we seek higher experiences
and with what intention. In
a way, intent is everything in all
this. Clearly, if we are seeking higher experiences for
secondary social purposes, that will prevent or distort those
experiences. As one Sufi put it, "Truth must be sought
for it's own sake and not your sake. " When the outer
social self operating through the cunning brain is trying for
occult powers to show off, that is one example of a secondary
social purpose. That is why the world is so filled with
sickening would-be "healers" and "clairvoyant readers" and
such. Such emotional, shallow and vainglorious little
social selves only prevent their own higher intelligence and
wisdom from functioning, which prevents the really great, uplifting
and liberating transcendental experiences. No matter
how much they can Heal or control their Dreaming Double, they
are still far short of the genuine higher development of the
truly divine realms of Being-Consciousness-Bliss. The
Second Attention, however admirably developed, is far short
of the Fourth Attention, the Turiya Samadhi. If all those
healers would study the Third Attention teachings of Krishnamurti
and Trungpa, they would learn to rise into Bodhichitta.
K: Mediation is not personal
achievement, sitting next to God.
Comment: Only Christian
mystics would want to "sit next to God". Most people
who try to take up meditation these days are people attracted
to Buddhist Meditation or Hindu Yoga. Bashing the silliness
of pitiful Christian theology is not an argument against Buddhist
Meditation or Hindu Yoga. And again, in Mahamudra, the
Great Attitude, one "achieves non-achievement" or what is called
in Taoism, "doing without doing". So bringing in the
silly problem of Christian mysticism is hardly to the point
here, but smacks of typical Krishnamurti pettiness and inability
to appreciate his own historical seniors in the field of meditation.
K: Meditation is then a
state of mind in which the 'me' is absent, and therefore that
very absence brings order.
Comment: We have already
been fully into this issue, but he is off again on one of his
tirades. Instead of dialoguing with Trungpa, he is lecturing
and pontificating again.
K: And that order must exist
to go any further. Without that order, things become
silly. It's like these people who go around dancing,
chanting and repeating 'Krishna' and all that silly stuff. That
is not order. They are creating colossal disorder!
Comment: When Chaitanya
was getting spontaneously transcendental in Bengal with the
chanting of "Krishna", that was not creating disorder in Bengal,
but when people come over to the West and induce gullible non-Hindus
to do that in the streets of America and Britain, it is indeed
wholly silly, artificial and wrongly confrontational with the
cultural conditioning of the land. Whether there is order
or disorder is partly a function of context. A Buddhist
temple in Bhutan with horns blowing and deep chanting going
on has a somewhat uplifting effect on some of the practitioners
and people in the organically natural audience, but if you
build such a temple in Colorado or Scotland and carry out such
stuff, it is no longer organically attuned, but a discordant
alien invasion. Sufi group zikrs carried out in Senegal
with some practitioners levitating in ecstatic states is one
thing, but a group of Westerners trying to do it in some rented
hall in London is just a silly, pitiful imitation and second-hand
usage of the mystical technology of another people. Krishnamurti
is therefore expressing an important half truth, but not a
whole truth of what goes on within a
tradition as opposed to what happens when the tradition tries
to project itself into a foreign
society. Seeing these sociological issues is also part
of sanity, of order.
K: As the Christians are
creating great disorder, as the Hindus, the Buddhists are.
Comment: And let's not leave
out the Muslim suicide-bombers and the technological atheist
Americans and Brits who want to slaughter Muslims wantonly
in the their quest for oil reserves. The conflict and
disorder of clashes between various conditionings and belief-systems
is an increasing problem on the planet Earth. It is incredibly
evil, ignorant and uncosmic behaviour. Nobody on any
side of such bloody conflict will come out victorious.
K: As long as you are held
within a pattern you must create disorder in the world. The
moment you say, 'America must be the superpower,' you are going
to create disorder.
Comment: A prophetic insight
considering current ugly aggressions coming from America against
the rest of humanity on the Earth! He speaks rightly in regard
to the level of the mass-hypnotized collectives of various
ignorant, robotic conditioning in cultures. But when
Communist China raped and murdered and scattered Buddhist Tibet,
were the Tibetans supposed to stop being Tibetans and become
Chinese Communists? When they tried to set-up in India, did
that mean they should become Hindus? When they try to set-up
in various North American and European countries, are they
supposed to become North Americans or Europeans? If they are
to go beyond cultural conditioning, they will have to speak
AUI, Cosmic Language, and not merely English like Krishnamurti. Krishnamurti's
semantic net of English in his neurocognitive system is a pseudo-liberation
from conditioning. The real way beyond mechanical cognition
on Earth has not yet happened except in very rare, unknown
individuals in contact with Extraterrestrial races in Shambhala
type situations. Neither Krishnamurti nor Trungpa really
understand this, though Trungpa knows that the Great Guru,
Padma Sambhava, "spoke to the Dakinis in the language of the
Dakinis". But his conditioning did not allow him to assess
this information, for it is too cosmic and extraterrestrial
for earthbound prisoners of cultural cognitive conditioning.
K: So the next question
is: can the mind observe without time and without memory, which
are the material of the mind. Memory and time are the
material of the mind.
Comment: Ah, but yet again
this is a cosmological issue of levels of
time and memory. The higher dimension is always timeless
and beyond memory in reference to the lower dimension of time
and memory. If the material brain with its time and memory
is suspended, made silent, then the higher time and experiencing
of subtle memory on the subtle plane can unfold in that flow
of personal energy.
If the subtle flow of dream-time and dream-memory is superseded in the supersubtle
causal realm, then the supersubtle realm is no longer timeless and without
memory for the causal experiencer, but only for experiencers on the subtle
or physical levels of the dreamers and the sensers, the dead and the living.
Then the Divine realm of the Fourth Attention is timeless and beyond causal
memory of the time and memory operating on causal supersubtle levels. The "timeless
beyond memory" therefore always means "the dimension, level or tattwa beyond. " So
Time and Memory are not an ultimate either/or as mystics like Krishnamurti
try to dogmatically expound. But if we can observe in the ordinary sensory
waking state of the physical day that we are all too conditioned by brain-time
and brain-memory, then there is hope of transcending all that and unfolding
subtler perceptions in subtler flow of time.
K: Can it observe without
those two elements? Because if it observes with memory, the
memory is the centre, the 'me'. Right?
Comment: Right. If
I want to step up to a higher level of conscious being, then
I must suspend the memory, time and 'me' of my present level,
whatever that may be, whether physical or otherwise. But
if I had not experienced this directly for myself in shifting
to higher planes of existence, it would be rather difficult
to truly see the implications of what Krishnamurti is talking
about, or what Juan Matus meant when he told Carlos Castaneda
that he must "put an end to his internal dialogue in order
to Stop the World. " This entire
issue of Memory, Time and Selfhood is not merely philosophical
and abstract, but requires Yoga and Meditation, whether traditional
or otherwise. Spiritual truth must be directly experienced
and not merely believed or argued about intellectually.
K: And time is the 'me',
also time is the evolution of the brain cells as becoming.
Comment: He should have
said "as physical becoming". There
is still the issue of relativity of the levels, the dimensions
or tattwas. This has got to
be understood or we are going to get bogged down in the brain
states of intellectual opinions and fixations about all this. Of
course, when Krishnamurti got rid of Theosophy, he also got
rid of these important issues. He threw out the baby
with the bathwater. He gave himself a cosmolocal lobotomy
and recommends the same to all. That falls short of the
kind of things we need to know and experience to work all this
out for real.
K: So can the mind observe
without memory or time? Which is only possible when the mind
is completely still.
Comment: So far, so good,
insofar as we are looking at brain-functions, but beyond that
he has confusion as to the term "mind". It has different
meanings on different levels of Being.
K: And the traditional people
realize this, so they say, 'we must practice in order to be
silent. '
Comment: The miraculous
Siddha, Tilopa, never said any such thing! Again, read his Song
of Mahamudra that he gave to his disciple, Naropa. I
grow so weary of Krishnamurti's shallow assertions about what
advanced people have said and done within certain traditions. Such
condescending arrogance! That kind of petty, self-enclosed
attitude of "being beyond all traditions" is all too much a
peculiar sort of ignorance and egotism. We need to do
better than that!
K: So control your mind
- you know the tricks they play.
CT: I don't see any particular
importance in laying emphasis on the stillness of the mind
because if one is able to see the non-dualistic way of looking
at situations then you have further energy that will flow out.
Comment: Trungpa is gently
pointing out that though he is coming from the Tibetan Buddhist
tradition, that tradition does not get into neurotic brain-frustrations
of brain-trying-to-put-a-stop-brain-functions. Krishnamurti
has lost it again, so now Trungpa is the teacher again, which
allows Trungpa to sneak away from the fact of being too much
a social self operating with an excessively culture-bound cognitive
system. Where is an end to all this?
K: You can only have further
energy to flow, greater energy, when the mind is quiet.
Comment: He avoids the issue
of non-dualism which has just been brought up. Properly
speaking, nondualism is a function of Superconsciousness in
the Fourth Attention of Divine Being beyond the causal level
of Bodhichitta. Krishnamurti
does not want to go into that because it would actually bring
the tradition of Vedanta into all this. So he will have
to go on confusing the levels of what he calls "mind". Nevertheless,
it not only releases greater energy to leap up to a higher
level of being, it also requires greater energy to make such
a leap, and hence the need for Kundalini Yoga and the validity
of Shaktipat, transmission of higher energy being put down
into a lower energy personal system to give it a boost if that
system is on a high enough level of purity and readiness and
able to make the right use of the boost, which is rare. Immature
people can actually become addicted to getting boosts from
a much more energetic person, which can create a useless dependency
rather than a development. The Sufis have deeply studied
this issue better than any other tradition on Earth, particularly
in the Naqshbandiyya Order, so the earnest seeker of higher
things should study carefully the way the Sufis handle relations
between higher energy teachers and lower energy students to
avoid the pitfalls of energy dependency without
losing the necessary situations of transmission of the Baraka,
the Blessed Energy or Kundalini Shakti.
CT: But to put the emphasis
on stillness. . .
Comment: Trungpa is devastatingly
pointing out for anyone who wants to hear it that Krishnamurti
is himself caught up on a subtle level of wanting to make a
stillness happen, though he wants to do it without what he
calls "control". Trungpa sees an obvious contradiction
there.
K: No, we said, observe
disorder without the 'me', its memories, its structure of time,
then in that quality there is a quietness of the mind which
is observing. That stillness is not an acquired, practiced
thing, it comes naturally when you have order.
You see, sir, all one can do is to point out and
help the person to the door, it is for him to open the door, you can't do any
more than that. This whole idea of wanting to help people means, you know,
you become a do-gooder. And a do-gooder is not a religious man at all. Shall
we go on with this?
Comment: Krishnamurti has
brought his particular teaching to its peak here; it can't
go any further. He wants a stillness. The stillness
will not come from an effort. But how then does the stillness
come? He says that "order" will bring stillness. But
he has already said that only stillness, a detached attitude
or position of timeless observation without a 'me' and its
memories can bring about order. So, in actually fact
stillness and order rise together or there is disturbance and
disorder. The dog of cognition is chasing its own tail. This
is a vicious feedback loop. Disturbance prevents order
and disorder prevents stillness. So where is the emphasis
supposed to be and why?
He is also trying to explain about teaching without
being a teacher, helping people without being a helper, and so on. He believes
Trungpa cannot really help anyone because he is (a) stuck in being a culture-bound
Tibetan, and (b) he is assumed to be a deluded altruistic do-gooder without the
right orientation toward humanity. So Krishnamurti assumes that he is utterly
superior and in charge about all that has been brought up.
CT: I think so. There
is a further thing that can be clarified, when you put emphasis
on absolute peace.
Comment: Trungpa sees the
contradictory and vicious feedback loop in Krishnamurti's position
on stillness and disorder. He wants to break that down. But
will Krishnamurti take the necessary step?
K: Ah! I said sir, complete
order is complete quietness of the mind. Quietness of
the mind is the most active mind.
CT: That's what I want you
to say!
Comment: Krishnamurti has
now agreed to step into a real aspect of meditation that Trungpa
has understood better.
Trungpa points out that, yet again, he is now the
teacher who just gave a boost to Krishnamurti's perspective on meditative states
of consciousness. The Indian tradition of Samkhya would help here. Consciousness, chitta,
is still within the realm of matter, so it can be basically in one of three states: Tamasic,
dull and sluggish or asleep; Rajasic, disturbed, disorderly,
distracted, unsteady, flighty and restless; Sattwic,
clear, calm, serene, observant, aware, watchful, sane and orderly. Now
picture a fan. In the tamasic condition, the
electricity is off and there is very little movement if any; in the rajasiccondition,
the electricity is off but there are gusts of wind coming through the window
at random which causes the blades to visibly move now and then at various speeds
in a chaotic manner; in the sattwic condition, the
fan is turned on and the blades are moving at such a tremendous consistent speed
that the blades are invisible, they are just an homogenous blur. So the
fast speed has a dynamical stillness that is also paradoxically superactive,
dynamic. Hence, for there to be the necessary stillness and order, the
consciousness has to be brought up-to-speed. This implies the need for
a requisite level of energy in the cognitive system itself. It is not just
about the brain and intellect thinking about various words and meanings in and
around the subject of "meditation". Thinking and discussing meditation
in a low energy personal state will not really do anything dynamically real about
all this.
K: It's the most dynamic
thing, it isn't just a dead thing.
Comment: This is a beautiful
moment because Krishnamurti and Trungpa were able to genuinely
come together on an important point.
CT: People could misunderstand.
Comment: Trungpa is very
aware of where they have arrived, which is an agreement about
the meditative state of consciousness that transcends both
tradition and anti-tradition, effort and non-effort.
K: Because they are only
used to practice which will help them become -
that is death. But a mind that has gone, inquired into
all this in this way, becomes extraordinarily active and therefore
quiet.
Comment: Krishnamurti, within
his own terminology, has accepted Trungpa's important insight
on the dynamical aspect of necessary cognitive stillness. So
Trungpa emphasizes this acquiescence that has taken place in
Krishnamurti's consciousness by saying:
CT: That's what I mean,
yes.
K: It's like a great dynamo.
CT: yes.
Comment: Krishnamurti is
appreciating the Tibetan Meditation Master insight into meditation. This
is an admission of fundamental defeat in the debate about meditation
itself, but the issue of Trungpa's clinging to Tibetan identity
as a culture bound 'me' is still outstanding. So what
is Krishnamurti going to do about all this?
K: The greater the speed,
the more the vitality. Of course, Man is seeking more
energy, he wants more energy, to go to the Moon, to go and
live under the sea. He is striving for more and more
and more. And I think the search for more does lead to
disorder.
Comment: Defeated in the
encounter, Krishnamurti collapses into one of his usual themes
about the state of collective human ignorance and its globally
abusive projects. He tries to put enlightened personal
transformation and evolution, including the necessary energization
of Kundalini Yoga and Mahamudra dynamical meditation on the
same level as the heedless, greedy, corrupt, ambitious and
materialistic humanity of the pitiful planet Earth. This
is wholly inappropriate and away from the whole point of the
discussion of meditative states of consciousness. He
is just falling back on familiar old worldview commentaries
of his that he has always expounded for years. He wants
closure in and around his particular position as a world influencer. This
is his messiah complex given to him by Leadbeater, Besant and
the Theosophists kicking up again, which is wholly irrelevant
to Truungpa's more modest, sane and healthy approach of being
part of a good spiritual lineage with a relevant contribution
to make about meditation.
K: The consumer society
is a disorderly society. The other day I saw some paper
tissue, Kleenex, which was beautifully decorated.
Comment: Now he is really
losing it. Trungpa must have thought to himself at this
point, "Poor fellow, all this has driven him mad. He
can't cope with where the discussion went. "
K: So our question is: does
the observation of disorder bring order? That is really a very
important point because for most of us effort is demanded to
bring about order. Human beings are used to effort, to
struggling, fighting, suppressing, forcing themselves. Now
all that has led to disorder, socially, outwardly and inwardly.
Comment: Trungpa is not
recorded as saying anything more in the encounter. Why
not? It is rather probable that he had to give up on taking
things any further because Krishnamurti is now in the all-
out lecturing and pontificating mode again, trotting out all
his usual stuff again and trying to appear as if he is making
the ultimate summary of what the discussion has been about. This
is a terribly sad little episode here at the end.
K: The difficulty with human
beings is that they never observed a tree, a bird, without
division. Since they have never observed a tree or a
bird totally they can't observe themselves totally.
Comment: Now Krishnamurti
wants each of us to identify with the stupid, heedless, insensitive,
materialistic, disturbed, disorderly, unobservant and unmeditative,
undevelopmental and unregenerate human masses who are destroying
themselves and their planet. Why does he want this identification
with only the lowest level of humanity? Again, there are at
least seven levels of humanity. What level we are actually
operating on is the real issue here, which Krishnamurti is
covering up.
K: One can't see the total
disorder in which one lives, there is always an idea that somewhere
there is a part of me that is order which is looking at disorder.
Comment: We must never deny
that higher and deeper part of our being that is natural, innate
meditative silent observation of the truth of things, for it
is only by stepping into that place in ourselves that we can
have meditation, which is awakened consciousness, Bodhichitta. It
is the true evolutionary element within a human being. Without
this better part of ourselves, who are what could listen to
and genuinely understand higher teachings, whether Krishnamurti's
or Chogyam Trungpa's or anyone else's, such as my particular
commentaries today? It is the awakening of this better, higher
aspect within our being that is our fundamental spiritual opportunity. If
a human being is utterly without soul and conscience, without
a causal body, then indeed there is just total disorder, total
evil of harming others and oneself without the slightest chance
of coming to a better way of being.
K: So they invent the higher
self,
Comment: The higher self
is real, however asleep, however
unactivated so far. It is not just an "invention" of
some cognitively prejudiced and ignorant fools. Krishnamurti
does not understand the actual meaning of Self on any level
of existence. He is still imprisoned subconsciously in
Buddhist dogma. He is caught up in the invented notion
of No-Self, Anatman. Recursive
levels of Guest-and-Host are not comprehended by him, as I
have already pointed out.
K: which will bring about
order in disorder - God is in you and pray to that God, he
will bring about this order.
Comment: Recognition of
the Godself, which is Ishwara Pratyabhijna in
Kashmir Shaiva tradition, is not about praying,
but a real, direct and indispensable glimpsing experience of
the divine level of existence in oneself, the Fourth Attention,
however brief and unsustainable that glimpse may be. The
inner God must be directly revealed, not stupidly prayed to!
Krishnamurti is mixing up his traditions and religions at random
here, which instead of making a point only betrays his colossal
deliberate ignorance of (a) what is really going on in the
higher planes of our actual and potential existence, and (b)
what different traditions have come to understand about all
this.
K: Always there is this
effort.
Comment: It would be hard
to locate some idiot on the planet actually making the theologically
confused sort of effort that he has described.
K: What we are saying is
that where there is the 'me', the world outside or the world
inside, there is not only division, but that brings about conflict,
that division creates chaos and disorder in the world. Now
to observe all that totally, in which there is no division,
such observation is meditation. For that you don't have
to practice, all that you have to do is to be aware of what
exactly is going on inside and outside, just to be aware.
Comment: He has said that
we are each in a state of total disorder, total unawareness
and that we have no inner element of order and awareness basically
within us that we could awaken into greater dynamical presence,
and no inner God to recognize in ourself beyond all this which
could empower our evolutionary aspiration. Yet we are
supposed to come up somehow with a simple awareness that does
not practice or improve anything in our everyday being that
might bring enough energy boost to get up-to-speed for real
meditation. Fortunately, things are neither this flat
and bleak, but they are not quite so simple as Krishnamurti's
all-rejective dogma either. When he says, "just be aware",
who or what manner of being does he imagine he is saying this
too? It is like a "one size fits all" shoe he wants us each
to put on our mind.
On the positive side of Krishnamurti, he always
pointed out quite thoroughly all the stupidities and dangers of remaining caught
in the cognitive trap of culture-bound conditioning. For this we can all
be grateful. Tradition-bound, petty pseudospiritual authorities from the
East have brought a lot of silly exploitation and counterproductive societal
conflicts and misunderstandings in the West. Yet not all sages and yogis
from the East, spiritual masters, have been of that common, deplorable ilk. We
will never rightly put all these issues on one level only. We need to deeply
understand what Krishnamurti has said, but we also need to deeply understand
what other relevant spiritual leaders have also said. Once one is neither
clinging to nor rejecting anyone or anything useful, one then needs to become
very clear as to who or what is useful to what degree in what zone of our evolutionary
path. Sometimes a teacher can help with this to some degree and we should
let ourself recognize the teacher and learn how to learn from such a teacher. At
other times we are in a region of our development where no appropriate teacher
is available and we have to learn for ourself what we have to learn for ourself. Issues
of context and timing then
put all this beyond the "either/or" dogmas that are usually adhered to by immature
people and their influencers. Neither the cults nor the cult-bashers are
of any real evolutionary use, but only demonstrate the sociological illusions
and tensions of confused human beings who stagnate in ignorance. If we
will stop entrapping ourselves in our beliefs and disbeliefs and learn to at
least stop smoking and drinking coffee or alcohol, we might get clear enough
and clean enough to make it to real Yoga, Meditation and Samadhi, regardless
of what kind of theoretical or traditional emphasis we want to give to such things
of the Way, the Tao, the Tariqa. In the vastness of Total Existence, the
Dharmadhatu, there are infinite traditions, languages and spiritual schools on
infinite planets of aspiring human beings with infinite variable cognitive conditions
and types of organic sensory bodies. Our tiny little temporary speck of
a world in all that has no ultimate authority in it, whether Krishnamurti or
anyone else, including myself. We do not need an ultimate authority. We
need to learn how to learn, we need Self-realization and Self-awakening. We
need truly cosmic Clarity. Whoever or whatever
helps us come to this in ourself should be gratefully recognized and accepted
with receptive humility, which has nothing to do with gullibility or emotional
clinging without self-responsibility and necessary personal work and effort. Ultimately
we each get what we have earned on any level of existence of our concern. The
Law of Karma must become an Existential Enlightenment.