tenderness

quotes from great eastern sun by chogyam trungpa

"humility in the shambhala tradition also involves some kind of playfulness, which is a sense of humor. at the beginning, communicating with someone may be somewhat flat, but the sense of humor in the relationship is always lurking around the corner. instead of approaching things flatly, you may have to scan around to the right and the left, to see whether there are any sparky areas where you can communicate. so humility here is slightly different than in the catholic tradition. in most religious traditions, you feel humble because of a fear of punishment, pain, and sin. in the shambhala world, you feel full of it. you feel healthy and good. in fact, you feel proud. therefore, you feel humility. that's one of the shambhala contradictions or, we could say, dichotomies.

real humility is genuineness. it's not even honesty. honesty implies a twist of punishment or negativity -- that you have drawn the card for deception, put it in your pocket, and now you'll draw another card for honesty. but there's only one genuineness, which is being oneself to the fullest level."

"we are talking about how to work with very simple situations, such as talking to your landlord or landlady about the rent, consulting with your bank manager about taking out another loan, depositing money in your checking account, buying another house, doing your grocery shopping at the supermarket, or dealing with your dry cleaner. whatever situations you are working with, you have to be aware that every step you take is very precious. you cannot change this world into the great eastern sun world with a snap of your fingers. it can only change stitch by stitch. what thread you use, what kind of needles you use, and how you sew the fabrics together - that is purely up to you.

you might feel that this is such a small-minded approach that it will have almost no effect at all. particularly if you are gung ho on shambhala vision, you might be so impatient, thinking that this is taking too much time and won't have any effect. but that is not the case. we must go step-by-step, starting from square one. pay attention to your landlord, your grocery store, your bus, every place you go, everything you do habitually. look at them twice, thrice. how you deal with the cockroaches in your apartment, how you vacuum your floor, even how you flush the toilet: any dealings that you have with the outside world, so to speak, have to be witnessed thoroughly and watched very carefully. you do not need a tutor like i had. you have hundreds of tutors around you. all those situations are your tutors, and they will give you the message.

wisdom is not purely the product of intelligence. you have to work on things personally. it's not exactly hard work, but it's taxing in some sense, because you have to be constantly alert, all the time. the notion of wisdom is the same as prajna, or the discriminating awareness that we discussed earlier in the context of renunciation. i am using the word wisdom here because what you are being given is something that can only be taught to you in the form of a hint. having been given the hint, you pick up the message spontaneously. that is wisdom.

wisdom is what joins heaven and earth. you bring your zafu and zabuton, your meditation cushion and your meditation mat, together for the sitting practice of meditation. when the gong rings, you and your cushion are joined together. that is joining heaven and earth. i'm putting it on a very elementary level. joining heaven and earth is not like making a decision. it is the principle of a mirror. you have electricity or daylight, which is heaven. you have your body, your face, your uncombed hair, your beard -- which are all earth. then you have the mirror, which joins together that heaven and earth."

"working with yourself always involves a journey. as part of the journey, every one of us has to go through our own garbage. some of it is real garbage, which should be discarded, and some of it is organic garbage, which can be recycled. one important point is that, when you're going through your garbage and sorting things out, you have to admit to yourself that you are not being a 100 percent ideal student. you improvise, you stick with your own neurosis sometimes, and you are cheating yourself, somewhat. as long as that is acknowledged, it is not regarded as absolutely evil at all. how much of the journey is genuine and how much of it is hypocritical is very hard to sort out. as long as you try to just keep doing it, it's fine. it only becomes problematic if you try to philosophize or rationalize the whole thing.

as far as the shambhala principles are concerned, we don't believe in original sin. you are not fundamentally condemned. in fact, quite the opposite. fundamentally, you are good. in spite of your hypocrisy, you are capable of being good, and what you express will be good as well. it will work out fine.

in discussing know-how, our larger theme is letting go: knowing how to let go, what to let go, and how to relax in our world. in many cases, you've been given guidelines for how to relate with yourself and how to relate with others, but you haven't been given any guidelines for how to experience freedom. the expression of freedom has to come from you. letting go is not being purely carefree in a sloppy style. you have to evaluate what portion of discipline should be maintained in the name of integrity and what portion of discipline should be relaxed. so letting go is still a training process. at the same time, it contains fruition-level logic. . .

the shambhala society is very much concerned with what happens when we depart from the womb and regroup into the products of the womb, so to speak. we are asking people to remain clan-oriented, family-oriented. on the other hand, we're asking you not to hang on to the neurosis or the impetus that exists in being the child of somebody. we have to separate ourselves; at the same time, we have to come together in comradeship, working with human society. that is contradictory in itself, but it is at the same time full of wisdom."

"the third category of letting go is sadness and joy joined together. ordinarily, when you talk about feeling sad, it means that you are so hurt; you feel so bad. when you talk about feeling joyous, it means that you feel so excited and uplifted. here you develop sadness and joy at once. you begin to feel tender -- extremely tender and sad. when you fall in love for the first time, thinking about your lover, you have delightful ideas, but at the same time, you feel somewhat sad. it's not purely that your lover can't be with you or that your lover is long distant, but you feel tender even when you're together. on the spot, sharing the same room or the same bed, when you look at your lover, it feels wonderful. at the same time, it feels very touchy and sad. it is wonderful -- in fact, it is ideal -- that human emotions are expressed that way. when you feel sad, therefore, you feel great. hot and cold, sweet and sour, at once, take place.

according to the shambhala principles, you should feel that way with everything you do. whether you have a good time or a bad time, you should feel sad and delighted at once. that is how to be a real, decent human being, and it is also connected with the buddhist principle of longing, or devotion. longing is the hunger for sacredness. when you begin to feel you're too much in the secular world, you long for the sacred world. therefore, you feel sad, and you open yourself up that way. when you feel so sad and tender, that also brings ideas for how to uplift the rest of the world. joining sadness and joy is the only mechanism that brings the vision of the great eastern sun."

"heaven is anything that is spacious. it includes your lofty ideas, your beliefs, your metaphysics, your wishes, your desires. it is anything you hold as sacred, anything you might put in your safe-deposit box: your jewelry, your birth certificate, your college diploma. earth is related with your personal existence, your car keys, the keys to your apartment, money in your wallet, your husband, your wife, your groceries for the night or for the rest of the week. so heaven is the lofty principle, and earth is what you actually have in your refrigerator or your bank account.

joining them together is challenging. if you think in terms of how a nation might join heaven and earth together, it gets quite complicated. but if you begin with yourself and how you relate personally to joining heaven and earth, that's quite simple and domestic. you might think that your personal heaven and earth are not sacred enough to be joined together. but in the shambhala world, we have fundamental appreciation and respect for whatever we do. every act is a sacred act. with that inspiration, we regard every experience in our life as sacred as well. therefore, we can join heaven and earth together. it could be as mundane as going to the supermarket to buy toilet tissue. you bring it home, then you use it, and you flush it down the toilet. you are joining heaven and earth together. when you buy it, you have heaven. when you use it, you have earth. you join them together, and it's very beautiful. you can accomplish the whole thing."