Getting to the Point

Quotes on Perception by Chögyam Trungpa




Panoramic Awareness in Everyday Life

Student: In the arts, there are techniques that one learns for the purposes of overcoming techniques, in order to be able to get to the direct experience part of it. I was wondering if, besides meditation, there are any other techniques that you could speak of that could help one in this way, some means to open oneself or to be closer to being.

Chögyam Trungpa: In addition to the sitting form of meditation, there is the meditation practice in everyday life of panoramic awareness. This particular kind of practice is connected with identifying with the activities one is involved in. This awareness practice could apply to artwork or any other activity. It requires confidence. Any kind of activity that requires discipline also requires confidence. You cannot have discipline without confidence; otherwise it becomes a sort of torturing process. If you have confidence in what you are doing, then you have real communication with the things you are using, with the material you are using. Working that way, a person is not concerned with producing masterpieces. He is just involved with the things that he is doing. Somehow the idea of a masterpiece is irrelevant.

Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche
"Consciousness,"
Glimpses of Abhidharma.

The Majesty of the World is Always There

Look at the sun. The sun is shining. Nobody polishes the sun. The sun just shines. Look at the moon, the sky, the world at its best. Unfortunately, we human beings try to fit everything into conditionality. We try to make something out of nothing. We have messed everything up. That’s our problem. We have to go back to the sun and the moon, to dragons, tigers, lions, garudas (mythical birds). We can be like the blue sky, sweethearts, and the clouds so clean, so beautiful. We don’t have to try too hard to find ourselves. We haven’t really lost anything; we just have to tune in. The majesty of the world is always there.

Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche
“Helping Others
Great Eastern Sun: The Wisdom of Shambhala.

The Beauty of Totality

Ultimate goodness is connected with the notion of ultimate joy without comparison to suffering. Out of that joy, we begin to experience, visually, the beauty of the blue sky; the beauty of a red rose; the beauty of a white chrysanthemum; the beauty of chattering brooks; the beauty of the openness of the ocean, where sky and land meet; the beauty of sweet and sour; the beauty of music, high pitches and low; the beauty of experiencing warmth on our bodies; the beauty of cool air, which creates natural refreshment; the beauty of eating a meal when we feel hungry; the beauty of drinking water when we feel thirsty; the beauty of learning more things when we feel that we are not learned enough—when we feel that we don't know enough wisdom or vocabulary or language.

I don't want to paint a pleasure-oriented picture alone. There is also the beauty of your schoolmaster pinching you on the cheek; the beauty of being too hot on a mid-summer's day; the beauty of being too cold in the middle of winter—the beauty of pain as well as the beauty of pleasure. All of those are connected with the fundamental notion of basic goodness. You might ask why we speak of beauty. The answer is that beauty here means fullness, totality—total experience. Our life is completely full even though we might be completely bored. Boredom creates aloneness and sadness, which are also beautiful. Beauty in this sense is the total experience of things as they are. It is very realistic. It means that we can't cheat ourselves—or anybody else, for that matter.

Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche
"Natural Hierarchy,"
The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa.

Fearlessness Contains Joy

Fearlessness contains a feeling of joy and relaxation or well-being. From the goodness of simply being yourself, a quality of upliftedness arises, which is not overly solemn or religious. It is joyful to be in such good health, joyful to have such good posture, joyful to experience that you are alive, you are here. You appreciate colors and the temperature of the air. You appreciate smells and sounds. You begin to use your eyes, your ears, your nose, and your tongue to explore the world. You have never seen such penetrating and extraordinary red before. For the first time, you see such cool and beautiful blue. For the first time, you see such warm and delicate yellow. You see such refreshing, earthy, and wet green; such pure, clean white, as though you are opening your mouth and breathing out at the same time. For the first time, you see such wonderful balck. It’s so trustworthy that you can almost sleep on it. It has a sheen, which reminds you of stroking a black horse.

Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche
“Joining Heaven and Earth,”
Smile at Fear: Awakening the True Heart of Bravery.

Ordinary Is Extraordinary

The Shambhala approach is to befriend what is there, the everyday occurrence, which is real, obvious and constant. Then first thought, best thought becomes a shocking experience, which shocks us into reality. It may be the same blue sky and the same Volkswagen car that we drive to work every day. But that ordinariness is extraordinary. That is the dichotomy: when you live life in a thoroughly ordinary way, it is extraordinary.

Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche
"Aloneness and the Virtues of the Higher Realms,"
Great Eastern Sun: The Wisdom of Shambhala.

Be There All Along

Sometimes people find that being tender and raw is threatening and seemingly exhausting. Openness seems demanding and energy consuming, so they prefer to cover up their tender heart. Vulnerability can sometimes make you nervous. It is uncomfortable to feel so real, so you want to numb yourself. You look for some kind of anaesthetic, anything that will provide you with entertainment. Then you can forget the discomfort of reality. People don't want to live with their basic rawness for even fifteen minutes...For the warrior, fearlessness is the opposite of that approach. Fearlessness is a question of learning how to be. Be there all along: that is the message. That is quite challenging in what we call the setting-sun world, the world of neurotic comfort where we use everything to fill up the space.

Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche
"Conquering Fear,"
The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa.

Click into the Sense of Delight

The phenomenal world is self-existing. You can see it, you can look at it, you can appreciate your survey, and you can present your view to others. It is possible to discover the inherent state of things. It is possible to perceive how the world hangs together. It is possible to communicate your appreciation to others. The possibility of freshness is always there. Your mind is never totally contaminated by your neuroses. Goodness is always there. Catch it on the spot. Click into the sense of delight that comes from basic wakefulness.

Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche
"Heaven, Earth and Man,"
The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa

Buddhists Don't Con You

If you are completely confident in yourself, you don't have to think about the audience at all. You just do your thing, you just do it properly. This means YOU become the audience. What you make is entertainment, but that needs a certain amount of wisdom. When an artist does a painting for commission, there is a good likelihood that his painting will be one-sided because he is aware of the audience and he has to relate to the educational standards of the audience.

If he presents his own style without reference to the audience, they will begin to react and automatically their sophistication will develop and eventually will reach the level of the artist....You see, we have the responsibility of raising the mentality of the audience. People might have to reach out with a certain amount of strain, but it's worth it. The whole civilization then begins to raise its level of sophistication....The beautiful thing about Buddhism, if I may say so, is that Buddhists don't try to con you. They just present what they have to say as it is, take it or leave it.

Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche
'Visual Dharma: Film Workshop'
Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa Volume Seven

Discovering Magic

Whether you care to communicate with it or not, the magical strength and wisdom of reality are always there....By relaxing the mind, you can reconnect with that primordial, original ground, which is completely pure and simple. Out of that, through the medium of your perceptions, you can discover magic, (which in the Shambhala tradition is called ) drala. You actually can connect your own intrinsic wisdom with a sense of greater wisdom or vision beyond you.

You might think that something extraordinary will happen to you when you discover magic. Something extra-ordinary does happen. You simply find yourself in the realm of utter reality, complete and thorough reality.

Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche
'Discovering Magic'
Shambhala: The Sacred Path of
the Warrior

Inquisitiveness

When you were very young, three years old, you didn't want to look into the possibility of escape, particularly, because you were so interested in how things were done. You used to ask your father and your mother all sorts of questions: "Why is this so, Mommy? Why is this so, Daddy? Why do we do this? Why don't we do that?" But that innocent inquisitiveness has been forgotten, lost. Therefore you have to re-ignite it. Getting into your cocoon of habitual behavior happens after that initial inquisitiveness. Once there was tremendous inquisitiveness happening and then you couldn't care less. You thought that you were being mistreated by your world, so you jumped into your cocoon and decided to ignore the whole thing....Actually using our sense perceptions properly -- inquisitiveness -- is so important. *

Chögyam Trungpa
Overcoming Habitual Patterns
Collected Kalapa Assemblies

Beyond Habitual Patterns

How on earth, how in the name of heaven and earth can we actually become decent human beings without trying to entertain ourselves from here to the next corner?...
It boils down to taking interest in what you see. I have a very frustrated feeling, actually, that when I talk about appreciating red, white, blue, and green, I'm not sure whether you actually appreciate those colors or not. Maybe you think I'm trying to tell you that you should be artists or something. And when I say that you should listen to the sounds that go on in the world, maybe you think I'm trying to tell you to be musicians. And when I talk about the textures of your body -- sense perceptions and feelings -- maybe you think I'm trying to tell you to become salesmen in the garment industry. I'm beginning to wonder.
        
We are not talking about becoming experts in marketing things, but we are talking about our own situation: how we can actually stop habitual patterns and appreciate the nitty-gritty of the real world on the spot. We can appreciate the bright, beautiful, fantastic world around us; we don't have to feel all that resentful....Once we put a stop to habitual patterns, the vividness, the magic, will begin to descend, and we will begin to become masters of our world -- individually, personally, of course. We will begin to appreciate our world.*

Chögyam Trungpa
Overcoming Habitual Patterns
Collected Kalapa Assemblies

It manifests out of nowhere
like mushrooms in a meadow,
like hailstones, like thundershowers.'*

Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche
The Art of Calligraphy

Nowness and Tradition

We need to find the link between our traditions and our present experience of life. Nowness, or the magic of the present moment, is what joins the wisdom of the past with the present. When you appreciate a painting or a piece of music or a work of literature, no matter when it was created, you appreciate it NOW. You experience the same nowness in which it was created. It is always NOW.*

Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche
Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior

 

Work of Art

What a work of art is all about is a sense of delight. Touch here, touch there, delight. It is an appreciation of things as they are and of what one is -- which produces an enormous spark. Something happens -- clicks -- and the poet writes poems, the painter paints pictures, the musician composes music. *

Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche
"Artists and Unemployed Samurai"
The Teacup and the Skullcup

* All quotes courtesy of Ocean of Dharma Quotes

  All material by Chogyam Trungpa is copyrighted
  Diana J. Mukpo and used by permission.

The Warrior Is Also an Artist

If the warrior does not feel alone and sad, then he or she can be corrupted very easily. In fact, such a person may not be a warrior at all. To be a good warrior, one has to feel sad and lonely, but rich and resourceful at the same time. This makes the warrior sensitive to every aspect of phenomena: to sights, smells, sounds, and feelings. In that sense, the warrior is also an artist, appreciating whatever goes on in the world. Everything is extremely vivid. The rustling of your armor or the sound of rain drops falling on your coat is very loud. The fluttering of occasional butterflies around you is almost an insult, because you are so sensitive.

Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche
Conquering Fear,"
The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa