Jamgon Kongtrül’s Direct Path to Enlightenment – 1

AG: [continuing with his annotations of William Blake’s Auguries of Innocence] This is a great one, for last night, the lecture last night (sic, August 10, 1978)) [Allen is referring to Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche‘s ongoing NAROPA lecture(s)]

“To be in a passion, you good may do but no good if a passion is in you” That’s the whole key to Vajrayana. That is to say, (that) in Vajrayana there is the participation in passion, you become your passion, you appreciate your passion. – “To be in a passion you good may do” – Passion is real, Thought is real. Emotion is real. The microphone is real – “To be in a passion,you good may do, but – no good if a passion is in you” – i.e.if you are attached to the passion and the passion has entered and displaced your mindfulness, if the passion has so filled your brain that you forget the space in which the passion takes place. That make sense?.

That’s a very clear thing and why I chose this for the sort of transition toVajrayana out of English literature. It’s a real good..  it’s a great clear arrow of direction (very similar to another book I’ve put on the reading list, this  Direct Path To Enlightenment by Jamgon Kongtrül [Editorial note – otherwise known as The Great Path of Awakening] – How many know that? – Jamgon Kongtrüll – I’m going to interrupt the Blake for just one second –  (for) these are root texts – Mind-training in several points done by slogans – one-line slogans for directing the mind in training.

Think that all phenomena are like dreams

Examine the nature of unborn awareness – (We were using, I was using the word “unborn”, so you all have some sense of what I mean and what is meant here in this context by “unborn” awareness, awareness that is simply there without root traceable, without traceable rational conceptional underpinnings, simply there like we are here.

And then, regarding mindfulness – Let even the remedy itself go free on its own
That make sense? Anybody not understand that? – That even the remedy itself go free on its own  i.e. if you solidify mindfulness, or solidify the notion of breathing, of following breath, or meditation, the difficulty there is that you’ll get hung up and addicted to meditation as a conceptual solidification idea (as many people do) and be using that for your own passion, aggression, ignorance, pride, vanity, and so the idea of meditating displaces the actual disappearance of conceptions in the breath. So you actually have to forget you’re meditating when you’re meditating and actually go into the breath – :Let even the remedy itself go free on its own” – which is to say, finally, even on the most literal level, let the breath go free on its own and dissolve.

(Between sittings.. -(he means sessions) (Between sittings) consider phenomena as phantoms (These are primarily Mahayana, by the way) . Yes?

Student: Trungpa had proposed a tripartite classification, and..

AG: Yeah – Let’s save that, let’s save further inquiry into the phenomenology of mind, of that technical nature, until.. until he comes, (if he comes, maybe he won’t come) – “Let even the remedy itself go free on its own”! – “Consider phenomena as phantoms”! –

Drive all blame into one  – Anybody know that? Has anybody heard that before? – Drive all blame into one, i.e where there is the great stinky ball of blame, take it, (because it’s empty, to begin with), take it on yourself (because, at that point, you can get on with business with clear lucidity in open space, otherwise you’re blocked with “so you’re to blame”, “it’s all your fault” – so, having tried to project the fault outward on something else, you never get to adjust the perceiver, or adjust the perception of the perceiver, or adjust the faulty perception. So, always, in all cases, it’s best to “drive all blames into one” and take that on yourself

Be grateful to everyone

Always rely on just a happy frame of mind – (that’s a nice one)

These are kind of interesting.I’ll go through some of them, They’re actually points in mind-training or slogans dealing with conceptual phenomena which become irritating

Do not discuss defects
– You know “accentuate the positive”, in the sense of..work towards that which is workable, rather than be attatched to what is unworkable and constantly complaining and resenting

Abandon all hopes of results

Don’t be consistent
Don’t be consistent – that’s sort of the beginning of Vajrayana. >be consistent, meaning.. there’s actually an old American saying “Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds” – (Ralph Waldo) Emerson? – “Don’t be consistent ”

Don’t make wicked jokes 

Don’t wait for an opportunity
i.e you don’t wait for an opportunity to strike, you know.  Don’t bear your, don’t cling to your, grudge – “Don’t wait for an opportunity”.

Don’t strike at the heart– That’s a mysterious one – “Don’t strike at the heart”. Obviously, just don’t try to kill, don’t try to be mean. The only workable possibility is trying to open up space where there’s ignorance, rather than kill whoever’s ignorant.

[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately  thirty-one-and-three-quarter minutes in and concluding at approximately thirty-eight-and-a-quarter minutes in]

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *