Source Text
Meditation in this case has no object, no purpose, no reference point. It is simply individuals willing to take a discipline on themselves, not to please God or the Buddha or their teacher or themselves. Rather one just sits, one holds oneself together. One sits a certain length of time. One just simply sits without aim, object, purpose, without anything at all. Nothing whatsoever. One just sits.
Suppose highways were without any bends, just like Roman roads, a one-shot deal straight from New York to Washington, 100 percent straight. The drivers would fall asleep. Because of that, there would be more accidents than if the road had bends in it with road signs here and there. The path is personal experience, and one should take delight in those little things that go on in our lives, the obstacles, seductions, paranoias, depressions, and openness. All kinds of things happen, and that is the content of the journey, which is extremely powerful and important. Without those problems, we cannot tread on the path. We should feel grateful that we are in the samsaric world, so that we can tread the path, that we are not sterile, completely cleaned out, that the world has not been taken over by some computerized system. There’s still room for rawness and ruggedness and roughness all over the place. Good luck!
We have experienced pain, discomfort, because we have failed to relate with the harmony of things as they are. We haven’t seen things as they are precisely, directly, properly, and because of that we have experienced pain, chaotic pain. But in this case when we talk about peace we mean that for the first time we are able to see ourselves completely, perfectly, beautifully as what we are, absolutely as what we are.
If you’re smart enough, you might ask the question, “Who is being aware of this whole thing?” That’s a very interesting question, the sixty-four-dollar question. And the answer is, nobody is being aware of anything but itself. The razor blade cuts itself. The sun shines by itself. Fire burns by itself. Water flows by itself. Nobody watches—and that is the very primitive logic of egolessness.
Traditionally, we have the term smriti-upasthana in Sanskrit, or satipatthana in Pali, which means resting in one’s intelligence. This is the same as awareness. Awareness here does not mean that the person practicing vipashyana meditation gives up his or her shamatha techniques of, say, anapanasati—mindfulness of the coming and going of the breath—or of walking in walking meditation practice.
AI Summary
The Path Is the Goal by Chogyam Trungpa presents key insights from the contemplative tradition. The 5 passages above capture the essential teachings.
Core Themes:
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Key Passages: Highlights above are particularly representative.
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