Forests of Imagination

Commentary on extract from Dharma Art by Chogyam Trungpa

by Padmayogini/Wendy Le Ber 2006

Chogyam Trungpa’s book Dharma Art, is one that I’ve enjoyed reading over the last few years. I like the way he writes and describes the nature of perception and the ways he describes of working as an artist. There is much food for thought in the book but I’ve picked out just one of the many possible passages to base my talk and our discussion for this weekend on the nature of perception.

CT starts off by talking about the way that we see the world, what we take as reality. In the spiritual life, and in everyday life we can receive confusing ideas about reality and about the world. There are people talking all the time about how the world is like this and that and how people are like this or that and that things can never change.

From the earliest times, people speaking in groups, in public spaces under trees, in small meetings, in Parliament’s, to books and newspapers, radio, photography, film and to the Internet today, competing voices proclaimed their ideas about the world of women and men and the spiritual life. How do we make sense of all this? Who does know the true nature of reality?

Maybe nobody knows CT says, or maybe everybody knows what reality Is. I think about the haiku poet priests of China and Japan, how they talk of the basic nature of their experience and of the world.

“ snow
Melting
Village
Brimming
Over
kids.”

“temple
bell
and
mountain
cuckoo
taking
turns”

Kobayashi Issa

Of the Tathagatagarbha doctrine, that we all have Buddha nature with in-us, which means we all have the potential to become enlightened, to understand reality, to see the world as it really is.

What we can begin to do despite all the confusion in the world, is to begin to trust in our own personal inner experience of this world, using meditation, and reflection to guide us.

C.T. talks about how we perceive the phenomenal world and we have probably started to understand a bit more about this for ourselves already this morning. We can easily be bored by the things that we think we know, the everyday objects CT says. He talks about looking at an egg or a cup of tea and not really seeing them. We know what they are, we have named them to ourselves many times before. We think we really know what a cup of tea is but we may not even taste the drink as we talk to friends, read the paper or watch TV. Then do we know what a tea bush is? Where our tea comes from? How many people are connected to us through that cup of tea? And that’s without taking the cup or the teapot or the milk into account.

Those of you have been on retreat may have had the experience of coming out of meditation practice or a puja, and sitting down to eat breakfast or lunch and actually beginning to really see and taste the food that is in front of you. We might notice as if for the first time, the pattern on our mugs or the colour of the table. It is as if we have slowed down our perception, our understanding of the world to some degree. In fact this is exactly what we have done.

When we see something more extraordinary however then we become excited. We like to be presented with something new, we feel we are being treated, we may feel special we deserve this. It may be an amazing cake, a beautiful picture, a new exciting computer game, a firework display a stunningly good looking man or woman and so on, our mind is excited, and pleased.

So in our normal way of seeing and responding to the world we move between these two states, boredom and excitement and this is why we rarely experience peace in our minds. We are constantly on the move, our eyes are looking for the next thing, the next sensation. We may in fact almost literally seem to see through the everyday or boring items in our world, as we hungrily look for something that will give us that extra bit of sensation or pleasure.

This way of responding to the world brings about aggression according to C. T. when we’re bored we can often feel irritated at the same time, we don’t want to be bored we almost demand of the world or of people that they take this boredom away from us and provide us with something more interesting When we are excited and stimulated we can also become aggressive because we want to carry on in this mode, in this vivid state of emotion. We cling to it and resist any one who comes in the way of the objects or situations that are providing us with this stimulation.

This aggression or potential aggressive state of mind is an obstacle to really seeing and having a true understanding and perception of the world, of reality in its fullest sense. We need some form of practice some form of discipline like meditation to begin to understand ourselves, to make friends with ourselves as CT puts it. Then we can begin to see and understand the world more fully and take on board some of the world of chaos and pain and anxiety. Not that the world is only full of pain, I want to make that clear straight away, as some of us can easily fall into a more despairing frame of mind with this particular aspect of reality.

When we are able to move away from a state of aggression, and we may have experienced this already this morning in our meditation practice or looking at the leaves, we begin to perceive things in a different way. We begin to see things without making the same demands or judgements . We are not demanding that objects entertain us, we are not demanding that the books we read, the films we see and the people. pets and children or our partners entertain us in some particular way. And we’re not tied to making anything better than anything else, we just become more and more aware of the objects and ourselves

When we are perceiving in this way, we begin to have a more direct personal experience of the world, We are less reliant on others to tell us what to see, how to see, or how to think about something. So we begin to be less reliant on critics, on teachers and family and so on. But because of this CT is warning us perhaps that this way of perception can be quite painful because it is more penetrating.

You may remember a particular heightened experience like being surrounded perhaps by a particularly beautiful sunset where the glow is touching the world all around you and you feel in encompassed in something quite magical and beautiful and that experience sometimes is one that I would describe perhaps as painfully happy. It’s not that the object or the person, or the situation is necessarily painful in itself at all, it’s that my response sometimes is tinged by this regret perhaps that I’ve gone so long without realising this. Perhaps it’s something to do with the transient moment passing And perhaps sometimes it’s that growing recognition that these moments and sensations cannot really be shared by someone else, not quite in the way we see them, as we perceive them in our own uniqueness.

Again as you begin to see the world more clearly, things as they really are ,as things add up and you’re not making excuses as it were, it can become irritating. You don’t want to know, perceive this much, snuggling under the duvet can suddenly seem very inviting! There are definitely times when I’ve thought about or wanted to put the genie back in the bottle.

But at the same time of course you also develop much more of a sense of humour, can see, can laugh at your own irritation and you can look more kindly and humorously on the workings of your mind and the world. And of course the beauty and the loveliness is highlighted around you If we’re taking this particular journey than we do begin to see to some degree that this world is a state of mind as CT says.

If we embark or as we embark on this particular way, this particular way of seeing the world, of looking at the nature of our own perception, then we need to take it as slowly as we need. And we do need to stop to appreciate the beauty and cultivate the positive experiences in our minds and a positive experience of ourselves as we are,

Chogyam Trungpa goes on to talk a bit about the physical nature of perception, or the ordinary human way of seeing the world of objects. Do we noticed that the world is framed by our eyes? It easier to notice if we wear glasses or when we wear sunglasses we are looking through the world in this oval shaped frame. We notice the actual physical barriers to our vision.

Think about other ways of seeing the world or how other creatures may see the world, They have different physical attributes. Like a fly with it’s multi prisomn eyes, seeing multiple worlds perhaps. The owl with it’s ability to swivel it’s head and see around itself, the frog with his eyes on the top of his head. And then what about the magnifying glass the microscope and the telescope. When we are drawing over the weekend we can think about these very different ways of seeing the world and maybe experiment with another perspective. What would something look like if I were on the floor and the object was above me on the table for instance..

When we first focus on objects we involve all our senses, though our sense of sight is often predominant. But our sense of smell, our sense of touch and sense of sound is also there. If we are looking at some flowers for instance we may well be specifically tuned in to our sense of smell as well as sight and be expecting a fragrance. We might be quite surprised or disappointed if there wasn’t the scent we expected. Again with our food for Instance, if we have a bad cold and we lose our sense of smell, we often find that our food becomes unpalatable and that’s because the aroma of the food is no longer available to us. According to scientists our sense of smell accounts for a huge percentage of what we call taste.

As our senses engage with an object,( and in my experience I usually quite quickly try to name that object) we begin to engage our minds more seriously in the process. Do we like this? do we like the sound or smell, the taste of this? Do we want to hold on to it? Do we want to grasp it or do we want to push it away and ignore it? And these decisions, this process happens all the time jing, jing, jing,CT says and it happens sometimes within a fraction of a second and it takes place all the time I feel quite exhausted just thinking about it.

So what do we do if we really want to see the nature of reality? we begin by starting to slow down the whole perception process down and by just being with our perception of an object. We don’t accept or reject it, we don’t make our usual judgements about it. We sit down with it, aware, interested, appreciative in solidarity I like to think of it or as being a witness, but a witness whose heart is engaged in the seeing and perceiving.

Again sometimes coming out of meditation or on retreat I can really experience this slowing down, throwing off my usual concerns, object seen literally closer to me and the world appears very differently. Delight seems to come naturally and spontaneously. It’s like I’ve given up on wanting the world as I want it. given up a particular way of seeing the world and in this process the world is given back to me as a much more beautiful and alive place to be.

So we can begin to cultivate this slowing down process, over the weekend “ a standing-still quality” as CT says. Like the frog who sits in a puddle with the rain falling down. He just sits there winking his eyes as the raindrops fall .