Jamgon Kongtrül's Direct Path to Enlightenment - 2

                               [The First Jamgon Kongtrül  [sic] - Jamgon Kongtrül the Great  (1813-1899)]

[Allen continues his discussion of Jamgon Kongtrül's Direct Path To Enlightenment] 

Student:  (Sometimes you have to be strict with someone to make them learn a lesson)

AG: Yes, but that’s.. it’s.. it's like saying ... It's linked with "Don’t make wicked jokes".  In other words, don’t... Skillful Means [Upaya] may be being blunt but it doesn’t mean being mean – or if there’s meanness to the bluntness then obviously it’s not Skillful Means, it’s not opening up space. "Don’t strike at the heart", meaning..actually.. in a literal way, you push people in a corner where they can’t get out, they can’t admit they’re wrong, let us say, or can’t see their own ignorance because they have to defend themselves from such a lethal attack, which is different from.. a lethal attack is different from bluntness

Student: (But why doesn't he bother to give advice as to what we have to do..  it's always don't do this, or don't do that. What do we have to do?)
AG: I don’t know - "Don’t strike at the heart"

Student: (Why (not))?

AG: Because.. okay, because, it’s (more) useful this way. It could be.. Actually, it's for un-kinking kinks more.  It might be.. Actually, this is a translation, so I don’t know..

Student: Yes, maybe that's it.

AG: But, you know, it’s funny, (Ezra) Pound did that, you know his line, his idea for poetry was - “A Few "Don’t’s” for Imagists" (his essay on poetics was  “A Few "Don’t’s" for Imagists”)  - Don’t say “the dim misty lands of peace” – Don’t use reference instead of presentation – It’s pointing out the.. it's..  I think this is alright but.. It’s pointing out, it’s not striking at the heart.

Student: (Is everything telling you what not…)

AG: No, no, no – “Drive all blame into one” – that tells you what to do -  “Be grateful to everyone” -  Yes?  someone had a (question)? Mark [sic]?

Student: (Can you say if there is a difference between guide-lines and rules? - you know, don't.. do…)

AG: These are metaphors, these aren’t rules or guidelines. You’d have to interpret them. 
I mean, they’re so… I mean a thing like “Don’t back the favorite” - You have to figure it out, (and) in the course of figuring it out, in the course of inserting a small slogan like that into your nervous system and trying to figure it out – like “Don’t be consistent” – What does he mean, “don’t be consistent”? – Isn’t it good to be consistent? – You have to figure out what the language means, so I couldn’t quite call it a rule - maybe guide-line?, (metaphoric guide-line, more likely), slogan, like the Mao… apparently, the Maoists slogans were traditional…well this is Atiśa slogan (I forgot (from) what century, but it’s something like  four or five hundred A.D, I think) - Yes? Glen [sic]?

Student: I think (William) Blake would consider these slogans as limited, in a sense. If you compare these and put them back in Blake's system, Blake's things are Auguries of Innocence and  (each reflects) Blake's limited condition, (even if  it has its own beauties), and  (each reconfigures) in the world of Experience, they all turn inside-out -  (and) these are subjective points, and, for Blake, an objectivity comes through Experience - you can look back, at great, immense distance on Innocence, which..  I think you’ll find these as, not being given in a logical system, they were given to be criticized...

AG: I’m not so sure

Student: …comparing them to his own Auguries of Innocence.

AG: Well, in this case.. These are actually Mahayana, the boy-scout rules for 
mind-training, a long-needed, that is needed rules. In states of confusion, they’re good reference points. What do you do? – what you do, or what you don’t do, or warnings against getting into mind-traps (like being consistent, striking at the heart, waiting for an opportunity, making wicked jokes, discussing defects...)

Student: And one of the things that (William) Blake is doing in Auguries of Innocence is wiping out that eighteenth-century vision of worlds - "the busy little bee gathers up his store" ["How doth the little busy bee"]  and all of those things that were produced in the eighteenth-century ..the little primers and so forth. He’s wiping them out in that practical way. And  he is thinking always in terms of  jumping out of  Innocence into Experience. 
And so he was find these, I think, to be exactly that - boy-scout rules.

AG: (Yes) Well, it is boy-scout training . However, it’s a necessary training, because you can’t jump out unless you are to have some practical experience with the situation and understand your mind.

Student: No, I was just comparing Blake’s system.

AG: Blake’s are Vajryana and these are Mahayana. These are Mahayana. It’s just that the pith instructions or slogan concept in condensation of…  because we don’t know these in Tibetan, we only know them in relatively unsubtle English translations. But they’re really interesting, like “Drive all blames into one”  is a great classic. That would be worthy of Blake, I think.

["Satan in His Original Glory: Thou Was Perfect Till Iniquity Was Found in Thee" - William Blake - from the Tate Collection]

Don’t fall for the celestial demon 

(this is for Helen Luster! - Don’t fall for the celestial demon! – i.e..

One method will correct all wrong
 –which is, dropping everything.

There’s one that I always liked, that I worked at with Rocky Flats, actually, as a…
In order to bring any situation to the path quickly, as soon as it is met, join it with meditation  
“In order to bring any situation to the path quickly – the path of enlightenment, or the path of openness -  as soon as it is met, join it with meditation” 

Train as though cut-off 
– i.e.  beyond the veil, train as though cut off from life itself 

Don’t expect thanks
 – that’s the last of them – don’t expect thanks!

[Audio for the above can be heard here, starting at approximately  thirty-eight-and-a-quarter minutes in, and concluding at approximately forty-four-and-a-half minutes in]

Jamgon Kongtrül's Direct Path to Enlightenment - 1

[Tibetan statue of Shakyamuni Buddha c. 13th-14th Century - Gilded Bronze & Pigment - from the Esther R Portnow Collection of Asian Art at the Michael C Carlos Museum at Emory University] 


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 to Vajrayana 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]