Glimpses of the Profound: Four Short Works by Chogyam Trungpa

Author:Chogyam Trungpa [Trungpa, Chogyam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shambhala
Published: 2016-05-17T04:00:00+00:00

PART TWO

EVAM

EVAM.

From the personal seal of Chögyam Trungpa and the Trungpa tulkus. Design by Molly K. Nudell.

Generations of Astronauts

WELCOME, ladies and gentlemen, fellow students. First of all, I would like to find out how many students did not have a chance to read or study the literature that was put out.1 Anybody? Does that mean that everybody has done the preliminary study group? Okay.

This is an unusual situation, in that we provided some vanguard study before the seminar itself began. I am glad you had a chance to study and work with the material. That will certainly provide some kind of base, or footing—a great deal. However, what we are going to discuss is not all that esoteric and all that extraordinary, far-out, mind-blowing, and so forth. It is somewhat ordinary, to your disappointment. However, maybe you could pick up some highlights throughout the few days we have together. You might be able to find something particularly personal and real.

I would like to get to the topic right away, at this point. What we are going to study, what we are going to discuss, is the EVAM principle, as you know already. Do I have that right? Yes? EVAM? [Laughter] I will be working with Khyentse Rinpoche, who is my personal teacher and a friend of my root guru. Khyentse Rinpoche is in town, so I would like to also ask him for a few suggestions. We would like to work together on this topic, so that this seminar could become more potent, so to speak.

We often ignore the sense of general ground. Instead we usually try to pick out the highlights. We do that all the time in our life, and that has become problematic. We have no idea of the general perspective. We say, “Oh, those general perspectives, let us leave that to the learned or the technicians.” We fight constantly, stitch by stitch, inch by inch, all along. By trying to have little goodies and words of wisdom here and there, consequently we become completely ignorant and stupid. We lost track of our sky, in trying to fight for a grain of sesame seed each day.

The vision of EVAM, basically speaking, is much larger than talking about the marriage counselor’s level, or the relationship between two people, or simply the relationship between sky and earth. The interesting point is that whenever we talk about relationship, we manage to reduce ourselves into just simply one louse trying to fight another louse in the crack of a seam in our shirt, which we call our home. Psychiatrists do that, marriage counselors do that, physicians do that, local gurus do that. Usually we have a problem there: whether somebody can make glamour and glory out of how to get from here to the next stitch of thread going through that seam. As one louse, could we walk over to the next louse and make friends with it? Our vision is generally absolutely cramped and so poor, so little, so small, depressingly small.

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