Chogyam Trungpa: His Life and Vision

So the problem is not negativity itself, but our reaction to it—or, as Chögyam Trungpa put it, “negative negativity.”

Chögyam Trungpa emphasized a different aspect of the mahayana.26 Instead of using logical argument, he stressed compassion as an experience that arises when the struggle to maintain the fiction of ego ceases. It is an acceptance and a feeling of trust that spreads and radiates naturally toward others: “In the mahayana tradition we experience a sens

As Martin Heidegger put it: “The beginning . . . is not safeguarded—it is not even reached—by conservatives. It is only from what has already occurred that such people produce what must be regulated and ideal.”21 In other words, conservatives want to keep intact what was, for the simple reason that it has been, without any regard for its true worth

The danger of spirituality, he explained constantly, is to create a world apart, a holy world without ties to the solid and direct experience of each person. Such a vision of bliss can never truly help people. It is a sort of unattainable ideal that reinforces each person’s feeling of psychological misery and encourages spiritual materialism.

making these discoveries into an answer. Instead we explore further and further and further without looking for an answer. It is a process of working with ourselves, with our lives, with our psychology, without looking for an answer but seeing things as they are—seeing what goes on in our heads directly and simply, absolutely literally. If we can u

Obstacles should not be seen as threats to be fought off, because then, instead of trying to establish contact with them, we spend our time warding them off as though they were evil and antagonistic to the teaching. On the contrary, it is necessary to work with negativity and try to use it as an “adornment.”

Chögyam Trungpa often explained the importance of expressing what is true for us at the moment of speaking, and not just repeating what we already know to be true. It is not enough merely to parrot lessons.

However innumerable beings are, I vow to save them; However inexhaustible the passions are, I vow to transform them; However limitless the dharma is, I vow to understand it completely; However infinite the Buddha’s truth is, I vow to attain it.

As he himself explained, becoming a Buddhist is not a matter of trying to live up to what you would like to be, but an attempt to be what you are: “This possibility is connected with seeing our confusion, or misery and pain, but not