Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism

by Chögyam Trungpa

Kagyü lineage,

Marpa, student of the Indian teacher Naropa and guru to Milarepa, his most famous spiritual son.

The process of receiving teaching depends upon the student giving something in return; some kind of psychological surrender is necessary, a gift of some sort. This is why we must discuss surrendering, opening, giving up expectations, before we can speak of the relationship between teacher and student. It is essential to surrender, to open yourself, to present whatever you are to the guru, rather than trying to present yourself as a worthwhile

It does not matter how much you are willing to pay, how correctly you behave, how clever you are at saying the right thing to your teacher. It is not like having an interview for a job or buying a new car. Whether or not you will get the job depends upon your credentials, how well you are dressed, how beautifully your shoes are polished, how well you speak, how good your manners are. If you are buying a car, it is a matter of how much money you have and how good your credit is. But when it comes to spirituality, something more is required. It is not a matter of applying for a job, of dressing up to impress our potential employer. Such deception does not apply to an interview with a guru, because he sees right through us. He is amused if we dress up especially for the interview. Making ingratiating gestures is not applicable in this situation; in fact it is futile. We must make a real commitment to being open with our teacher; we must be willing to give up all our preconceptions.

If you are not involved with materialism, either spiritually or physically, then there is no emphasis made on any extreme.

We tend to wear suits of armor, one over the other. This

as soon as we remove one layer of our suit of armor, we find another beneath it. We hope we will not have

to completely undress. We hope that stripping off only a few layers wil...

There are many stories of teacher-student relationships in the past in which the student had to make long journeys and endure many hardships until his fascination and impulses began to wear out. This seems to be the point: the impulse of searching for something is, in itself, a hang-up.

When this impulse begins to wear out, then our fundamental basic nakedness begins to appear and

a self-conscious feeling that “I may not be able to open completely and thoroughly.” A love-hate relationship, a kind of surrendering and running away process develops. In other words,

we begin to play a game, a game of wanting to open, wanting to be involved in a love affair with our guru, and then wanting to run away from him. If we get too close to our spiritual friend, then we begin to feel overpowered by him.

“A guru is like a fire. If you get too close, you get burned; if you stay too far away, y...

wanting to be near and wanting to be far away

is simply your own game.

You can play games with him or not, as you choose.

every situation becomes an expression of the teachings.

First you surrendered to your spiritual friend.

Then you communicated and played ga...

And now you have come to the state of complete openness. As a result of this openness you begin to see the guru-...

the creative quality of the spiritual friend which also becomes a part of us.

The basic intelligence, tathagatagarbha, buddha nature, is always in every experience life brings us.

attempting to prove that you are good indicates fear of some kind.

Zen expression: “At first the mountains are mountains and streams are streams. Then the mountains are not mountains and streams are not streams. But in the end, mountains are mountains again and streams are streams again.”

When we think that we are working on the forward-moving process of attempting to empty ourselves out, we find ourselves going backward, trying to secure ourselves, filling ourselves up.

And this confusion continues and intensifies until we finally discover that we are totally lost, that we have lost our ground, that there is no starting point or middle or end because our mind has been so overwhelmed by our own defense mechanisms.

what spirituality means really. Is it simply a matter of attempting to be religious, pious, and good? Or is it trying to know more than other people, trying to learn more about the significance of life?

true initiation, is born out of surrender.

When we regard abhisheka as sacred, then the precision and sharpness immediately begin to fall away because we have begun to evaluate.

congratulating us that we have managed to do such a holy thing.

You try to secure yourself and, having achieved security, then you also attempt to secure that as well.

Such fortifications could extend to an infinite empire.

If you really want to secure yourself completely, there is literally no limit to the efforts you can make.

the irony of your attempts to secure yourself, the irony of your overlapping structure of self-protection.

You have to give up the watcher of the watcher of the watcher.

In order to do this, one has to drop the first watcher, the intention...

Ego is always trying to achieve spirituality. It is rather like wanting to witness your own funeral.

“hunting the guru.”

We are so concerned with what we are going to get out of our potential operation that we have forgotten the doctor who is going to perform it.

we need a person to play the part of mirror. Whenever

we are involved with any kind of self-deception, it is necessary that the whole process be revealed, opened. Any grasping attitude must be exposed.

So self-deception, in this case, means trying to re-create a past experience again and again, instead of actually having the experience in the present moment. In order to have the experience now, one would have to

flash was, because it is this memory which keeps it distant.

As long as you regard yourself or any part of your experience as the “dream come true,” then you are involved in self-deception. Self-deception seems always to depend upon the dream world, because you would like to see what you have not yet seen, rather than what you are now seeing. You will not accept that whatever is here now is what is, nor are you willing to go on with the situation as it is. Thus, self-deception always manifests itself in terms of trying to create or re-create a dream world, the nostalgia of the dream experience. And the opposite of self-deception is just working with the facts of life.

If one searches for any kind of bliss or joy, the realization of one’s imagination and dream, then, equally, one is going to suffer failure and depression. This is the whole point: a fear of separation, the hope of attaining union, these are not just manifestations of or the actions of ego or self-deception, as if ego were somehow a real thing which performed certain actions. Ego is the actions, the mental events. Ego is the fear of losing openness, the fear of losing the

egoless ...

Fear, hope, loss, gain—these are the ongoing action of the dream of ego, the self-perpetuating, self-maintaining structure which is self-deception.

When we face things as they are, we give up the hope of something better.

we really want to learn and see the experience of truth, we have to be where we are.

We are still here, which is always the first thing to bring us down.