Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism

by Chögyam Trungpa

senses. This monkey is inquisitive, poking its head out of each window and jumping up and down, up and down, restlessly. He is a captive monkey in an empty house. It is a solid house, rather than the jungle in which the monkey leaped and swung, rather than the trees in which he could hear the wind moving and the rustling of the leaves and branches. All these things have become completely solidified. In fact, the jungle itself has become his solid house, his prison. Instead of perching in a tree, this inquisitive monkey has been walled in by a solid world, as if a flowing thing, a dramatic and beautiful waterfall, had suddenly been frozen. This frozen house, made of frozen colors and energies, is completely still. This seems to be the point where time begins as past, future, and present.

The flux of things becomes solid tangible time, a so...

If one is fascinated, the sense of claustrophobia becomes more and more vivid, more and more acute, because one begins to explore one’s imprisonment. In fact fascination is part of the reason he remains imprisoned. He is captured by his fascination.

having taken solidity for granted, he is trapped by his involvement with it.

Hungry for entertainment, he tries to feel and appreciate the texture of the wall, attempting to make sure that this seeming solidity is really solid.

Then, assured that the space is solid, the monkey begins to relate to it by grasping it, repelling it, or ignoring it.

When we speak of “hallucination” or “dream,” it means that we attach values to things and events which they do not necessarily have.

We have definite opinions about the way things are and should be. This is projection: we project our version of things onto what is there.

Thus we become completely immersed in a world of our own creation, a world of conflicting values and opinions. Hallucination, i...

of things and events, reading into the phenomenal world...

does not...

Because he is so tired of struggling, it is very tempting for him to relax and let his mind wander and hallucinate. This is the creation of the six lokas or six realms.

These are the different kinds of projections, the dream worlds we create for ourselves.

hallucinate is the deva loka, the god realm, “heaven,

The monkey dreams of strolling out of his house, walking in luxuriant fields, eating ripe fruit, sitting and swinging in the trees, living a life of freedom and ease.

Having experienced the dream of heaven, the monkey wants to defend and maintain his great bliss and happiness. He suffers from paranoia, worrying that others may try to take his treasures from him, and so he begins to feel jealousy.

He is proud of himself, has enjoyed his creation of the god realm,

Then he also perceives the earthbound quality of these experiences. Instead of simply alternating between jealousy and pride, he begins to feel comfortable, at h...

his hallucinations become more and more solid, then this whole development begins to feel rather heavy and stupid.

He would rather crawl or moo or bark than enjoy the pleasure of pride or envy. This is the simplicity of the animals.

Then the process is intensified, and the monkey starts to experience a desperate feeling of starvation, because he really does not want to descend to any lower realms. He would like to return to the pleasure realms of the gods; so he begins to feel hunger and thirst, a tremendous feeling of nostalgia for what he...

Then there is a sudden losing of faith and the monkey begins to doubt himself and his world, begins to react violently. All this is a terrible nightmare. He realizes that such a nightmare could not be true and...

the development of ego. It is a kind of psychological portrait of our mental states.

You suddenly go into a trance, because you have worked so hard.

This is something which you have actually achieved, a masterpiece, all this solidity. And having achieved it completely, then suddenly you are overwhelmed by

The whole point is that we must not attempt to figure out how we are going to escape our dilemma,

think about all these claustrophobic rooms that we are in.

These and the other hallucinations of hell are generated from an environment of claustrophobia and aggression. There is a feeling of being trapped in a small space with no air to breathe and no room in which to move about.

Trapped as he is, the monkey not only tries to destroy the walls of his claustrophobic prison; he even attempts to kill himself in order to escape his excruciating

and continuous pain. But he cannot really kill himself, and his suicide attempts on...

The more the monkey struggles to destroy or control the walls, the more solid and oppressive they become, until at some point the intensity of the monkey’s aggression wears out a bit and, instead of battling with the walls, he stops relating to them, stops communicating with them. He becomes p...

eventually the monkey begins to become exhausted from his struggle.

The intensity of the hell realm begins to diminish, the monkey begins to relax, and suddenly he sees the possibility of a more open, spacious way to be.

In the hell realm he had been too busy struggling to even have time to consider the possibility of relief.

Now he experiences great hunger for more pleasurable, spacious conditions and fantasizes numerous

ways to satisfy his hunger. He may imagine that he sees far away from him some open space, but when he approaches it, ...

In each of his fantasies he glimpses the possibility of satisfaction, reaches out for it, and is quickly disappointed.

but his hunger is so demanding that he is not daunted and so continues to constantly churn out fantasies of future satisfaction.

The pain of disappointment involves the monkey in a love-hate relatio...

it is the insatiable hunger itself which causes pain.

the monkey is fascinated with being hungry rather than with satisfying his hunger.

as the monkey is repeatedly frustrated in his attempts to fulfill his fantasies, he begins to become somewhat resentful and at the same time resigned.

He begins to give up the intensity of hunger and relax further into a set series of habitual responses to the world.

He ignores other ways of dealing with life experiences, relies on the ...

This is the animal realm, the realm of stupidity.

He is intoxicated with his safe, self-contained, familiar world and so fixes his attention on familiar goals and pursues them with unswerving and stubborn determination.

eventually the monkey begins to realize that he can pick and choose his pleasures and pains.

He begins to become somewhat more intelligent, discriminating between pleasurable and painful experiences in an effort to maximize pleasure and minimize pain.

This is the human realm, the realm of discrim...

Here the monkey stops to co...