Chogyam Trungpa was a controversial yet undeniably influential Tibetan Buddhist teacher who brought the essence of Tibetan Buddhism to the West. His book outlines the spiritual path and the pitfalls commonly found along the way.
Copyright 2023 by Letters to the Sky
Chogyam Trungpa was a controversial yet undeniably influential Tibetan Buddhist teacher who brought the essence of Tibetan Buddhism to the West. His book outlines the spiritual path and the pitfalls commonly found along the way.
Copyright 2023 by Letters to the Sky
Stephan Downes:
Hi, I'm Stephan Downes.
Adam Rizvi:
And, I'm Adam Rizvi.
Stephan Downes:
This is Letters to the Sky, a podcast about the metaphysical iconoclasts, philosophical visionaries, and religious leaders of the world.
Adam Rizvi:
Whether you consider yourself religious, spiritual, neither or something in between, we invite you to take a deep dive with us down metaphysical rabbit holes and learn to see your life from a new perspective.
Stephan Downes:
Adam.
Adam Rizvi:
Stephan.
Stephan Downes:
Don't laugh.
Adam Rizvi:
I won't. I'm holding it back.
Stephan Downes:
You're doing it right now. Hi, how are you doing?
Adam Rizvi:
Hey, doing well. Good to have you back.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, thank you for inviting me back to my show. You are such a generous host.
Adam Rizvi:
Oh, it's my pleasure. It's the least I could do.
Stephan Downes:
So, we usually record in the mornings and Adam just finished a 12-hour shift, and I finished a lovely lazy Saturday, looking at houses, so I am pooped. Adam's ready for-
Adam Rizvi:
We're both ready for a truly amazing episode.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah. So, this episode, we are talking about Chogyam Trungpa's, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, which is, without question, my favorite book of all time and I think it is, for anyone who has been on the path or... To be honest, it was, I think the first or second spiritual book I ever read in my entire life. Someone gave it to me. Like, an old tattered copy, a first edition or whatever and I just devoured it, and loved it so much and it's been on the top of my list ever since.
Adam Rizvi:
To show you Stephan here... We can see each other on video, but for those of you listening, I'm going to describe what I'm doing. I'm showing Stephan, this is the book you gave me, and I still have the postcard you put on the inside.
Stephan Downes:
What does it say? I forget what it says.
Adam Rizvi:
And you wrote, this is the single most important book you will ever read.
Stephan Downes:
Hey.
Adam Rizvi:
Hey.
Stephan Downes:
I don't even remember when I did that.
Adam Rizvi:
So, I still have the book and I still have that post-it note that you put on the inside cover. That goes to show how much Stephan values this book and it truly... It's a marvelous, wonderful book, but we're going to dive into that now.
Stephan Downes:
Adam, would you say that this book is the Netter's Anatomy of spiritual books?
Adam Rizvi:
Oh, man.
Stephan Downes:
That's not really... Is it essential or is it just traditional you know?
Adam Rizvi:
Right, yeah, I don't know if the reference works, but it's a great book. It's a great book.
Stephan Downes:
I just wanted to show that I knew something about medicine, from that time I tried to go to medical school.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, you almost made it.
Stephan Downes:
So close. It's that GPA. All right. Okay. Talking about the book. So, Chogyam Trungpa was a Tibetan teacher. He came from Tibetan lineage. He was the head of a particular lineage in the Kagyu School, although he also held the lineage for part of the Nyingma school as well and he started out in England. When he came to the west, he was a monk and he came to the west and he basically decided that there is no way that these Western people are going to relate to me as a Tibetan monk, so he gave back his robes, he kind of renounced his roles as a monk, and he basically adopted a Western lifestyle. He was a bit of a... I was going to say, he was a bit of a controversial figure. He was a controversial figure. But, I can't get away from how good this book is. This book has like touched my life in so many important ways, and every time I read it, it is fresh again, and has new meaning for me and I just can't get over it.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, I would say that, even if you're not a Buddhist, even if you're not even interested in the teachings of the Buddha, there are some fundamental guideposts in this book that every ardent spiritual practitioner will recognize. There are dynamics in ways of being when we try to deal with evolving and diving into our own psyche and transforming ourselves, that show up over and over again. It's almost like staples along the path. It's a very well-worn path and I think Trungpa, he describes it so well.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, he does. He has such a way with... For someone who wasn't born in an English speaking language, he has a much better command of the English language than most English authors, like native English speaking authors and the way he describes things and the metaphors he chooses are so perfect and poignant. I don't know how he did it. Anyway, we can just jump in. Because, my favorite part about podcasts is when the host spend a good five, six minutes, not talking about the content of the podcast. So, I don't want to let everybody down.
Adam Rizvi:
Let's talk a little bit about the context of the book, so the book. Actually, Chogyam Trungpa talks about this right at the outset in his introduction, and he says that this book is actually from a series of talks given in Boulder, Colorado, in the fall of 1970, and the spring of 1971. I'll just read a little bit here, because this is the book, is what it's about. He said, "At that time, we were just forming our Meditation Center in Boulder. Although, most of my students were sincere in their aspiration to walk on the spiritual path, they brought to it a great deal of confusion, misunderstanding, and expectation. Therefore, I found it necessary to present to my students an overview of the path and some warnings as to the dangers along that path." It's very simple. It's very straightforward, but whoa, boy, it's quite an undertaking and I think he does a really good job in... Actually, it's not that big of a book. I think it's something like a little over 200 pages, but he really does a good job at the overview of the path and the dangers, and all of that held, I think, nicely in the typical Tibetan Buddhist tradition.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so here's my favorite Trungpa quote of all time. "The bad news is that you're falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is, there's no ground."
Adam Rizvi:
I haven't heard that before. It's so good.
Stephan Downes:
It's so good. It's perfectly describes the path. It perfectly describes it. I wanted to start with that one, because I feel that it's such a... So, perfect. So, in the intro, he talks about how this, like you're saying, this is something that can be applied to whether you're a non-theistic tradition, like Buddhism is, or a theistic tradition, or... And, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say, an atheistic tradition, because there are those and they're a thing, and they are vulnerable to the same mental flaws that... I'm trying to... I'm just looking for words here.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah yeah, all you got to do is be a human being and you will find yourself. It doesn't matter what ism you identify yourself with.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah. So, I think that the questions that we came up with, that we really wanted to talk about today, for everybody are, the first one is, what is spiritual materialism? When we use that word, what does it mean, and what does it not mean? This is tied to the questions, like what is the ego? Then the second one is, what is Chogyam Trungpa's overview of the spiritual path as he lays it out? What does it mean to walk the spiritual path, being aware of spiritual materialism, and having... As he says it, spiritual materialism is a real threat to the spiritual practitioner. Then thirdly is, what are his warnings as to the dangers along that path, which, I guess, I just said again? So, good for me. I think we'll just jump in here.
Adam Rizvi:
Maybe, we start with his definition of spiritual materialism. I think that's on page one. I'll read it here for us. "Walking the spiritual path properly, is a very subtle process. It is not something to jump into naively. There are numerous side tracks which lead to a distorted ego-centered version of spirituality. We can deceive ourselves into thinking we are developing spiritually, when instead, we are strengthening our egocentricity through spiritual techniques. This fundamental distortion may be referred to as spiritual materialism." It's so good. In fact, this one piece I'm going to repeat again, "We are strengthening our egocentricity through spiritual techniques." It's the amazing, subtle, I guess, conniving, but it's not really a thing. But, the ego has this amazing tendency and ability to use absolutely anything to further its purpose of its survival and so, I think, spiritual materialism is talking, in this definition, about this very subtle process that happens along the spiritual path where we start to use quote, unquote, spiritual items along the path, the techniques, the rituals, the processes, as fodder for the ego.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, absolutely. When I think about spiritual materialism, and obviously he defines it great by himself, but if I were to really summarize it for myself in a sentence is, spiritual materialism is identifying spirituality or some part of your spiritual self, whatever, as your identity. Right? That's fundamentally what it is. I think that that is, for a lot of people who have not encountered this kind of conversation before, an incredibly threatening statement and it's an incredibly confusing one. Because, for a lot of people who have never even considered what their identity is or isn't... I think, right now, a lot of us are starting to just in like normal conversations, but spiritually, I think a lot of people just take the path for granted that the path is this magical thing that's going to fill us with sparkles and feeling great all the time and I think Chogyam Trungpa really dives into how that is absolutely the opposite. In the intro, he says, "The heart of the confusion is that man has a sense of self, which seems to be continuous or solid." Right? That's very Buddhist. But, he goes on in, again, the intro to talk about how, in particular, the Buddhist path and the Buddhist kind of philosophy of how one walks a spiritual path, is a process of cutting away to find enlightenment. It's not adding to create some sort of end product called spiritual awakening, because that product could then be dissolved, since it was created, you know? Anything that was created can be destroyed, and enlightenment is beyond being destroyed, and so it can't be created and so, the only way to do that is to cut things away to what's already there. I remember, when I was younger, there was a moment where I got this on a deep level. It's the idea that there are two major paths to growth. At least, at first, it seems that way. It seems like there is the, what I call, the positive path, or you could call it the acquisition path, which is, let me learn as much as I can. Let me gather more experiences, more books, more movies, more, more and more. It's like, there's something to get that I don't have, and if I know enough, if I experienced enough, then I will be enlightened, or at the very least more spiritual. Then, at some point, it dawns on you. Well, what if it's actually about letting go of all the conditioning, that I've had all these false belief systems, all these ways of thinking, that don't serve, don't help. In fact, they perpetuate this sense of identity that I currently hold on to. At the beginning, it seems like those are the two options I have, but deeper down the path, you start to realize that negative path of melting away and letting go till you're left with the fundamental unconditioned reality of yourself, that's actually the only path there ever was to begin with.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we start to get into the conversations about dualism versus non-dualism, and this is obviously a tricky thing to kind of... We can talk about what dualism is all day, but like getting to what non-dualism is, I don't know if there's that much to say about it. I'm, at least, i'm not good at talking about it.
Adam Rizvi:
Well, I was going to say, we're talking a little bit about Trungpa's overview of the path. So, we have this question of, what is spiritual materialism, and I think we identified that. He seems to lay out a pretty rough idea of what the path looks like. He talks a little bit about meditation, which I thought was really interesting. One of the things he says is, "Once you begin to understand what's going on, you start to realize the true purpose of meditation" and he actually compares it to different forms of meditation, like concentration. A lot of people think of, okay, you focus on a candle or you focus on your breath, he actually distinguishes his definition of meditation from that practice and he says, meditation, for him, at least, is letting be. There's a deep profundity in that statement, because it means there's no more holding on to, there's no more grasping, there's no more pushing away. There's no more trying to identify with the situation that's happening. You're just letting what is, be, both internally and externally. I thought that was a very critical aspect of the path for him.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I remember when I first started learning about Buddhist meditation, specifically. I was reading another book by Chogyam Trungpa, and he was talking about the trappings of thinking that you're doing meditation right, right? Oh, I definitely concentrated that whole time, I nailed that meditation. Actually. It's not safe for a work video, but Arj Barker is a comedian, he has a video called the... What is it, the illest Buddhist? He has a rap video about how he's the best meditator around. Don't watch it around your kids or at work, but it's pretty funny and I think he kind of nails it. So, Chogyam Trungpa, in his book, he's talking about, even if you were able to follow your breath and concentrate for 5% of the time you're meditating, the fact that you sat down and did it and just were just with yourself, like that is the juice of the meditation, especially in like, like shamatha meditations, like following the breath and concentration-based meditations.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah. What would you say, Stephan, are some other aspects of his definition of the path?
Stephan Downes:
He talks about throughout the book, in a lot of different ways. You know the first half of the book is really his flavor of qualities of the spiritual path, and the second half is, his take on foundational Buddhist ideas. And so, I think, for Chogyam Trungpa, the path is not an easy one, the spiritual path isn't.... This is one of the reasons I love this book, and something that really struck me the first time I read it, was his... The way he talks about disappointment, the idea of disappointment. He says, "We must surrender our hopes and expectations, as well as our fears, and march directly into disappointment, work with disappointment, go into it and make it our way of life, which is a very hard thing to do. Disappointment is a good sign of basic intelligence that cannot be compared to anything else." And then, further on in that page, he says, "Disappointment is the best chariot to use on the path of the Dharma." I'm curious if that stuck out to you and what you think about that, because I could talk about this for, probably, days. So, I want to hear what you have to say about that.
Adam Rizvi:
I remember when you first brought this up, and I think it was before I actually had read the book and my relationship with the word disappointment, up until then, had been really a negative one. There's nothing good about it, you're disappointed. All right, well, get past it. What are you disappointed about? It just felt inherently like something I needed to fix. At that point, it's pretty actually recent... Maybe it was a couple of years ago, that we were having this conversation, but eventually what happens... And, this what happened to me is, something happens in your life, a situation, that causes a tremendous amount of disappointment. It's so big that you can't push against it, you can't push it away, you can't fix it, at least not immediately, and so you're left with this behemoth stone or block just sitting in front of you on your path. I think the suffering, at that point, is actually trying to do something with it. You just try to push this gigantic stone, it's not going anywhere. But, when you just let it be, when you realize, this is it, this is the path you know, this is what's going to bring about my transformation. It sounds, I guess, cliche in the spiritual sense of you just let it be and you accept the moment. It's more than that, like it feels visceral, and it feels poignant, when something deeply disappointing happens, in the sense that expectations are not met. But, more than that, it's, life goes in a direction that you didn't anticipate it going. To really sit with that and to acknowledge that this too, is the path. It's not that you've gone off on a side trek or gone down an alleyway that has a dead end, and you're actually where you're not supposed to be. No, you're actually exactly where you're supposed to be. And, that too, is the path. That was the big takeaway for me in how I relate to disappointment now.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah yeah, I completely agree. For me, disappointment is that starting place. Disappointment is the one emotion that you cannot like, work your way around. It is so thorough. When you're like really disappointed, it's so thorough, and there's... I don't know.
Adam Rizvi:
I have a feeling, he uses it in a way that's more profound, than we use the term colloquially.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, when he's talking about disappointment, I get the sense, he's talking about our humanity. You know, there's so many times on the spiritual path, when we, even if we're in a path like Buddhism, which is very explicitly dealing with our humanity, any kind of spiritual school you go to where it has a lineage and a set of teachings, deals with humanity. It deals with our human nature, the parts of ourselves that are ugly, the parts of ourselves that are limited, that are flawed, you know. This is the kind of disappointment that I think Chogyam Trungpa's talking about is, we are fundamentally disappointed with ourselves. We are disappointed that we're not taller, that we're not nicer, that we're not more confident, that we're not less confident, that we're not humble enough. That we're disappointed in a million things about ourselves. We're disappointed that we're not disciplined enough, we're disappointed that we're too strict with ourselves. Everyone's disappointed about something about themselves or numerous things, and we always fight it. We always fight that we're disappointed with ourselves. I really think he's trying to get us to the point of like, just accepting who we are right now. That doesn't mean, accepting who we are as, who I am, is this vision of perfection, right? Especially when we're talking about the dualistic part, like where we're starting, as, we're accepting that we are human, and all the things that, that means, right? Real quick, I just want to read another thing here about it. It kind of ties into disappointment, as well as his view of the spiritual path is, says, "If we regard spirituality as a way of making ourselves comfortable, then whenever we experience something unpleasant, a disappointment, we try to rationalize it. Of course, this must be an act of wisdom on the part of the guru, because I know, I'm quite certain the guru doesn't do harmful things. Guruji is a perfect being and whatever Guruji does is right. Whatever Guruji does is for me, because he's on my side, so I can afford to open. I can safely surrender. I know that I'm treading on the right path. Something is not quite right about such an attitude. It is at best, simple minded and naive." And again, he's talking here about... He uses the word guru, which he spent some time talking about in the book, not everyone has that.That word doesn't mean the same thing to people who are in a tradition with an actual guru. But, this could be... People say this about the universe all the time. Oh, like the universe is on my side. Right? There's a fundamental fantasy about what is, and it's not just dealing with our feelings that say otherwise, right? It's not about what's true. It's not even about what's true. Like is the Guru... There's no truth claim in this. It's just like, what do we feel? The vast majority of us, I think, really feel deep down that like, that's not the whole truth.
Adam Rizvi:
Right. There's actually two things I want to say. I want to make sure that we hit both. But one, is this idea of the other side of disappointment, is... He talks a little bit about surrender and it's this idea of letting be. It's the not pushing, it's the not grasping for this typical concepts in Buddhist thought. But, he says over here on page 28, "The basic act of surrender does not involve the worship of an external power. Rather, it means working together with inspirations that one becomes an open vessel into which knowledge can be poured." I like this description of it, because it applies to anyone in any situation. You become an open vessel. This is important teaching, not only so that you can learn something and have knowledge poured into it. It's more than that, it's, you hollow yourself out, there's no doing anymore. There's no forcing against the world. There's no agency that's trying to impact the world in its own way, right. But instead, it's open now. The act of surrender is open. And, what ends up flowing through you is, it's ineffable, really. We can't put words to it. We could say it's the universe, we could say it's the divine, we could say it's God, or the spiritual master, the guru, but it's more than that. It comes back to this original idea of the deconstruction of the sense of self. When you do that fully, when you surrender fully, it takes you to the ground of being.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think one of the things in this... Surrender is, I think, a big topic in this book, and this book is from Tibetan tradition. But, the topic of surrender is something, I think, like you're saying, it's universal, and it's something that I think doesn't... When I see spiritual paths being talked about in everyday parlance, in people in their spiritual selves, I really don't see people using this term, like the way that I relate to it. You know, I'm someone who grew up in a tradition like this, that surrender has a different meaning, you know. One of the things in that quote I just read, is he says, I can afford to open, I can safely surrender, right? Even in this, we're surrendering, but we're saying, oh, it's safe to do so, right. Like that's not really surrender, right? Surrender is surrender. Surrender isn't... it's not conditional, or I'll surrender when I feel open and safe to surrender. It is like right now, in this very moment, surrender to how you feel. Surrender to, you know in this case, we can say, oh, we don't need to use the word guru. But, like surrender to how you feel. If you're feeling angry, surrender to how you feel. There's a saying that I use, which is stop fighting that you're fighting it, right? So, it's not even that... I won't say, we're angry. The problem isn't only... You know, you can say, oh, being angry is bad. That's not what causes us stress. Being angry, it's just a feeling. The stress comes from, we don't think we should be angry. Then, it's like, so if you stop fighting the fact that you're fighting being angry and just like, well, I really don't like being angry, like all of the stress just dissolves. You just admit to yourself, I really hate being angry. It completely removes the charge and that's the kind of surrender, I feel, that he's getting at, is just surrendering to how you feel.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, I really, I just, almost don't even want to fill this silence with words, because what you just said, Stephan, is so powerful. I think people need to hear that over and over again. It's something that, I think, we all discover-
Stephan Downes:
Stop fighting it. Stop fighting that you're fighting it.
Adam Rizvi:
Stop fighting that you're fighting, exactly. For me, I call it the double hit proposal, you know. It's this idea that you have the anger, but the real suffering is not the initial hit, it's the second hit when you're like, I don't want to feel this way. Or, I shouldn't feel this way. That's where the suffering comes in. It also explains a lot of the crazy and bizarre behavior on the part of so-called spiritual masters, or enlightened masters where they do things that seem very counterintuitive and very not spiritual. It's because that's not where spirituality lies. It's not in the overt form or behavior. It's in whether there's a reaction to what arises in the moment, and a grasping or a pushing away of that.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah and we're talking here on a very. We're really talking on a very pure level of a very pure... Pure's not even the right word. Like a very focused and subtle... Yeah, pure's totally not the right word.
Adam Rizvi:
Spiritual people are very pure, Stephan.
Stephan Downes:
That's true. We're talking about a very subtle understanding of like the spiritual path and of like spiritual development and I will say you know, in Buddhism, there's this concept of skillful means, which is like, a teacher who's using skillful means is using all of the tools available to them. That could be tools, like being really loving to someone who's really never felt love before. Like really completely opening themselves as a teacher, and baring their heart with somebody. So, someone, who's never really felt love before like feels it. It could be, someone needs to be pissed off, so the teacher does something to piss them off you know, and it's always this dance, and you can never really tell... You can never really tell what's going on and I think, as Chogyam Trungpa talks about it in the book, right here in the quote I just made, like having only the view that everything that is happening, is 100% perfect. Holding on to that very strongly, very strictly, I think, doesn't do you any good.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah. So, the second thing I wanted to bring up from a couple minutes ago, was this concept of Guru. It actually features quite prominently in his book and coming from a Judeo-Christian and theistic background, myself, I feel like it's important to dive into that a little bit. Let me just quote something here. "I'm afraid the word Guru is overused in the West. It would be better to speak of one's spiritual friend, because the teachings emphasize a mutual meeting of two minds. It is a matter of mutual communication, rather than a master servant relationship between a highly evolved being and the miserable confused one." I thought that was really, really good.
Stephan Downes:
That's such a good description, yeah.
Adam Rizvi:
It's a really good description and I think, hopefully, for those who are exploring that path or in a path like that, it serves as guidance for how to relate, you know. A meeting of minds, of mutual communication and openness. The other thing that I wanted to highlight in this discussion of the guru was actually something he says early on in the book... So, the way the chapters are arranged, he has discussion of a particular topic, and then he ends the chapter with a Q&A, which is actually kind of nice, because you get to see what people were thinking of the time. The questions are, they're timeless. You know, you'll have the same questions.
Stephan Downes:
I didn't relate to any of them.
Adam Rizvi:
I'm sure you didn't, Stephan. Stephan, I feel like you are the exception to almost everything. You're an outlier. You're a living outlier.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, absolutely. They don't include me. Yeah, that's true.
Adam Rizvi:
And, it makes you special. Very special.
Stephan Downes:
Very special.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah. There's a pedestal just for you.
Stephan Downes:
Being an outlier's special by definition.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah.
Stephan Downes:
That's the definition, right?
Adam Rizvi:
Okay, so the question is... He's talking about a guru and all that. The student asked him, "So, who are you following, more or less?" Meaning, who's your guru? He says, "Situations are the voice of my guru, the presence of my guru." I like that a lot, because it broadens the concept. He changed the word, he offered a different word, he said, spiritual friend, later on in the book. If you broaden that even further still, to situations, then it becomes readily apparent what life is all about. Shit happens, as people say. The question is, it's not how do I get over this to return back to life as I remembered it, but really recognizing the shit that's happening. That's it. That's it. That's what you have to go through. That's what you have to see and explore and dive into and traverse. That's the, that is the meat of it.
Stephan Downes:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), absolutely. Yeah. It's a really profound thing that he's saying. It's a really mature understanding, because I think a lot of people when they have a teacher... And, again, we're using the word guru, but I've seen this dynamic play out in any sort of tradition with a teacher. The same kind of relationship, the same kind of devotion occurs and the same kind of reliance occurs. So, we're using the word guru, and I think that has a charge for some people, but it's really just about a teacher, which is, I think, why the use of the word spiritual friend is really appropriate. But, a lot of people when they first start out, and probably from a lot of people for quite a long time, they really relate to that teacher, and like that guru as just the person sitting in front of them. I think the longer you walk that path, and the more and more you interact with that person, you start to realize that there's no difference between what that person may tell you or ask you to do in how they interact with you than anything else in life. There's nothing special going on, the specialness is in the connection that you have with another person that feels so tender, and like you know, you feel like you can trust what they're saying and that they have your back. But, there's nothing fundamentally different, right? Your teacher might say... There's a famous story that he talks about in the book of the teacher, Marpa, and the student, Milarepa. Marpa had... This is a very extreme story. A lot people are just going to eat it up. Where he had, Marpa made, there's a student Milarepa, in order to take them on as a student, made him build and rebuild towers, like stone towers. Then, he would build it. Then, Marpa would say, "Oh, I was drunk when I told you to do that, tear it down and put all the rocks back exactly the way you found them so as not to disturb the landscape." Then he would say, do it again. That's not so different from life, just handing us lemons, right? But, we make it different because it was a person and a person shouldn't tell me to do that, right? A person shouldn't do that. I have rights, don't you know? It's like, life doesn't give a crap what rights you have. There's no constitution to life. There's no Bill of Rights in life. We made that stuff up.
Adam Rizvi:
That's really good. There's no Bill of Rights to life, a quote by Stephan Downes. I love that.
Stephan Downes:
Put it on a T-shirt.
Adam Rizvi:
Put it on a T-shirt. Yeah, hopefully... Maybe, we'll get some merch at some point.
Stephan Downes:
Here's another section. So, this is from a chapter called self-deception and we're still talking about, I think, in this instance, about the teacher and about deceiving oneself with the teacher. He says, "No one can really change your personality absolutely. No one can turn you completely upside down and inside out. The existing material, that which is already there, must be used. You must accept yourself as you are, instead of as you would like to be, which means giving up self-deception and wishful thinking. Your whole makeup and personality characteristics must be recognized, accepted, and then you might find some inspiration."
Adam Rizvi:
I feel like we are quoting so much. Hopefully, you all can get the sense of how valuable we consider this book because it's being quoted so heavily. I have a follow-up quote for you.
Stephan Downes:
Quote off.
Adam Rizvi:
Quote off. "In as much as no one is going to save us, to the extent that no one is going to magically enlighten us, the path we are discussing is called the hard way." So, he talks about different ways of approaching the path he calls... He talks about the hard way and he uses that term... He actually puts it in quotation marks, not because it's difficult and you have to struggle. Actually, I have something to say about that in a little while. But, it's that you shouldn't fool yourself into thinking that this is a walk in the park, or more specific that someone else is going to do it for you, especially if you have a spiritual master, or a teacher of some sorts, whether it's a religious teacher, a pastor, and Imam. They're not going to do it for you. That's for you to do and that's what makes the spiritual path in Trungpa's view, a hard way. But, it's also an open way, as he would say. It's that there's another quality to it. Maybe, Stephan, you can talk a little bit about the open way.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, so he starts talking about the hard way and about... I feel like the hard way, that's really his like, hitting disappointment again. Then, he talks about the open way. He says, so the next... Oh, God, I'm quoting again.
Adam Rizvi:
This is one giant quote off with a couple of random words in between.
Stephan Downes:
"Openness is not a matter of giving something to someone else. But, it means giving up your demand and the basic criteria of the demand." The hard way and the open way are two sides, I feel, of the coin of the spiritual path. The hard way is really coming to terms with disappointment, right? To be okay with disappointment. Then, once you've done it, then it's open, right? Once you have given up the fact that you are not perfect, the fact that you are constantly, constantly trying to be better, trying to search for something that is better, that is more pure, that is nicer, that is you know. Once you like come to terms with that, then you can be open to what is, right? Then, there's an openness that occurs naturally, because there's no more struggle against. That open way, that's what we're talking about here.
Adam Rizvi:
I'm just struck right now by this particular theme of how the hard way transitions into the open way, in the famous channeled work, A Course in Miracles. There's a quote of one of the co-scribes, before the teaching ever gets delivered. It's this conversation between two psychologists and one of the psychologists is struggling so much with his life and how messed up it is and how much strife there is, that he tells this other psychologist... He says, "There's got to be another way." There's got to be another way and for me, that particular phrase holds a lot of meaning in that teaching, because that's the opening. That is the opening. Everything needs to come to a head. You need to be up to here with the craziness of life. You need to be so filled with disappointment at how life has turned out for you that everything falls apart, and then it's only at that point when everything has fallen apart, that there's an opening.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah. On a practical level, I think I can speak to my own life, for sure, this happens a lot. You typically hear of this thing happening when people go through major changes in their lives that they didn't intend. I can remember, my younger brother died... So, I'm 33 right now... Or, no, I'm 34, whoops. I'm 34 and when I was 23, my little brother died. He was 21. He died overnight, suddenly, there was no warning to any of us. I had never been through anything like that before. Grandparents had died, but they were all on the east coast, I was in Colorado. I saw them like once a year. But, having my brother die... Like i'm the one who found him, you know. It was like hugely traumatic. I remember that night being on the phone with my teacher, I was so much pain that I thought I was going to die. I can just remember like crying and just... There are no words for that amount of pain. I didn't know what the word pain meant until I went through that. I remember my teacher on the phone with me, and she just said, "You just need to let it into your heart, you're not going to die." Because, I was on the phone with her saying, I'm going to die. I'm in so much pain, I'm going to die. She's, "You're not going to die. You just need to let it in." I remember this moment very clearly where I just relaxed. I just relaxed and the pain went in. I let it in. And, I just had this explosion in my heart. It literally felt like my heart exploded. All of a sudden, it was so much love. There was so much tenderness. There was so much care, there was so much softness, there was so much feeling. You know from this moment where I... I can remember talking to the cops, because, when a young person dies suddenly, it's treated as a homicide until they know otherwise. They investigate it like a homicide. I'm the only one home, like I'm talking to the police officers, they're telling me this stuff, I'm talking with the paramedics, trying to keep it together, keep it together for my family. I had to tell my mother that my brother had died, her son had died. It was a horrible experience. I just had to hold it all together. Then, that night, just letting it go, right? Just like facing the fact that I was in so much pain, and there's nothing I can do about it, it was too much. Just letting it go. That was the hard way, and the open way, right? The hard ways, facing the pain and saying, I'm just going to let it in. I'm snapping my fingers, I can't do it very loudly. But, as soon as you do that, that's the open way. There's this openness to just everything, everything. Chogyam Trungpa talks about in the book, he talks about how you have to open to both the light and the dark. There have been times in my life where I have a fundamental awareness and understanding that the light and the dark are the same, you know. They're not different things. I contain all of those. I contain the pain, I contain the bliss, right? I contain the hate, I contain the love. There's nobody that's different than me. There might be people who literally have chemical imbalances who are literally different than me right now in this moment. But, even, we have to take medications for things, mental illness is a thing, right? But, all of us have the same makeup. None of us is fundamentally different than any other person. So, when we are judging ourselves, when we're judging other people, and saying, that person is wrong, that person's awful, I would never do what that person is doing, that's a load of crap. We are doing ourselves a disservice, because that's us. We're that person, just in a different situation, right? Nobody's out there having it all together, and nobody's completely broken. There's no such thing as being completely broken and there's no such thing as being completely whole.
Adam Rizvi:
Wow, I think what you started to touch on... First of all, thank you, Stephan, that's amazing. Thank you for sharing that. Not many people have to go through such a traumatic experience. We all go through very challenging times in our lives. That's one thing I've really held on to is, be kind. Because, every one that you meet is fighting a hard battle. But, it's hard and unique for them. We don't know, what's challenging for one person may not be for another. But, if we assume that everyone is facing their own unique challenges, I think what arises is compassion. That's actually one of the key things that you discovered through your trauma, which is tenderness. I remember, you said that word, there was tenderness. That's, I think, a characteristic of the open way is, is a tenderness. It's a compassion. In fact, Trungpa calls it... He says meditation, or one of the aspects of being in the open way, is the continual act of making friends with yourself. I like that. It's very soft. It's kind. I think it's a huge characteristic of the open path, it's compassion and tenderness.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, you know the first time that it hit me that when I was judging someone else, I was judging a part of myself. The first time that that happened, and I really got it, like I realized that that was the actual definition of compassion. Like that was like the big view of compassion. Is that, I'm hating myself. You know, if you're round in sort of spiritual circles, or whatever, you tend to hear the phrase, there won't be peace... As long as there's war in our hearts, there's will be war on the planet, right? You hear some version of that a lot and that is what that means. When you are judging someone else, when you are saying, I would never be like that, you are saying that about yourself, and it's not true. You're like cutting off a limb. You're flogging yourself. You're hating who you are. It's not that you don't make those choices. It's not that like, oh, that means I need to go be abusive. I need to go be a mean person or hate. You can still make a choice. It's just that like, there's times that people have thought that of you and you're just seeing it from a different perspective, and really taking it on that it's you and getting it. Really getting it that it's you, you are doing this to yourself, that, for me, is compassion. It's so easy then to like be with others and just love them, no matter who they are. One of the things that helped me... And, I'll just talk about my brother a little bit more, because I really... I just don't talk about that much anymore. But, one of the things, we were not on great terms. He struggled with mental illness for quite a few years before he passed away and he was really angry at me, and I was, in turn, really angry at him because we're you know, young men who are brothers. I realized, when he passed away, I couldn't even hug him, let alone tell him I loved him, and that shattered me. The fact that someone could just die and never know that I love them, you know. I remember, after he died, someone told me that he talked about me fondly, quite often you know, but to my face, never. Like, oh my god, we did not like each other. The fact that someone could just... Any one of us, at any moment... It can be you, Adam, it can be my parents, it can be my wife, it can be my friend, that, you just die. And like, the last thing... that I couldn't tell them, I love them to their face. That like i'm too scared to feel vulnerable, that shattered me, especially with my brother. So, one of the things that really touched me was to make sure that I was being open with people. That I was like surrendering in the moment of, it doesn't matter what I'm afraid of, it doesn't matter if I'm afraid that they're going to like it or not, that they're going to think I'm weird for like expressing affection. Like, a genuine, like tender affection for somebody emotionally. I'm not even talking about telling someone... Just like being heart-centered. Heart upfront. I think, especially for young men, it's really hard to do that. There's a lot of stigma around that.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, I think it's a testament to the sincerity of this book, and its teachings, that the conversation has gone where it has. I had no idea we were going to be talking about this. Stephan and I have a general sense of where we're going, we're not doing this blind. We prepare a lot for our episodes. We do a lot of reading in preparation, but we sort of leave a certain amount of uncertainty for the naturalness of the conversation and it took us here... Which, I think, actually, now that I think about it, this is an interesting quality to Chogyam Trungpa. He's known as a teacher who has crazy wisdom. We haven't even touched on how ridiculously controversial he was and how he did things that were truly questionable. But, it's not even... I recommend reading the Wikipedia article, you'll get a sense. But, really, I hope everyone listening gets a sense of the power behind many of his teachings. Also, a shout out to his disciple who's perhaps equally as well-known, Pema Chodron. She wrote a book. She's a relatively well-known Buddhist nun.
Stephan Downes:
She's probably like the most well-known American, Tibetan teacher, for sure.
Adam Rizvi:
Yes. Exactly and she wrote a book called, When Things Fall Apart. It's a great, great book. She touches-
Stephan Downes:
It's like it's about disappointment.
Adam Rizvi:
Yes.
Stephan Downes:
It's almost like the whole book is about disappointment.
Adam Rizvi:
Exactly. Exactly.
Stephan Downes:
Sorry, go on go on.
Adam Rizvi:
Well, I was just going to say, if the depth of this conversation has touched you, and if you're going through something that is very challenging, and you don't know where to go, I recommend that book by Pema Chodron. What it will do is, in my experience, it takes a stone hard wall emotionally and it cracks it open just a little bit, enough for there to be some light and love to seep in. And eventually, it can open up fully where whatever needs to be healed, gets healed and is exposed. There's a great teaching, actually, in Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, where Trungpa talks about how to truly heal when you're a patient, and you have a doctor, you cannot get healed unless you're fully open with the physician and tell them what's going on. Like, honestly and truly. If you lie about your symptoms, if you can conceal, if you make it up, if you minimize it, then you won't get truly the treatment that you need. But, if you can be willing to truly surrender and be open and just share things as they are, then the healing begins and I thought that was a very apt analogy, something that I resonated with.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, it's a good example. If I came to you, Adam... I know it's not your specialty, but if I came to you with lung cancer, right, and you're like, hey, Stephan, do you smoke by any chance? No, I definitely don't smoke and tucking those pack of cigarettes further into my pocket. I just never told you I smoked. Like I refuse to admit that I smoked to you, the doctor. You would know, first of all, because like you've been around a while. This is like the analogy of a teacher, right? You're not the first person who's tried to lie to the teacher. But, the doctors like, well, if you just admitted that you smoke, then this could go a lot faster. It would suck to have to tell me you smoke, but then we can actually do something about it. Because right now, I'm going to do what I can for you, but unless you're in on it, like this is not going to go away.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, yeah exactly.
Stephan Downes:
It's my medical metaphor.
Adam Rizvi:
So, we're nearing the end roughly, of the episode. Um Stephan, I wouldn't have ever found this book if it weren't for you. What would you have to say to people who maybe haven't read this and are interested?
Stephan Downes:
Before we get there, just real quick. I hate to do this to you, but I want to talk about a super important part of the book that we haven't touched on, which is a sense of humor.
Adam Rizvi:
Oh, my gosh, yes. Dive into that.
Stephan Downes:
I just, I have to, I have to.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, we can't move on. That's so critical.
Stephan Downes:
Oh, my God, and the next like eight chapters. Guys, we're about to take a deep dive into the five skandhas. No, we're not going to do that.
Adam Rizvi:
Actually, we've been talking about whether this actually needs to be a two or three episode review of the book. But well, it's not really a review, it's a discussion. But yes, there's so much more. We've only covered, I think, maybe a half to two thirds of the book.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah. So, he has a whole chapter on having a sense of humor, and this is something that I certainly appreciate, and any sort of teacher that I relate to, usually they have a good sense of humor and he says. Get this, another quote, "If you are not meditating"... This is the attitude of what not... He talks about a sense of humor and what a sense of humor isn't, right? He first like uses a negative. He's, "It'd be easier to just tell you what a sense of humor isn't." So, he says, "If you're not meditating properly, sitting still and upright, there will be someone behind you just about to strike. Or, if you're not dealing with life properly, honestly, directly, someone is just about to hit you." You know it's this attitude that like, if I don't do it, the man in the sky is going to strike me with a lightning bolt. You know, like this so strict, all the time, straight... Like even when you're completely safe, no one's around to judge you, and you still like can't let your hair down, right? There's a real sense in spiritual paths of people taking themselves very seriously. Like, Oh, no, I'm a practitioner in X and Y lineage, and I have studied with these teachers. This is my spiritual resume, and this is why I have authority and why I'm someone you should listen to. No, no. That's not having a sense of humor. I think a sense of humor is really important and to have a relationship with our limited human selves that isn't one of only just hates, and trying to fix it all the time, which ties right in with the rest of the book.
Adam Rizvi:
One of my favorite YouTube videos of Alan Watts, actually, hearkened back to one of our first episodes, is a video. I think it's a chillstep. There's a couple of great videos which have chillstep music in the background.
Stephan Downes:
Shout out to whoever made those.
Adam Rizvi:
Shout out. We've got to find out who that is, and put it in the show notes. There's a YouTube video called, Don't Take Life So Seriously. I listen to it so often, because it's a great lecture that Alan Watts gives, that is exactly based on these Buddhist concepts of, just, laugh at life, laugh at the absurdity, laugh at just the craziness that happens. Just don't don't take it so seriously.
Stephan Downes:
I'm not ready to end the show, I'm sorry. We've been recording, I can see the timer. We've been recording for 59 minutes and 56, 7, 8, 9... One hour. Okay, we've recorded for an hour. I have to talk about one of the central themes that allows all of this to be possible. It ties back into his view of the spiritual path, and to anyone who has any familiarity with Buddhist teachings, it will be a no-brainer, but the idea of a lack of a permanent self. I didn't want to dive into things like the five skandhas and like really central Buddhist teachings, because it's this isn't fundamentally, currently, a show about explaining how religions work. But, fundamental to all of these conversations that are happening, is the idea that there's no sense of permanent self, right? There's no one that has it all inside of us, right. We have the sense of self, we have, you could say, the illusion of self of like there's literally a person sitting here that has qualities. Like, my name is Stephan Downes. Stephan Downes is a person that is on a spiritual path or isn't or is Buddhist or not Buddhist or atheist or Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, Christian. You know there's a self and fundamental to all of this, is understanding that that's actually not the case. Yeah, there's no like permanent person there, right? There might be aspects of ourselves that continue on or don't continue on you know, after we die, you know depending on what your flavor is. But, there's no permanent thing there and that's very fundamental to all of this. Because, when you understand and really start to get that like there's no one there. There's just these reactions. I think we were having a conversation, Adam, you and I, the Buddhist word for this would be like causes and conditions, it's one of the ways that they describe it. Things happen, because something caused them, right. Then, those things will cause other things. It's this never ending cycle of causes and conditions. I don't even remember what we were talking about now, but you were going through a particularly hard time, a particularly tough decision or something like that. I remember telling you, Adam, just remember, all you are is causes and conditions. That like broke it for you. You were able to be, oh my God, yes. Yes, indeed, it is just causes and conditions. That's the sense of humor, right? Like understanding it's just life happening. It's not rocket science. Life is not rocket science, people. You heard it here first. We have to have this attitude, like it's some part of ourselves. You're someone, you're a critical care physician, your job is very serious. You hold a lot of responsibility on your shoulders, you take your job very seriously, to be the best you can be at it. To serve people with the most care and the most skill that you can, and, still, life is just happening. There's no answer, right? I think that's fundamentally what a sense of humor is, is understanding that no one has the answers, you are okay, do what you can when you can, take it as seriously as you want, when it makes sense to, but don't die for it. Don't martyr yourself for your cause, for being a spiritual person.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah. There's a lot in that and a lot to be said, about the way of the cross. You know, that the spiritual path needs to be a path of suffering in order for it to be legitimate, and worthy.
Stephan Downes:
It's like you, that's your path. That's why we get along so well, because you're so sanctimonious all the time.
Adam Rizvi:
Hey, it needs to balance out the absolute profanity that is your life.
Stephan Downes:
Wow. God, so brutal. Cut right to the core, Adam.
Adam Rizvi:
Yep yep.
Stephan Downes:
All right. Okay. That's what I wanted to get through.
Adam Rizvi:
That's a good note to end.
Stephan Downes:
That's all I want to get through. So, how do we end this? So, I recommend, if you haven't read this book, that you get this book. I think that this book, for certain types of people, will be very challenging, it will push a lot of buttons, but I think it's important. I think it's one of the most important books that you could ever read if you're someone who is interested in development of any kind, because these questions, these traits that we have of self-deception, of not wanting to surrender of things like the hard... Concepts of the hard way, the open way, how to relate to a teacher, right? Concepts of any... It could be any teacher, just a mentor, right? Mentors or something, or like a figure in many of our lives. This book is like a masterclass on how not to do it.
Adam Rizvi:
Well said, well said.
Stephan Downes:
What about you?
Adam Rizvi:
Oh, yeah, I would say this is an excellent primer for those of you who have been on the spiritual path and I know there are many many different paths out there. It does something to see dynamics that you thought were unique to your own path or to your own traditions path.
Stephan Downes:
Oh, that's a great point.
Adam Rizvi:
And, to see it from a different angle, specifically, the Tibetan Buddhist perspective, it does something to realizing its universality, and it gives you another access point to go through and transform whatever it is you're experiencing. To be with it and to remember that much more who you really are in all of this.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, I think that was a great point. I wouldn't have thought of that, but I love it. Yeah, I think, apart from just really recommending this book, because it's my all-time favorite, I think that I want... If you're still listening, yeah, I just want you to know that you're all right, that no one out there has the answers. No one out there knows more than you about you and the decisions that you make, and who you choose to be in the world is perfect. It's perfectly wonderful and all right, and you don't have to sacrifice who you are for someone else, whether that be a family member, whether that be, especially, a teacher, that you are, you are perfect and whole.
Adam Rizvi:
You are perfect and whole, I could not have ended that better.
Stephan Downes:
I said, there was no wholeness, actually, earlier in this episode, so I'm a bit contradictory.
Adam Rizvi:
This is it, this is paradox. That's, that's life, man.
Stephan Downes:
All right. Well, I think we're going to end it there.
Adam Rizvi:
Sounds good.
Stephan Downes:
Well, Adam, you have yourself a wonderful day at work tomorrow, and I can't wait to talk to you again.
Adam Rizvi:
Thanks, Stephan. Take it easy.
Stephan Downes:
Goodbye.
Adam Rizvi:
Bye.