The Dharma in a Single
Drawing – John J. Baker
In the fall of 1970 Bob Lester, then
Chairman of the Religious Studies Department at the University of
Colorado (CU), invited the highly ranked Tibetan Buddhist lama
Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche to teach a course on Buddhism to
undergraduates. Rinpoche had arrived in the United States that
spring from Scotland, establishing Tail of the Tiger (now Karmê
Chöling) in Barnet, Vermont, where he gave summer seminars on the
teachings of Milarepa, the Tibetan Buddhist saint, and other
subjects. In August some CU professors had invited Rinpoche, then
about 31 years old, to come to Boulder, and I and another student,
Marvin Casper, both in our mid-twenties, had asked him if we could
accompany him. So in October 1970 the three of us moved to
Colorado, initially living to gether in a stone cabin with a
potbellied stove and outhouse at 10,000 feet in Gold Hill but later
moving to a modern duplex in Four Mile Canyon just outside town.
Rinpoche’s wife, Diana, joined us after a few months, and the two
of them stayed together in the first floor apartment, while Marvin
and I inhabited the upstairs.
The CU course was to run in the winter
semester of 1971. Rinpoche appointed Marvin and me as his teaching
assistants, which meant helping him select readings, construct the
syllabus, run the class, and conduct discussion groups. He, of
course, determined the content and delivered the
lectures.
At Tail of the Tiger, Rinpoche had given
Marvin and me pointing-out instruction [the showing of the nature
of mind by a teacher] and forged a bond with us stronger than any I
had known in my relatively short lifetime. He had recently asked us
to start teaching the students who were coming to him from the
coasts and elsewhere, hippies mostly, without much money,
adventurous and inspired by the dharma in general and by Rinpoche
in particular. We knew very little doctrine, but Rinpoche had
introduced us to the heart of the teachings. He felt it important
for Westerners to connect to the essence of Buddhism first, so that
they would not be dazzled and seduced by the many exotic forms that
implied spectacular results, a problem he considered pandemic in
America at the time.
The university had a population of about
25,000, including staff and students—this in a town whose total
population was about 100,000. The town had a prominent population
of Seventh-day Adventists (thus no alcohol was sold within city
limits), there were no malls, and hippies were arriving from the
coasts to live in the town and in the communes that constellated
around it.
CU in those days had the reputation of
being a second-tier school with a few standout departments, such as
engineering. It was known to be popular with undergraduates who
wanted proximity to Colorado’s ski areas as well as the overall
opportunity to play and party. So our expectations for the class
were not high, and we were not disappointed. My memory is that 40
or so students sat slumped in their chairs (the kinds with an
enlarged arm for notepads), giving the impression of sleepiness and
apathy. (In fact, a few of them later became devoted students of
Rinpoche. You just never know.)
The room was large, stark, bare, and
brightly lit by both the overhead fluorescents and the Colorado
sunlight streaming in through outsize windows. Rinpoche wore a
sport coat and tie; portly with tousled hair, he stood before the
class, blackboard behind him, the Flatirons visible through the
windows, rising 1,800 feet into the clear blue sky. Marvin and I
sat in the front row, to the side.
Rinpoche presented basic Buddhist doctrine, but with
an emphasis on the teaching about “spiritual materialism,” which he
felt was particularly relevant to his audiences at that time.
America was in the throes of the counterculture revolution,
protests against the Vietnam War, and the invasion of Eastern
religions from India, Tibet, Southeast Asia, and Japan. Think
Satguru, Maharishi and the Beatles, Yogi Bhajan, Hare Krishnas on
street corners and in airports, Zen Beats, macrobiotic diets, and
of course yoga and meditation and kundalini energy and so much
more. We were all too ready to ape the cultures of these imports,
hoping that, by adopting their to-us-exotic forms we would enjoy
some benefit or release from unhappiness. Rinpoche spent a lot of
his time debunking that notion: critical of our naiveté, he once
said to an audience, almost apologetically, “If I told you to stand
on your heads 24 hours a day, you would do it.”
But the lecture that most stands out in my
memory—because it was so revelatory for me, personally, and so
brilliant—was the one Rinpoche gave on the trikaya, a
Sanskrit term that refers to the three (tri) bodies
(kaya) of a buddha: the dharmakaya,
sambhogakaya, and nirmanakaya, which are to be
understood at various levels. This was no lecture on spiritual
materialism.
Most basically, the term
nirmanakaya refers to the actual physical and mental
manifestation of Shakyamuni Buddha as well as other enlightened
individuals. Nirmana is usually translated as
“manifestation” or “apparition” or “incarnation.” It is the idea
that a person has taken rebirth many times—has died and been reborn
over and over again—and that this current birth is the “nirmana,”
or current manifestation/incarnation. The Tibetan translation of
nirmanakaya is tulku, a term applied to
reincarnate lamas, so the Dalai Lama is the 14th tulku (or
nirmanakaya) in his line, and Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche was the 11th
Trungpa tulku.
In one sense we are all nirmanakayas
(tulkus), because we all have been reborn many times. The term,
however, is usually reserved for enlightened teachers who take
rebirth deliberately, out of compassion and because they have taken
a vow to work for the benefit of confused, sentient beings until
they have all attained enlightenment. The rest of us unenlightened
individuals take rebirth not deliberately but out of the force of
our karma: habit and desire drive us forward in life and in death
to continual and uncontrolled rebirth in various realms of
suffering. We are fortunate to be human beings in this life—the
human realm is the only one in which a being may traverse the path
to enlightenment and freedom—but we may not be so fortunate in
future lives. According to the Buddhist teachings, sooner or later
we will be reborn in all the realms: god realms, animal, hungry
ghost, and hell realms. In fact, we experience these realms
psychologically even during the course of a day: the anger and
panic of the hell realms, the pride and pleasure of the god realms,
the hunger and sense of deprivation of the hungry ghost realms, or
the stupidity, sloth, and fear of the animal realms.
Dharma is a
Sanskrit word that has a number of different meanings, but here it
refers first to the Buddhist teachings: the truth about who we are
and what confusion and wisdom are, as well as the path to realizing
enlightenment and release from suffering. In addition,
dharma refers to the true action of an enlightened
individual, a buddha. Dharmakaya, then, from the
historically earliest teachings, refers to the “teachings” body of
the buddha: the instructions he gave to his students to help them
see what is real and to tread the path. Additionally, it refers to
the buddha’s capacity to act in accord with what is true and
real.
Sambhogakaya, a term that appeared in a later period of Buddhist history, is
usually translated as “enjoyment body” of a buddha. It refers to
the idea that (when one has the eyes to see) a world of celestial
beings, buddhas and bodhisattvas, dharma protectors, teachers, and
embodiments of energy, enlightened and not, is present here and
now. In truth we are in the midst of the Akanishtha (“above all”)
Heaven [the realm of awakened mind], but the sambhogakaya realm is
hidden in plain sight from the unenlightened, who may become aware
of it only in glimpses, if at all. It is a world of beauty, power,
and meaningfulness, and it is completely available to individuals
who have left confusion behind—bodhisattvas on the stages of the
path and enlightened beings, or buddhas.
But there is another subtler way to
understand the trikaya, and it is this understanding that Trungpa
Rinpoche taught to us that winter day in 1971. He did it in this
way.
Stepping to the blackboard, he picked up a
piece of chalk and drew this figure:
Then he stepped back and asked: “What is
this a picture of?” Of course no one wanted to say the obvious, and
there was an extended silence until finally some fellow raised his
hand and said, “It’s a picture of a bird.”
Rinpoche replied, “It’s a picture of the
sky,” and in those six words he taught the entire
trikaya.
Rinpoche was introducing us to the most
profound Buddhist description of reality as it arises in the only
place and time it ever arises: here and now. It is not a
metaphysical explanation of reality; it is simply a description of
what arises in the moment, now, the only time we ever
have.
The past and future are mental constructs.
Even the present can be conceptualized, but it can also be
experienced. In fact, we choicelessly experience it all the time.
It is merely a matter of whether we emerge from our dreams about
the past, present, and future long enough to notice and see it
clearly, truly.
In the present the six types of
phenomena—sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations, and
mental events, which are referred to in Buddhism as the six
knowables—arise and pass away, a constantly appearing and
disappearing display, like a movie or like images passing through a
mirror. These “things” do not endure even for an instant in the
present moment; as we turn our head, as our attention shifts, as
the light changes and things move, the display is constantly in
motion, transforming so completely and continuously that we cannot
even point to something that has changed. It is a
continual “presencing,” as they say in the Dzogchen texts
[according to the Nyingma sect of Tibetan Buddhism Dzogchen is the
last and most profound of the six vehicles of Tibetan Vajrayana
Buddhism]—a presencing of what we call phenomena. And this display
has three aspects.
First, the dharmakaya aspect. All phenomena
seem to arise from and pass back into nothing. Where did that sound
go? That precise visual experience? That thought? That odor? They
arose from nowhere, appeared in the midst of a matrix of
conditions, and finally disappeared into nowhere. That fertile
“nowhere” is, in this first pass at a definition, a meaning of the
dharmakaya: absolute reality, the “womb” from which all appearances
arise and the charnel ground into which they pass away.
And yet, some thing seems to
appear and pass away. This “thing” aspect is the nirmanakaya. There
is a “presencing” of phenomena (the six knowables appear). That
presencing is the fact of seeming appearance, the “thingness” of
appearances, and it is all that confused sentient beings know,
because they are not paying attention to the present moment, not
noticing that nothing truly exists as they think it
does.
Confused sentient beings see the phenomenal
world through the veil of static thought: we see a friend or hear a
piece of music, and we are consumed with the pastness and
futureness of it all; we are in relationship to it, an I-other
proposition, fraught with past and future significance for “my”
well-being. As long as we believe that other things and I exist,
life must be experienced as a series of I-other problematic
relationships. If the other is antipathetic to us, causes us pain
and unhappiness, then we want to push it away from us: hatred. If
the other promises pleasure, happiness, security, and so on, then
we wish to pull it to us: desire. And if the other promises neither
benefit nor harm, then we don’t care about it: indifference. In
Buddhist doctrine, these are called “the three poisons,” and you
can find them depicted at the center of the Wheel of Life, a
heuristic depiction of confusion, as a snake, a rooster, and a pig,
respectively.
But seen stripped of concept, nakedly in
the present moment—in reality even beyond the present moment, which
can be a concept in itself—then the nirmanakaya is an aspect of the
presencing, of the display, its seeming “thingness,” and it is
described as the display of compassion, because it can communicate
with us in the form of a teacher (either an actual human being or
simply life experiences that move us along our path).
And finally there is the sambhogakaya, the
aspect whereby, as these “things” arise and pass away, they
communicate to us what they are: the redness of red, the
sweetness of sugar, the cold of ice, the sadness of sorrow. It is
precisely because all phenomena are arising out of nowhere and
passing away into it again, because they are utterly transitory,
that they can and must express their qualities, so vividly and
beautifully and meaningfully. This is the sambhogakaya, and it is
the realm of magic: not magic in the sense of walking through walls
or reading minds (although there may be that too), but magic in the
sense of the extraordinary beauty and meaningfulness and
value of this world seen nakedly, stripped of the false,
ego-centered and emotion-laden thoughts/dreams through which
confused sentient beings see their lives. Sambhogakaya is the world
of deity—sacred world. In confused world things are of greater or
lesser value in terms of what they can do for or to me. In sacred
world things are of value for no reason at all; this life has
intrinsic worth.
And so, seen in the present moment, a bird
is utterly insubstantial: a constantly changing presentation, a
presencing from the ground of nothingness, coming into being and
passing away so totally every instant that we cannot even find any
“thing” that is coming into being or passing away. In fact, we
cannot even distinguish between the bird and the nothing
(symbolized here by the sky), which is its womb and its grave. So
when Trungpa Rinpoche said that he had drawn a picture of the sky,
there were two ways to take his assertion.
First: we are so focused on the thing that
we do not pay attention to the background (temporal as well as
spatial) from which it arises. Look! The bird is also a picture of
the sky! Lost in concept, seeing the world through the veil of
discursive thought, we have been ignoring the ground from
which phenomena arise and into which they disappear. This is one
meaning of the Sanskrit word avidya (usually translated as
“ignorance”), the fundamental error that produces “unenlightenment”
or confusion. Trungpa Rinpoche said that avidya means
“ignoring” or not seeing (the literal meaning of
a-vidya) the ground, focusing only on the figure and its
significance for or against me.
Second: the bird and sky seem different and
yet we cannot find the dividing line between them. They create each
other and are each other. The bird, as it moves through the sky, is
merely a recoloring of the sky in an infinite number of locations.
The difference between them is merely seeming, just like an image
in a mirror. In the highest tantric teachings the word sky
is often a code word for and interchangeable with “space,” which
signifies the unity of the three kayas.
In Vajrayana (tantric Buddhist) practice
one often recites this two-line formula, or some variation on it:
“Things arise, and yet they do not exist; they do not exist, and
yet they arise!” The first is what Buddhists call the absolute
truth; the second is what Buddhists call the relative
truth.
Finally and always, the three kayas are
merely different aspects of the same thing, which is what is meant
when in the texts we find the assertion that the three kayas are
one. The nirmanakaya and sambhogakaya, often lumped together and
called the rupakaya, or “form body of the Buddha,” are in
union with the dharmakaya, the absolute body, from which—in the
present moment, here and now—everything seems to arise and pass
away.
Things arise from and pass back into
nothingness: dharmakaya. Things arise from and
pass back into nothingness: nirmanakaya. And as those things arise
and pass away, they communicate their unique, brilliant,
emotionally moving individuality: sambhogakaya.
To quote a line from Trungpa Rinpoche’s Sadhana
of Mahamudra, “Good and bad, happy and sad, all thoughts
vanish into emptiness like the imprint of a bird in the
sky.”