The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Five Read Free

for a year; then Naropa prostrated and asked for teaching. Tilopa caused him to throw himself into a fire, . . . be beaten nearly to death, have his blood sucked out by leeches, be pricked with flaming splinters . . . ,” and on the story goes. It is difficult to know what to make of such a tale. We could dismiss it as craziness or treat it as symbolism. But could we imagine that such things actually took place and that such people could actually exist?
    Trungpa Rinpoche published a poem in First Thought Best Thought titled “Meetings with Remarkable People.” After describing encounters with three very strange beings, who are actually vajrayana deities, he says:
     
Can you imagine seeing such people and receiving and talking to them?
Ordinarily, if you told such stories to anybody, they would think you were a nut case;
But, in this case, I have to insist that I am not a nut case;

Don’t you think meeting such sweet friends is worthwhile and rewarding?

I would say meeting them is meeting with remarkable men and women:
Let us believe that such things do exist. 3
    In that spirit, it may be valuable to explore the life of Naropa and how it might apply personally to oneself. Not only does Trungpa Rinpoche present the outrageous qualities of Naropa’s life, but he also draws analogies to our own experience. Of Naropa’s trials, he writes, “these twelve experiences that Naropa went through were a continuous unlearning process. To begin with, he had to unlearn, to undo the cultural facade. Then he had to undo the philosophical and emotional facade. Then he had to step out and become free altogether. This whole process was a very painful and very deliberate operation. This does not apply to Naropa and his time alone. This could also be something very up-to-date. This operation is applicable as long as we have conflicting emotions and erroneous beliefs about reality” (Life of Naropa Seminar I, chapter 3). From that point of view, the story makes good sense. However, on another level, it remains utterly outrageous. If we look at most of the stories about the lives of the Tibetan lineage holders—Padmasambhava, Tilopa, Naropa, Marpa, Milarepa, and others—we see that these were people who did not exclude anything from their experience. They could, in fact, be quite terrifying in their fearlessness.
    In the article “Milarepa: A Warrior’s Life,” which appears in Volume Five, Trungpa Rinpoche includes the last instructions given by the yogi Milarepa to his students, as he lay on his deathbed: “Reject all that increases ego-clinging, or inner poison, even if it appears good. Practice all that benefits others, even if it appears bad. This is the true way of dharma. . . . Act wisely and courageously according to your innate insight, even at the cost of your life.” The great forefathers of the lineage were willing to work with whatever might come up. In fact, they delighted in embodying the most extreme aspects of human experience, if in doing so they could help others. From their point of view, they were not striving to be outrageous or even helpful; their behavior was just the natural expression of what is.
    This is the training that Chögyam Trungpa had himself received. A story from his early life illustrates how he put this training into effect, in extreme as well as ordinary circumstances. When Tibet was invaded by the communist Chinese, he had to flee the country over the Himalayas to avoid imprisonment and probable death. Before he set out on his journey to India, he heard of people being tortured and killed; his monastery was sacked; there was a price on his head. The journey out of Tibet lasted ten months—an almost unimaginably long time to be trekking on foot over the Himalayas (without modern mountain gear, jeeps, or thermal underwear, one might add), constantly in fear of being discovered by the Chinese, while facing extraordinary physical difficulties, crossing one high pass after another, fording