Army of Emanations

I do believe it was Field Commander Cohen who said that if your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.

We'll return to that in a bit, but in the meantime....
 
I like Trungpa Rinpoche's choice of words so much, I think I will run this one again, albeit with a little bit different presentation.

Let's see now... where did we leave off?

"Thus, if a person is self-righteously claiming to practice the buddhadharma, is using his practice as credentials, then he is simply playing ego's game."

Ah, yes... the text continues from there:

"[1] If a group of people do this together, then they reinforce each other in the same game. Inevitably they will pick a leader.

[2] Then the leader will have as his credentials the title 'head of the flock.'

[3] Then the members of the flock will have as their credentials the title 'member of such-and-such organization.'

[4] The leader and his flock reinforce each other's identities.

[5] As is said in the Sutra of the Treasury of Buddha, 'If someone teaches with ignorance, it is worse than if he took the lives of the inhabitants of three universes, because his ability to teach the dharma is impure.'

[6] Inevitably this organization, this collective ego, will look for further confirmation of its health and existence.

[7] It may even take as its credentials the transmission of the lineage, the teachings of the great masters, but it will be a prostitution of those teachings.

[8] It will involve itself in the ever-escalating game of one-upsmanship in order to enlarge its congregation.

[9] This one-upsmanship may take the form of collecting endorsements and diplomas, as well as the form of ambitious practice and adherence to the teachings.

[10] It will also see the success of rivals as a threat.

[11] The Buddha said that his teachings, like a lion, would never be destroyed by outsiders; it could only be destroyed from within like a lion's corpse consumed by maggots.

[12] This is the perversion of sangha.

[13] It is the dark-age style of spirituality, the operation of spiritual materialism."

It isn't too difficult to find examples of what Trungpa Rinpoche describes. However, I think it is less useful to employ his descriptions in a field guide sense than it is to employ them in a diagnostic sense.

What of people who are right-this-minute, completely caught up in the perversion of sangha, but are absolutely, positively (self-righteously) convinced that everybody else is out of step but them? What of the people who have devoted decades of their lives to braying like a jackass about lineage-in-the-abstract, but have nothing in the way of accomplishment? Whenever I think about this, I am always reminded of Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche's statement --

"One serious concern I have is that though the West is known for having thousands of experts and educated people, as yet I have heard of very few westerners who have achieved any degree of realization through practice."

Well, that is the issue, isn't it? Whenever you hear this, you should thank him for laying it on the line. Lineage is held, and upheld, not by proclamation, but by actual accomplishment. You can shout about lineage all you want, and demand to see by whose authority, blah, blah, blah, but the people with authentic presence really aren't tied to your notions of what is and is not probative.

Rely not upon individuals but upon the doctrine,
Rely not upon words but upon their meaning,
Rely not upon the provisional but the definitive meaning,
Rely not upon consciousness but upon pristine cognition.

Again, getting even farther away from the field guide and even closer to the diagnostic -- where and in what context do you suppose prostitution of the teachings is taking place? At a Teamster's meeting? Down at Our Lady's? In some faraway, mythical land where the unicorn dwells? Apply some common sense. It is taking place in the West, in Buddhist "centers," or "sanghas," where they play the ever-escalating game of one-upsmanship, telling you that they are the chosen arbitrators between culture and religion.

It is possible to become so materially religious that you forget spirituality. In matters of culture and spirituality, you and you alone are the arbitrator.

Taking Trungpa Rinpoche's descriptions in the diagnostic sense, we need to sit down in a quiet place where we've never been before, and will never go again, and just ask ourselves the basic questions. In what ways do we fit his description? In what ways do we defy his description? We need to be brutally honest about this -- utterly candid with ourselves -- even if after doing so, we still sigh, get up, and go rejoin the perversion of the sangha because we don't know any better, or don't have any place else to go.

What if you have spent your life... ten, or twenty, or even thirty years... wholly invested in something that is fundamentally the operation of spiritual materialism? Do you have the courage to leave? Do you have the courage to change? Do you have the courage to try something new? Do you have the ability to see things not as you once wished them to be, ten, or twenty, or thirty years ago, but as they actually are right this minute?

A sangha is not a gang of football hooligans, rooting for Mahamudra United Meditation Club to overcome its arch-rivals.

And, as a Buddhist, you are most definitely not a partisan.

Now, back to poetry.... or what passes for poetry in the places where expectations are what they are told to be...

From the birth of yearning
To the moment of recognition
The path, this journey, is method.

Really?

Since sentient beings meditate on the path in order to purify ...
bewildering appearances which arise suddenly as in a dream
through their lack of realization,
and the propensities of the bewildering thoughts
which cling to them,
there need be no clinging to the idea that
the doctrines of the path and result are truly existent.
It is as when a sorcerer removes fears on the path
by an army of his emanations, or
when a phlegmatic eye disease is cured.

No kidding.

One’s journey, this path-  the method.
The awakening- this fruit- the treasure.
How astonishing!

How disappointing!

Therefore, with reference to the conclusion that is to be realized,
all things subsumed by the relative and ultimate truths

should be established as naturally indivisible,
in the great pure sameness free from conceptual elaborations,
the original natural expression of the buddhas.

Yet one should not be attracted to
or fall into
any elaborate viewpoint
regarding dualistic concepts such as
being and non-being,
appearance and emptiness,
or purity and impurity,
as are partially appraised by childish intellects
of inhibited vision.

When one writes poetry, one should try not to make an ash of one's self.