Free The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa Collected Works: Volume Two by Chogyam Trungpa, Chögyam Trungpa Page B

acknowledged occasionally. That’s very important.
    Student: You were talking about breath and the movement of the breath being a mirror of the mind. Couldn’t that be extended to the whole body? Wouldn’t the movement of the whole body also be a mirror of the mind, the thought processes, and therefore another path of meditation?
    Trungpa Rinpoche: Well, you could stretch in that direction, but there’s a bit of a strain there.
    S: I don’t see that.
    TR: You don’t move all the time, unless you are restless; but you breathe all the time.
    S: No. Our human bodies are designed to move almost all the time. In fact, it’s almost impossible to sit perfectly still the way we are designed with our center of gravity.
    TR: I’m not trying to tell you you should fight your center of gravity, particularly. But there are moments of stillness, relatively speaking. It is the breath that makes your body move. Your lungs always expand and contract, but that’s sort of an accidental thing. The reason why meditation practice should be based just on your breath, not on your body, is that there are possibilities of exploring the parts of your body unnecessarily. You start to try to shape your body like your mind, which has a hint of neurosis in it. In fact, that happens a great deal in the sensory-awareness schools of meditation. And there has been a great interest in T’ai Chi Ch’uan that has gone along with the enormous interest in touch and bodily movement. But there is a limit on how you can do that. There is a tendency to create something special. Whereas when you just sit with the breath, you don’t have to breathe specially. You just do it naturally. It’s part of your pulse.
    S: But since most of our time is spent in movement, why not use movement as a form of meditation?
    TR: I think you can’t do that. At this point I have to be very orthodox. You can’t do that, because it would be very convenient and there would be no discipline. For example, you have to set aside a time for sitting practice that is especially allocated for that practice. Whereas with the approach you suggest, you could just say, “Well, I’m going to visit my girlfriend and I have to drive. So on my way to my girlfriend’s, I’ll use driving as my meditation.”
    S: But as long as it’s mindful, why couldn’t that be done?
    TR: That approach to mindfulness becomes too utilitarian, too pragmatic—killing two birds with one stone. “That way I meditate and I get a chance to see my girlfriend at the end too.” But something has to be given up somewhere. Some renunciation somewhere is necessary. One stone kills one bird.
    Student: You talked about mindfulness and breathing, and breathing as a portrait of the mind. You also talked about being mindful of the various thoughts and feelings that come and go. You described those as the branches of the tree, which I gather is what we’re supposed to attack.
    Trungpa Rinpoche: At this point we are not in a position to handle those, to deal with them, to cut them down. Now we just have to see that the branches do exist.
    S: I’m confused about this. Is breathing the tool we are fashioning to eventually cut down the branches?
    TR: No, the mindfulness.
    S: The mindfulness. Of which the breathing is—
    TR: The breathing is just crutches.
    S: Yeah. The breathing is the crutches to bring about the mindfulness, which we can then later develop toward the emotions. Okay, that’s it!
    TR: That’s it.
    Student: You say that we don’t exist, that we only think we exist. I see that as being part of the grand illusion. Could you elaborate on that?
    Trungpa Rinpoche: That’s a lengthy discussion. But maybe I could hear from you what you think about whether you exist or you don’t. Do you think you exist?
    S: I think that—
    TR: Be honest.
    S: We are here.
    TR: Yes?
    S: Whatever these vibrations are are here. We are here.
    TR: Well, who are we?
    S: Who’s asking the question?
    TR: That’s it. Yes. Who is it.