Free The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume 4 by Chögyam Trungpa Page A

suffering; it is going to be okay.” I could give you all kinds of antidotes: tranquilizers, mantras, and tricks. I could say, “Soon you’ll feel good. Soon you’ll forget your pain, and then you’ll be in a beautiful place.” But that would be an enormous falsity, and in the long run, such an approach is ungenerous and extremely destructive to the spiritual path. It is like giving our children tranquilizers whenever they begin to misbehave so that they will fall asleep. It saves us the trouble of getting a baby-sitter and changing diapers, but the child becomes a complete zombie. That is not the human thing to do, we must admit, and giving someone a spiritual tranquilizer is just as primitive as that. We suffer tremendously if we treat spirituality in that way, and we have to pay for it later on. Enormous problems arise—both resentment and discontent.
    One approach that is used in presenting spirituality is to say that if we have any questions, we should just forget them. We should regard them as outside the circle of the spiritually initiated. We should forget all our negativity: “Don’t ask any questions; just drop them. It is important that you have hope, that you go beyond your questions. Only if you accept the whole thing will you be saved.” That strategy is used to take advantage of the sanity of human beings—which is unlawful.

     
    Jetsün Milarepa (1040–1123). The chief disciple of Marpa, Milarepa is renowned for his songs of devotion and realization. This statue was a shrine object of Gampopa, Milarepa’s chief disciple .
    PHOTO BY GEORGE HOLMES AND BLAIR HANSEN.
     
    Someone may tell us that, if we commit ourselves to a particular practice or path, within four weeks we are going to be okay; we are going to be “high” forever. So we try it, and it works—but not forever. After six weeks, at most, or perhaps after only ten days, we begin to come down, and then we begin to panic and wonder what is going on. Usually the most faithful students blame themselves, feeling they have mismanaged the practice: “I must have some problem that I haven’t cleared up yet. I must not have done my confession properly, or given in properly.” But that is not the case at all. The problem is the way they were indoctrinated into their spiritual practice.
    We accept what is presented to us with an open mind, which is beautiful, but then its truth does not hold up. Because of the basic deception involved in our initiation, all sorts of holes begin to develop. Unfortunately, we become the victims of those lies, deceptions, or charlatanisms, and we feel the effects constantly, over and over again.
    So we have a problem with spiritual transmission, a problem of how to get real transmission from a competent master into our system. At this point, we are talking purely about the beginner’s level and the preparations that might be needed in order for spiritual transmission to occur in the very early stages. It is necessary for us to sharpen our cynicism, to sharpen our whole critical attitude toward what we are doing. That cynicism provides a basis for our study and work. For instance, if we are building a bridge, we begin by constructing the framework. It could be made of timber or iron rods, but the skeleton must be built before we pour the concrete. That is an example of the cynical approach. It is absolutely necessary to have that kind of cynical attitude if we are going to build a bridge, and it is necessary to be cynical in our approach to spirituality as well.
    We need to encourage an attitude of constant questioning, rather than ignoring our intelligence, which is a genuine part of our potential as students. If students were required to drop their questions, that would create armies and armies of zombies—rows of jellyfish sitting next to each other. But, to use a local expression, that is not so neat. In fact, it is messy. Preparing a beautifully defined and critical background for what we are doing to