6 – Crazy Wisdom Movie: Meditation, Boredom, Cutting Hypocrisy

The documentary movie "Crazy Wisdom: The Life and Times of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche", by Johanna Demetrakas, distributed by Kino Lorber.

This movie is streaming free on-line at this url: (4634) Crazy Wisdom: The Life and Times of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche | Full Documentary Movie - YouTube

Blog #6: Meditation, exposing hypocrisy, and boredom
The emphasis on meditation practice

15:35 [timing minutes and seconds into the Crazy Wisdom movie, url above:] We begin with an archival color still of Chogyam Trungpa and two students, Dan Russell’s voice begins and we cut to Dan Russell: “His injunction to me always was that the major change must always be internal and that without meditation there’s no progress.”

Generally speaking, it is difficult to think of anything less cinematic than quiet visuals of students meditating for hours at a time. Thankfully, Johanna Demetrakis does not subject us to that in this film. However, the emphasis which Chögyam Trungpa placed on the practice of mindfulness-awareness meditation for all of his students cannot be overstated:

CTR: "According to the Buddha, no one can attain basic sanity and basic enlightenment without practicing meditation. .... You might be fat, thin, big, small, intelligent, stupid – whatever you are, there is only one way, unconditionally, and that is to begin with the practice of meditation. The practice of meditation is the and only way. Without that, there is no way out and no way in. (“Mindfulness and Awareness Seminar,” New York, 1974, in book The Path is the Goal, Shambhala Publications, pp. 4-5)

Chögyam Trungpa emphasized this point over and over, not only in this seminar, but throughout his teaching career in the West. He did this so much that most of these quotes did not make it into the books. Over time, Chögyam Trungpa and his senior students created norms, practices, and educational systems related to supporting meditation practice, unique for groups whose lineage was Tibetan Buddhism. Hundreds of students trained as meditation instructors. Ongoing group practice situations of nyinthun (day long sitting and walking meditation group practice) and dathun (month-long practice) were established, largely inspired by the example of the Zen “sesshins,” as practiced in the communities of his friend, Zen master Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. Senior students, although they also had other practice and teaching commitments, were also encouraged to keep up their commitment to mindfulness-awareness practice.

In Chögyam Trungpa’s Boulder Buddhist community in the early to mid-1980s, intermediate-level students were encouraged to meditate for 50-60 hours per month, including nine 3-hour blocks of group sitting and walking meditation practice. This is literally true. These could be accomplished as part of nyinthuns or Shambhala Training levels. Dathun was also a prerequisite for the Vajradhatu seminary, that seminary being a ten-week program which was a gateway for students who wished to receive the advanced vajrayana teachings, practices, and vows. Solitary retreats (ten days or longer), consisting mostly of sitting and walking meditation, were also encouraged for those who aspired to become vajrayana students and had first accomplished some group practice.

Some students actually fulfilled or exceeded these practice guidelines. Some did not. In any case, the injunction to “just sit,” was a well established cultural force.

Meditation practice, cutting through spiritual materialism, and boredom

In this particular meditation, unlike many other approaches, the practitioner is deprived of any sense of promise or goal orientation or, for that matter, any notion of doing anything at all, such as concentrating on an object of meditation:

CTR: "It is a very humble gesture on your part—just sit and cut through your thoughts, just welcome your breathing going out and in, just natural breathing, no special breathing, just sit and develop the watchfulness of your breathing." (The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation, Shambhala Publications, p. 52)

CTR: "Meditation in this case has no object, no purpose, no reference point. It is just individuals willing to take a discipline on themselves, not to please God or the Buddha or their teacher or themselves. Rather one just sits, without aim, object, purpose, without anything at all. Nothing whatsoever. One just sits.” (Path is the Goal, pp. 4-5).

One of the main themes of all of Chögyam Trungpa’s teachings was to expose the deception and hypocrisy of ego-process, that which gets in the way of directly experiencing the rawness of the human heart, basic goodness, buddha nature. Nothing reveals this as directly, effectively, and personally, as the practice of simply being, basic sitting meditation. One might say that sitting meditation, done in this style, is the engine which cuts through spiritual materialism, and which intimately shows the truth of suffering and the origin of suffering.

In most meditation seminars, soon after students had some experience with practice, Chögyam Trungpa would present teachings on the nature of ego-process, usually some version of Buddhist teachings on the five skandhas and/or the eight consciousnesses. In later years, there were the Shambhala teachings about “cocoon,” the habitual ways in which we make ourselves unavailable to ourselves and others. In both contexts, the need to expose and overcome deception and arrogance was emphasized.

In his book, The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation (Shambhala Publications), the development of ego is likened to a human body. The false, desperate process of grasping onto a sense of self is discussed in terms of the five skandhas of ignorance/form, feelings, perception/impulse, concept, and consciousness. The credentials of spiritual materialism are likened to a sickness which needs treatment:

CTR: "In this analogy, the fundamental dualism, feeling, impulse and concepts are like the bones of the body. Emotions are like the muscles of the body and subconscious gossip and all the little mental activities are the circulatory system which feeds and sustains the muscles.... (p. 51)

Meditation practice, then, is described as the “dissection process which cuts through the body of ego.” It is essentially depicted here as a blood-letting of discursive thoughts, the little mental activities which serve as nourishment for the for the greater body of ego, the muscles of the emotions, and so on. “We have to operate on this person to eliminate the credential sickness....Sitting and meditating is the little slit in your artery, in the area of complaint....  (p. 52)

Then you begin to realize that actually the slitting of the artery did not take place when you were introduced to the practice. The actual slitting takes place when you begin to feel the boredom of the practice – real boredom. 'I’m suppposed to get something out of Buddhism and meditation. I’m supposed to attain different levels of realization. I haven’t. I’m bored stiff.' Even your watcher is unsympathetic to you. Boredom is important because boredom is anti-credential. Credentials are entertaining, always bringing you something new, something lively, something fantastic, all kinds of solutions. When you take away the idea of credentials, then there is boredom."

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Having said all this, there was at least an equal emphasis on the arts disciplines and other life practices alluded to in this movie as there was on the formal practice of sitting and walking meditation. Even the seminars which were largely about the practice of sitting meditation include, in the latter talks, discussion of how awareness based on mindfulness extends into everyday life activities, relations to others, various arts disciplines, and intellectual disciplines. (Training intellectual discipline and training in logic would require another essay, and is essential to study and teacher training.)

A number of such seminars related to medition are available for free listening or viewing. See the Meditation section of this website for a number of talks, some of which appear at the Chogyam Trungpa Naropa digital library site, some on the Chronicles of Chogyam Trungpa website. Meditation talks by his student, The Vajra Regent Osel Tendzin, are also extremely valuable for the new, intermediate, and advanced meditator.

Meditation Practice - Dharma Study Group Kazoo (dsgroupkazoo.com)

Although in-person instruction from a living human being is encouraged, the Meditation: The Path of the Buddha 1974 Naropa Seminar, for example, does include actual group meditation instruction. This is noteworthy in that, before 1974, meditation seminars, for the most part, did not include group instruction, but each student received meditation instruction personally, one on one. In the very early years, all of that was done by Chögyam Trungpa himself. 1973-1974 was about the time when meditation instructor trainings were initiated in earnest.

Even students whose main connection to him was through the arts or other disciplines were strongly encouraged to sit on their cushions or chairs for many hours. How much practice actually went on for individuals varied widely from person to person. The main point was, however, that without sitting meditation, there was no genuine basis for awareness practice in everyday life.

CTR: "Rather than concentration we practice mindfulness. We see what is happening there rather than developing concentration, which is goal-oriented. Anything connected with goals involves a journey toward somewhere from somewhere. In mindfulness practice there is no goal, no journey; you are just mindful of what is happening there. There is no promise of love and light or visions of any kind – no angels, no devils. Nothing happens: it is absolutely boring." (Myth of Freedom, p. 53)

Link to  blog 7: 7 - Crazy Wisdom Movie: No Place to Hide - Dharma Study Group Kazoo (dsgroupkazoo.com)