Read The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa Collected Works: Volume Two for Free Online Page B

along with you when you were born.” That would be absurd: “We are starving because you didn’t bring any money along with you.” It is a karmic situation that is taking place, all along, throughout the whole thing. We are confused, utterly, as far as we know. We are confused to the point where sometimes we don’t even know that. But we are confused in any case. Trying to find out who we can blame our confusion on is a further act of confusion. That takes us away from the practice of the actual discipline of meditative training, just takes us away from it.
    It boils down to this: nobody has fucked up your life, really. The only thing that fucks up your life is that you actually feel somebody has pulled a trick on you or that you have pulled a trick on yourself. And as a matter of fact, there’s no you. You don’t even exist, you don’t exist at all. So nobody’s pulling a trick on anybody. Even you don’t exist. You are just a myth, a mythical truth.
    Within that understanding of mythical truth, we practice meditation. We sit at the level of the myth of freedom. That might be a myth—the star of Bethlehem might be a myth—but we have seen it, we have experienced it.
    So you need enormous discipline, committing yourself to a spiritual friend and committing yourself, because of the spiritual friend, to yourself. And sitting practice provides an enormous help. You can’t even begin to call yourself a follower of buddhadharma if no basic training of the mind is involved. In order to perceive buddha and dharma, one has to have devotion. In order to have devotion, one has to train to develop devotion. This may be very clumsy at the beginning, but it is necessary. Starting with the hinayana level of discipline, satipatthana and vipashyana practice are extremely important and powerful. They are absolutely necessary if you want to follow the path properly, thoroughly, and completely. Enlightenment is very complete, total. There’s no such thing as fake enlightenment. It’s real experience. It’s real life.
    Student: You said that even we don’t exist, we’re a myth. Is enlightenment also a myth?
    Trungpa Rinpoche: You. You don’t exist. Nor I. I don’t exist.
    S: Does enlightenment exist?
    TR: Not even enlightenment exists.
    S: Does devotion exist?
    TR: Devotion is knowing that you don’t exist. It’s the information that someone gives you that you don’t exist. And you experience that, that it’s true: “I don’t exist.” That’s the act of devotion. Devotion is language, media to communicate that message. Devotion acts as a mailman who brings you mail.
    Student: You talk about having a personal experience of the teacher, the enlightenment experience. But what I’ve understood you to say about enlightenment is that it isn’t an experience. So what’s happening at that moment? Is it enlightenment, or is it still an experience? Is there still somebody there experiencing something?
    Trungpa Rinpoche: Enlightenment is no longer regarded as experience. Experience is like blotting paper that absorbs ink. The blotting paper has a good experience by absorbing the ink. This requires two entities to work together. But in this case, it is not experience from that point of view. It is total. The notion of a razor blade cutting itself.
    S: If it was total at that moment, why would it end?
    TR: It doesn’t end, that’s the whole point. Enlightenment is eternal. It doesn’t end. I mean that’s the whole point of liberation—once you are liberated, it is forever.
    S: So the experience with the spiritual friend is just a glimpse—
    TR: A glimpse of that freedom.
    S: And if you went to see your spiritual friend and wanted to surrender your ego to him and didn’t have a glimpse, was that because—
    TR: You’re still wrapped up in the notion of freedom. The whole thing about the glimpse seems to be very simple.
    Student: Enlightenment doesn’t begin either, right?
    Trungpa Rinpoche: What do you mean by that?
    S: