Re: The Mahasiddha and His Idiot Servant, by John Riley Perk
Posted: Mon Mar 04, 2019 12:42 am
Introduction
This is a story about transformation from mindlessness and unconsciousness to the realization of how mind functions in all its aspects, and the implications of that realization in everyday life situations. It is also a story about an enlightened teacher and a student who was completely ignorant. During that relationship Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche said at different times, "You should write about how we worked together."
"You mean how we created the Court and military?" I inquired.
"No," he replied, "How our minds work together."
"That sounds like a huge task," was my observation.
"Just keep it simple," he advised.
"When should I do this?" I inquired further.
"When you have the time," came the answer.
It is important that the reader have some knowledge of my state of mind before and during my years with Rinpoche. While at the time I had no understanding of my mental constructs, looking back from my present perspective I can offer the following summary. I have labeled myself an idiot. From the point of view of enlightened or realized mind this is certainly so. All beings are attached to their personal karma. Karma is action, the working of cause and effect whereby positive actions produce happiness and negative actions produce suffering. Personal karma means that you are born into a family and you take on the karma of that family. You take on the karma of the town, the state, and the country in which you were born. Then you take on the karma of the training you receive at various educational establishments. Even if you rebel against all of this, you take on the karma of the rebel.
For instance, a British karma could be one of having a stiff upper lip in all situations, which means that when catastrophes are occurring you say nothing is happening or "Let's have another cup of tea." While historically this is portrayed as being heroic, it is actually quite stupid, because it negates reality at the most basic level.
One cannot blame people for this. It is simply the way that karma operates. A pig is ignorant and symbolizes ignorance in Buddhism. But one can't blame the pig for being a pig, as that is its nature. Similarly, it is the nature of human beings to be attached to their karma, their emotions, and their habitual patterns. In this scenario there is no notion of enlightenment or realization to interrupt the cyclical patterns, and there is no reason for one to feel guilty or blame others.
From the historical point of view, I was born in Kent, England, in the year 1934. My father was a band master and a music teacher. My mother was his housekeeper but she was also a practical nurse. Both of my parents had been married three times each and had children from these various marriages before their love affair produced me and my two sisters. They were never married and lived together for twelve years including the beginning and end of World War II. My father was in World War I as a stretcher bearer. The mental anguish that he and many suffered during that conflict was immeasurable. My mother was a spiritualist -- driven there as refuge from the constant insanity of war and poverty.
This was the family karma that I inherited. I also received tremendous love and adoration from both my parents even though they were living in a dark period of warfare and violence. Like everyone else I was conditioned early on in traditional English values, education, and culture. When the war came I fought to survive, as was required of all intrepid, resilient Englishmen. And I fought to survive to be John Perks. I put extreme effort into maintaining my "own-ness." My only thought was how to maintain myself. I had no understanding of the feelings of others. I just reacted to their emotional displays and covered myself the best way that I could in order to maintain my ego. If, for instance, a person in authority was angry with me I found ways to please him or, alternatively, to go behind his back to create subterfuge and outmaneuver him. If a person in authority displayed love toward me I would endeavor to please him so that the love situation would continue.
Concerning the phenomenal world I had no understanding at all. I simply attached myself to the pleasure or pain that it gave me. Either it pleased me by being sunny and smelling like roses or depressed me by being froggy, dull, and smelling of manure. My own-ness and my self-ness had to survive above everything, and I would do anything-literally anything-to maintain my "self."
Trungpa Rinpoche used to say that I was very self-reliant. I took pride in that until I discovered what it meant. Then I took another pride in it. From the mental point of view I was at the mercy of my emotions. To complicate this further, when emotions were displayed in the English society in which I had been living, one was punished. So I became a kind of secret agent, hiding my emotions, or else became a renegade.
Being at the mercy of emotions is like being imprisoned by passion, aggression, ignorance, or depression. Ironically, when you're imprisoned that way you don't recognize it. You have no knowledge of "I." It is just a state that you are in. It feels very bad and painful but you don't know that there is any other alternative. Perhaps on a sunny day you might feel better, but then when it rains you retreat back to. your habitual pattern of passion, aggression, ignorance, or depression.
Thoughts flow through our minds in an unending stream, rather like shingles on a roof that overlap each other. I considered these thoughts to be reality, whether they were created by emotion or just popped up out of the blue, like bogeymen. The world was a very fearsome place for a mind such as mine.
Today, we live in a society that feels that the best way to handle people's ignorance is to punish them, eliminate them, or medicate them. That is because having to deal with another person in an open, nonjudgmental manner requires extreme mindfulness and attention. One would have to become selfless and totally open. Few people undertake this, as it is painful to have to give up one's self Yet everywhere people are seeking that state of open, compassionate love for each other. That is why Buddha and Jesus are revered by so many. They are examples of the infinite compassion for all beings that so many of us strive for. The obstacles to that attainment are peoples' possessiveness and attachment to maintaining their self-identity and their ignorance in seeing this.
Ignorance, with which I am personally very familiar, does not understand enlightened mind. Ignorance just operates to maintain "self," rather like the pig, head down, turning over the sod under its nose. It doesn't look around, it only knows "piggy-ness." It's not that the pig is not beautiful. The pig is supremely beautiful and supremely intelligent in maintaining its "piggy-ness," but it also suffers enormously because of its habitual karma and its attachment to the unending display of emotions or neuroses which it sees as reality. Even in making love to its partner the pig will suffer. It may be a tremendously successful lover but be unable to receive love. That is, the piggy wants to control even that aspect of his or her world. Receiving love might be extremely painful because it would have to give up a particular notion of self. In the union of masculine and feminine, selflessness can be experienced only if the predetermined states can be surrendered. Such a love never occurred to me. I was somewhat like a bull in rut. My only interest was in my own persona and presenting it in such a way that it could receive the adulation it required. This is an explanation of my mind and how it operated at the time I met Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.
Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche's mind was one of boundless infinite compassion for all beings. It became this way through his many lifetimes of meditation practice and also through the love, compassion, and training from his teachers. He was born into a lineage and a society where these attributes were regarded as he supreme treasure. While he was not born as an enlightened being he attained enlightenment as a gradual process of his training with his teachers.
Such a compassionate mind is not attached to any notion of self but is totally dedicated to the benefit of all beings. From the point of view of a pig-mind it is very difficult to understand the mind of an enlightened person. In the beginning the pig-mind might become alarmed that it can find no habitual pattern in the enlightened mind to manipulate for its own benefit. Then it might conceive from its own point of view that the enlightened mind is crazy, because the pig-mind is unable to obtain the power that enlightened mind displays. At that point it might give up and become confused again in all types of illusions. Seeking some type of ground it may see these illusions as reality -- whether they manifest as visions or spiritual accomplishments -- and again may cling to the new concept and try to make a reality out of it.
The actual reality of enlightenment is beyond ordinary description. From the point of view of my mind at the initial meeting with Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, I was convinced that I could attain such a state by scheming or by personal manipulation. Needless to say, I failed in that endeavor. That failure produced the attributes in my mind of both hopelessness and negation, thinking that the whole thing was crazy in the first place. Those obstacles had to be worked through.
The attachments and clingings of my mind were undermined by the teachings of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche in ordinary daily situations. He continually disarranged my personal egotistic reality and sense of self. Additionally, I was engaged in the meditative activities of shamatha vipashyana, ngondro, and the Vajrayogini sadhana. Vajrayogini is called the sadhana of the Coemergent Mother-meaning the union of samsara and nirvana. This was a situation of being in the middle of a sandwich with the guru on one side, the yidam or deity on the other side, and myself as the ham in the middle. The whole thing was driven together by a diamond nail that can never be removed.
The stories in this book are told from my unrealized point of view. From the realized point of view something else was happening. I was being given what I wanted, which was to become enlightened. But that enlightenment meant having an open, compassionate heart. I could not "get it" by any other way than giving up self. I fought tooth and nail against the very state that I sought because I was terrified of the notion of emptiness and no self. In these stories I appear a fool, which is what I was. I remain continually in awe of the realizations and compassion of my three teachers: Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, and His Holiness, the sixteenth Karmapa. I am also totally indebted to my sangha brothers and sisters who were fellow students of these teachers and engaged in their own paths toward enlightenment. I am more than indebted to my own students for forcing me to explain what happened in minute and painful detail. And I am in awe of their heroism and determination to also seek realization, even though their teacher is an idiot.
Perhaps if you yourself are a seeker, or are on the path to true complete enlightenment, these stories might give you some comfort. If a total idiot could become a realized person, even though he himself has not attained true complete enlightenment, then such an endeavor should be easier for you. Also, you could think of us as being comrades-in-arms, united in transforming passion, aggression, ignorance, depression, and illusion into enlightened mind. We could, you could, create or work toward a world that displays the compassionate reality for all beings which is the heart of Buddha, the heart of Jesus, and the heart of many teachers throughout history and who still exist in the world today. We could create an enlightened world for all beings.
If I had only one wish it would be that you never give up on your devotion to the enlightened state, no matter what personal sufferings you might experience. It need not matter if you are a murderer, thief, liar, terrorist, bank manager, housewife, Buddhist teacher, electrician, blacksmith, or someone without vocation in your journey in this impermanent realm. May you meet the heart of true, complete enlightenment, surrender your self-ness to it, and experience the total pain, total suffering, total joy, and total compassion of that state.
Whatever confusion is displayed within these pages is the confusion of the author. Whatever realization emanates is the realization of the teacher. The union of these two is the mutual love affair that is the basis of Buddha's lineage.
Seonaidh Riley Perks
Vermont, 2003
This is a story about transformation from mindlessness and unconsciousness to the realization of how mind functions in all its aspects, and the implications of that realization in everyday life situations. It is also a story about an enlightened teacher and a student who was completely ignorant. During that relationship Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche said at different times, "You should write about how we worked together."
"You mean how we created the Court and military?" I inquired.
"No," he replied, "How our minds work together."
"That sounds like a huge task," was my observation.
"Just keep it simple," he advised.
"When should I do this?" I inquired further.
"When you have the time," came the answer.
It is important that the reader have some knowledge of my state of mind before and during my years with Rinpoche. While at the time I had no understanding of my mental constructs, looking back from my present perspective I can offer the following summary. I have labeled myself an idiot. From the point of view of enlightened or realized mind this is certainly so. All beings are attached to their personal karma. Karma is action, the working of cause and effect whereby positive actions produce happiness and negative actions produce suffering. Personal karma means that you are born into a family and you take on the karma of that family. You take on the karma of the town, the state, and the country in which you were born. Then you take on the karma of the training you receive at various educational establishments. Even if you rebel against all of this, you take on the karma of the rebel.
For instance, a British karma could be one of having a stiff upper lip in all situations, which means that when catastrophes are occurring you say nothing is happening or "Let's have another cup of tea." While historically this is portrayed as being heroic, it is actually quite stupid, because it negates reality at the most basic level.
One cannot blame people for this. It is simply the way that karma operates. A pig is ignorant and symbolizes ignorance in Buddhism. But one can't blame the pig for being a pig, as that is its nature. Similarly, it is the nature of human beings to be attached to their karma, their emotions, and their habitual patterns. In this scenario there is no notion of enlightenment or realization to interrupt the cyclical patterns, and there is no reason for one to feel guilty or blame others.
From the historical point of view, I was born in Kent, England, in the year 1934. My father was a band master and a music teacher. My mother was his housekeeper but she was also a practical nurse. Both of my parents had been married three times each and had children from these various marriages before their love affair produced me and my two sisters. They were never married and lived together for twelve years including the beginning and end of World War II. My father was in World War I as a stretcher bearer. The mental anguish that he and many suffered during that conflict was immeasurable. My mother was a spiritualist -- driven there as refuge from the constant insanity of war and poverty.
This was the family karma that I inherited. I also received tremendous love and adoration from both my parents even though they were living in a dark period of warfare and violence. Like everyone else I was conditioned early on in traditional English values, education, and culture. When the war came I fought to survive, as was required of all intrepid, resilient Englishmen. And I fought to survive to be John Perks. I put extreme effort into maintaining my "own-ness." My only thought was how to maintain myself. I had no understanding of the feelings of others. I just reacted to their emotional displays and covered myself the best way that I could in order to maintain my ego. If, for instance, a person in authority was angry with me I found ways to please him or, alternatively, to go behind his back to create subterfuge and outmaneuver him. If a person in authority displayed love toward me I would endeavor to please him so that the love situation would continue.
Concerning the phenomenal world I had no understanding at all. I simply attached myself to the pleasure or pain that it gave me. Either it pleased me by being sunny and smelling like roses or depressed me by being froggy, dull, and smelling of manure. My own-ness and my self-ness had to survive above everything, and I would do anything-literally anything-to maintain my "self."
Trungpa Rinpoche used to say that I was very self-reliant. I took pride in that until I discovered what it meant. Then I took another pride in it. From the mental point of view I was at the mercy of my emotions. To complicate this further, when emotions were displayed in the English society in which I had been living, one was punished. So I became a kind of secret agent, hiding my emotions, or else became a renegade.
Being at the mercy of emotions is like being imprisoned by passion, aggression, ignorance, or depression. Ironically, when you're imprisoned that way you don't recognize it. You have no knowledge of "I." It is just a state that you are in. It feels very bad and painful but you don't know that there is any other alternative. Perhaps on a sunny day you might feel better, but then when it rains you retreat back to. your habitual pattern of passion, aggression, ignorance, or depression.
Thoughts flow through our minds in an unending stream, rather like shingles on a roof that overlap each other. I considered these thoughts to be reality, whether they were created by emotion or just popped up out of the blue, like bogeymen. The world was a very fearsome place for a mind such as mine.
Today, we live in a society that feels that the best way to handle people's ignorance is to punish them, eliminate them, or medicate them. That is because having to deal with another person in an open, nonjudgmental manner requires extreme mindfulness and attention. One would have to become selfless and totally open. Few people undertake this, as it is painful to have to give up one's self Yet everywhere people are seeking that state of open, compassionate love for each other. That is why Buddha and Jesus are revered by so many. They are examples of the infinite compassion for all beings that so many of us strive for. The obstacles to that attainment are peoples' possessiveness and attachment to maintaining their self-identity and their ignorance in seeing this.
Ignorance, with which I am personally very familiar, does not understand enlightened mind. Ignorance just operates to maintain "self," rather like the pig, head down, turning over the sod under its nose. It doesn't look around, it only knows "piggy-ness." It's not that the pig is not beautiful. The pig is supremely beautiful and supremely intelligent in maintaining its "piggy-ness," but it also suffers enormously because of its habitual karma and its attachment to the unending display of emotions or neuroses which it sees as reality. Even in making love to its partner the pig will suffer. It may be a tremendously successful lover but be unable to receive love. That is, the piggy wants to control even that aspect of his or her world. Receiving love might be extremely painful because it would have to give up a particular notion of self. In the union of masculine and feminine, selflessness can be experienced only if the predetermined states can be surrendered. Such a love never occurred to me. I was somewhat like a bull in rut. My only interest was in my own persona and presenting it in such a way that it could receive the adulation it required. This is an explanation of my mind and how it operated at the time I met Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.
Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche's mind was one of boundless infinite compassion for all beings. It became this way through his many lifetimes of meditation practice and also through the love, compassion, and training from his teachers. He was born into a lineage and a society where these attributes were regarded as he supreme treasure. While he was not born as an enlightened being he attained enlightenment as a gradual process of his training with his teachers.
Such a compassionate mind is not attached to any notion of self but is totally dedicated to the benefit of all beings. From the point of view of a pig-mind it is very difficult to understand the mind of an enlightened person. In the beginning the pig-mind might become alarmed that it can find no habitual pattern in the enlightened mind to manipulate for its own benefit. Then it might conceive from its own point of view that the enlightened mind is crazy, because the pig-mind is unable to obtain the power that enlightened mind displays. At that point it might give up and become confused again in all types of illusions. Seeking some type of ground it may see these illusions as reality -- whether they manifest as visions or spiritual accomplishments -- and again may cling to the new concept and try to make a reality out of it.
The actual reality of enlightenment is beyond ordinary description. From the point of view of my mind at the initial meeting with Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, I was convinced that I could attain such a state by scheming or by personal manipulation. Needless to say, I failed in that endeavor. That failure produced the attributes in my mind of both hopelessness and negation, thinking that the whole thing was crazy in the first place. Those obstacles had to be worked through.
The attachments and clingings of my mind were undermined by the teachings of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche in ordinary daily situations. He continually disarranged my personal egotistic reality and sense of self. Additionally, I was engaged in the meditative activities of shamatha vipashyana, ngondro, and the Vajrayogini sadhana. Vajrayogini is called the sadhana of the Coemergent Mother-meaning the union of samsara and nirvana. This was a situation of being in the middle of a sandwich with the guru on one side, the yidam or deity on the other side, and myself as the ham in the middle. The whole thing was driven together by a diamond nail that can never be removed.
The stories in this book are told from my unrealized point of view. From the realized point of view something else was happening. I was being given what I wanted, which was to become enlightened. But that enlightenment meant having an open, compassionate heart. I could not "get it" by any other way than giving up self. I fought tooth and nail against the very state that I sought because I was terrified of the notion of emptiness and no self. In these stories I appear a fool, which is what I was. I remain continually in awe of the realizations and compassion of my three teachers: Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, and His Holiness, the sixteenth Karmapa. I am also totally indebted to my sangha brothers and sisters who were fellow students of these teachers and engaged in their own paths toward enlightenment. I am more than indebted to my own students for forcing me to explain what happened in minute and painful detail. And I am in awe of their heroism and determination to also seek realization, even though their teacher is an idiot.
Perhaps if you yourself are a seeker, or are on the path to true complete enlightenment, these stories might give you some comfort. If a total idiot could become a realized person, even though he himself has not attained true complete enlightenment, then such an endeavor should be easier for you. Also, you could think of us as being comrades-in-arms, united in transforming passion, aggression, ignorance, depression, and illusion into enlightened mind. We could, you could, create or work toward a world that displays the compassionate reality for all beings which is the heart of Buddha, the heart of Jesus, and the heart of many teachers throughout history and who still exist in the world today. We could create an enlightened world for all beings.
If I had only one wish it would be that you never give up on your devotion to the enlightened state, no matter what personal sufferings you might experience. It need not matter if you are a murderer, thief, liar, terrorist, bank manager, housewife, Buddhist teacher, electrician, blacksmith, or someone without vocation in your journey in this impermanent realm. May you meet the heart of true, complete enlightenment, surrender your self-ness to it, and experience the total pain, total suffering, total joy, and total compassion of that state.
Whatever confusion is displayed within these pages is the confusion of the author. Whatever realization emanates is the realization of the teacher. The union of these two is the mutual love affair that is the basis of Buddha's lineage.
Seonaidh Riley Perks
Vermont, 2003