the space between:
the theater legacy of chögyam trungpa (1)
Lee Worley
Photo: Nina Maria Mudita
Vajrayana: the path of skillful means
Designed to be aids to the practice of meditation, hundreds of deities and mandalas mark the various vajrayana traditions of Tibet. By visualizing an image that represents one’s basic nature, the practitioner tunes into that nature in its pure, nondistorted form. The mind reflects the mind back to itself. These ancient methods go directly to the heart of what meditation practice is designed to do—liberate the meditator from fixation upon and attachment to impermanent things, objects, people, or ideas. It is our attachment that causes our suffering. These deities and mandalas are “skillful means” because they have the potential to awaken us to freedom in this lifetime.
Chögyam Trungpa was a great master of these skillful means. When he met the Western consciousness, however, he understood that if students were to integrate the buddhadharma teachings into their ways of being, rather than simply adopting external Tibetan forms and using these as further entertainment or what he called spiritual materialism, translations needed to be made. For example, he abandoned the life of a monk, married, and fathered children. He felt that the robes and all that they implied were too exotic an attraction, that instead of supporting the message of shunyata or egolessness, they might become another “trip.”
During Chögyam Trungpa’s years in the United States, he utilized many Western forms and conventions, including business, education, and the arts in his presentations of Buddhism. He used whatever he did as a way to illuminate the nature of mind and phenomena. Among these many skillful means that he designed for Westerners were several plays that he wrote and a physical theater training that he developed for his performance students.
I first discovered this training in 1973 when I journeyed from Santa Fe to Boulder to attend a theater conference hosted by Chögyam Trungpa and his Mudra Theater Group. We had met once before in New York City while I was still a working member of Joseph Chaikin’s Open Theater. I remember seeing a short Asian man with a limp who spoke softly and almost unintelligibly. Other than my impression that he could use some voice lessons, the meeting in New York was uneventful.
Around this time, one of his students visited the Open Theater Loft on Fourteenth Street and told us a story about traveling with Chögyam Trungpa in Bhutan where he and a Tibetan monk were serving as attendants. With Trungpa in the lead, the three of them were making their way along the side of a cliff at night. As the student told it, the trail was very narrow, the night quite dark, and he and the other attendant were quarreling over which of them should have the right to hold the flashlight to light their guru’s way. The disagreement went on for some time until finally Trungpa turned, snatched the flashlight from the one holding it, and flung it over the cliff!
I was utterly intrigued by hearing about a teacher who would sacrifice hiw own safety to teach his students. And so, years later, when I was invited to the conference, I eagerly accepted the invitation. Since that time I have studied, practiced, and taught the work that Chögyam Trungpa presented at the conference. In this article I wish to share some of the insights into theater that I have gained through it.
Chögyam Trungpa’s own performance training is briefly described in Born in Tibet (chapter 8, “A many sided training”), his autobiography of his early years as a young tülku, or reincarnated teacher, his Buddhist training to become abbot of his lineage’s monastery, and his harrowing escape from Tibet to the West. As part of this education he was taught a monastic dance, a speciality of his monastery that accompanies a vajrayana sadhana, or practice. He writes that he did not consider himself a particularly good dancer, being more experienced in scholastic studies, but as abbot he was obliged to learn the dance so that he could lead the procession. The training is arduous and thorough, and the costumes lavish with heavy brocade, the dancers holding hand bells and drums. The “performance,” which takes place within the monastery, is presented only for the monks. It was done only once every two years and goes on for twenty-four hours without pause. The dancers execute three hundred and sixty-five ritual movements indicating the days of the year as well as the three hundred and sixty-five obscurations that need to be overcome prior to liberation. Imagine the immense contrast between this definition of a performance and what Chögyam Trungpa encountered upon his arrival in the West!
Buddhism enters a culture subtly. Rather than imposing a set of liturgical or iconographical religious forms onto the new culture, Buddhism goes straight to the heart of the human condition and invites adherents of whatever culture to take a look at the nature of their minds. In doing so, practitioners begin to discover their culturally induced habits of thinking and assumptions about the nature of the reality. As this understanding develops, practitioners are able to let go of preconceptions, becoming more adept at arising freshly in each immediate moment of nowness. They begin to shape their world from this liberated awareness. Artists may begin to find new creative expressions; teachers may begin to listen more carefully to their students; parents may begin to appreciate a child who seems “different” from them.
Chögyam Trungpa believed that art has the capacity to transform when used for purposes other than ego-gratification. His methodology included training the senses, training the mind by means of the body, and incorporating an understanding of space into the students’ awareness. The Mudra training constituted skillful means for becoming aware of mind and also for becoming more embodied in performance. Buddhist concepts were thus incorporated into plays that he wrote as well as into his work with performers. Just as the peaceful and wrathful deities of Tibetan Buddhism mirror the mind, so does theater mirror society. As a master Buddhist teacher, Chögyam Trungpa aspired to hold a mirror up to the “enlightened society” within each one of us.
Photo: Nina Maria Mudita
Space is outlined by neurosis
“Fundamentally,” Chögyam Trungpa says, “there is just open space, the basic ground, what we really are. Our most fundamental state of mind, before the creation of ego, is such that there is basic openness, basic freedom, a spacious quality; and we have now and have always had this openness.” (Cutting through spiritual materialism, 2002, p. 122)
From Chögyam Trungpa’s perspective, we are all neurotic. He attributes our neurosis to this very space: “We are this space, we are one with it. […] But if we are this all the time, where did the confusion come from, where has the space gone, what has happened? Nothing has happened, as a matter of fact. We just became too active in that space. Because it is spacious, it brings inspiration to dance about; but our dance became a bit too active, we began to spin more than was necessary to express the space. At this point we became self-conscious, conscious that ‘I’ am dancing in the space.” (ibid., p. 123)
Out of oneness, we constantly manufacture the perception of duality. It is at this point that our neurosis begins. Because space has become other than “I,” I must seduce it into dancing with me, and in doing so I solidify or fix it, denying it and myself the flowing qualities that are its nature. Chögyam Trungpa calls this event the birth of ignorance. (ibid., p. 125) From there we build our sense of a solid, separate self and a solid-seeming reality “out there.” The traditional Buddhist metaphor is of a monkey shut up in a window, fascinated by the exciting world “outside.” As he becomes bored and desirous of new forms of entertainment, he cultivates his neurosis, attempting to seduce, repel, or ignore his world. Finally our monkey lives in a fabrication of his or her own delusion.
This view of ourselves might cause us to feel quite defeated. We might wonder what hope there is for reunion with the primordial open ground. According to the Buddhist view, at the moment of questioning we are beginning to deal with our neurosis; uncertainty begins our path toward clarifying our confusion about reality’s true nature. In fact, from the vajrayana point of view, our neurosis and confusion are hardly problems. They keep us yearning for a more absolute truth. Chögyam Trungpa once proclaimed that confusion could be regarded as extremely good news! All of our chaos and confusion means that we are not fixed, not made of stone. We are alive and constantly moving, able to change and shed outworn patterns. Within the flux of our monkey minds, our open space shines forth.
It has been said that the vajrayana teachings are especially powerful medicine in a culture in turmoil, where the intensification of the confusion surrounding self-identity leads people to question their assumptions. Thus it was that Padmasambhava brought the vajrayana dharma from India and transplanted it in Tibet, which was at the time a very rugged civilization looking for refinement. In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, vajrayana came to the United States with Chögyam Trungpa, at a time when many Westerners were searching for truth, questioning their assumptions about the nature of reality. Even where no great upheaval is occuring, however, we still suffer from our attachments to the transient; our minds are still neurotic, still needing to be tamed. The dharma is always timely; space is always outlined by neurosis.
Sandcastles, a play by Chögyam Trungpa written in the early 1970’s, is designed in a series of short scenes between two or three characters. Reflecting this era in North America, it echoes this searching and neurosis in absurdist form. In scene three, for example, a guru, “dressed in white and wearing numerous strands of wooden beads around his neck,” is speaking with a student seated on the floor at his feet. The student, dressed in simple Western clothes, is complaining that while he has studied and practiced many sorts of yoga, he doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere. He assumes that the guru can help him understand. The guru agrees, proclaiming that a good student proves that one is a good teacher.
As the Holy Book of Cockrow says in chapter 1301 and as the Divine Book says also, “If you could balance yourself on one finger it is one of the most meritorious deeds that you could perform.” After all we don’t want to lay heavy burdens on our fellow beings. Your finger is the most generous outlet or crutch according to the Divine Book of Cockrow. “He who rests his divine attitude with his finger, he finds his way through the divine energy of the index finger as the Lord slew the Evil Ones through His index finger.” [Sandcastles, c. 1972]
Within this spoof on the pursuit of Eastern and Western holiness, some quality of space being outlined by neurosis reveals itself. Things are not only one way at all. There is a certain ambiguity that plays between our hopeful expectation that things will make sense and the ridiculous way things seem to appear. Nothing is spelled out for us, yet we continually suspect a message; by clinging to the anticipated message, we make our neurosis spin faster. Chögyam Trungpa once described his theater training as “harnessing the wild horses of neurosis.” As in the practice of Zen koans, we wear out our conceptual frameworks until space, which has been there all along, miraculously appears.
Photo: Nina Maria Mudita
The step from offstage to onstage is only one step
“The step from offstage to onstage is only one step” is one of the slogans from the Mudra Theater Group that I use in training young performers. It encourages approaching performance with a certain attitude of ordinariness, of “no big deal.” Popular wisdom suggests that acting is a monumental achievement and attaining fame or wealth the goal, which only a few very special people will achieve. Thus, much of the benefit of studying and practicing art is lost. In the effort to reeducate young people so that they understand performance as a craft in which one hones one’s tools, polishes one’s role, and then gets out of the way, not being dependent on or discouraged by either success or failure, this slogan has been helpful. Returning playfulness to theater means that everyone on stage and off can enjoy the performance.
Taking this slogan in another direction, we could also say that the step from onstage to offstage is only one step. Trungpa’s aspirations always included educating Americans about the possibility of a more sane society, a society where “there is no aggression and where people could discover their innate basic goodness and enlightened existence” (in an interview about one of Chögyam Trungpa’s dharma art installations). A senior student of Trungpa’s said, “The Vidyadhara’s message was that there is no time off from sacred view. All situations of gathering, meeting, and socializing were demanding opportunities for invocation, transformation, practice and waking up” (Gina Stick, in an interview with Carolyn Rose Gimian, 2002). In working on productions of Trungpa’s plays, the rehearsal process might easily have been seen as a strong preparation for living a mindful life, if only the participants had been more aware.
Prajna is a play based on The Heart Sutra, a body of literature central to Mahayana Buddhism. Prajna is the Sanskrit word for the fundamental intelligence that sees things as they really are: empty, impermanent, and interconnected. The central idea of The Heart Sutra is “Form is emptiness, emptiness itself is form; emptiness is no other than form, form is no other than emptiness.” The play begins with “six people dressed in white pajama-like clothing, holding brooms and facing each other at the center of the circle. They still sway to the recorded music even after it is finished. Their actions seem somewhat self-conscious and devotional. After a short time they turn outward as a group and begin sweeping the area in a choreographed pattern—out to the edge of the circle, in again, out again, and exit.” (Prajna, in The collected works of Chögyam Trungpa, vol. 7, p. 654)
This sweeping theme repeats at the end of the play, only this time by another set of people, who are dressed in maroon robes, possibly the same group now more enlightened. In an introduction to the play written by Andrew Karr, then director of the Mudra group, they are described as, “men and women who serve as uncompromising spokesmen for the teachings. Their behavior cuts through the neurotic trips of the people they confront.” (Loka: a Journal from Naropa Institute, 1975, ed. Rick Fields, p. 139) The neurotic trips referred to include a man who is examining the solidness and stubbornness of a large rock, which he eventually lifts above his head with the aid of maroon-robed people raising and lowering long poles while they chant a portion of The Heart Sutra, and a ragged fisherman with an Irish brogue who reflects on the quality of his day and places small rocks around a blanket as he says, “This is for m’father. This is for m’wife. This is for m’husband,” and so on. Again the maroon pole-bearers converge on him and continue the Heart Sutra chant. Two men enter and pull the blanket out from under the fisherman, who scrambles to collect his rocks but eventually joins in a dance with the pole-bearers. At the end, the maroon-robed pole-bearers “form a tight circle in front of the shrine. One by one they turn and sweep in a precisely stylized manner to the edge of the playing area, where each places his broom on the floor and sits facing the audience. Lights fade to black.” (Prajna, op. cit., p. 661)
Andrew Karr says that Prajna is “a simple play. […] Our greatest problem was moving and acting with simplicity and directness—whether simply walking across the stage, lifting objects, or placing them on the altar—rather than trying to find a ‘right’ way of doing such things.” (Loka, op. cit., p. 139) In Chögyam Trungpa’s words: “The point is you don’t have any philosophical background to determine how you should be acting before you act. It is quite different from getting a driver’s license where you pass your training period, and then you know how to drive. In this particular thing you have nothing to relate to. You just act like any normal situation, the way any life situation happens. There’s a door, there’s a wall, there’s a window.” (Mudra Theater Group Meeting, February 21, 1973)
During the summer of 1974, while I was attending the first session of the new Naropa Institute, I was invited to watch a rehearsal of Prajna that the Mudra Theater Group was preparing for presentation later that summer. It was a hot and lazy afternoon, and the group was practicing in the meditation hall of their Buddhist center in downtown Boulder. I tucked myself into a corner, discreetly out of the way, and watched while eight or ten Mudra students learned to sweep the floor. Each student had a broom, and Trungpa directed each actor to first place the brush tips down at a right angle to the floor on the right side, then to pull the broom directly across in front to the left side, and then to gracefully lift the broom straight up from the floor, carry it back over to the right side, place the tips of the bristles gently down again, and repeat. This happened over and over while Trungpa moved among the group correcting posture, adjusting a grip on a broom handle, and, in one case, even demonstrating the stroke to a particularly clumsy young man. It seemed obvious to me that the group saw this exercise as a sheer waste of time but was willing to go along with what their teacher wanted them to do. As a well-trained, egocentric New York actress, I watched this extremely boring exercise with a quiet mental sneer. I felt that I could do a much better job than any of the people practicing, and I was intolerant of their awkward efforts.
At that rehearsal I myself received a teaching on simplicity and on form being emptiness, as well as on the attitude that I was manifesting (clandestinely, I thought). At one point during the sweeping exercise, Trungpa walked over to my corner with his right hand behind his back. Stopping in front of me, he brought forth his hand and, like a magician, displayed the heads side of a Kennedy half-dollar. I smiled, somewhat befuddled by the gesture, and nodded encouragingly. He then withdrew his arm once again behind his back. I waited to see what the point of this demonstration might be. Again he brought forth his hand and showed me the coin. I anticipated at least seeing the tail side, but no, JFK’s head again appeared. I was without thought for a moment. Then Trungpa Rinpoche laughed, so I did too, although I was completely mystified. Later, in pondering the significance of this moment, I saw a link between my attitude toward the Mudra students and the teaching of this “magic trick.” It remains a haunting reminder to me not to make judgments or think that I have the superior answer.
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Photo: Nina Maria Mudita
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Text: © 2010 Lee Worley. Text originally published in Recalling Chögyam Trungpa, edited by Fabrice Midal, and published by Dharma/Arte by arrangement with the author. No part of this text may be reproduced in any form or any means without permission in writing from the author.
Photos: © 2010 Nina Maria Mudita