Student: ls the achievement of hopelessness a one-shot affair, where
you suddenly just flip into it-
Trungpa Rinpoche: No. It's not a sudden flash that you are saved by.
Absolutely not.
S: So it's something that anybody could have some intuition of at any
point.
TR: We all do, always. But even That is not sacred.
Student: If there are no maps and no guidelines and it's all hopelessness,
is there any function for a teacher on this whole trip besides telling
you that it's hopeless?
Trungpa Rinpoche: You said it!
Student: Would you advise just diving into the hopelessness or cultivating
it little by little?
Thmgpa Rinpoch.e: It's up to you. It's really up to you. I will say one
thing. It's impossible to develop crazy wisdom without a sense of hopelessness,
total hopelessness.
S: Does that mean becoming a professional pessimist?
TR: No, no. A professional pessimist is also hopeful, because he had
developed his system of pessimism. lt's that same old hopefulness.
75
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Student: What does hopelessness feel like?
Trungpa Rinpoche: Just purely hopeless. No ground, absolutely no
ground.
S: The moment you become conscious that you're feeling hopeless,
does the hopelessness sort of lose its genuineness?
TR: That depends on whether you regard hopelessness as something
sacred according to a religion or sp:iri tual teaching, or whether you regard
it as utterly hopeless. That's pu rely up to you.
S: I mean, we're always talking about this hopelessness, and everybody's
beginning to feel that that's the key, so we want it. We feel hopeless
and we say, "Well, now I'm on my way." That might eliminate
some of the reality of it.
TR: Too bad. Too bad. If you re.gard it as the path in the sense that
you feel you are going to get something out of this, that won't work.
There's no way out. That approach is self-defeating. Hopelessness is nor
a gimmick. Ir means it, you know; it's the truth. It's the truth of hopelessness,
rather than the doctrine of hopelessness.
St11dent: Rinpoche, if that's so about hopelessness, then the whole picture
that we have about the hinayana, mahayana, and vajrayana, and so
on seems to become just a big trip leading to giving up hope. You often
talk of a kind of judo practice, usin g the energy of ego to lee it defeat
itself. Here we would somehow use the energy of hope to bring hopelessness,
rhe energy of all this ro defeat itself. ls rhar for real, or is this
whole idea of judo practice also just part of the trip?
Trungpa Rinpoche: It is said that ait the end of the journey through the
nine yanas, it is clear that the journey need never have been made. So
the path that is presented to us is an act of hopelessness in some sense.
The journey need never be made at all. It's eating your own tail and
continuing until you eat your own mouth. Thar's the kind of analogy
we could use.
S: lt seems that ro proceed you have to disregard the warning. Although
I may hear that it's hopeless, the only way I can go on at this
point is with hope. Why sit and meditate right now? Why not just go
our and play? Tr seems that everything in this situation is a paradox, bur,
you know, okay, so l'J1 be here. Even though 1 hear it's hopeless, ru
pretend.
TR: T hat's a hopeful act as well, which is in itself hopeless. It eats
76
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SEMINAR II: KARME CHOLING. 1972
itself right up. In other words, you think you are able to deceive the path
by being a smart traveler on the path, but you begin to realize that you
are the path itself. You can't deceive the path, because you make the
path. So you're inevitably going to get a very strong message of hopelessness.
S: The only way to get that, it seems, is to keep playing the game.
TR: That's up to you. You could also give up. You have a very definite
choice. You have two very definite alternatives, which I suppose we
could call sudden enlightenment or gradual enlightenment. This is entirely
dependent upon you, on whether you give up hope on the spot or
whether you go on playing the game and improvising all kinds of other
entertainments. So the sooner you give up hope, the better.
Student: It seems that you can put up with a hopeless situation only
so long. At a certain point, you just can't relate to it anymore and will
take advantage of any distraction to turn away from it.
Trungpa Rinpoche: It's up to you.
S: Should you just force yourself again and again, continually, toTR:
Well, it comes about that waiy as your life situation goes on.
Stu.dent: If the whole situation is hopeless, on what basis do you make
decisions like whether to kill one buffalo to feed your family or five hundred
buffalo to have their heads on the wall?
Tnmgpa Rinpoche: Both alternatives are hopeless. Both are ways of
trying to survive, which is hope. So both are equally hopeless. We have
to learn to work with hopelessness. Nontheistic religion is a hopeless
approach of not believing anything. And theistic religion is hopeful, believing
in the separateness of me and the nipple I suck on, so to speak.
Sorry to be crude, but roughly it works that way.
Student: You said there's no Cod, there's no self. Is there any so-called
true self? Is there anything outside of hopelessness?
Trungpa Rinpoche: T should remiad you that this whole thing is the
preparation for crazy wisdom, which does not know any kind of truth
other than itself. .From that point of view, there's no true self, because
when you talk about true self or buddha nature, then that in itself is
trying to insert some positive attitude, something to the effect that you
are okay. That doesn't exist in this hopelessness.
77
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Student: This hopelessness seems to me to be a restatement of the
idea of stopping self-protection, stopping a sense of trying to improve
the situation. According to our stereotyped understanding of enlightenment,
it is in the moment that we stop protecting and improving that
real understanding can begin. ls that what you're saying?
Trungpa Rinpoche: As far as this process is concerned, there's no promise
of anything at all, none whatsoever. It's giving up everything, including
the self.
S: Then that hopelessness puts you in the here and now.
TR: Much more than that. It doesn't put you anywhere. You have no
ground to stand on, absolutely none. You are completely desolate. And
even desolation is not regarded as h ome, because you are so desolately,
absolutely hopeless that even loneliness is noc a refuge anymore. Ever ything
is completely hopeless. Even i.tseif[shouts "itself" and snaps fingers].
It's totally taken away from you, absolutely completely. Any kind of energy
that's happening in order to pr,eserve itself is also hopeless.
Student: The energy that was preserving the self, that forms a kind of
shell around the self, if that stops, 1then it just escapes into no division
between itself and what's all around it?
Trungpa Rinpoche: It doesn't give you any reassurance. When we talk
about hopelessness, it means literal h opelessness. T he sense of hope here
is hope as opposed to loss. There's no means by which you could gee
something in return anymore at all. Absolutely not. Even itself.
S: It's lost its self?
TR: Lose itself, precisely.
S: T hat kind of groundlessness seems to be more than hopelessness.
I mean, in hopelessness there's still some sense of there being someone
who is without hope.
TR: Even that is suspicious.
S: What happens to the ground? The ground drops away. I don't understand.
TR: The ground is hopelessness as well. There's 110 solidity in the
ground either.
S: I hear what you're saying. You're saying that 110 matter what direction
one looks in-
TR: Yes, you are overwhe lmed by hopelessness. AU over. Utterly.
Completely. Profusely. You are a claustrophobic situation of hopelessness.
Copyrighted m ler1,1I
SEMINAR II: KARME CHOLING. 1972
We're talking about a sense of hopelessness as an experience of no
ground. We are talking about experience. We are talking about an experience,
which is one little thread in the whole thing. We are talking about
the experience of hopelessness. This is an experience that cannot be forgotten
or rejected. It might reject itself, but still there is experience. It is
just a kind of thread that goes on. I thought we could discuss this further
in connection with Padmasambhava's experience of experience. But the
fact that this is Padmasambhava's experience of experience doesn't mean
anything. It's still hopeless.
Student: You seem to be saying that where there's no hope, it's intelligent.
And when you think there's hope, then that's ignorance.
Trungpa Rinpoche: I don't think so, my dear. It's completely hopeless.
Student: When you talk about hopelessness, the whole thing seems
totally depressing. And it seems you could very easily be overwhelmed
by that depression to the point wh,ere you just retreat into a shell or
insanity.
Trungpa Rinpoche: It's up to you. It's completely up to you. That's the
whole point.
S: Is there anything-
TR: You see, the whole point is t:hat I'm not manufacruring an absolute
model of hopelessness with complete and delicately worked-out patterns
of all kinds, presenting it co you, and asking you co work on that.
Your goodness, your hopelessness, is the only model there is. If I manufactured
something, it would be just a trick, unrealistic. Rather, it's your
hopelessness, it's your world, your family heirloom, your inheritance.
That hopelessness comes in your existence, your psychology. It's a matter
of bringing it out as it is. But it's still hopeless. As hopeful as you
might try to make it, it's still hopeless. And I can't reshape it, remodel it,
or refinish it at all. It's not like a political candidate going on television,
where people powder his face and put lipstick on his mouth to make him
presentable. One cannot do that. In this case, it's hopeless; it's absolutely
hopeless. You have to do it in your own way.
Student: Is it possible for someone to be aware that it's all hopeless
but yet be joyous?
Trungpa Rinpoche: Well, I mean we could have all kinds of hopeless
79
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CRAZY WISDOM
situations, but they are all the expression of hopelessness. I suppose what
you described could happen, but who are you trying to con?
Student: The situation with Naropa having his visions and having the
possibiliry of choosing to jump over the bitch or deal with the bitch, is
that the same situation of "yes" or "no" you described in your talk?
Trungpa Rinpoche: I think so, yes.
S: And Naropa's hopelessness at the end-
TR: Naropa's state of hopelessn,ess before he actually saw his guru
was absolute. Understanding Padmasambhava's life without a sense of
hopelessness would be completely um.possible.
So
Copyrighted m ler1,1I
TWO
Hopelessness and the Trikaya
THE SENSE OF H OPELESSN BSS is the starting point for relating with
you suddenly just flip into it-
Trungpa Rinpoche: No. It's not a sudden flash that you are saved by.
Absolutely not.
S: So it's something that anybody could have some intuition of at any
point.
TR: We all do, always. But even That is not sacred.
Student: If there are no maps and no guidelines and it's all hopelessness,
is there any function for a teacher on this whole trip besides telling
you that it's hopeless?
Trungpa Rinpoche: You said it!
Student: Would you advise just diving into the hopelessness or cultivating
it little by little?
Thmgpa Rinpoch.e: It's up to you. It's really up to you. I will say one
thing. It's impossible to develop crazy wisdom without a sense of hopelessness,
total hopelessness.
S: Does that mean becoming a professional pessimist?
TR: No, no. A professional pessimist is also hopeful, because he had
developed his system of pessimism. lt's that same old hopefulness.
75
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CRAZY W ISDOM
Student: What does hopelessness feel like?
Trungpa Rinpoche: Just purely hopeless. No ground, absolutely no
ground.
S: The moment you become conscious that you're feeling hopeless,
does the hopelessness sort of lose its genuineness?
TR: That depends on whether you regard hopelessness as something
sacred according to a religion or sp:iri tual teaching, or whether you regard
it as utterly hopeless. That's pu rely up to you.
S: I mean, we're always talking about this hopelessness, and everybody's
beginning to feel that that's the key, so we want it. We feel hopeless
and we say, "Well, now I'm on my way." That might eliminate
some of the reality of it.
TR: Too bad. Too bad. If you re.gard it as the path in the sense that
you feel you are going to get something out of this, that won't work.
There's no way out. That approach is self-defeating. Hopelessness is nor
a gimmick. Ir means it, you know; it's the truth. It's the truth of hopelessness,
rather than the doctrine of hopelessness.
St11dent: Rinpoche, if that's so about hopelessness, then the whole picture
that we have about the hinayana, mahayana, and vajrayana, and so
on seems to become just a big trip leading to giving up hope. You often
talk of a kind of judo practice, usin g the energy of ego to lee it defeat
itself. Here we would somehow use the energy of hope to bring hopelessness,
rhe energy of all this ro defeat itself. ls rhar for real, or is this
whole idea of judo practice also just part of the trip?
Trungpa Rinpoche: It is said that ait the end of the journey through the
nine yanas, it is clear that the journey need never have been made. So
the path that is presented to us is an act of hopelessness in some sense.
The journey need never be made at all. It's eating your own tail and
continuing until you eat your own mouth. Thar's the kind of analogy
we could use.
S: lt seems that ro proceed you have to disregard the warning. Although
I may hear that it's hopeless, the only way I can go on at this
point is with hope. Why sit and meditate right now? Why not just go
our and play? Tr seems that everything in this situation is a paradox, bur,
you know, okay, so l'J1 be here. Even though 1 hear it's hopeless, ru
pretend.
TR: T hat's a hopeful act as well, which is in itself hopeless. It eats
76
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SEMINAR II: KARME CHOLING. 1972
itself right up. In other words, you think you are able to deceive the path
by being a smart traveler on the path, but you begin to realize that you
are the path itself. You can't deceive the path, because you make the
path. So you're inevitably going to get a very strong message of hopelessness.
S: The only way to get that, it seems, is to keep playing the game.
TR: That's up to you. You could also give up. You have a very definite
choice. You have two very definite alternatives, which I suppose we
could call sudden enlightenment or gradual enlightenment. This is entirely
dependent upon you, on whether you give up hope on the spot or
whether you go on playing the game and improvising all kinds of other
entertainments. So the sooner you give up hope, the better.
Student: It seems that you can put up with a hopeless situation only
so long. At a certain point, you just can't relate to it anymore and will
take advantage of any distraction to turn away from it.
Trungpa Rinpoche: It's up to you.
S: Should you just force yourself again and again, continually, toTR:
Well, it comes about that waiy as your life situation goes on.
Stu.dent: If the whole situation is hopeless, on what basis do you make
decisions like whether to kill one buffalo to feed your family or five hundred
buffalo to have their heads on the wall?
Tnmgpa Rinpoche: Both alternatives are hopeless. Both are ways of
trying to survive, which is hope. So both are equally hopeless. We have
to learn to work with hopelessness. Nontheistic religion is a hopeless
approach of not believing anything. And theistic religion is hopeful, believing
in the separateness of me and the nipple I suck on, so to speak.
Sorry to be crude, but roughly it works that way.
Student: You said there's no Cod, there's no self. Is there any so-called
true self? Is there anything outside of hopelessness?
Trungpa Rinpoche: T should remiad you that this whole thing is the
preparation for crazy wisdom, which does not know any kind of truth
other than itself. .From that point of view, there's no true self, because
when you talk about true self or buddha nature, then that in itself is
trying to insert some positive attitude, something to the effect that you
are okay. That doesn't exist in this hopelessness.
77
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CRAZY W ISDOM
Student: This hopelessness seems to me to be a restatement of the
idea of stopping self-protection, stopping a sense of trying to improve
the situation. According to our stereotyped understanding of enlightenment,
it is in the moment that we stop protecting and improving that
real understanding can begin. ls that what you're saying?
Trungpa Rinpoche: As far as this process is concerned, there's no promise
of anything at all, none whatsoever. It's giving up everything, including
the self.
S: Then that hopelessness puts you in the here and now.
TR: Much more than that. It doesn't put you anywhere. You have no
ground to stand on, absolutely none. You are completely desolate. And
even desolation is not regarded as h ome, because you are so desolately,
absolutely hopeless that even loneliness is noc a refuge anymore. Ever ything
is completely hopeless. Even i.tseif[shouts "itself" and snaps fingers].
It's totally taken away from you, absolutely completely. Any kind of energy
that's happening in order to pr,eserve itself is also hopeless.
Student: The energy that was preserving the self, that forms a kind of
shell around the self, if that stops, 1then it just escapes into no division
between itself and what's all around it?
Trungpa Rinpoche: It doesn't give you any reassurance. When we talk
about hopelessness, it means literal h opelessness. T he sense of hope here
is hope as opposed to loss. There's no means by which you could gee
something in return anymore at all. Absolutely not. Even itself.
S: It's lost its self?
TR: Lose itself, precisely.
S: T hat kind of groundlessness seems to be more than hopelessness.
I mean, in hopelessness there's still some sense of there being someone
who is without hope.
TR: Even that is suspicious.
S: What happens to the ground? The ground drops away. I don't understand.
TR: The ground is hopelessness as well. There's 110 solidity in the
ground either.
S: I hear what you're saying. You're saying that 110 matter what direction
one looks in-
TR: Yes, you are overwhe lmed by hopelessness. AU over. Utterly.
Completely. Profusely. You are a claustrophobic situation of hopelessness.
Copyrighted m ler1,1I
SEMINAR II: KARME CHOLING. 1972
We're talking about a sense of hopelessness as an experience of no
ground. We are talking about experience. We are talking about an experience,
which is one little thread in the whole thing. We are talking about
the experience of hopelessness. This is an experience that cannot be forgotten
or rejected. It might reject itself, but still there is experience. It is
just a kind of thread that goes on. I thought we could discuss this further
in connection with Padmasambhava's experience of experience. But the
fact that this is Padmasambhava's experience of experience doesn't mean
anything. It's still hopeless.
Student: You seem to be saying that where there's no hope, it's intelligent.
And when you think there's hope, then that's ignorance.
Trungpa Rinpoche: I don't think so, my dear. It's completely hopeless.
Student: When you talk about hopelessness, the whole thing seems
totally depressing. And it seems you could very easily be overwhelmed
by that depression to the point wh,ere you just retreat into a shell or
insanity.
Trungpa Rinpoche: It's up to you. It's completely up to you. That's the
whole point.
S: Is there anything-
TR: You see, the whole point is t:hat I'm not manufacruring an absolute
model of hopelessness with complete and delicately worked-out patterns
of all kinds, presenting it co you, and asking you co work on that.
Your goodness, your hopelessness, is the only model there is. If I manufactured
something, it would be just a trick, unrealistic. Rather, it's your
hopelessness, it's your world, your family heirloom, your inheritance.
That hopelessness comes in your existence, your psychology. It's a matter
of bringing it out as it is. But it's still hopeless. As hopeful as you
might try to make it, it's still hopeless. And I can't reshape it, remodel it,
or refinish it at all. It's not like a political candidate going on television,
where people powder his face and put lipstick on his mouth to make him
presentable. One cannot do that. In this case, it's hopeless; it's absolutely
hopeless. You have to do it in your own way.
Student: Is it possible for someone to be aware that it's all hopeless
but yet be joyous?
Trungpa Rinpoche: Well, I mean we could have all kinds of hopeless
79
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CRAZY WISDOM
situations, but they are all the expression of hopelessness. I suppose what
you described could happen, but who are you trying to con?
Student: The situation with Naropa having his visions and having the
possibiliry of choosing to jump over the bitch or deal with the bitch, is
that the same situation of "yes" or "no" you described in your talk?
Trungpa Rinpoche: I think so, yes.
S: And Naropa's hopelessness at the end-
TR: Naropa's state of hopelessn,ess before he actually saw his guru
was absolute. Understanding Padmasambhava's life without a sense of
hopelessness would be completely um.possible.
So
Copyrighted m ler1,1I
TWO
Hopelessness and the Trikaya
THE SENSE OF H OPELESSN BSS is the starting point for relating with
