The Truth of Suffering

The Truth of Suffering--Backwards Ati, Trungpa Rinpoche's Hinayana Teachings

"In order to cut through the ambition of ego, we must understand how we set up me and my territory, how we use our projections as credentials to prove our existence.  The source of the effort to confirm our solidity is and uncertainty as to whether or not we exist.  Driven by this uncertainty, we seek to prove our own existence by finding a reference point outside ourselves, something with which to have a relkationship, something solid to feel separate from.  But the whole enterprise is questionable if we really look back and back.  Perhaps we have perpetrated a gigantic hoax."

When people first hear about Buddhism and the teachings of the Hinayana which focus on "the truth of suffering" they often wonder, " Why would I want to study a religion that is so depressing?"

When the Buddha attained "so-called enlightenment" (Trungpa's words) under the bodhi tree 2600 hundred years ago he spent 7 days wondering how he could communicate what he realized to confused people like ourselves.  Essentially, what he realized was that we only glimpse the awakened state when our habitual mind-- the mind of hope and fear-- experiences a gap.  Because we are attached to the process of mental projection and fixation (dualistic fixation) a gap in its speed and smooth operation produces tremendous anxiety and panic.  If we hold our seat in th midst of egos panic attack we discover a reality beyond or as a background too habitual mind's fantasy world.  This reality is the enlightened state.  Trungpa Rinpoche describes this as the "cosmic joke" in the talks transcribed in " The Myth of Freedom."