"How about the puzzle of what it means to act as-if our activity were _not
play_? or _not resistance_? These unmarked 'negatives' must also be active
constructions, even if in a sense their stances are invisible. To make them
visible is perhaps the heyoka-coyote-buddha function: to let us see the most
ordinary unselfconscious real, doing, meaning as a single way-of-being
defined by its contrasts to its Others, and not natural orgiven at all."
I went back on reading this to look at some of Chogyam Trungpa's writings on
resistance and enlightenment, and also to his students' writings on the role
of resisting or _not_resisting in helping open up to different stances toward
activity. Trungpa is a fairly well known (and infamous) Tibetan Buddhist
teacher, appreciated for his "crazy wisdom." Some of his crazy wisdom in all
truth led to his own undoing, and his teacher-student relations leave a bit
to be desired. At the same time, he is respected as someone who was able to
translate Tibetan psychology into a Western idiom....
On the one hand, it seems as if the "crazy wisdom" teacher's activity
_provokes_ resistance on the part of the student to get them to loosen up
their conceptual hold on reality; that is, to create the possibility for a
different stance toward's activity. This from an interview with one of
Trungpa's students, Pema Chodron:
"A teacher can also help to constellate that resistance."
"Right [says Pema], teachers usually squeeze you. They put you in situations
where you're just hanging in midair and you can't buy it and you can't not
buy it. And you can begin to delight in that, by not taking sides. Teachers
are always working against your tendency to get secure in some kind of belief
system."
(_Meetings with Remarkable Women: Buddhist Teachings in America, 1987, p.104)
>From Trungpa himself, the distinction between the world or person of "action"
and the world/person of "spirit" was a false one: the whole point was to take
a stance of _not resisting_ (perhaps in the way Jay is asking about) the
activities of everyday life. He spoke of the stance of "light touch," 'not
beating reality into the ground but appreciating reality with a light touch"
(_Shambhala: Path of the Sacred Warrior_, p. 32). This has some parallels to
the Navajo/Hopi coyote tradition, where humor is used as a teacher.
One difference in the Southwest coyote tradition, though, is that coyote is
not conceived as a buddha/enlightened one. Coyote in the stories is often
tricked himself. He doesn't seem to learn anything from his own lessons, but
goes on with trying to trick other animals and humans with his medicine.
Coyote's 'lesson' is as much then a tool of the _narrator_ who tells a
coyote story in a particular place and time, bringing in coyote as a figure
in a story to teach something about one's view of reality/the ordinary world.
While the "function" or role of coyote may have similarities across
tellings, this is a bit different from the crazy wisdom of Trungpa.
Reading across both these traditions, it seems to me that what is
instrumental in opening different stances toward activity is not some
_outside_ perspective, but one that, as Jay mentioned in part of his message,
emerges out of the relationships among activities and of the participants in
them. While the Buddhist examples suggest a conscious awareness of different
perspectives, I'm not sure this has to be the case to generate different
stances toward activity. Just as often, contrary perspectives that challenge
us humorously or playfully to try on something different are unwitting like
coyote medicine.
I've had it suggested to me by a Buddhist teacher that the "development" of
crazy wisdom (as a stance-across
-activities) can be "incomplete", perhaps not insofar as the person is
conscious/unconscious of what they're doing to provoke it, but in its
effects. To this teacher, it's the outcome that matters: does it induce a
playful orientation, a "light touch" on the other, or does it create more
confusion?
Bill Penuel
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PreventionInventions
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