Product Description

Chögyam Trungpa's unique ability to express the essence of Buddhist teachings in the language and imagery of modern American culture makes his books among the most accessible works of Buddhist philosophy. Here Trungpa explores the true meaning of freedom, showing us how our preconceptions, attitudes, and even our spiritual practices can become chains that bind us to repetitive patterns of frustration and despair. This edition features a new foreword by Pema Chödrön, a close student of Trungpa and the best-selling author of When Things Fall Apart.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #201082 in Books
• Published on: 2002-02-12
• Released on: 2002-02-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 296 pages

Review
"All is made painfully clear—we are routed out of our little 'cubby holes', all of our excuses are brought out into the open and exposed for what they are. . . . If it is reality you want and not illusion, this is it. . . . An ego-shattering experience."— The Middle Way

About the Author
Chögyam Trungpa (1939–1987) was a meditation master, teacher, and artist who founded Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, and an international association of meditation centers known as Shambhala International. He is the author of numerous books including Shambhala: Sacred Path of the Warrior and Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism

Customer Reviews

Do we really know the world around us?
An online friend recommended that I read this book, so after a few months of procrastinating I did it. I read it once and I'm far from telling that I can fully appreciate and comment on its message. Not surprisingly, that friend recommended I read it more times, leaving a couple of months in between to digest it. However, I can say that even the superficial understanding I gained from one pass makes me say this is a great book.
It is a manual of Buddhism, but in its spiritual but not religious meaning - there are any rituals between the covers, only teachings on how we should behave, think, and most importantly, feel.
As Trungpa puts it, Buddhism is a religion different from others in that it doesn't promise heaven or other ransom at the end of the life, but instead it helps us to live our live the way it is, full of suffering. But why do we suffer? Because we are ignorant of the pure nature of things and ourselves, and we try to explain it, understand and define ourselves as an entity separated from the rest of the world: in short, because we create an ego. This word - ego - shows up very often in the book, and it can be said it is its central subject.
Trungpa presents the Buddhist teachings which explain how the ego is formed, starting from basic ignorance of primordial nature of things, and, adding layer over layer, up to intellect and consciousness. We suffer because of the basic ignorance, of the duality we created, but to successfully remove it we must first remove the upper layers. The first to be removed is the consciousness, in which our thoughts play the most important role, so the first thing to do is to observe thoughts (in a semi-controlled fashion) - and this is the purpose of meditation. Meditation is mostly useful at the beginning on the path of evolution (but that beginning could take decades or even lifetimes).
He goes to enumerate the six basic attitudes/major thoughts in the mind: pride, jealousy, desire, ignorance, greed and hatred, which the Buddhists say they belong (or make up) six realms: of gods, demigods, humans, animals, hungry ghosts and hell respectively. In each non-enlightened being one of the six attitudes dominates over the rest, and Trungpa talks at length about each of them. Although he doesn't say it explicitly, probably for most humans desire for something is the most important component. As I side note, I had read about the six emotions and realms in another classic on Tibetan Buddhism (Sogyal Rinpoche's Tibetan book of the dead), and it was mentioned that human realm is the best for spiritual progress. Now that I read Trungpa's explanation I understand why Sogyal said that.
But the book is not over... it touches other aspects of Buddhist teachings and then presents the possible evolution of a soul - according to Buddhist ideals - on annihilating the ego, using masters (buddha), teachings (dharma) and community of fellow souls (sangha). Although these help, ultimately every soul is alone. Reading this part I understood why it is said that without a master, one can go into a spiritual deadend,,being self-pleased and getting into self-complacency, which only makes the ego stronger - the opposite of spiritual evolution (Trungpa names this spiritual materialism- which is the subject of another great book of his - one that I haven't read yet). In the beginning the master is more of a spiritual friend, he is friendly, but as a soul progresses, it realizes more and more what the master has been through, and friendship changes into devotion and respect, and the master himself demands more and more and is now brutally honest when a mistake happens.
The last section of the book touches the issue of tantra (which basically means enjoying life, and what most Westerners know - you know what I mean - is but a small part). Trungpa emphasizes that tantra shouldn't be attempted until ego has been mostly assimilated, that is until what he had talked up to that section have been lived, experimented, really understood and assimilated.
The message of the book is that there is no freedom as long as we run from ourselves, but only when we start to accept as we are, and, if we can, to change ourselves to be better. Meditation is a technique to do that, and initially will make us even more aware of our suffering. Freedom is a myth, and meditation is just a technique, a process to make us aware of this. We cannot find freedom from outside until we have focused on ourselves.

An essential companion to contemplative practice
For starters, this is not a book for reading only; instead, it is a companion to regular contemplative practice (albeit not necessarily one that is "Buddhist").

I was "forced" to read this book as a graduate student at The Naropa Institute (in the same way that all students are "forced" to read textbooks) and found that I got very little out of the book. While at times his presentation was incredibly lucid, at other times Trungpa's turns of phrase made little sense, leading our circle of student heretics to coin the descriptive phrase "Trungpa-babble." (Full-disclosure: One of the reasons that this book appeared so jargon-laden at the time I first read it probably had to do with the fact that my sitting practice was very new and so I had little experience with which to compare Trungpa's ideas.)

On re-reading this book as one of the titles on my guru's reading lists, I was impressed by how much of the same material that had once left me cold now applied directly to my life and practice. Trungpa definitely takes the "romance" out of spiritual practice and reveals it to be as mundane as going to work, eating dinner, or taking a bath. Like those other activities, though, meditation (in this context the basic practice of sitting with oneself and familiarizing oneself with the neurosis and clarity that make up the mind) is essential to a life fully lived.

Insightful
I have just recently been introduced to Trungpas work, and this book really changed the way I, as a young person, go about being "free". I certainly recommend this to anyone looking for freedom of the mind.