BOOKS
I
f you are looking for a spiritual practice to take you
higher and higher into bliss
so that you can bypass
things in your life or yourself that you do not like,
be warned: this month’s
featured book may pop
the bliss bubble. It may
challenge you to look at
what you are hoping to
gain from your meditation
practice, and what you
are willing to surrender
in order to reach the attainment you aspire to. If
you wish for your spiritual
life to remain comfortable and unchallenged,
you may not want to
read this book. But if you
feel a genuine thirst to go
beyond the ego and become a boddhisattva,
fully enlightened and fully
surrendered to serving the
world, this book could be
a dear friend.
Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
was an occasionally controversial teacher seen by many
in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition as embodying “crazy
wisdom”. It’s said that only
one enlightened person
can recognize another
enlightened person. Be-
ing far from enlightened, I
am in no position to comment on Trungpa’s level
of attainment or his actions. But what I find in the
writing of those considered to be enlightened
masters is a clarity that
leaves nothing for the
ego to hang on to. So it is
with Trungpa Rinpoche’s
“Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism”. Reading
such books is to engage
with spaciousness, vibrant
and alive yet at the same
time devoid of solid form
for the ego to grasp and
name.
Spiritual materialism, as
Trungpa explains, is a pitfall on the spiritual path
in which one becomes
attached to the form of
their practice, and their
identity as a practitioner,
instead of being willing to
completely surrender. It is
a subtle way in which the
ego can hide and grow
instead of being eradicated. Trungpa reminds
us of the importance of
openness and dropping
the mental structures of
self-projection. He notes,
“Eventually we must give
up trying to be something
special.” The boddhisattva way is made possible
by compassion, generosity and openness, without
trying to prove anything.
Trungpa also discusses the
formation of the ego and
the skandhas, the five aggregates of the sentient
being, in a manner that
is informative and understandable without feeding an acquisitive egoic
search for more knowledge. He warns against
accumulating too many
teachings without deeply
imbibing them.
The teachings shared in
this book cut through the
egoic projections of spiritual materialism, upsetting
the apple carts of comfortable assumptions. It is
not for nothing that the
symbol on the cover of
the book is the dorje (in
Sanskrit, vajra, meaning
thunderbolt or diamond).
This book can be a thunderbolt to shake the
reader loose from their attachments. Highly recommended.
Pranada Devi is a communications professional living in Toronto, Canada.
She is the Managing Editor of Parvati Magazine, and serves as an advisor
on marketing communications for Parvati’s various projects. Recently, she
edited Parvati’s new book “Confessions of a Former Yoga Junkie”, which is
has gone on to sell out its first two printing runs.