Transcending Aggression

I’m reading chapters each morning in The Essential Chogyam Trungpa.  It’s a collection of excerpts from his voluminous collection of writing, and a good introduction to his work if you haven’t read him.  He’s the Tibetan Buddhist scholar and teacher responsible for bring Tibetan Buddhism of the Shambhala tradition to America.  And he’s the founder of Naropa University in Boulder, CO.

As most of you know, Shambhala Buddhism is the tradition I study and practice, and so I consider Chogyam Trungpa my root teacher.

The chapter I was reading today is from his book called Dharma Art (published in 1996), and in this chapter he talks about the kind of violence artists can fall into when they denigrate themselves, or speak of their work or their creativity in negative ways.  I’ve been made aware, recently, of how often I speak negatively of myself, or denigrate my work, or make conclusions about a lack of creativity.  I’ve been trying to watch that tendency, and I’ve thought often about how violent it is to an emerging quality to squash movement the way we do with violent or negative language.  So this is good material for my own spiritual practice.  But also, I’m trying to work some of these thoughts into a writing workshop I’m developing.

And then, as so often happens, the universe brings me just what I need to coalesce some thoughts, or to clarify some attention I’m trying to bring to my own behavior.  In this chapter,  called “Art and Everyday Life,” Trungpa says this:

"Aggression is antiart.  If you are not in an aggressive state of mind, you feel you are rich and resourceful and infinitely inspired.  When somebody is angry and uptight—even such ordinary, literal aggression as anger—then it cuts all possibilities of improvising what exists in your life as part of your artistic talent.”

Isn’t that wonderful?  This is a lesson I’ve been learning in yoga too—to stop the aggressive tendency I have toward bending the body to the will.  Be gentle, my teachers say.  Rest often.  Soften your approach to the practice.  To be aggressive about the practice is willful.  And the pose will not offer itself up under conditions of willfulness.

So in my teaching, I will begin asking students to become aware of the ways in which they are being aggressive about their writing, their creative process.  How are you forcing?  How are you chastising yourself?  How are you breaking the tender stem of a new seedling by squashing it with your dissatisfaction?  Let us be gentle with ourselves and with our emerging creative efforts.  Trungpa says, “transcending aggression is the root of all the artistic talent one can ever imagine.”