Drop Specialness

Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa warned against this common pitfall for aspirants on the spiritual path: “The problem is that ego can convert anything to its own use,” he said, “even spirituality.”

In The Myth of Freedom, the Tibetan teacher Chögyam Trungpa Rinpochetalks about the very un-specialness of the Buddha: “. . . that total openness in which the Buddha had no ground, no sense of territory. So much so, that he was hardly an individual. He was just a grain of sand living in the vast desert. Through his insignificance he became the ‘world enlightened one,’ because there was no battle involved.” Being special requires a battle. It requires that we stake out territory and then defend it. The Buddha had given up the battle.

Genuine spiritual practice should strive towards dissolving the ‘specialness’ rather than enhancing it