A Gift of Dharma for 12.13.09
by Danny Fisher
Today’s dharma quote is yet another from the Vidyādhara, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche (1939-1987), whom I previously quoted and wrote a little bio for here. Here’s the quote, from the brand new Smile at Fear: Awakening the True Heart of Bravery (an absolutely magnificent distillation of Rinpoche’s most essential teachings), pg. 4-5:
The idea of the setting sun is that the sun is already setting in your world, and you cannot rise above the darkness. You feel that there is only misery, clouds, the dungeon, life in the gutter. To compensate for that, you might go to a very dark dungeon with bad lighting, where you get drunk. That is called a club. You dance like a drunken ape who has forgotten bananas and its home in the jungle a long time ago. So it feasts on cheap beer while wiggling its tail. There is nothing wrong with dancing per se, but in this case it is a form of escaping from or avoiding fear. Its very sad. That is the setting sun. Its a dead end, a very dead end.
With all due respect, that isn’t much of a bio (really, I do think that we need to see all these guys warts and all), and your quote sets the irony meter way into the red.