Collective Problem Solving
Student: This is a question about working with problems. It seems to me there are all kinds of problems in any organization that has been built, as I’m sure you know. My question is, when do you actually take steps to change something?
Chögyam Trungpa: First of all, there is the notion that problems are not regarded as monumental, and you are not defeated right away by them. Then there is the question of your own state of being: you are not necessarily the problem-solving person; you are not the trouble-shooter. So you don’t have to take all the responsibility, or assume an attitude of heroism, thinking that you are going to solve the whole problem yourself. Solving a problem might take a collective effort in some cases, so you should take care of your part of the problem first. That way, at least one problem is solved, your problem, which then would affect the whole problem area. Then somebody else would probably have to take their turn in the same way, and solve their side of the problem.
It is like lifting a big table. You know, you can’t just lift a big dining room table by yourself, but you need several people to carry it out of a room. It takes a collective effort. On the whole, the point is that you are not going to clean up or save the world by yourself, singlehandedly. Although the bodhisattva vow [to save all sentient beings] is taken that way, nonetheless, you do need sangha, community, to do the whole thing–along with your inspiration, at the same time. So as long as you don’t regard your portion of the problem as a big problem that is spread all over the place, you can lift one corner of the table. Then, when that part of the table has been lifted up already, your friends can come along and do likewise, so that finally the table is moved out of the room. As I myself remember, when I first arrived in this country, I didn’t particularly solve any problems by coming. I had to tell a lot of other friends of mine, like yourselves and other people, how to solve them, so then all together we did solve them. This is the same thing: we need a sangha, a community, to solve larger problems. That seems to be the only way to do it.
