Understanding Trungpa's Approach to Meditation and Freedom
Chögyam Trungpa was a Tibetan Buddhist teacher who brought meditation practice to the West in a way that was notably different from what people expected. His 1973 book The Myth of Freedom collects talks he gave in the early 1970s, and it lays out his core view: the problem isn't that life is painful or meaningless. The problem is that we keep treating meditation like a technique for self-improvement, which reinforces the very ego we're supposedly trying to relax. I spent years working with meditation students who came in burned out from trying to "get somewhere" with their practice. They'd sit, count breaths, try to clear their minds, and then get frustrated when nothing changed. That's exactly the trap Trungpa was pointing at. He called it the myth of freedom because people imagine freedom as something you achieve through discipline, when actually the pursuit itself becomes another form of bondage.
The Myth Of Freedom And Way Meditation Chogyam Trungpa
His meditation method isn't complicated. You sit. You watch your breath. That's it. The difficulty is that most people can't actually do that without turning it into a project. They start evaluating their session, judging whether they did it right, noticing distractions and trying to suppress them. Trungpa would say you've just created another layer of mental activity disguised as practice. The actual instruction is straightforward enough that beginners often miss the point. Sit in a stable posture. Let your eyes be open or closed, whichever feels less like avoidance. Bring attention to the natural rhythm of breathing without controlling it. When thoughts arise, don't push them away and don't follow them. Just notice them and return to the breath. That's all there is to the technique. What makes it harder than it sounds is the psychological resistance. I had a student once who reported that after twenty minutes of sitting, she started feeling an intense urge to check her phone. Not boredom, not restlessness, but this almost physical compulsion. She kept fighting it and couldn't sit more than ten minutes without giving in. We talked about it and I suggested she simply name the urge internally—"wanting, wanting"—and let it move through without acting on it or fighting it. That shifted something for her. After a few weeks she could sit thirty minutes without that pull becoming unbearable.
Here's something that isn't obvious from reading about it: Trungpa's approach assumes a certain baseline of mental stability. If you're dealing with active trauma, severe anxiety, or psychosis, sitting alone in silence can make things worse. I've seen it happen. There was a case I encountered where someone with a history of panic disorder started meditating based on what they read online, and within a month their anxiety had escalated to the point they needed clinical support. Trungpa himself warned about this, though it's easy to skip past that in the books. People with serious psychological conditions should work with someone trained in both meditation and mental health before going at it alone. Another counter-intuitive point is that Trungpa actually discouraged long silent retreats for beginners. He thought people would use retreat time to build up their spiritual identity, which just makes the ego stronger. A daily twenty-minute sitting practice done consistently over years is more reliable than a weeklong retreat followed by three months of doing nothing. The concept of "shunyata" or emptiness comes up a lot in his teaching and it gets misunderstood constantly. It doesn't mean nothing matters. It means things don't have fixed, independent existence the way we assume they do. Your thoughts aren't solid facts. Your emotions aren't permanent states. They arise and pass. Recognizing this isn't intellectual, it's something that shows up in the body during sustained practice.
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If you want to try this, here's what I'd suggest actually doing: find a chair or cushion where your spine can be upright without strain. Set a timer for fifteen minutes. Sit down. Breathe naturally. When you notice your mind has wandered, gently return to the breath. Don't scold yourself. Don't celebrate when it works. Just do it. Do this every day at roughly the same time. That's the foundation. Everything else builds on that. The The Myth of Freedom book is still in print and available through most major booksellers. Shambhala Publications handles the distribution. There's also the Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism book which covers related ground in more depth if you want to go further. Both are widely available physically and digitally. What I found after years of teaching this was that the people who got the most out of it were the ones who stopped trying to get anything out of it. The practice reveals itself gradually, usually slowly enough that you don't notice it day to day. Six months in, you might realize you haven't reacted with anger to something that would have set you off a year ago. That's not dramatic. That's just life getting a little easier.
