‘Spiritual struggle’ Chogyam Trungpa

You might ask then, “What about the great religious traditions, the teachings? They speak of discipline, rules and regulations. How do we reconcile these with the notion of a sense of humour?” Well, let’s examine the question properly. Are the regulations, the discipline, the practice of morality really based on the purely judgmental attitude of “good” as opposed to “bad”? Are the great spiritual teachings really advocating that we fight evil because we are on the side of light, the side of peace? Are they telling us to fight against that other “‘un-desirable??” side, the bad and the black? That is a big question.

If there is wisdom in the sacred teachings, there should not be any war. As long as a person is involved with warfare, trying to defend or attack, then his action is not sacred; it is mundane, dualistic, a battlefield situation. One would not expect the great teachings to be as simple-minded as that, trying to be good, fighting the bad. Such would be the approach of the Hollywood western movie- even before you have seen the conclusion, you already know precisely that the “goodies” will not be killed and the “baddies” are going to get smashed. This approach is obviously simple-minded; but it is just this type of situation that we are creating in terms of “’spiritual” struggle, “‘spiritual” achievement.

From Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism by Chogyam Trungpa