Han de Wit 0206
Question: Can you be neurotically enlightened as well?de Wit: Yes, you can be neurotically enlightened. There are famous examples of this. Not only can you be neurotically enlightened, it goes even further than that.
Question: People often ask the question: how can one be a spiritual teacher and have pathological behavior as well?
de Wit: Yes, that is the question, what should we call this? Take Trungpa Rimpoche, for example: it is common knowledge that he drank a lot of alcohol. Now, typically a drunk has only one thing on his mind: where is my next drink coming from? A person like that doesn’t accomplish anything any more in life. But when we look at Trungpa, we see that he founded Naropa University and hundreds of centres throughout the world, he wrote plays, he painted - he did a few things with Karel Appel - he was a respected photographer, and he also gave thousands of dharma teachings. This is not the behaviour of an alcoholic.
But we look at it from the perspective of our own culture and we think: that guy drinks, he must be an alcoholic. We think this is pathological behavior, but when you look at the complete picture of the man: during the seventeen years that he taught in the West, he accomplished more than a tee-totaller who focuses on one thing for his entire life. So often it has to do with how we look at things. There are other teachers in the Tibetan tradition, for instance Lodrö Thaye, also called Jamgön Kongtrül the Great, who was one of the most important Rime masters - Rime is the eucumenical movement in the Tibetan tradition since the 19th century - he was known to suffer from depression. But he was still one of the greatest teachers of the 19th century. So it is too easy to say that you must first free yourself from all neurotic or even psychotic patterns before you can follow a spiritual path.