by Chogyam
Trungpa The Bardo of Illusory
Body The Bardo of
Dreams The Bardo of
Existence The Bardo of
Death The Lonely Journey
From seminar’s in 1971 Chapter 2 THE SIX REALMS OF BEING Generally there is the basic space
to operate, in terms of creative process, whether you are
confused or whether you are awake. That basic space acts as
the fundamental ground for the idea of bardo. Many of you
may also have heard about the development of ego, which is
exactly the same pattern as the operation of bardo. The
experience of bardo is also operating on the basis of that
evolution of ego. But the discovery or sudden glimpse, or
the experience of bardo, is a momentary thing, impermanent.
So fundamentally we might say that the teaching of bardo is
closer to the concept of impermanence. Bardo is that sudden glimpse of
experience which is constantly developing. We try to hold on
to it, and the moment we try to hold on to it, it leaves us,
because of the very fact that we are trying to hold on to
it, which is trying to give birth to it. You see something
happen and you would like to give birth to it. You would
like to start properly in terms of giving birth, but once
you begin to prepare this birth, you realize you can’t give
birth anymore. You lost your child already by trying
officially to adopt it. That is the kind of bardo experience
which happens in everyday life. It is operating in terms of
space as well as in terms of ego. Bardo is generally associated with
samsaric mind, not necessarily with the awakened state of
being. There is a background of bardo experience, which is
like a river. A river does not belong to the other shore or
to this shore; it is just a river, a no-man’s-land. Such a
no-man’s land, or river, has different characteristics: it
may be a turbulent river or a gently flowing river. There
are different categories and types of rivers—our basic
situation, where we are at, our present psychological state
of being—which make the bardo experience more
outstanding. If there is an impressive little island, by
being in the middle of a turbulent river, it becomes more
outstanding. An island in the middle of a gently flowing
river is also more impressive and outstanding. At the same
time, the shape and condition of the island itself will be
completely different, depending on the river and the
background. Therefore it seems necessary to go through these
patterns, which are called the six types of world: the world
of the gods, the world of the jealous gods, the world of
human beings, the world of animals, the world of hungry
ghosts, and the world of hell. Before we get into the bardo
experience, it is very important to know these particular
types of worlds. They are not purely mythical stories or
concepts of heaven and hell; they are also psychological
pictures of heaven and hell and all the rest. We could begin with heaven. The
notion of heaven is a state of mind which is almost
meditative. Heavenly psychology is based on a state of
absorption in something, or spiritual materialism. It is
complete absorption, which automatically, of course, means
indulging ourselves in a particular pleasurable
situation—not necessarily material pleasure, but more
likely spiritual pleasure within the realm of ego. It’s like
the notion of the four jhana states. Traditionally, the 33
god realms are based on different degrees of jhana states,
up to the point of a completely formless jhana state
containing both experiencer and experiencing. But if there
is an experiencer and also an experience, then that
experience must be either pleasurable or
painful—nothing else could exist beyond those limits.
It could be an extremely sophisticated experience, seemingly
transcending pain and pleasure, but there is still a very
subtle and sophisticated experience of some thing going on.
The thingness and the awareness of self continue. That is
the realm of the formless gods—limitless space;
limitless consciousness; not that, not this; not not that,
not not this—the full state of absorption in a formless
state. Other states as well are inclined toward that state
of mind, but they become less sophisticated as the
experience is on a more and more gross level. The first
state, therefore, the realm of spiritual pleasure, is so
extremely pleasurable that you can almost afford to relax.
But somehow the relaxation doesn’t happen, because there’s
an experiencer and an experience. That is the realm of the gods. And
in that god realm, as you can imagine, in such a state of
spiritual materialism, there is a weakness. The intensity of
your experience is based on collecting, possessing further
experiences. That means that fundamentally your state of
mind is based on give and take. You are developing immunity
to temptation and fascination in order to seek pleasure and
try to grasp hold of the pleasure more
definitely. As that state of mind develops in
terms of the six realms of the world, we are talking about
regressing from that sophisticated state of spiritual
materialism in the world of heaven down to the world of
hell—regressing. Such a state of pleasure in the world
of heaven, that complete meditative absorption into the
jhana states, automatically brings up temptations and
questions. You begin to get tired of being extremely
refined, and you want to come down to some raggedness.
Jealousy or envy or dissatisfaction with your present state
comes up automatically as an obvious next step, which then
leads to the realm of the jealous gods, the
asuras. The realm of the asuras is highly
energetic, almost in contrast to that state of spiritual
absorption. It’s as if somebody had been far away a long
time from their civilization, in the middle of a desert
island, and they suddenly had a chance to come down to the
nearest city. Automatically, their first inspiration, of
course, would be to try to be extremely busy and entertain
themselves, indulging in all sorts of things. In that way
the energetic quality of busyness in the realm of the asuras
develops. Even that experience of tremendous
energy, driving force, trying to grasp, trying to hold on to
external situations, is not enough. Somehow you need not
only rushing, but you have to pick something up, taste it,
swallow it, digest it. That kind of intimacy is needed. You
begin to feel tired of rushing too hard, too much, and you
begin to think in terms of grasping and taking. You would
like to take advantage of the situation and the intimacy of
possessing, the sexual aspect, the tenderness. You try to
use it, chew it. That is the world of human beings. (In this
case, when we talk of the world of human beings or the world
of animals, it is not necessarily human life or animal life
literally, as conventionally known. It’s the psychological
aspect.) So the human realm is built on passion and
desire. Somehow, indulging ourselves in
passion and desire is again not quite enough—we need
more and more. You realize that you can come down to a more
gross level, a cruder level. And realizing that, you begin
to yearn for much more real and obvious experience as a way
of putting into effect your emotional need. But at the same
time, you are tired of relationships. You are tired of
relating to experience in terms of pleasure, and you begin
to find all sorts of facets of your experience are involved
with just that. You begin to look for something simpler, a
more instinctive way of dealing with things, in which you
don’t have to look for the complicated patterns of that
passion, that desire. Then you are reduced to the animal
level. Everything is put into practice in an instinctive way
rather than by applying intellectual or emotional
frustrations as a way of getting or possessing
something. Then, again, such a state of mind,
in which you are purely acting on the impulsive or
instinctive level of the animal realm, is not gross enough.
You begin to feel that there is a tremendous weakness in
your state of being, in such animal mentality. You don’t
want to give away anything, but you would like to take more.
So far, all experience—from the realm of the gods down
to the animal level—has been a kind of exchange
constantly, a balancing act or play. And somehow you begin
to realize and come to the conclusion that exchanging or
commuting between two situations, even at the blind level,
is too exhausting. Then you look for a highly crude form of
maintaining yourself. That is the world of the hungry
ghosts. You don’t want to give away anything, but you just
want to take. And since you do not want to give anything
away, since you would purely like to take in, the mentality
of that world becomes an extremely hungry one, because
unless you give, you won’t get anything. And the more you
get, the more you want to receive. In other words, you do
not want to give or share any experience. There’s so much
hunger and thirst, me-ness, unwillingness to give an inch,
or even one fraction of a moment, to relate with the world
outside. So the hungry ghost realm is the height of
poverty. Ultimately that sense of poverty
leads to aggression. You not only do not want to give
anything away, but you would like to destroy that which
reminds you of giving. That is the ultimate world of hell,
or naraka, an instant and extremely powerful state of
aggression or hatred. All these six states, these six
different aspects of the world, are the rivers in which the
bardo experience is taking shape. In terms of the realm of
the gods, it’s a very dreamlike quality. The realm of hell
is very aggressive and definite. It would be good to think
about that process of the six types of world and become
familiar with those different states of mind before we get
into bardo experience itself. That would be very helpful.
Having already developed that ground, we can pinpoint the
different experiences of bardo and fit them into these
different types of rivers, samsaric rivers. It would be much
easier to work on that level.And strangely enough, these
experiences of the six realms—gods, jealous gods, human
beings, animals, hungry ghosts, and hell—are space,
different versions of space. It seems intense and solid, but
in actual fact it isn’t at all. They are different aspects
of space—that’s the exciting or interesting part. In
fact, it is completely open space, without any colors or any
particularly solid way of relating. That is why they have
been described as six types of consciousness. It is pure
consciousness rather than a solid situation—it almost
could be called unconsciousness rather than even
consciousness. The development of ego operates completely at
the unconscious level, from one unconscious level to another
unconscious level. That is why these levels are referred to
as loka, which means “realm” or “world.” They are six types
of world. Each is a complete unit of its own. In order to
have a world, you have to have an atmosphere; you have to
have space to formulate things. So the six realms are the
fundamental space through which any bardo experience
operates. Because of that, it is possible to transmute these
spaces into six types of awakened state, or
freedom. STUDENT: Can you be in more than one
type of world at the same time? TR: With momentum the worlds always
change. But it seems that there is one particular governing
factor. S: When you’re in one of these
worlds, can you remember another one? TR: Well, you have the instinct of
the other one. That’s why you can move from one experience
to another experience. S: By your own will? TR: Not necessarily by your own
will, but you sense that you know something. For instance,
dogs occasionally forget that they are dogs. They almost
think they’re human beings taking part in human
society. S: These worlds of the bardo, are
they real, or are they mind-manufactured? TR: That’s a very heavy question:
What is real? It is very difficult to distinguish 100% real
in any case. S: Does it make any difference if
these take place only in the mind or in reality? TR: Well, mind operates
realistically. S: Does it make any difference
whether they are actually acted out? TR: Well, they are acted out, of
course, but that activity is questionable—whether it is
purely action for the sake of action or whether it is
inspired by the mind. The point is that once you are in any
of these realms, you are completely immersed in it. You
can’t help showing the internal impressions of it. You are
completely submerged into that kind of experience. It is so
living and so real. It is almost confusing whether the
experience of hell, for instance, is external hell or
internal hell, purely in your mind. At the time, you can’t
distinguish whether you are just thinking or whether you’ve
been made to think that way. And I don’t think you can avoid
acting at all. If you are nervous, for instance, much as you
try not to act nervous, there will still be some signs of
nervousness. S: But take passion, for instance:
you can restrain your action, but you can’t restrain your
thinking. TR: You can. At a certain gross
level there are different ways of putting out passion.
Passion is not sexual passion alone at all, there are many
kinds: one particular desire can be replaced by all sorts of
other things. You see, what generally happens is that if you
don’t want to reveal completely your full state of being,
quite conveniently you tend to find ways of interpreting
that in order to get satisfaction in all sorts of
ways. S: So whether you act on it or not,
you’re in that world? TR: Yes, at that time you’re in that
world, and action happens. S: And repressing it doesn’t change
the fact? TR: No, you always find a way of
doing it. S: I sense, when you talk about
transmuting the six realms of samsara into the six realms of
the awakened state, that the six worlds are to be avoided or
worked through into something else. Is that a good way to
think about it? TR: I don’t think replacing them
with something else would help. That doesn’t seem to be the
point. The point is that within that realm of intensity
there is the absence of that intensity as
well—otherwise intensity couldn’t exist, couldn’t
happen, couldn’t operate. Intensity must develop in some
kind of space, some kind of environment. That basic
environment is the transcendental aspect. S: There’s no sense in leaving the
world of hell behind, transmuting it into something which
excludes hell? TR: No, then you go through the
realms again and again. You see, you start from the world of
heaven, come down to hell, get tired of it, and go back up
to heaven. And you come down again and again—or the
other way around. That’s why it is called samsara, which
means “whirlpool.” You are continually running around and
around and around. If you try to find a way out by running,
by looking for an alternative, it doesn’t happen at
all. S: Does it make any sense to look
for a way out? TR: It’s more like a way in, rather
than a way out. S: Were you ever in the hell world
yourself? Have you yourself ever experienced the hell
world? TR: Definitely, yes. S: What do you do? TR: I try to remain in the hell
world. S: What is the basic ground that
allows one to enter completely into that state and yet be
completely out of that state at the same time? TR: The point seems to be that the
hell realm, or whatever realm may be, is like the river, and
the bardoexperience out of that is the island. So you could
almost say that the bardo experience is the entrance to the
common ground. S: Is it the key to that
experience? TR: You could say key, but that is
making a more than necessary emphasis. S: So it’s like the high point or
peak. TR: Yes. Yes. S: You spoke yesterday of the ground
or canvas on which experience is painted. How does that
relate to the river and the island? TR: That’s a different metaphor
altogether. In this case, the canvas had never known colors
yet, it’s an open canvas. Even if you paint on the canvas,
it remains white, fundamentally speaking. You could scrape
off the paint. S: I still don’t see how it relates
to the gulf between the ground and the
experience. TR: The experience is, I suppose,
realizing that the turbulent quality purely happens on the
surface, so to speak. So you are not rushing to try to solve
the problem of turbulence, but you are diving in—in
other words, fearlessness. Complete trust in confusion, so
to speak. Seeing the confused quality as the truth of its
own reality. Once you begin to develop the confident and
fearless understanding of confusion as being true confusion,
then it is no longer threatening. That is the ground. You
begin to develop space. S: Where hope and fear cease to
exist? TR: Of course. S: And activity continues; each
state continues. Nothing changes? TR: Nothing changes. S: If confusion persists, do you
just let it persist? Don’t you try to clear it
out? TR: You do not go against the force,
or try to change the course of the river. S: Suppose there are four exits, and
in our confusion we don’t know which is a good
one? TR: You see, the whole idea is not
to try to calm down; it is to see the calm aspect at the
same level rather than just completely calming down. These
particular states of turbulence, the emotions or confusions,
also have positive qualities. One has to learn to transmute
the positive qualities as part of them. So you don’t want to
completely destroy their whole existence. If you destroy
them, if you try to work against them, it’s possible that
you will be thrown back constantly, because fundamentally
you’re running against your own energy, your own nature.S:
There’s still something undesirable I feel about confusion.
You always think that you’re going from some unenlightened
state to an enlightened state, that if you stay with it
there is this little hope or feeling that you will develop
clarity sooner or later. TR: Yes, there will be clarity.
Definitely. S: So you don’t want confusion to be
around, you want to get rid of it, but nevertheless you have
to stay in it to see it? TR: It doesn’t exactly work that
way. You see, you begin to realize that the clarity is
always there. In fact, when you are in a state of complete
clarity you realize that you never needed to have made such
a fuss. Rather than realizing how good you are now, you
begin to see how foolish you’ve been. S: Does anything actually exist
outside of the mind itself? Does anything actually
exist? TR: I would say yes and no. Outside
the mind is, I suppose you could say, that which is not
duality—open space. That doesn’t mean that the whole
world is going to be empty. Trees will be there, rivers will
be there, mountains will be there. But that doesn’t mean
they are some thing. Still, tree remains tree and rocks
remain rocks. S: I wonder, in the human world is
there any advantage over, say, hell for crossing over, or is
it equal in all respects? TR: I think it’s the same. The
karmic potential of the human realm seems to be greater
because there is more communication in the human state. The
human state is the highest state of passion, and the
ultimate meaning of passion is communication, making a link,
relationship. So there is a kind of open space, the
possibility of communication. But that doesn’t mean that the
human realm is an exit from the six realms of the world. The
experience of passion is very momentary: you might have a
human state of mind one moment and the next moment you have
another realm coming through. S: But seeing as how we have human
bodies, isn’t the human world the one in which we have the
best chance to accept ourselves for what we are? TR: Yes, but we are talking about
the realms as six experiences within the human body. We are
not talking about the different realms as other types of
worlds. S: I understand that, but since we
have human bodies and minds, isn’t passion the basic
framework of our lives rather than hatred? Don’t we have the
best chance of crossing over within that
framework? TR: I think so. That’s precisely why
we can discuss these six types of world in a human body. So
as far as experience goes it is equal, but the physical
situation of the human realm seems to be unequal or special.
As I’ve said already, we are discussing these realms now, in
our human bodies. However, all of them are human states of
mind, one no more so than any other. S: I’m not clear about the
difference between humans and asuras. TR: The asura realm is a kind of
intermediate state between the intense passion of the human
realm andintense bliss, which is the world of heaven.
Somehow there’s discontentment with the blissful state; one
is looking for a more crude experience. Then you begin to
transform your experience into that of an asura, which is
energy, speed, rushing, and a very sudden glimpse of
comparison which is called jealousy or envy. But I don’t
think jealousy and envy are concrete enough words to express
this state of neuroticism. It’s a combination of jealousy
with the efficient speed of looking for an alternative to
the blissful state of the world of the gods. Then in the human realm you begin to
find some way of communicating, some way of making that
experience more concrete. You begin to find passion instead
of pure jealousy and comparison alone. You begin to find
that you can get into it: you can dive into it and indulge,
in fact. In the realm of the asura there’s no time for
indulgence because the whole thing is extremely fast and
rushed. It’s almost a reaction against the blissful
state. I would say that with all the realms
you are not quite certain what you are actually getting and
what you are trying to get hold of. So you try to find the
nearest situation and reinforce that or change that. There’s
constant confusion. S: If you drop all your usual
patterns of relating, what holds on to giving logical
answers? TR: You can’t do that in any case.
Impossible. S: You could go to the
desert. TR: Then there would still be the
desert. If you try to give up patterns, that in itself forms
another pattern. S: But what if you’re not
trying? TR: If you are not trying to drop
anything, either pattern or without pattern, and you are
accepting all of them as just black and white, you have
complete control; you are the master of the whole situation.
Before, you were dealing purely at the ground level, but in
this case you are dealing from an aerial view, so you have
more scope. S: Does anxiety have anything to do
with the asura realm, that rushing quality? TR: I think so, yes. S: It also seems that the rushing
quality is very closely connected to the hungry ghost
state. TR: That’s a good observation. The
world of hell is ultimate crudeness, and the world of the
gods is ultimate gentility. The hungry ghost and asura
realms are the intermediaries between these two realms and
the animal and human realms. S: Sometimes the fear of losing
oneself, of losing ego, is very overwhelming. It’s very
real. Is there any way to prepare the ground for dropping
that, or do you just have to drop it one step at a
time? TR: I think the only alternative
left is just to drop. If you are as close as that, if you’re
extremely close to the cliff— S: You mean to the
ground. TR: To the cliff. S: It almost seems as if someone has
to push you over; you won’t go yourself. TR: Yes. S: I was wondering, is there really
any reality except the reality about which everyone
agrees? TR: You might find that everybody
agrees on it, but sometimes people don’t agree. To some
people, one particular aspect is more real than the others.
Somehow, trying to prove what is real and what is not real
isn’t particularly beneficial. S: Is it possible that a real world
exists, but that even if we all agree as human beings, a
catfish or a gopher might see it differently? TR: Well, it seems that reality,
from a rational point of view, is something that you can
relate to—when you’re hungry you eat food, when you’re
cold you put on more clothes, and when you’re frightened you
look for a protector. Those are the kinds of real things we
do. Real things happen, experiences such as that
happen. S: Rinpoche, are you going to
discuss ego at all during this seminar? TR: I suppose that subject will pop
up. S: Rinpoche, you said that you can’t
get out of a situation, you have to get completely into
it. TR: You have to be completely
fearless. And there should be communication with the ground
you’re standing on. If you are in complete touch with that
nowness of the ground, then all the other situations are
automatically definite and obvious. S: Which world are you in
now? TR: Woof, woof. S: But you said these are not states
of the awakened mind—they are only
confusion! TR: Yes, confusion. Sure. S: Do the six bardos go around in a
circle like the six realms? TR: Somehow it isn’t as methodical
as that. S: Is it one continuum? How does one
move from one to the next? TR: It’s the same as the different
types of emotions, which change from one to another, like
temperament. Each bardo is individual, an independent thing,
like an island; but each island has some connection with the
other islands. The presence of the other islands allows us
to see the perspective of any one island. So they are
related as well as not related. S: Is it the water that connects
them? TR: I think so, yes. S: Could you say that each
experience has its root in one or another of the
bardos? TR: Yes, definitely. S: Is it a good thing, as one is
experiencing, to try to hold that view? TR: Well, one doesn’t have to
acknowledge them on the spot necessarily, not
intellectually, but from an experiential point of view, this
happens and one can acknowledge it, so to speak. It is not
necessarily healthy to speculate or to try to put it into
categories intellectually. You see, meditation is a way of
providing a clear perception of these experiences, so that
they don’t become confusing or inspire paranoia. Meditation
is a way of gaining new eyesight to look at each situation,
to feel situations. And often the hidden aspect of these
states or worlds is brought out by meditation. If there’s a
tendency to try to hide from yourself the suppressed
elements of these worlds, then meditation brings them out.
If your experience is constantly destructive, then
meditation brings out the friendliness in these situations
and you begin to see that you don’t have to regard them as
external attacks or negative destructive things anymore.
Meditation is a way of seeing the perfect value of them, in
a sense, the perfect relationship of them. The whole thing
is that you have to work from within. Unless you are willing
to go back to the abstract quality, the root, judging the
facade doesn’t help at all. So meditation brings you back to
the root, dealing with the root of it. S: Does meditation mean nothing but
simply sitting still quietly for forty-five
minutes? TR: In this case, it is not
necessarily only that. It’s the active aspect of meditation
as well as the formal sitting practice. All
aspects. S: Everybody seems to have different
interpretations or opinions as to what you feel about drug
addiction or alcoholism in relation to the Buddhist path.
Can you relate drug use or heavy drinking to bardo
experience? TR: Well, it seems to be connected
with the idea of reality, what is real and what is not real.
Everybody tries to find what is real, using all sorts of
methods, all sorts of ways. A person may discover it by
using alcohol or by using drugs, but then you want to make
sure that discovery of reality is really definite, 100%
definite. So you go on and on and on. Then somehow, a sort
of greediness takes over from your discovery at the
beginning, and the whole thing becomes destructive and
distorting. This happens constantly with any
kind of experience of life. At the beginning, there’s a
relationship; but if you try to take advantage of that
relationship in a heavy-handed way, you lose the
relationship absolutely, completely. That relationship
becomes a destructive one rather than a good one. It’s a
question of whether the experience could be kept an actual
experience without trying to magnify it. At a certain stage,
you begin to forget that the situation that the usage is not
pure experience alone; it begins to become a built-up
situation that you require. And then there will be conflict.
In terms of LSD, for instance, a person has an experience
for the first time, and in order to confirm that experience
he has to take LSD again—a second, third, fourth,
hundredth time—and somehow it ceases to be an
experience anymore. It isn’t exactly a question of middle
way or happy medium, but somehow trusting oneself is
necessary at that point. One doesn’t have to be extremely
skeptical of oneself. You have one experience, and that
experience is experience—you don’t necessarily have to
try to make it into a clear and complete experience. One
experience should be total experience. S: In meditation, how does one get
these glimpses of clarity? TR: In a sense you can create a
glimpse by being open to the situation—open meaning
without fear of anything, complete experience. A glimpse
just takes place; it takes shape of its own and sparks us.
But in many cases, when a person tries to re-create that
glimpse he or she had already, that sudden flash, it doesn’t
happen at all. The more you try, the less experience you
get—you don’t experience open space at all. And the
minute you are just about to give up, to give in and not
care—you get a sudden flash. It’s as if a person is
trying very hard to meditate for a set time—it could be
in a group or it could be alone—and it doesn’t go very
well at all. But the minute you decide to stop, or if it’s
group practice, the minute the bell is run, then the
meditation actually happens, spontaneously and beautifully.
But when you want to recapture that, to re-create that
situation, it doesn’t happen anymore. So it’s a question of
trying to recapture experience: if you try to recapture an
experience, it doesn’t happen—unless you have an
absence of fear and the complete confidence that these
experiences don’t have to be re-created, but they are there
already. S: Supposing what you think you want
more than anything is openness, but you don’t know how to
open? TR: There’s no question of how to do
it—just do it! It cannot be explained in words; one has
to do it in an instinctive way. And if one really allowed
oneself to do it, one could do it. S: People seem to want to be happy,
but it doesn’t work out. TR: Happiness is something one
cannot recapture. Happiness happens, but when we try to
recapture it, it’s gone. So from that point of view there’s
no permanent happiness. S: Are the six worlds always
happening, and do you attain them in meditation? TR: Yes, the six realms seem to
happen constantly; we are changing from one extreme to
another and going through the six realms constantly. And
that experience takes place in meditation practice also.
Therefore, the whole idea of trying to create a fixed, ideal
state of meditation is not the point. You can’t have a
fixed, ideal state of meditation because the situation of
six realms will be continuously changing. S: I mean, we’ve spent all our lives
in these six realms, but through meditation we can learn to
see which realm we’re in, and how to deal with
them? TR: That isn’t the purpose of
meditation, but somehow it happens that way. Actual
meditation practice is a constant act of freedom in the
sense of being without expectation, without a particular
goal, aim, and object. But as you practice meditation, as
you go along with the technique, you begin to discover your
present state of being. That is, we could almost say, a
by-product of meditation. So it does happen that way, but
it’s no good looking for it and trying to fit it into
different degrees or patterns. That doesn’t work. S: When you just perceive
something—smell, hear, see—and you don’t have any
thought about anything for a very brief time, what world is
that? TR: Any world. Sure, any
world. S: Are people born with a quality of
one of the worlds as predominant? TR: It seems there is one particular
dominant characteristic—which is not particularly good
and not particularly bad, but a natural
character. S: Would sense perceptions be the
same in all six realms? TR: The sense perceptions will be
different. We are talking about the human situation, and in
human life the six experiences of the world will be the
same, of course, but your impressions of them will be
different. Each thing we see, we see purely in terms of our
own likes and dislikes, which happen all the time, and our
associations. Certain trees, plants, and things may be
irritating for some people; whereas for some other people
they may be a good experience. DISCUSSION NEXT MORNING S: Would you discuss briefly the
similarities and differences between Zen practice and
mahamudra practice? TR” Well, that has something to do
with the evolutionary aspect of the teachings. The Zen
tradition is the actual application of shunyata, or
emptiness, practice, the heart of the mahayana teaching.
Historically, the Zen method is based on dialectical
principles—you engage in continual dialogues with
yourself, asking questions constantly. By doing that, in the
end you begin to discover that questions don’t apply anymore
in relationship to the answer. That is a way of using up
dualistic mind, based on the logic of Nagarjuna. The
interesting point is that the practice of traditional Indian
logic used by Hindu and the Buddhist scholars is turned into
experiential logic rather than just ordinary debate or
intellectual argument. Logic becomes experiential. In other
words, the subject and object of logical discussion are
turned into mind and its projections—and that
automatically, of course, becomes meditation. Once you begin
to follow the whole endless process, everything begins to
become nothing—but nothing becomes everything. It’s the
same ideas as the four statements of Prajnaparamita: form is
emptiness, emptiness is form, form is no other than
emptiness, emptiness is no other than form. It’s kind of
using up the abundance of hungry energy. Or, it could be
said, self-deception is exposed by realizing that you don’t
get any answers if you purely ask questions, but you do get
answers if you don’t ask questions. But that in itself
becomes a question, so in the end the whole thing is dropped
completely: you don’t care anymore. S: In Zen they talk about abrupt
realization. TR: That abruptness is referred to
in the Zen tradition as the sword of Manjushri, which cuts
through everything. It is symbolized in Zen practice by the
stick (kyosaku) carried in the hall during meditation
(zazen) practice. If a person wants to have sudden
penetrations, or if a person is off his pattern, he’s
reminded by being hit on the back—the sword of
Manjushri. In the case of mahamudra, the
application or the technique is not quite like the Zen
approach of logic,questioning, or koans. It is, in a sense,
a highly extroverted practice—you don’t need inward
scriptures, but you work with the external aspect of
scriptures, which is the phenomenal world. Mahamudra has a
cutting quality as well, but that cutting or penetrating
quality is purely based on your experiential relationship
with the phenomenal world. If your relationship to the
phenomenal world is distorted or if you are going too far,
then the sword of Manjushri—the equivalent of the sword
of Manjushri, which is the phenomenal world—shakes you
and demands your attention. In other words, the situation
begins to become hostile or destructive for you if you are
not in tune with it, if you are dazed or if you’re confused.
If you are not willing to put your patience and discipline
into practice, then such situations come up. In this case,
mahamudra is very much purely dealing with the phenomenal
world aspect of symbolism. So mahamudra practice contains a
great deal of study of events or situations, seeing them as
patterns rather than using logical, koan types of
questions—which brings us to the same point. These two practices are not
polarities. You have to go through Zen practice before you
get to mahamudra practice, because if you don’t realize that
asking questions is the way to learn something, that the
questioning process is a learning process, then the whole
idea of study becomes distorted. So one must learn to see
that trying to struggle for some achievement or goal is
useless in any way. You have to start by learning that such
a dualistic notion is useless; you have to start from the
Zen or mahayana tradition. And after that, you realize that
asking questions is not the only way, but being a fool is
the only way. If you see the foolishness of asking
questions, then you begin to learn something. Foolishness
begins to become wisdom. At that point, you transform
yourself into another dimension, a completely other
dimension You thought you had achieved a sudden glimpse of
nonduality, but that nonduality also contains relationship.
You still need to relate yourself to that sudden glimpse of
beyond question. That’s when you begin to become mahamudra
experience. In other words, the Zen tradition seems to be
based on the shunyata principle, which is a kind of
emptiness and openness, absence of duality. The mahamudra
experience is a way of wiping out the consciousness of the
absence: you begin to develop clear perceptions beyond being
conscious of the absence. If you feel that absence,
voidness, or emptiness is so, then you are dwelling on
something, one some kind of state of being. Mahamudra
experience transcends that consciousness of being in the
void. In that way every situation of life becomes play,
dance. It is an extroverted situation. I suppose you could say that Zen and
mahamudra are complementary to one another. Without the one,
the other one couldn’t exist. As experience, first of all
you clear out the confusion of duality. And then, having
cleared that out, you appreciate the absence of the
blindfold in terms of appreciating colors and energies and
light and everything. You don’t get fascinated by it at all,
but you begin to see that it is some kind of pattern. The
whole process of mahamudra, in other words, is seeing the
situation of life as a pattern. That’s why the word mudra is
used, which means “symbolism.” It doesn’t mean ordinary
symbolism; it isn’t a question of signifying something, but
it is the actual fact of things as they are. The pattern of
life is a pattern. It is a definite pattern, a definite
path, and you learn how to walk on it. I think this
particular topic needs some kind of actual experience or
practice, you can really explain it in terms of
words. S: If one is preliminary to the
other, can you explain the emphasis in Zen meditation
practice on posture and the lack of emphasis in
mahamudra? TR: Well, I think that the
discipline which goes along with Zen practice is connected
with the experience of being determined—being
determined and willing to use up any dualistic notion
Therefore it is described in terms of struggle, or within
the framework of discipline. Otherwise, if there were no
framework around this notion of shunyata, or voidness, you
wouldn’t have anything at all; you wouldn’t even have
practice, because everything is nothing, absolute nothing.
In order to bring out the notion of shunyata and voidness,
you have to create a horizon, or some framework, which is
discipline. That is necessary. That is what we all do in the
practice of meditation: at the beginner’s level, we have
disciplines or techniques, something to do. In the case of
mahamudra, instead of putting discipline into situations,
the situations bring out discipline for you. If you are lax,
the situation reminds you, jerks you, and you’ll be pushed;
if you are going too slow, if you are too careful, the
situation will push you overboard. S: Are we beginners, or are we
advanced enough to disregard the techniques? TR: It’s much safer to say that
we’re all beginners, that we do need some act of sitting
down and practicing. But, of course, the level of discipline
in meditation practice is not only a conflict between
mahamudra practice and the Zen tradition at all. It’s also
connected with different styles of teaching, such as the
Theravadin tradition of Southeast Asia, Tibetan Buddhism, or
the Chinese tradition. Each culture effects a different
tradition and style of practice. Obviously, in the Zen
tradition a lot of the formality is highly connected simply
with Japanese culture rather than fundamental Buddhism. And
the same thing could be said about Tibetan Buddhism as
well—a lot of things came into it from the Tibetan
cultural background, not from the actual teaching. Those
cultural styles make a difference in some says. S: Do you have to have some
preparation for working in a mahamudra way? Does one have to
be particularly conscious of the transition point from Zen
to mahamudra? TR: Well, it happens as you grow. It
would be too presumptuous for teachers to say that now
you’re ready for mahamudra—in fact, it would be
dangerous to say it. But if a student finds himself in the
situation of mahamudra under the pretense of practicing Zen,
he’ll find himself in a mahamudra situation automatically.
Then of course he’ll accept that as the next process. But
there wouldn’t be a big deal about relaxing from one
technique to another technique at all; it would become a
natural process for the student. S: When you say “situations,” do you
mean the situations that arise in daily life? TR: I mean individual meditation
experience as well as daily life and your relationship to
it. Many people have heard about the principle of abhisheka
and the initiations that are involved with mahamudra
teachings or tantric teachings in general. But initiations
aren’t degrees at all; initiations are the acceptance of you
as a suitable candidate for the practice. There’s really
only one initiation, and that’s the acceptance of your whole
being, your whole attitude, as suitable to practice, that
you are the right type of person. Beyond that, there’s no
change of techniques and practices. It’s not like a
staircase at all; everything’s a very evolutionary process.
When you are on the first level, as you go along, you begin
to develop possibilities and qualities of the next step. And
then, as you begin to lose the idea that the first step is
the only way, you begin to discover something else. You
begin to grow like a tree. It is a very general process, and
therefore it is very dangerous to pin down that you belong
to a different type of experience, a different
level. S: Both you and Shunryu Suzuki Roshi
speak of the path as being dangerous. I always wondered what
the danger is that I should be avoiding. TR: They are numerous. Danger is
really a relative term, in terms of the relationship of ego
and the relationship of being awake. The relationship of ego
is regarded as a danger—the extreme or the confusion.
But danger also comes from different levels of practice.
Danger always comes with speed, going fast—very rarely
from going too slowly. And generally we go very fast.
There’s the possibility that if you go too fast youwill get
hurt. There’s the danger of going too slow as well, being
too concerned and becoming ultraconservative. That’s not the
case in the West, particularly; it is more the case in the
East. Easterners go too slowly; they don’t go fast enough.
In a lot of cases, according to the stories of great
teachers and their relationship to students on the path, the
teachers actually have to push their students overboard,
kick them out. “If you hesitate to jump, then I’ll push
you—let’s go!” That sort of hesitation is a problem of
the Eastern mentality. And in the West, the problem seems to
be one of going too fast, being unbalanced, bringing up pain
and confusion in terms of ego. S: If the danger is of going too
fast, don’t you intensify that danger for us by outlining
the mahamudra practice as a superior one, because most of us
tend to want to skip to a more advanced practice without
experiencing fully the preliminary level? TR: Precisely. That’s the whole
point. I do feel that I’m responsible for this. And
precisely for that reason, in the practice of meditation I
try to present everything as extremely dull and uncolorful.
In fact, most people who practice meditation are going
through the process of discovering that meditation practice
is not a kick anymore; the whole practice is extremely dull
and uninteresting. And I think we have to go through that
process as well. But I don’t think there is anything wrong
in mentioning mahamudra. It doesn’t have to be introduced as
a surprise. There is this possibility if you go through it,
but it needs patience and hard work—that automatically
brings up a person’s inspiration, which is a very great
thing. S: Concerning the idea of different
levels or hierarchies of practice, sometimes it seems like
we’re in all these levels at the same time. TR: Well, we are passing through the
six realms of the world all the time. I mean, you pass
through those different states of the world every moment or
every other moment, on and off. But the gradual development
we’ve been talking about is more definite than that. You may
have an experience or mahamudra as well as an experience of
Zen happening all the time, but as your Zen practice
develops, your experience of mahamudra becomes more
frequent, and you develop in that way. And beyond mahamudra,
your experience of maha ati also begins to develop more. The
flash of that experience becomes more and more frequent,
stronger and more real. S: All this seems
endless. TR: I think it is an extremely good
thing to realize that the learning process is
endless. S: I thought you said the whole idea
is to stop collecting things, but you’re collecting more
things. TR: It isn’t really collecting, but
you’re involving yourself in it. You see, the whole point is
that mahamudra is not introducing a new thing or new theme,
but if you reach an absolute understanding of the shunyata
principle, then that becomes mahamudra. And when you
understand completely the level of mahamudra, then that
becomes something else. So it’s a growing process. It’s not
collecting anything at all, but it’s the way you grow. And
each step is a way of unmasking yourself as well. You begin
by realizing the shunyata principle and experience, and then
you begin to see it as a foolish game. You begin to see the
foolishness of it once you get to mahamudra experience. And
once you transcend mahamudra experience, then you again
begin to see that you unnecessarily fooled yourself. It’s a
continual unpeeling process, a continual unmasking process.
So it’s more of a continual renunciation than collecting
anything—until there’s nothing further that you have to
go through, no journey you have to make. And then you begin
to see that the whole journey youmade was a foolish thing
that you never made at all. S: You speak of the original
understanding of voidness as something thta you transcend
more and more, rather than giving up one thing to proceed to
another, as though you were climbing a ladder? TR: Each moment has possibilities or
potentials of everything. Your experience of emptiness and
form is empty at the beginning level as well, all the time,
but somehow your experience becomes more and more deep as
you go along. So in a sense it could be called a progressive
process, but is not absolutely so—because all the
possibilities or potentials of the various steps are present
in one moment of personal experience. S: Is it as if the circle of one’s
understanding keeps enlarging and includes more and more,
rather than giving up one thing to proceed to the
other? TR: Yes. It’s a process of going
deeper and deeper. You are unpeeling, unmasking the crude
facade to start with. Then you unmask the semi-crude facade;
then you unmask a kind of genteel facade; and you go on and
on and on. The facades become more and more delicate and
more profound, but at the same time they are all
facades—you unpeel them, and by doing so you include
all experiences. That is why at the end of journey, the
experience of maha ati is referred to as the imperial yana
(vehicle or path) which sees everything, includes
everything. It is described as being like climbing up the
highest mountain of the world and seeing all the other
mountains underneath you: you have complete command of the
whole view, which includes everything in its absolute
perfection. S: I don’t understand what is meant
when it’s said that forms are empty. I don’t understand what
emptiness means. TR: When we talk of emptiness, it
means the absence of solidity, the absence of fixed notions
which cannot be changed, which have no relationship with us
at all but which remain as they are, separate. And form, in
this case, is more the solidity of experience. In other
words, it is a certain kind of determination not to give
away, not to open. You would like to keep everything intact
purely for the purpose of security, of knowing where you
are. You are afraid to change. That sort o9f solidness is
form. So “Form is empty” is the absence of that security;
you see everything as penetrating and open. But that doesn’t
mean that everything has to be completely formless, or
nothing. When we talk of nothingness, emptiness, or
voidness, we are not talking in terms of negatives but in
terms of nothingness being everything. It’s another way of
saying “everything”—but it is much safer to say
“nothing” at that particular level than
“everything.” S: What is the relation of kriya
yoga, the Hindu practice, to mahamudra? TR: It’s the same thing. Kriya yoga,
or kriya yana, is the first tantric yana, or stage. In kriya
yoga, the basic notion of absolute is presented in terms of
purity. Because your discovery of the symbolism of mahamudra
experience is so sharp and colorful and precise, you begin
to feel that if experience is so good and accurate, it has
to be pure. And that fundamental notion of purity in kriya
yoga is the first discovery that such an experience as
mahamudra is there. In other words, it is excitement at the
discovery of mahamudra, the experience of a tremendously
valuable discovery. An extra attitude of sacredness begins
to develop because of your mahamudra experience. That is
kriya yoga, the first step. It is the first discovery of
mahamudra. S: But kriya yoga is also a Hindu
school. TR: Buddhist and Hindu kriya yoga
probably use different kinds of symbolism, iconography; but
the fundamental idea of kriya yoga in the two traditions is
very close, definitely close. S: Is kriya yoga a definite
technique? TR: It is. In fact, you could almost
say it is 99% technique. S: Couldn’t one use the expression
“truthfulness” instead of “purity,” since in the experience
you are talking about, all pretensions are suddenly
missing? TR: Yes, that’s true. S: So why should one get rid of
it? TR: Well, you see, there are
different types of discoveries. The discovery that happens
in kriya yoga is in some ways a sharp and absolute
discovery, but it is still based on spiritual materialism,
meaning spirituality having a reference to ego. You see, any
kind of practice which encourages constant health, constant
survival, is based on ego. And actually, any discovery of
such a practice wouldn’t be absolute truthfulness or an
absolute discovery, because it would have a tinge of your
version of the discovery rather than what is, because you’re
seeing through the filter of ego. Such discoveries,
connected with spiritual development or bliss, are regarded
as something that you should transcend. I suppose we are talking about the
definition of “absolute” and of “truth.” You see,
absoluteness or truth in the ultimate sense is not regarded
as a learning process anymore. You just see true as true. It
is being true, rather than possessing truth. That is the
absence of ego; whereas in the case of ego, you still feel
you possess truth. That doesn’t mean that you have to start
absolutely perfectly. Of course you start with ego and with
confusions and negatives—that’s fine. Ego is the sort
of ambitious quality which comes up throughout all parts of
the pattern, a kind of continual, constant philosophy of
survival. Ego is involved in the will power of survival, the
will power of not dying, not being hurt. When that kind of
philosophy begins to be involved with the path, it becomes
negative—or confusing rather, in this case. But that
doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t have any of these notions at
all. At the beginning of the path, you have all sorts of
collections, but that doesn’t matter. In fact, it is very
enriching to have them, to work with them. So the point is,
one begins with faults, one begins with mistakes. That is
the only way to begin. S: When I think of some possible
terror or pain, I think, “That’s my ego.” At the same time,
if I get very relaxed, then I think maybe I am heading for
danger, that I am not taking any precautions. TR: One doesn’t have to rely purely
on blind faith or guesswork alone. Whether it is going to be
dangerous or not depends on how much of a relationship to
the present situation you are able to make, how much you are
able to communicate with the present situation. If your
relationship with the present situation is vague or
confused, then something’s not quite solid; whereas if your
relationship is quite clear and open, then that’s fine. That
seems to be the criterion and judgment—standing on the
ground, the earthy quality, grounding quality. I often refer
to it as the peasant quality—simple, but at the same
time, solid. TRANSCENDING MADNESS –
by Chogyam Trungpa Bardo
| The
Six Realms of Being |
The
Bardo of Meditation |
The
Bardo of Birth The Bardo of Illusory Body |
The Bardo of Dreams |
The Bardo of Existence The Bardo of Death |
The Lonely Journey
Allenspark, Colorado
&
Karme Choling