The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume 6 (15 page)

TR:
Yes.

S:
So it seems like you’re given a chance, and if you miss, somehow you’re back in samsara.

TR:
Your actual practice in everyday situations, when those peak experiences are not present, brings them into a balanced state. If your general pattern of life has developed into a balanced state of being, then that acts as a kind of chain reaction enforcing the bardo experience. In other words, you have more balanced possibilities of sanity because of your previous chain reactions.

S:
It’s like the base of a mountain—the broader and more solid your base, the stronger and taller you stand.

TR:
Quite. Yes.

S:
So that’s what sitting meditation is all about.

TR:
Yes. I mean, that’s the whole idea of bardo being an important moment. I think that working on basic sanity provides tremendous possibilities. It is basic—there will be tremendous influence and power, needless to say.

Student:
Do you have to go through the bardo to get to the awakened state?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
There will be some moment of experience, peak of experience, before the awakened state of mind. That is called bardo. It is not particularly that bardo is special, but it’s just that the gap is called bardo.

S:
It may not be anything special, but when we see it coming, we say, “Wow, that’s it.”

TR:
Well, I wouldn’t make a particularly big deal of it—although we are holding a seminar on it.

Student:
There is something that continues after death, and I guess that something is the you that reincarnates.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Nobody knows. But if you see it in terms of the present situation, experiences happen; they pass through continuously. Our physical situation can’t prevent the psychological experience of pain or pleasure—it’s beyond control. So if we work back from that level, there seems to be the possibility that even beyond physical death there will be continuity of consciousness throughout—but that’s an assumption.

Student:
If you finally reach the awakened state, you’re released from having to come back—I’ve heard this in Hindu thought.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
There is the same idea in Buddhism as well—if you use up your karmic chain reactions and if you use up your karmic seeds, then you are no longer subject to the power of karma, returning to the world. But then, of course, if you are that advanced a person, naturally the force of compassion forces you out, to come back and help other people. So in any case you come back, it seems.

Student:
In talking about time, you said that time was an invention, a wishful thought, that it was related to hope. But time is also related to fear, because time moves us up to death. Is it true, then, that if one manages to give up both fear and hope, one is also released from time?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Well, time is a concept, obviously, and you transcend concepts. I would say so, definitely.

S:
But one doesn’t have to be awake to understand the concept of time, because in ordinary everyday life one sees that time is very unreal. Sometimes there are five days that seem like five years; other times there are five years that seem like five days.

TR:
If you look at it from a rational point of view, it is determined by your preoccupations. They determine the length of time. But that isn’t exactly transcending time in terms of freedom; that is simply the degree of your determination, your preoccupation. If something is pleasurable, it passes very quickly; if something is painful, it lasts an extremely long period. And certain people have a kind of noncaring quality, feeling that time doesn’t matter; they are completely easy about it. But that again is purely habitual rather than a fundamental idea of time. You see, time means struggle, or wish. It’s a demand for something—you have a particular concept or desire to achieve something within a certain limit of time. When you don’t have this desire to achieve something or desire not to do something, then somehow the limitation of time doesn’t become important. But you can’t say that you completely transcend time, in terms of transcending karmic seeds or karmic patterns. Even the awakened state of mind of compassion and wisdom, in communicating and dealing with other people, still has to use the concept of time. But at the same time,
your
version of time doesn’t last any longer; that fundamental, centralized notion of time doesn’t exist anymore.

Student:
You spoke of compassion as being a force that brings us back, insists that we reincarnate again. Is that the same as when we are feeling bliss in meditation and we do not want to stop and go back to everyday activities, but out of our sense of duty to our friends, we do?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Any kind of awake experience you have should have sharpness or intelligence as well. I don’t think there will be possibilities of being completely dazed in the experience at all—if that’s so, then something must be wrong. You see, when you are completely involved in the awake state of mind, you develop discriminating wisdom as well as the wisdom of equanimity.

S:
You are here out of compassion. Are we here out of that same compassion?

TR:
I hope so.

S:
I never experienced any sharp, clear choice to stay in the world for the sake of others.

TR:
Perhaps you feel that you are not ready to help others yet.

S:
I feel I have no choice but to be in the world.

TR:
That’s generally how things operate: you have no choice. You are bound by karma; you have no choice.

S:
Is there an alternative state where the awakened person constantly has the option of being in the world or out of it?

TR:
Well, if an awakened person is not bound by karmic duties, so to speak, then of course there is that option, definitely. Even the arhats, who have achieved the equivalent of the sixth stage of the bodhisattva path, supposedly have the option of not stepping back into the world, because they have transcended certain karmic seeds. They remain for kalpas and kalpas (eons) in the meditative state until a certain Buddha comes to the world. He has to send his vibrations to wake them up and bring them back to the world and encourage them to commit themselves to the bodhisattva path of compassion, not to stay out.

S:
You mean you can leave if you don’t feel a strong enough duty to others?

TR:
That would mean that it was a partial kind of enlightened state. A fully enlightened state automatically would have compassion, whereas a partially enlightened state would have wisdom without compassion; and in this case, you quite likely would stay away.

S:
Is remaining in nirvana for kalpas something worth shooting for?

TR:
That’s purely up to you.

Student:
I have a question about the difference between buddhahood and egohood in the six bardos. At certain times I’ve experienced leaving this situation, a kind of transcending, but there’s still a center, a source of radiation. But at a certain point, if I’m willing to let go further, it seems to break loose into a more spacious quality without this center.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Well, you get a potential glimpse of that constantly. All aspects are in individuals all the time, and you do experience that, yes. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that one has reached higher degrees; more likely, a person is able to see the potential in himself.

Student:
How would you relate the déjà-vu experience to the six bardos, the feeling that you have been someplace before?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Before?

S:
[
Repeats
]

TR:
I suppose that experience is within the six realms of the world.

Student:
Would you translate
bardo
again?

Trungpa Rinpoche: Bar
means “in-between” or “gap” or “the middle,” and
do
means “island,” so altogether
bardo
means “that which exists between two situations.” It is like the experience of living, which is between birth and death.

S:
What is not bardo?

TR:
The beginning and the end. [
Laughter
]

Student:
Can there be wisdom without compassion or compassion without wisdom? Can either exist independently?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
According to the teachings as well as one’s own personal experience, it is quite possible you could have wisdom without compassion, but you couldn’t have compassion without wisdom.

Student:
I know somebody who almost doesn’t sleep at all, he sleeps sometimes one hour a day, and he leads a frightfully energetic life. He’s not a Buddhist, but he’s a rather enlightened person—is that at all relevant?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Well, I don’t know about that. You see, ultimately there are certain requirements for the physical being, as long as you have a physical body—like sleeping and food. It’s a natural process. And of course there’s the balance of whether you need a great deal of sleep or a great deal of food, which depends on whether a person is using sleep or food as an escape, or in some other way. I mean, from a rational point of view, one would presume that enlightened beings would eat balancedly, sleep normally. They wouldn’t have to fight with the pattern of their life anymore, whether it was sleep or food. It just happens, I suppose. But that’s pure guesswork on my part.

S:
I think I’ve read somewhere that if one is really relaxed one sleeps more efficiently, so one doesn’t need much sleep.

TR:
Generally you need very little sleep. It depends on your state of mind. But you need some sleep anyway, and you need some food. On the other hand, there’s the story of the great yogi Lavapa in India: he slept for twenty years, and when he woke up he attained enlightenment.

Student:
What do you mean when you say that no one knows about the after-death period? I thought all bodhisattvas would know, all those who have returned.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I think they would have confidence, definitely, and they would have some definite intuitions about it, or quite possibly memories of their previous lives. But in the ordinary case, nobody knows; nobody has actually gone through it, like a journey.

S:
In other words, for a bodhisattva, all his lives aren’t just like one life, just one change after another?

TR:
It wouldn’t be as clear as that for a bodhisattva. A bodhisattva still works with situations; therefore he works with his own life and death, and his physical being as well.

FOUR

The Bardo of Birth

Y
ESTERDAY WE DISCUSSED
the world of the gods and the particular point of eternity—involvement with eternity. That whole idea comes from an approach to spiritual practice which is based on the principles of ego. In such a spiritual trip, you tend to reach a peak point in which you do not know whether you are following a spiritual path or whether you are going completely mad, freaking out. That is the point of the bardo of meditation, or samten bardo. You worked so hard to get something—eternal promise, eternal blessing—and you begin to feel that you are achieving something; but at the same time you are not quite certain whether that achievement is imaginary, based on self-deception. That doubt brings madness. Conviction is part of the pattern which leads you to the madness, conviction based purely on relating with ego. Whenever we talk about bardo principles, we can apply the same analogy that I used yesterday: experiencing both hot and cold water being poured on you simultaneously. That pattern, which is pleasurable and at the same time extremely painful, continues with all six types of bardo.

The second bardo is connected with the realm of the jealous gods, the asuras. According to the teaching, it is described as the bardo of birth or, in Tibetan, kye-ne bardo.
Kye
means “birth,” and
nye
means “dwelling.” So kye-ne bardo is the birth and dwelling aspect of bardo. This experience of birth and dwelling is based on speed and on our trust in speed. It is based on living and dwelling on that particular state of being, which is our own individual experience of speed, aggression, and that which brings speed, the ambition to achieve something. In this case, the bardo experience is not necessarily a meditative state of spiritual practice, but it is an ordinary everyday life situation. You put out a certain amount of speed constantly, yet you are not quite certain whether you are getting anything out of it or whether you are losing something. There is a certain peak point of confusion or hesitation, uncertainty. It is as if you are going too far. If you spin really fast, faster and faster—if you spin fast enough—you are not quite certain whether you’re spinning or not. You are uncertain whether it is stillness or whether it is absolute speed that drives you. Absolute speed seems to be stillness.

This, again, is exactly the same point as in the bardo of meditation: that uncertainty as to sanity or madness. You see, we come to this same problem all the time—whenever we have some peak experience of aggression, hatred, passion, joy, pleasure, or insight. In whatever we experience, there’s always some kind of uncertainty when we are just about to reach the peak of the experience. And when we reach the peak point, it is as though we were experiencing both hot and cold water at the same time. There is that kind of uncertainty between the fear of freaking out and the possibility of learning something or getting somewhere. I’m sure a lot of us have experienced that; it is a very simple and experiential thing. I would like you to have a clear perception of the bardo experience, both theoretically and experientially. Particularly those who feel they have experienced so-called satori have felt this experience. We are always uncertain whether we have actually achieved something or whether we are just about to freak out. And this very faint line between sanity and insanity is a very profound teaching in regard to the experience of bardo and Buddhist teachings in general.