The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume 6 (19 page)

Student:
With the bardo of illusory body, for the first time I get a sense of its being pejorative—with the other two bardos I didn’t get that sense. Why is that?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
You see, the whole point is that we are trying to speak the language of samsara. In speaking of the inspiration opposite to all these bardo experiences, we are speaking purely in terms of duality. Therefore it is not an absolute answer in any case. In this sense, even mentioning freedom at all, teaching at all, dharma at all, is a pejorative thing, fundamentally. It is not an absolute thing, because we are talking about it. We are panicking in some sense by talking of the teachings.

Student:
What is the difference between samsara and bardo?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
They seem to be the same.
Samsara
is a general term which means a sort of whirlpool, a continual circle of confusion. One confusion sows the seed of another confusion, so you go round and round and round. Bardo is the same kind of experience. But at the same time, there is the possibility of stepping out of the confusion of samsara, as well as getting some understanding of the bardo experience and transcending it. It is the same thing. Bardo experience could continue all the time: these peak experiences of illusory body, jealously, and the eternity of the god realm could continue to come up. Then you go back to the confused level—and you repeat that again
and
again.

Student:
It seems to me that as long as all these things are happening, there’s a need for meditation.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Yes. Bardo experience is very important to know about. For one thing, nothing is regarded as some unexpected revelation coming up. A general tendency in meditation is that people come to these particular highlights of experience; and not knowing about these highlights of experience, they regard them as revelation. Having understood bardo experience, or
knowing
bardo experience, removes this trip of a sudden glimpse of enlightenment, which causes a lot of people to tend to freak out. They have a satori experience, and since then their life has been changed. And they try to hold on to it—which is the most dangerous, lethal aspect of all. Having understood bardo experience, then such a sudden glimpse could be associated with a particular state of mind, whether you belong to the hell realm or hungry ghost realm, whatever it may be. So nothing is regarded as extraordinary; it’s just one of the patterns.

Student:
Is bardo a breakthrough?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Yes and no. It depends. Bardo experience could be a breakthrough, but at the same time it is not a big deal. It is not ultimate freedom, necessarily. There’s something funny about people saying that their lives have been completely changed; for instance, that since the first time they took acid or had some kind of experience, their lives have been completely transformed and changed. That brings up the idea that they want to discontinue what they are. They don’t like what they were, but they like what they are now. Bardo understanding brings them into the very earth-grounding quality that nothing is changed before bardo experience, and nothing is changed after bardo experience—the experience is simply gone through. That is a very important point. Bardo experiences are not transformations of your life; they are continuity. And that continuity takes the shape both of highlights and of ordinary situations as well.

S:
Bardo could be a very impressive peak experience or it could also be just a regular little wave?

TR:
Yes. But either way, nothing is regarded as a complete change. That is very important. The continuity of the process of what you are cannot be escaped. You can’t regard achieving something as abandoning your bad self and latching on to the good one.

Student:
Is the level of intensity at all relevant?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
If you are involved with confusion or with hope and fear more intensively, then that kind of bardo experience comes up; whereas if you are involved with the practice of awake, with meditation practice and other attempts to see reality or the awakened state of mind—then that kind of peak experience develops with the same intensity. So bardo is just a building-up of energy—it could be either negative energy or positive energy. The intensity is the same. It really depends on how involved you are with your pattern of life before you have the experience of bardo.

S:
So intensity is not really relevant?

TR:
No, intensity is not relevant.

Student:
You mentioned the word
freedom
several times. Would you define it for us?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Freedom is the possibility of being generous. You can afford to open yourself and walk on the path easily—without defending yourself or watching yourself or being self-conscious all the time. It is the absence of ego, the absence of self-consciousness. That is ultimate freedom. The absence of self-consciousness brings generosity. You don’t have to watch for dangers or be careful that you are going too far or too slow. It is the confidence which is freedom, rather than breaking free from chains of imprisonment, exactly. Developing confidence and breaking out of psychological, internal imprisonment brings freedom naturally. In other words, it is generosity.

S:
You would have to have both self-discipline and detachment in order for that freedom not to turn into simple self-indulgence. Is that not true?

TR:
If you begin to indulge in self, then you also have to keep that self-indulgence safe, which automatically becomes self-conscious—it ceases to be freedom, anyway.

Student:
You’ve spoken several times about space. I remember your saying that people wanted to fill up space with material objects, filling rooms with chairs and things. I was wondering if you also fill up empty space with thoughts—say, conversation? I’m sort of afraid of empty space, and I notice that when I’m in empty space I begin to talk.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Well, space is everywhere, isn’t it? If you have any kind of activity going on, that activity must have some space in order to move about. So space is anywhere, everywhere, all the time. That space, or openness for that matter, is the room in which creative process could develop. For creative process to be possible, you have to have space. For instance, you can’t grow a plant without room—the more room you have, that much more could the plant develop.

Student:
Rinpoche, in meditation, if one is plunged into colors and diagrams and images—not thinking, but just in it—would that be hallucination, illusion, or reality?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
What do you think?

S:
I was just there. I don’t know. There weren’t any thoughts.

TR:
I would say, it is the reality of illusion.

S:
Where does hallucination come into it, then?

TR:
That
is
hallucination. But there’s nothing wrong with that. It is so. It is hallucination and it is real and it is vision—as far as it goes. I mean, that much we could look into. There’s no really fixed, ultimate, 100 percent or 200 percent answer to reality. Reality depends on each situation.

S:
Where does that fit into the bardo experience?

TR:
Well, there
is
a possibility of building peak experience in meditation practice. If you begin to see some particular big experience or breakthrough, that is bardo experience. But bardo experience does not necessarily take place in meditation only. It takes place in everyday life as well, when you think you have a big breakthrough. For instance, if you have a big argument with somebody, which could be regarded as your peak experience, there will be the element of bardo in it. It could be called a bardo experience. So bardo experience doesn’t have to be only a meditation experience; it could happen in everyday life.

SIX

The Bardo of Dreams

T
HE ANIMAL REALM,
or the confusion of being utterly involved with self-consciousness, seems to be the next destination. There’s a certain point that we should be clear about—the very word
confusion.
Usually when we talk of confusion, it is just simply not being able to make up your mind, such as whether you should belong to that or to this. But in the case of fundamental confusion, you are proud of your confusion. You feel you have something to hold on to, and you do not want to give in or to yield. You are extremely proud of your confusion, extremely self-righteous about it, and you would even fight for it. You could present the validity of your confusion, and you could also present your pride in that confusion as a valid thing, an absolute thing.

This type of confusion happens on a larger scale a great deal, as well. In particular, if there is a notion of validating confusion, that means there is also a tendency to overpower others. So power over others is one of the other factors involved in the animal realm. You are aggressively sure of what you are, and because of that you would like to influence other people and draw them into your empire, your territory. That is the meaning of power over others. Such power could happen politically or spiritually. It could happen spiritually in the romantic idea of the guru, or teacher, as a powerful person who can act on that power, who can relate to people and overpower them. Politically, it is that as a leader, you have fixed patterns of ideas as to what the society or the social pattern should be, and you put forth your ideas and your doctrines. Fundamentally, this approach is more a matter of confusion than of pride or egohood. It is confusion because one is not quite certain what one is; but the very fact of that uncertainty provides an extra boost to push forward. The basic twist of ego is that such uncertainty doesn’t become humble, but instead becomes proud. If you don’t see the situation as it is—it doesn’t matter whether you know what to do or not—you just push through and present a show of force. And accidentally something happens—something clicks. Then you take over.

That tendency to overpower through confusion is the dominant characteristic of the animal realm. It is like attacking a tiger. The more you attack a tiger, that much more does the tiger become egocentric and aggressive, because the tiger is not quite certain whether you are going to kill him or he is going to kill you. He’s not quite certain, but he’s taking advantage of that confusion, that ignorance. There is no reason a wounded tiger would be more aggressive than an ordinary tiger, a fresh young tiger; or, for that matter, there is no reason old tigers would become more aggressive than young ones. They may know that they don’t have sharp teeth or sharp claws anymore and that this act of aggression could become suicidal—but they still do it. That kind of crying and laughing at the same time, that pride, is the confusion of the animal realm. You are not quite certain whether a particular person is crying because of his or her humiliation, or whether this person is laughing because of his or her sinister opportunities.

That mixture of crying and laughing is confusion’s quality—absolutely the whole thing is confused. And that confusion seems to be the peak experience of bardo in the animal realm—the dream bardo. A lot of people may expect that in the dream bardo we might discuss how to play games with our dreams—how to levitate and do astral traveling, visit our friends, visit unknown worlds, survey all this unknown territory. But if you look at the dream world as it is, there’s no room for astral travel. It is the hard truth, the obvious truth, that dreaming—although very creative—is based on the uncertainty between day experience and night experience. You actually are not quite certain whether you are sleeping or not. As soon as you realize that you are asleep, that you are dreaming and having a terrifying dream experience—it immediately dissipates and you begin to awake. The nightmare begins to wake you up.

The dream bardo is the confusion of not knowing what you are—whether you are a gentle person or an aggressive person. You are not making an absolute reconciliation, but you are just trying to do something. Dreams very much reflect the day experience into the sleep experience. Metaphorically, we could talk of dreams not only as sleep experiences alone, but in terms of the dreamlike quality of the daylight experience, in which we are uncertain what is real and what is unreal. In other words, the dream bardo is a way of seeing yourself in that particular uncertainty. Whether you are absolutely weak or absolutely powerful, absolutely aggressive or absolutely peaceful—between those experiences there is a dreamlike quality, a hallucinatory quality. I wouldn’t say exactly hallucinatory, but there is a quality of ultimate confusion, absolute vagueness. I’m sure a lot of us have experienced that. In a drug experience, for instance, you are not quite certain whether you are completely able to see the subtleties of things as they are—there is a sharpness to the color and the overall experience, but on the other hand, it has an imaginary and confused quality as well. You are not quite certain whether you are going crazy or whether you are actually seeing something. That kind of ambiguity is also a particular source of dream bardo.

Dream bardo also has to do with the confusion involved in making decisions. Often, a lot of us try to make decisions: “Should I be doing that or should I be doing this? Should I commit myself into this or shouldn’t I commit myself into this?” There is uncertainty, ambiguity, confusion. That confusion of making a decision between two options involves a certain living experience of the two polarities: “Should I give up my job or should I stick to my job? If I give up my job, I will be good and free and I will no longer be bound to that particular commitment. On the other hand, if I give up my job, then I won’t have any source of insurance. I’ll be purely living a life of chance, trying to find some means of survival.” For that matter, there are all sorts of decisions. “Should I involve myself with this particular religious organization and attain enlightenment, or should I slow myself down and just try to relive what I’ve been trying to do in the past?” All sorts of decisions come up, and those kinds of decisions come up because of confusion—obviously. Fundamentally, confusion is based on not knowing the actual situation, not being able to see the meeting point of the two—“Should I or shouldn’t I?” I wouldn’t exactly say the answer lies between them, but the actual experience lies between them. Experience lies between “should” and “shouldn’t.”