The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume 6 (29 page)

TR:
The important point there is exactly parallel to what we were saying about the changing of the guards being a chance to infiltrate. Such things could also take place in reverse. If you try to help somebody, when you are leaning down to help, somebody could easily kick both of you equally. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t help others, that you just purely want to survive. You should be working with situations. But there is a danger of something else coming in and knocking both of you down. It’s the notion of the blind leading the blind.

Student:
You use the words
hope
and
fear
in the same way, meaning that they both need to be transcended, as though hope is as much of an obstruction as fear. I was wondering how that fits in with your schemes for the community here. It seems to be a very hopeful thing. You use the word
inspiration
, but it seems to be the same thing.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
It seems to depend on your relationship to that concept. If inspiration is hope, then fear is not a part of it. But the inspiration I was trying to express contains both hope and fear—in other words, both destruction and creation. Destruction is as creative an inspiration as creation. Both are inspiration.

S:
Does that mean you have to be willing to give up all plans of any type?

TR:
I wouldn’t give up plans, but I wouldn’t relate plans with the future alone—I would relate plans with the present moment. The potential of the future is in the present moment rather than purely in the future. We work in the present—with the future potential of possibilities in the present. So it is relating with the present moment, as your relation with yourself and as your stepping-stone.

Student:
Could you mention some positive aspects of ego that would allow us to make friends with it?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
That is what we have been saying, that inspiration includes both hope and fear. Any negative aspect of ego which presents itself then becomes material to work on. In that sense ego
is
the inspiration. Without ego, there wouldn’t be realization at all, from our point of view.

Student:
I was thinking about what you said about your relationship with your teacher, and the story of Gampopa and Milarepa, and the fact that there’s no gratification. And it seems as if I’m the one who wants to get enlightened—I mean me, Steve. Steve wants to get enlightened, but it also seems as if Steve is never going to get enlightened because he won’t be there when he’s enlightened; there’s no gratification in being enlightened. So why do I want to get enlightened so bad?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
You see, that’s the whole point—attaining enlightenment doesn’t mean gratification, does it?

S:
But what is it that makes us want to get enlightened? I mean, it seems everything I do is for gratification, and I want to get enlightened for no less reason—but there must be another reason.

TR:
Sure. There is pain and pleasure, and you want to have a proper relationship with them.

S:
I identify enlightenment with pleasure, I suppose, because I’m either looking for pleasure or looking for enlightenment.

TR:
I think that’s the problem, in fact. Enlightenment has nothing to do with pleasure—or pain, for that matter. It just
is.

S:
If we’re really aware of what we are and accept it, then is that the same as enlightenment?

TR:
Enlightenment is, as we said, an honest relationship with ourselves. That is why it is connected with the truth—
being
true rather than truth as something external you are relating to. Just being.

Student:
It seems ego is really clever. First we tell him we’ll make friends with him, come along, help out—and at the last minute we throw him overboard. And he’s really smart about it. He says, “Why should I be friends with you? You’re trying to suck me into something. What’s in it for me?” What’s the tag line?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Why not?

S:
Just go along for the hell of it?

TR:
Quite.

Part Two

THE SIX STATES OF BEING

Karmê Chöling, 1971

ONE

Pain and Pleasure

G
ENERALLY THE CONCEPT
of bardo is misunderstood to be purely the gap between one’s death and next birth. But in this case, the idea of bardo is being presented as it was by Padmasambhava. The whole concept is based on the continuity of the bardo experience. So although some scholars and people claim that the idea of bardo, or of the
Tibetan Book of the Dead
as a whole, is purely related with the details of the hang-ups and hallucinations connected with the colorful world after death and how to relate to it, what we are working on in this case is not necessarily connected with that purely colorful world and its hangups. Instead, it is connected with the continuity of the psychosomatic situation. As long as there is a physical body involved with life, that automatically brings pain or pleasure. Pain and pleasure could be interpreted as illness or sickness or problems or neuroses of all kinds. They have psychosomatic case histories constantly.

The word
bardo
means “in-between state.”
Bar
means “between,” “in between,” the medium situation which exists between one extreme and the other extreme.
Do
could be explained as being an island, a remote island which exists out of nowhere, yet is surrounded by an ocean, or desert, or whatever. So bardo is that which is outstanding like an island in terms of your life situation, that which is in between experiences. You could have experiences of extreme pleasure and extreme pain. When the experience of pleasure is extreme, automatically that experience of pleasure becomes irritatingly pleasureful. Bardo is that irritating and heavyhanded quality of pleasure just about to bring pain, invite pain. It is that kind of uncertainty between two situations. For instance, hot and cold are uncertain: either it is too hot or too cold. If it is too hot, therefore it could be said to be too cold; but if it is too cold, therefore it is regarded as too hot. Such uncertainty and the psychophysical buildup associated with it brings an extreme case of uncertainty, and at that point, one begins to lose criteria of any kind.

The concept of bardo has six types. It seems to be quite worthwhile to relate these six bardos with the six realms of existence: the realm of the gods; the realm of jealous gods, or asuras; the realm of human beings; the realm of animals; the realm of hungry ghosts, or pretas; and the realm of hell. Those prescribed situations, or realms, seem to provide an extremely interesting way of looking at bardo. Each of these realms has some quality of extreme pleasure and extreme pain, and in between the two there is also a kind of extreme. But those extremes have entirely different textures in the various realms. For instance, there is the extreme hunger, rigidness, and stupidity of the animal realm; the extreme indulgence of the human realm; the extreme relativity of the jealous gods level. All kinds of realms take place, each with their bardo states. What we are going to discuss is largely the psychological state where there is pain as well as pleasure—physical pain, psychological pain, or spiritual pain; spiritual pleasure, psychological pleasure, or physical pleasure. All six realms are characterized by this continual process of striving, the continual process of trying to reach some kind of ultimate answer, to achieve permanent pleasure.

As far as this particular human society is concerned, the concept of bardo is extremely powerful and important to us. We have continual problems related with questions such as “What is sane and what is insane?” “What is the purpose of life?” Those are popular questions often asked of spiritual teachers when they are interviewed on the radio or television, or give personal interviews. Always, “What is the purpose of life?” What is the purpose of life?—what isn’t the purpose of life, for that matter? These questions are not concerned with fixed answers as such, at all. But these questions could be answered in the psychophysical sense. What is not body? What is body? What is not mind? What is mind? What is emotion? What isn’t emotion? How does emotion function? What is the texture of emotion that you can switch by being loving as well as by being aggressive? What makes these changes? How does the whole creation take place? Creation does not take place through the revelation of God, and creation does not take place purely by trying to change your living situation. If you are irritated by yourself or your particular situation—for instance, living with your parents—moving out of your parents’ domain and renting your own apartment somewhere else does not solve the problem at all, because you carry yourself with you all the time, as the tortoise carries his shell. So the question has not been answered, the problem has not been solved. There is something more fundamental than that. Pain and pleasure are not as gullible as we would like to think. They are very subtle and deep-rooted in our life, and take place constantly.

The bardo experience tells you the details of the texture or the color or the temperature of godlike mentality or hell-like mentality, whatever it may be. It tells you in great detail about these basic situations or realms, about things as they are in terms of panoramic vision. It seems that a lot of people experienced this in the past and achieved the perfection of it. They understood those situations—so much so that the message has been handed down from generation to generation. People have experienced it. So it seems that what we are involved with in this particular seminar is the tremendous opportunity to discuss the texture and, you could almost say, the case history of emotions. It is an opportunity for a different way of living and relating to our human existence—the inhuman quality of human existence as well as the human quality of human existence.

Bardo experience is an extremely powerful way of solving the problem of extremes. At the same time, it is not presenting for or against, but trying to present both extremes simultaneously. That provides a way to the bardo experience of clear light. Such experiences as chönyi bardo, which is based on absorption into basic space, creating enormous, overpowering expansion—how does that relate with such bardos as sipa bardo, the bardo of existence, continually creating new situations? That whole process of the six bardos seems to be very much related with our own psychological portrait. Somebody in this audience—or everybody in this audience, shall we say—has animal qualities, as well as hungry ghost qualities, as well as realm of gods qualities, as well as human qualities. We are all part of this gigantic network, or amalgamation, of all colors, all textures, all temperatures, all emotions—we are part of the whole thing. That is why we exist as what we are, why we function as what we are. Otherwise, we could not function in terms of samsara. We have managed to maintain our confusion up to now very skillfully. Such an achievement! Why? Because we could become hell beings, because we could become realm of gods beings, because we could become part of the animal realm, because we could become hungry ghosts. We improvise constantly, very skillfully drawing out these possible alternatives.

That whole situation brings up the question of the survival of ego. In order to survive as a human being who is based on passion and aggression, in order to maintain those ideas of passion and aggression, we have to relate with all kinds of subsidiary ways of maintaining ourselves. We have all kinds of ways of doing that. We could present cold as completely frozen, icy cold, or just a chill. We could present cold which is just about to become hot, and then we could switch into hot: just chill-off hot, warm, body temperature warm, irritatingly hot warm. We could present all kinds of textures, all kinds of beings with all kinds of living situations. We are being trained in some strange way, immediately from the time we are born and presented until we are grown up, up to the point we become the emperor of the world. We constantly operate all those realms, improvising that as opposed to this, this as opposed to that.

So the bardo experience is the description of a skillful artist who managed to paint such a balanced picture, or a skillful musician who managed to play such beautiful music—but that music belongs to somebody, that picture belongs to somebody. That always seems to be the problem. That is what is called ego. But we cannot just forget the whole thing and try to present a beautiful and blissful heavenly situation which answers all the problems or shows the great promise of liberation. Before we know what liberation or enlightenment is, we also have to know what is not liberation, what is not enlightenment. Studying bardo seems to create a stepping-stone. That seems to be most important. We need to learn how to relate to our daily experience, how to relate with our own experiences rather than with doctrinal assumptions, philosophical views, scientific theories, or what have you. So bardo is a very practical way of looking at our life.

This particular talk seems to be more like an appetizer than the actual main course. But even the appetizer itself has the quality of the environment and of what meal is to come. So that also seems to be useful. If you just decide to have the appetizer, if you decide to walk out of the restaurant before you have the main course, that’s possible. We could do so—or you could do so.

Student:
What do you mean by spiritual pleasure and pain?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Spiritual pain is extremely powerful pain, because it transcends the ordinary pain of daily living; and spiritual pleasure is delightful, because it is regarded as transcendental pleasure, which supposedly transcends any human concerns. In either case, the whole idea is based on an inhuman attitude to spirituality, rather than the human aspect of spirituality.