The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume 6 (39 page)

TR:
Yes. And it has different intensities at different stages of the path. At the advanced stages of the bodhisattva path the clear light experience becomes more frequent—until you reach the tenth. In the beginning, it is less frequent.

S:
In the tenth stage, what is the clear light experience?

TR:
It is described in the books as being like visions seen in full moon–light: it is not as clear as the sunlight, as buddha, but it is relatively clear.

Student:
It was a surprise when I found out that the realm of the gods wasn’t where salvation was. Where does salvation come in?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
If you could talk about salvation, it seems that it is when there is no direction, the end of ambition, which is when you become completely one with your experience. Knowledge becomes one with wisdom, which is called buddhahood, or the awakened state of mind. You realize that you never needed to make the journey at all, because the journey is there already and the goal is there already. It is not so much that you are gaining something; it is not so much that you are achieving liberation, but it is more that you realize liberation is there and that you needn’t have sought for it. That is the precise definition of
jnana
, which is a Sanskrit word meaning “wisdom.”
Jnana
means complete oneness with your experience; you do not relate with the experiencer as such at all.

FIVE

The Animal Realm

T
HE EXPERIENCE OF THE
different realms should follow the qualities of personality, the way or style in which individuals handle themselves—their styles of talking, the way they make telephone calls, the way they write letters, the way they type letters out, the way they read, the way they handle their eating, the way they sleep. Everybody tends to develop a style which is peculiar to them; everybody tends to develop their own kind of composure. At the same time, they are generally unaware of that situation and of the way they handle themselves. That sense of style even goes to the extent that if we are nervous or self-conscious, we still have our style of how to be self-conscious, which is quite unique from individual to individual. We may smile because we are self-conscious, or we may try to be frozen or aggressive or polite, or whatever. There is always some kind of style we are trying to follow. And we follow these styles, or ways of handling ourselves, continuously—not only in domestic situations, but also spiritually. People have their own style of meditating, their own style of trying to be good, trying to be religious, which has a very definite flavor.

In many situations, a person’s particular style, or way of handling themselves, is uncertain or unknown to them. Often people become irritated when they hear their recorded voice or see videotapes or movies of themselves. If they observe themselves in that way, a lot of people find it extremely shocking. Even photographs are extremely shocking because you carry your own style in them. You may think you are better than you are or worse than you are, but when you see pictures of yourself you begin to get another point of view altogether. It is as though somebody else is seeing your style, which is extremely alien. Generally we do not like to see somebody else’s point of view of ourselves. We don’t like that, we find it irritating, embarrassing.

The realm that we are going to talk about today is highly connected with that style of handling our life situation. Even self-conscious people have particular characteristics that they fail to experience as though somebody else were watching or listening to them. Instead, a kind of instinct drives them into a particular aim, object, or goal—which is the animal realm. This has nothing to do with actually being reborn as an animal as such; it is the animal quality in this particular experience of our life.

Bearing that in mind, we could relate with that kind of animal instinct in ourselves in which everybody is involved with such serious games. Seriousness, in this case, does not necessarily mean the absence of a sense of humor. Even a sense of humor could be serious at this point. Self-consciously trying to create a friendly environment, a person could crack jokes or try to be funny or intimate or clever. That kind of sense of humor still has animal instinct, animal qualities. The reason seriousness is associated with the animal realm and that generally animals are viewed as symbolic representations of this particular realm is that animals don’t smile or laugh, they just behave. They may play, but it is very unusual for animals actually to laugh. They might make friendly noises, or they might make certain gestures of friendliness, but somehow the subtleties of a sense of humor do not seem to exist in the animal realm. So this whole way of handing ourselves is related with the animal realm, including the attempted sense of humor in which we try to present a solemn situation as humorous.

The animal quality is one of purely looking directly ahead, as if we had blinkers. We look straight directly ahead, never looking right or left, very sincerely. We are just trying to reach the next available situation, all the time trying. Again, we are trying to grasp in a slightly different way, trying to be in a slightly different way, trying to demand that situations be in accordance with our expectations. Intelligence still plays an important part, but at the same time, there is this dumb quality, the ignorant quality of the animal realm.

The animal realm is associated with ignorance. It belongs to the same category as the realm of the gods, in terms of its other characteristic buddha family. That is, animals have buddha-family qualities. They prefer to play deaf and dumb. They prefer to follow the given games that are available rather than looking at them or seeing them as they are. You might look at those games, or you might manipulate how to perceive such games, but at the same time you just follow along, you just continue to follow your instinct. When you have some hidden or secret wish, you would like to put that into practice. For instance, when there is irritation, you just put forward the irritation, no matter whether the irritation is going to hurt somebody or damage the creative situation or not. That does not seem to be a concern of the animal realm. You just go out and pursue whatever is available, and if the next situation comes up, you just take advantage of that as well and pursue it. It is like the story of the otter. An otter, who already has his prey of fish in his mouth, swims through the water. Suddenly he sees another fish swimming, a bigger, fatter one. He forgets that he already has a fish in his mouth, and he jumps the other fish—but the first fish slips away. So he loses both the first and the second fish. So if situations are unskillfully presented or unskillfully seen, then automatically you are going to meet with disappointment.

Generally, the quality of ignorance in the animal realm is quite different from primordial ignorance, or basic bewilderment. This kind of ignorance is dead honest and serious, which brings us further confusion or ignorance. You have a certain style of relating with yourself, and you refuse to see that style from another point of view. You completely ignore the whole thing. If somebody happens to attack you or challenge your clumsiness, your unskillful way of handling the situation, quite possibly you will find a way of justifying yourself. Or at least that is the approach taught in the schools: try to find your own logic to prove yourself and learn how to be self-respectable. Therefore, whatever you do is regarded as a self-respectable situation because you have only one way to go, which is to be serious and honest with yourself—in the pejorative sense. This has nothing to do with the truth at all. Actually, we don’t care whether it is true or false. The false is seen as also true, and the truth is seen as something very serious. So generally falsehood is also extremely encouraging and something to be worthy of, proud of, in terms of animal realm. If you are attacked, challenged, or criticized, you automatically find an answer, in a very clever way.

The ignorance of the animal realm is not stupid at all. It is extremely clever. But it is still ignorance, in the sense that you don’t see the perspective or the environment around you, but you only see one situation, one goal, aim, and object. You try to mold the situation in accordance with your desire or your demand. And all kinds of excuses need to be put into the situation in order to prove that what you are doing is the right thing. They are not very difficult to find: automatically the cunning quality of the ignorance finds its own way of associating with such falsehood, whatever it may be. And at that point, even you yourself don’t regard it as falsehood. That is the very interesting point about it. Whenever there is a falseness or some devious way of relating with things, you begin by convincing yourself that it is the right thing. And having convinced yourself, having developed this very narrow vision, then you relate with other people, other situations, and try to convert them to your style, to your original desire. So the animal realm seems to be extremely stubborn, but this stubbornness also has a sophisticated quality to it. It is not clumsy or stupid at all. It is a way of defending oneself and maintaining this animal realm. On the whole, the animal realm is without a sense of humor of any kind. The ultimate sense of humor in this case is relating with situations freely in their full absurdity. In other words, a sense of humor, in its true nature, is seeing things clearly, including their falsehood, without blinkers, without barriers. A sense of humor could be seen as a general way of opening or seeing with panoramic vision, rather than as something to relieve your tension or pressure. As long as a sense of humor is regarded, or used as, a way of relieving pressure or self-consciousness, it is an extremely serious thing. It ceases to be a sense of humor at that point. Instead it seems to be looking for another pair of crutches.

The final crescendo of the animal realm seems to be when we try to grope our way into the next situation constantly, trying to fulfill our desires or longings, our hidden and secret wishes. We try to put that into practice quite seriously, quite sincerely, honestly, and directly. In the traditional symbolism, the animal realm—this direct and extremely mean way of relating with the apparent phenomenal world of one’s projections—is symbolized by the pig. The idea behind that is that the pig supposedly does not look to the right or the left or turn around, but it just sniffs along, and whatever comes in front of its nose it consumes. It goes on and on and on, without any kind of discrimination, a very sincere pig.

Often we find ourselves identified with such an image. It doesn’t matter what topic or what particular situation we are dealing with. We may be dealing with all kinds of extremely sophisticated topics and intellectual concepts of the highest standard—but still, our style of working with that sophisticated world is that of a pig. It does not matter whether the pig eats beautiful, fantastic, expensive sweets, or whether the pig eats garbage and shit. Somehow, the criterion for being a pig is not based only on what the pig eats, but it is based on its style, how the pig handles itself in the process of eating.

Such an animal-realm approach could be related with all kind of situations: domestic, materialistic, or spiritual. There seems to be a crescendo of becoming completely more and more trapped. There is no way of steering to the right or the left because you are involved with such situations constantly, all the time, throughout your daily life. You are not able to look at yourself, you are unable to relate with the mirroring quality of the realms and of your life. You refuse to acknowledge that there are such things as mirrors. Mirrors that reflect your own projections do exist, but you do not relate with that at all. So the whole daily living situation—getting up in the morning, having breakfast and then doing odd things, having lunch and then also doing all kinds of things that you are interested in, eating dinner and going to sleep—goes on and on in that way. The things you put into those situations could be at an extremely high level of intelligence, the subject that you’re dealing with could contain tremendous wisdom—but the style in which you handle yourself happens to be that of an animal. There is no sense of humor. There is no way of being willing to surrender, willing to open, or willing to give, at all. There is constant demand. If one thing fails, you are disappointed and you try to embark on another thing. We do this constantly, getting into one subject after another.

In discussing a similar situation, we used the analogy of a tank. A tank just rolls along, crushing everything. If there is a roadblock, the tank just goes through it with the appropriate sidetracks. It can go through buildings or through walls. It doesn’t really matter whether you go through people or through objects. You just roll along. That seems to be the pig quality of the animal realm. And the animal realm seems to be one of the biggest—or
the
biggest and most outstanding—realms. We are often in that realm—to say the least.

Student:
Would one see a kind of naiveté in a person like that? They seem to be unaware or unconscious of their situation. It doesn’t seem as if a person in the animal realm would have a panoramic view.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I think so, yes, definitely. You have developed your own style of achieving things: either playing games of one-upmanship or playing games of conning other people in order to achieve your wishful desires. There is a constant simple-minded quality. Those games are known only to you; therefore you just do it, whether it works or not. If it doesn’t work, then you get into the next situation.

Student:
You were portraying the animal realm in terms of the stubbornness of going forward unthinkingly. But there’s also the stubbornness which we speak of as “stubborn as a mule,” which is that whatever way somebody is trying to pull you, you pull in the opposite way, sort of passive resistance. Is this kind of stubbornness also part of the animal realm, or is it something different?