The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume 6 (42 page)

Next we could discuss the realm of hell. Basically, hell seems to be related with aggression, ultimate aggression. That aggression is based on such perpetual hatred that you begin to lose the point. You are uncertain as to whom you are building up your aggression toward, or by whom that aggression is being built up. There is that continual process of uncertainty and confusion. Not only that, but you begin to build up a whole environment of aggression around you. That takes place constantly, all the time. Finally, even if you yourself feel slightly cool about your own anger, your own aggression, the atmosphere or environment around you begins to throw aggression back on you from outside. So a constant sense of aggression is involved. It is as if you were walking in a hot climate. You yourself might feel physically cool, but at the same time you begin to get this hot air coming at you constantly. So you cannot keep yourself cool all the time at all, because the environment creates heat. That kind of aggression is related with the extreme stuffiness or stubbornness of claustrophobia. The aggression does not seem to be your aggression, but the aggression seems to permeate the whole space around you. There is no space to breathe and there is no space to act. There is no space to move at all. The whole process becomes overwhelming.

Such aggression is so intense that if you kill somebody out of your aggression, you achieve just a fraction of the satisfaction of putting your aggression into practice. Somehow it doesn’t help; the aggression is still lingering around you. If you kill yourself afterward, having murdered someone already, that doesn’t seem to help either, because you don’t get the satisfaction of watching that you have achieved something. You could kill both your enemy and yourself by aggression, but still the aggression seems to be lingering around. There is some sense of satisfaction involved with the aggression, and that satisfaction seems to be the problem. In terms of committing suicide, you have to kill yourself—but the killer and that to be killed are still involved. Finally you realize that if you kill yourself, there’s still the killer, so you haven’t managed to murder yourself completely at all. It is extremely dissatisfying. One never knows who’s killing whom, who could manage to eliminate whom at all, because the whole space is filled with aggression constantly.

It is like eating yourself inwardly: having eaten yourself inwardly, then the person who eats you still happens; so you continue to eat yourself inwardly and so on and so on. There is the constant onion skin of that person. If you eat the skin, then having eaten it already, there is another skin; next you have to eat that skin as well,
and
the next skin, and on and on and on. Finally, in the process of eating, you expand yourself. You get some kind of nourishment as a result of the consumption. You begin to get further strength because you have managed to eat your skin, and then you have to eat
that
skin. So constantly eating inward produces further expansion, skin of another type. So it goes on and on. It is like the analogy of a crocodile biting its own tail. Each time the crocodile bites his own tail, that crocodile is nourished, so the tail grows faster and faster and there is no end to it. That seems to be the ultimate understanding of aggression, that you can’t really eliminate anything by aggression or kill anything by aggression. The more you kill, the more you are creating more situations to be killed. So a constantly growing aggression tends to develop.

Finally there is no space; the whole space has been completely solidified, without any gaps. There is no way to look back or do a double take on your actions at all. The whole space has been completely filled with aggression. It is outrageous aggression, but there is nothing to be outrageous about, because nobody is watching. You are completely consumed in your own environment. So aggression grows constantly, on and on and on. There is not even any pleasure in watching yourself or in creating a watcher to testify to your perceptions of killing and murdering and destroying. Nobody gives you a report. But at the same time, you constantly develop an overwhelming growth of aggression, as a result of the destruction. As a result of the destruction, therefore, creation takes place constantly on and on.

Often the aggression of the hell realm is portrayed in the symbolism by both the sky and earth radiating red fire. The earth is completely reduced into red-hot iron, and the space is completely reduced into an environment of flame and fire. That is to say, there is no space to breathe the air of any coolness or coldness at all. Whatever you see around you is hot and intense, stuffy, extremely claustrophobic. So the hell realm is seen as a realm in which the more you put aggression outward to destroy the enemy and win over your opponent, that much reaction is created. When we talk about your enemy or opponent, it doesn’t have to be an enemy in the literal sense. If you play a game of one-upmanship with somebody, it could be between friends—“I have experienced something much, much better than you did,” or “I have heard something better than you did,” “I already understand such-and-such a book better than you do,” “I have heard the message much more subtly than you did.” A constant battle goes on. It doesn’t have to be a relationship between an enemy and yourself, it could be friends with friends. By putting out that kind of vibration, automatically the reaction afterward is extremely stuffy. Because you decided to overcrowd the space of the relationship, you are left with that stuffiness. So you have created your own realm in that sense, in human life.

That extreme case of one-upmanship is based on the feeling of being better, feeling that your speed is faster than somebody else’s, your cunning quality is better than someone else’s—your intelligence, your literary quality, your philosophical grasping, your understanding, your economical practicality, or whatever. You have a constant list of all these things, so that you can compare, “I am that, I am that,” constantly. You have millions of subjects in your life to compare. Every life situation seems to be related with that sense of comparison. Everybody without fail has some genius, skill of some kind, including if they feel that they don’t have any genius or skill of any kind—which in itself is genius. There are constant ingenious qualities that everybody has, and that automatically presents that much hell, that much aggression, to cover over the overcrowded situation.

You tend to overcrowd, and by doing so you are creating more hell, extending the hell realm. Basically, the hell realm is based on extending your territory to such a level that you are defending your territory constantly. You are presenting one-upmanship all the time; at an unconscious or psychological level, you are trying to nurse or protect your territory as much as you can. That seems to be the process of the hell realm—we are throwing out flames, and radiation comes back to us constantly, on and on and on. There is no room to experience any spaciousness, any openness at all. And there is the constant effort to close up all kinds of space. That is also based on a cunning quality, as in the asura realm, where we talked about jealousy. It has that quality, but at the same time, the realm of hell is much more intense: you are actually putting forth your effort at a very practical level.

The hell realm can only be created by relationships. The asura realm is not necessarily based on relationships alone; it could be based on your own psychological hang-ups. But in the case of the realm of hell, there are constant relationships: you try to play games with something, and dealing with another individual bounces back on you constantly creating extreme claustrophobia, so finally there is no room to communicate at all. The only way to communicate is to try to re-create your paranoia or your anger, your aggression. You thought you managed to win the war by creating all kinds of one-upmanship, by laying all kinds of ego trips on somebody else. But the result is that having done that already, you don’t get any response from the other person. Seemingly, you might think that you have achieved some response, but still you are faced with your own problem: your own negativity comes back, your own aggression comes back. That manages to fill all the space constantly, so it is sort of like a gas chamber.

You are re-creating things constantly. Whenever there is a life situation in which you feel lonesome or you don’t have enough excitement, you get into another situation so that you can play that game again and again. It isn’t so much that there’s enjoyment in playing such a game, but the realm of hell seems to be purely the sense that there isn’t enough security. All the time we feel cold. If there isn’t any way of securing ourselves, we become bleak and too cold; therefore, we have to regenerate the fire. And in order to regenerate the fire, we constantly have to put out that effort to maintain ourselves. The bardo state connected with the hell realm seems to be based on playing that game constantly. One cannot even help playing such a game; one just finds oneself playing that particular game on and on, all the time.

Student:
What kind of doubt is there in each of these realms? Where is the transition where possibly there is space to change into another realm?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
In terms of the hungry ghost realm, it seems that transition is based on the uncertainty as to whether you will be able to maintain your constant consumption. At the hungry ghost level, there seems to be a certain amount of pain; but at the same time, that pain is largely based on not being able to achieve what you want to be. So there is always doubt as to whether you will be able to achieve what you want or not. It is like the gap between being hungry and deprived and because of that, wanting to consume more. Although you may realize that is not very good for you, at the same time, there is the tendency to collect more, to further enrich situations. So there is always a gap: uncertainty as to whether you could achieve what you want or not. There is always that kind of paranoia or fear. So it seems that in the hungry ghost realm, fear is one of the most outstanding situations you could relate with. That fear could be the way of stepping out of it.

In terms of the realm of hell, there is not much space in maintaining yourself as such. But at the same time the spacious quality in itself becomes perpetual creation. You have to function in some kind of space. You are consumed in that hot environment of claustrophobia constantly. You are creating that all the time. There is also, on the other hand, a tendency to relate with both hot and cold. You are aware of the textures of the elements. For instance, the buddha of the hell realm is depicted by a dark gray buddha holding fire and water in his hand. That flame and water in his hand represent a sense of texture as a way of stepping out of the hell realm. You are aware of the texture of the hotness or the texture of the coldness, whatever it is. If there is a sense of texture of all kinds, then there is also doubt at the same time.

In the realm of the hungry ghosts, the buddha of the hungry ghosts holds a container filled with all kinds of food. That food seems to be a way of confusing you or liberating you. It is confusing the issue of whether you want or whether you don’t want. That is the gap you can catch.

Student:
I don’t see why a sense of texture brings a sense of doubt.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Well, texture is not smooth and regular. Whenever we talk about texture, there is some pattern in the texture, as when we talk about fabric of some kind. That automatically means ups and downs and minute details. There are constant bumps or spots of texture. Otherwise, you could not experience textures. For instance, if you are being consumed in a fire and you touch an ember, there is the texture of that ember or fire coming closer and closer to you. It is sort of a pulsating quality. It is a momentary quality naturally, automatically.

S:
Why does that bring doubt?

TR:
Only the sense of texture can bring doubt in terms of the realm of hell. There is no greater space at all. Only the sensitivity to texture can bring doubt; only that can bring understanding. You have to perceive the texture, you have to feel it. It is like a blind person reading braille. If a person is already blind constantly, the only way to relate with reading is to read braille.

Student:
Rinpoche, what is the buddha of the realm of gods?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
The god realm buddha holds a tamboura, a musical instrument, so that he can sing and play sweet music for the gods, to relate with their absorption. He draws them out of their absorption by presenting some kind of gentle seduction.

Student:
Rinpoche, what grasping is involved with the realm of hell? There seems to be a certain grasping with all the other realms.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I suppose you could say that there is a sense of the maintenance of your perpetual continuity of being exposed to cold weather. The realm of hell is very much like living in an extraordinarily warm temperature; you have created a sort of super-central-heated house, whereas the world outside is cold weather.

S:
By warmth, do you mean security?

TR:
Security—which is based on your hatred, presenting your own hatred and having it bounce back on you.

Student:
What buddha family is associated with the realm of hell?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
It seems that the realm of hell is based on the vajra family. There is constant assertion; asserting yourself.

S:
Is it this refusal to see the mirror?

TR:
Yes, definitely.

S:
Is that part of the whole activity of the aggression itself?

TR:
You refuse to see the reflections, but you are fascinated by the textures, which is a different kind of thing altogether. That seems to be one of the reasons the hell realm becomes so powerful.

Student:
What buddha family is associated with the human realm? Did you say that it was the padma family?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
That’s right, yes.