The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume 6 (88 page)

Because of fear of the intensity of the ultimate lights, one turns away from them and moves toward the dull lights that now appear.

Thus, failing to understand the five peaceful buddhas, one sees these buddhas in their wrathful forms, and the sudden shock of their appearance may bring realization.

If not, one becomes aware of friends, houses, children, animals, and so on, offering help and security, and by becoming attracted toward them and trying to escape from the terrifying mental images that one sees, one loses the memory of one’s former physical body and inclines toward a future life in one of the six lokas.

The six lokas themselves are mental projections, and are formed according to our own emotional reactions. For example, our own projection of pleasure becomes the deva loka, our own projection of hatred the hells, and so on, the particular kind of hell experienced depending upon the form of one’s hatred.

Thus the six lokas are like dreams, the hells like nightmares, and so on.

However, the hells and heavens differ from an ordinary dream in that since there is no physical body to act as an anchor, one gets caught up in one’s own projection and the situation becomes completely real and vivid, and the intensity so great as to constitute a virtually timeless moment of pain and pleasure, which corresponds to those vast lengths of time for which life in these worlds is said to last.

The nowness of the moment of one’s conception or appearance in the loka to which one has been attracted is the bardo of birth.

B
ARDO
M
EDITATION

Bardo is something that is meant to be practiced, not just a theory.

It only has meaning if one practices bardo meditation in this life.

All forms of bardo meditation are part of maha ati yoga. There are five main types, the last often being considered a yana in its own right.

Seeing the Kleshas as Enlightenment

Be aware of the development, the building-up of a particular klesha, that is, anger, desire, and so on, and its occurrence as a series of waves.

With awareness one can realize shunyata at the peak of each wave.

Also become aware of the energy in dvesha, the love and compassion in raga, the equanimity and nonaction in avidya, and so on.

Each positive quality is an expression of the creative energy within the klesha, an aspect of prabhasvara.

Seeing the Five Skandhas as Five Buddhas

All that one experiences can be broken down into a particular configuration of the five skandhas. Each of the skandhas must be seen as one of five buddhas, thus:

Samantabhadra as vijnana skandha

Vairochana as rupa skandha

Ratnasambhava as vedana skandha

Amitabha as samjna skandha

Amoghasiddhi as samskara skandha

or as mandalas of five buddhas.

The skandhas may appear as buddha forms, buddha lights, or as the buddha essences of the five jnanas.

Continual Relaxed Awareness of All Experience

By continual relaxed awareness of all experience, by becoming increasingly open and entering into it, one develops a direct contact with experience, a realization of nowness.

This has a shock effect, since it takes one back to the original alaya, the prabhasvara, which produces a fear reaction.

One must then enter into this fear and identify with it.

Dream Yoga

As one falls asleep, the activity part of the five skandhas becomes passive due to avidya.

In nonaction, the activity part of the five skandhas also becomes passive, but this time due to the creative energy within avidya.

One returns to the alaya, the prabhasvara, as one falls into deep sleep and remains there for a while.

One can become aware of this return to the alaya during sleep if there is continual relaxed awareness and openness in everyday life and the intention to be aware of the deep sleep state during the day.

The dream state is like the after-death state, unstable and unpredictable.

If there is continual relaxed awareness and openness in everyday life, and the intention to be aware of one’s dreams during the day, coupled with comparing the sameness of dreams and the waking state, that is, the dreamlike nature of the waking state and the realness of the dream state, one will eventually be able to be aware of one’s dreams.

One then practices by changing the nature of the dream images, for example, one may deliberately jump over a cliff, leap into a fire, turn fire into water, visit a pure land, and so on, until eventually one can control one’s dreams.

Finally one will be able to control the dreamlike quality of the waking state also.

Intense Bardo Meditation

Since this meditation, which may be taken to constitute a yana in its own right, the yangti yana, cannot be understood without a knowledge of certain maha ati terms, it is best to consider it in a separate section.

Y
ANGTI
Y
ANA

Before one can understand this yana or this meditation one must be familiar with the maha ati terms
trechö
(“direct cutting” khregs chod) and
törga
(“instantaneous attainment”; thod rgal).

Trechö is the “sudden path,” achieving realization of the alaya without going through the six paramitas. It emphasizes prajna, the shunyata beyond shunyata, the primordial space quality and the stillness of meditation, and its nature is nowness. It is the negative aspect of nirvana at its highest level.

Trechö is the beginning of atiyoga, and in it one’s being becomes the formless meditation itself.

Mahamudra is an aspect of trechö, but still has some involvement with form.

Törga is the highest path, the highest possible kind of attainment, surpassing all others. It is seeing the whole universe as meaning (jnana) and symbol (kaya), and realizing that kaya and jnana are identical.

It emphasises upaya and prabhasvara, and is just beingness, with no subject or object. It is the positive aspect of nirvana at its highest level.

Törga is the final stage of atiyoga, being like a result rather than a practice. In it one becomes aware of the identity of the external light (kaya) and the internal light (jnana) and their connection with the five buddhas, the five lights, and the five jnanas. (Refer to “Seeing the Five Skandhas as Five Buddhas” above.)

Both trechö and törga are completely effortless and formless.

They always go together, and are interdependent, although a particular meditation may incline more toward one than the other.

The seven-week bardo meditation called
yangti
(“beyond ati”) is the major törga meditation, and is even thought of as a yana in itself, the yangti yoga beyond the ninth yana, atiyoga. By practicing it one attains the rainbow body, or jalü (’ja’ lus), which arises from the complete identification of mind (jnana) and body (kaya). This causes the physical body to vanish, first becoming smaller in size until only the hair and nails remain, which then may finally disappear completely, perhaps in the manner of fire or as light.

Essentially the yangti meditation is an intense form of bardo meditation, producing similar effects to those experienced during and after death. It is practiced in complete darkness, the darkness being used instead of light; in this respect it differs greatly from other meditation practices.

Yangti is thought to be extremely dangerous, and facilities for performing it were only available at two or three meditation centers in Tibet.

Every prospective practitioner had to undergo months of preparation and was not allowed to attempt it until he was judged mentally and physically ready.

When he was ready he was left in a meditation cell from which light was gradually excluded until at the end of a week he was in complete darkness.

At first he felt depressed and fearful, but gradually learned to live in the dark.

Every day his guru visited him to give meditation instruction and advice. The instructions were the same as those given to a dying person, and did not involve visualizations, although mental imagery appeared spontaneously; for example, the appearance of wrathful jnana eyes played a part in the practice.

At a later stage the guru’s visits were vitally important, since otherwise the meditator would lose complete touch with reality, forgetting who he was and what he was doing, and being unable to remember his past in any coherent way.

Eventually the dualistic concept of light and dark was lost, and everything was seen in a blue light.

He saw his own projections appearing as five buddha forms (lower), or as five buddha lights (medium), or as the essences of the five jnanas (higher).

It is usual to see the blue light first; it then changes to a different color depending upon how the meditator broke away from the alaya (for example, one might go from blue to white [peace], then to yellow, and so on).

It is a dangerous thing to become fascinated by the colored figures, mental imagery, and visions one may see and then to start deliberately projecting them. There is an oral tradition in Tibet that this fascination can lead to such a withdrawal from reality that one mentally creates a world of one’s own and physically enters a state of suspended animation resembling hibernation.

As the meditation proceeds one passes through the stages described in “The Bardos of Death, After-Death, and Birth” above.

The meditation lasts for a nominal period of seven weeks, as in the bardo, but it may in fact vary from a few days to a few months, depending upon the person.

At the end of the meditation the light is gradually readmitted until after a week the windows are completely uncovered and the meditator may leave his cell.

Femininity

O
M SVABHAVA SHUDDHA SARVADHARMA SVABHAVA SHUDDHA HAM
is the principal
dharana
used by tantric practitioners before the creation of a visualization. It proclaims inherent purity or the immaculate space of basic sanity, which means space uncorrupted by dualistic confusions. This space is the mother principle, which safeguards against the development of ego’s impulses. But perception without perceiver or visualization without visualizer is impossible. The mother, having occupied the space with purity, gives birth spontaneously to the visualization.

Feminine energy plays an important part in the Buddhist teaching. Naropa’s consort-sister Nigu, whose teaching became most dynamic in the six-doctrine practice; Mandarava, dynamic lady of eternal being, Padmasambhava’s consort in India; Kyegudamo of the Sakya tribe, one of Buddha’s disciples who supposedly confused his plans for future monasticism; Yeshe Tsogyel, consort of Padmasambhava in Tibet, known as the mother of all Tibetans and preserver of the sacred teachings; Sakyadeva of Nepal, another of Padmasambhava’s consorts and exposer of mind’s tendency toward neurosis; the follower of Longchen Rabjam, the twentieth-century abbess Jetsun Rinpoche who came near to becoming the rainbow body of wisdom and numerous other woman adepts have attained the highest level of sanity. But relating to them as part of woman’s liberation or woman’s enlightenment record is silly. Realization does not belong to either sex.

It might be too chauvinistic to speak of woman’s role in the teaching. Rather it is the principle of femininity that plays the important part. In this discussion I am not concerned with the sociological significance of woman; my view of this particular issue is based on the respectability of the feminine principle.

In phenomenal experience, whether pleasure or pain, birth or death, sanity or insanity, good or bad, it is necessary to have a basic ground. This basic ground is known in Buddhist literature as the mother principle. Prajnaparamita (the perfection of wisdom) is called the mother-consort of all the Buddhas. The
svabhava dharana
is the rational spokesman of this mother principle. As a principle of cosmic structure, the all-accommodating basic ground is neither good nor bad. In some sense it is neither male nor female. One might call it hermaphroditic, but due to its quality of fertility or potentiality, it is regarded as feminine.

The mother is always present, constantly giving birth. In the tantric tradition of praise of the mother, it is said: “Since you are unborn, you are also unceasing.” This brings us to the perspective that this mother is a great-grandmother as well as a young mother. She would also be seen as having given birth to passion. Thus she might be a lover at the same time.

In some tantric writings, the double-triangular star is referred to as the originator of all the dharmas. It is like a cervix, the gate of all birth. The mother principle is productive, constantly churning out the display of the phenomenal world. But the mother is also the consumer, the devourer. Thus the whole process becomes a recycling in which she is both creator and destroyer. Nevertheless, the mother cannot devour or give birth in rapid mechanical succession, because she conditions the fickleness of time itself. She has time to devour and give birth in that she produces the right moment.

F
EMININE
I
NSPIRATION

The Sanskrit word
lalita
, “dance of maya,” describes feminine inspiration. The female gives birth to a child or a lion cub—an offspring of whatever species—cherishes it, nurses it, encourages it to play games using hands or claws or teeth, until her offspring begins to discriminate. In other words, it no longer mistakes shit for food, this for that. This is an extremely powerful educational process. It can only develop in the environment of feminine inspiration.

Feminine inspiration here does not particularly refer to the activities of a fussy mother or aggressive lioness, but rather to a mother’s care. This care creates an extraordinary new situation, a sense of warmth, the inspiration of the meaningfulness of life; also precaution as to what is not worth pursuing. Mothers are instinctively trained to this; it does not come out of some scholastic system. The Tibetan teacher Paltrül Rinpoche said that the fact that even the most aggressive animals feel compassion toward their young indicates their buddha nature showing through.