The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume 6 (10 page)

TR:
Well, mind operates realistically.

S:
Does it make any difference whether they are actually acted out?

TR:
Well, they are acted out, of course, but that activity is questionable—whether it is purely action for the sake of action or whether it is inspired by the mind. The point is that once you are in any of these realms, you are completely immersed in it. You can’t help showing the internal impressions of it. You are completely submerged into that kind of experience. It is so living and so real. It is almost confusing whether the experience of hell, for instance, is external hell or internal hell, purely in your mind. At the time, you can’t distinguish whether you are just thinking or whether you’ve been made to think that way. And I don’t think you can avoid acting at all. If you are nervous, for instance, much as you try not to act nervous, there will still be some signs of nervousness.

S:
But take passion, for instance: you can restrain your action, but you can’t restrain your thinking.

TR:
You can. At a certain gross level there are different ways of putting out passion. Passion is not sexual passion alone at all, there are many kinds: one particular desire can be replaced by all sorts of other things. You see, what generally happens is that if you don’t want to reveal completely your full state of being, quite conveniently you tend to find ways of interpreting that in order to get satisfaction in all sorts of ways.

S:
So whether you act on it or not, you’re in that world?

TR:
Yes, at that time you’re in that world, and action happens.

S:
And repressing it doesn’t change the fact?

TR:
No, you always find a way of doing it.

Student:
I sense, when you talk about transmuting the six realms of samsara into the six realms of the awakened state, that the six worlds are to be avoided or worked through into something else. Is that a good way to think about it?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I don’t think replacing them with something else would help. That doesn’t seem to be the point. The point is that within that realm of intensity there is the absence of that intensity as well—otherwise intensity couldn’t exist, couldn’t happen, couldn’t operate. Intensity must develop in some kind of space, some kind of environment. That basic environment is the transcendental aspect.

S:
There’s no sense in leaving the world of hell behind, transmuting it into something which excludes hell?

TR:
No, then you go through the realms again and again. You see, you start from the world of heaven, come down to hell, get tired of it, and go back up to heaven. And you come down again and again—or the other way around. That’s why it is called
samsara
, which means “whirlpool.” You are continually running around and around and around. If you try to find a way out by running, by looking for an alternative, it doesn’t happen at all.

S:
Does it make any sense to look for a way out?

TR:
It’s more like a way in, rather than a way out.

Student:
Were you ever in the hell world yourself? Have you yourself ever experience the hell world?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Definitely, yes.

S:
What do you do?

TR:
I try to remain in the hell world.

Student:
What is the basic ground that allows one to enter completely into that state and yet be completely out of that state at the same time?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
The point seems to be that the hell realm, or whatever realm may be, is like the river, and the bardo experience out of that is the island. So you could almost say that the bardo experience is the entrance to the common ground.

S:
Is it the key to that experience?

TR:
You could say key, but that is making a more than necessary emphasis.

S:
So it’s like the high point or peak.

TR:
Yes. Yes.

Student:
You spoke yesterday of the ground or canvas on which experience is painted. How does that relate to the river and the island?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
That’s a different metaphor altogether. In this case, the canvas had never known colors yet, it’s an open canvas. Even if you paint on the canvas, it remains white, fundamentally speaking. You could scrape off the paint.

S:
I still don’t see how it relates to the gulf between the ground and the experience.

TR:
The experience is, I suppose, realizing that the turbulent quality purely happens on the surface, so to speak. So you are not rushing to try to solve the problem of turbulence, but you are diving in—in other words, fearlessness. Complete trust in confusion, so to speak. Seeing the confused quality as the truth of its own reality. Once you begin to develop the confidence and fearless understanding of confusion as being true confusion, then it is no longer threatening. That is the ground. You begin to develop space.

S:
Where hope and fear cease to exist?

TR:
Of course.

S:
And activity continues; each state continues. Nothing changes?

TR:
Nothing changes.

Student:
If confusion persists, do you just let it persist? Don’t you try to clear it out?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
You do not go against the force, or try to change the course of the river.

S:
Suppose there are four exits, and in our confusion we don’t know which is a good one?

TR:
You see, the whole idea is not to try to calm
down
; it is to see the calm aspect at the
same
level rather than just completely calming down. These particular states of turbulence, the emotions or confusions, also have positive qualities. One has to learn to transmute the positive qualities as part of them. So you don’t want to completely destroy their whole existence. If you destroy them, if you try to work against them, it’s possible that you will be thrown back constantly, because fundamentally you’re running against your own energy, your own nature.

S:
There’s still something undesirable I feel about confusion. You always think that you’re going from some unenlightened state to an enlightened state, that if you stay with it there is this little hope or feeling that you will develop clarity sooner or later.

TR:
Yes, there will be clarity. Definitely.

S:
So you don’t want confusion to be around, you want to get rid of it, but nevertheless you have to stay in it to see it?

TR:
It doesn’t exactly work that way. You see, you begin to realize that the clarity is always there. In fact, when you are in a state of complete clarity you realize that you never needed to have made such a fuss. Rather than realizing how good you are now, you begin to see how foolish you’ve been.

Student:
Does anything actually exist outside of the mind itself? Does anything actually exist?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I would say yes and no. Outside the mind is, I suppose you could say, that which is not duality—open space. That doesn’t mean that the whole world is going to be empty. Trees will be there, rivers will be there, mountains will be there. But that doesn’t mean they are some
thing
. Still, tree remains tree and rocks remain rocks.

Student:
I wonder, in the human world is there any advantage over, say, hell for crossing over, or is it equal in all respects?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I think it’s the same. The karmic potential of the human realm seems to be greater because there is more communication in the human state. The human state is the highest state of passion, and the ultimate meaning of passion is communication, making a link, relationship. So there is a kind of open space, the possibility of communication. But that doesn’t mean that the human realm is an exit from the six realms of the world. The experience of passion is very momentary: you might have a human state of mind one moment and the next moment you have another realm coming through.

S:
But seeing as how we have human bodies, isn’t the human world the one in which we have the best chance to accept ourselves for what we are?

TR:
Yes, but we are talking about the realms as six experiences within the human body. We are not talking about the different realms as other types of worlds.

S:
I understand that, but since we have human bodies and minds, isn’t passion the basic framework of our lives rather than hatred? Don’t we have the best chance of crossing over within that framework?

TR:
I think so. That’s precisely why we can discuss these six types of world in a human body. So as far as experience goes it is equal, but the physical situation of the human realm seems to be unequal or special. As I’ve said already, we are discussing these realms now, in our human bodies. However, all of them are human states of mind, one no more so than any other.

Student:
I’m not clear about the difference between humans and asuras.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
The asura realm is a kind of intermediate state between the intense passion of the human realm and intense bliss, which is the world of heaven. Somehow there’s a discontentment with the blissful state; one is looking for a more crude experience. Then you begin to transform your experience into that of an asura, which is energy, speed, rushing, and a very sudden glimpse of comparison which is called jealousy or envy. But I don’t think jealousy and envy are concrete enough words to express this state of neuroticism. It’s a combination of jealousy with the efficient speed of looking for an alternative to the blissful state of the world of the gods.

Then in the human realm you begin to find some way of communicating, some way of making that experience more concrete. You begin to find passion instead of pure jealousy and comparison alone. You begin to find that you can get into it: you can dive into it and indulge, in fact. In the realm of the asura there’s no time for indulgence because the whole thing is extremely fast and rushed. It’s almost a reaction against the blissful state.

I would say that with all the realms you are not quite certain what you are actually getting and what you are trying to get hold of. So you try to find the nearest situation and reinforce that or change that. There’s constant confusion.

Student:
If you drop all your usual patterns of relating, what holds on to giving logical answers?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
You can’t do that in any case. Impossible.

S:
You could go to the desert.

TR:
Then there would still be the desert. If you try to give up patterns, that in itself forms another pattern.

S:
But what if you’re not trying?

TR:
If you are not trying to drop anything, either pattern or without pattern, and you are accepting all of them as just black and white, you have complete control; you are the master of the whole situation. Before, you were dealing purely at the ground level, but in this case you are dealing from an aerial view, so you have more scope.

Student:
Does anxiety have anything to do with the asura realm, that rushing quality?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I think so, yes.

S:
It also seems that the rushing quality is very closely connected to the hungry ghost state.

TR:
That’s a good observation. The world of hell is ultimate crudeness, and the world of the gods is ultimate gentility. The hungry ghost and asura realms are the intermediaries between these two realms and the animal and human realms.

Student:
Sometimes the fear of losing oneself, of losing ego, is very overwhelming. It’s very real. Is there any way to prepare the ground for dropping that, or do you just have to drop it one step at a time?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I think the only alternative left is just to drop. If you are as close as that, if you’re extremely close to the cliff—

S:
You mean to the ground.

TR:
To the cliff. [
Laughter
]

S:
It almost seems as if someone has to push you over; you won’t go yourself.

TR:
Yes. [
Laughter
]

Student:
I was wondering, is there really any reality except the reality about which everyone agrees?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
You might find that everybody agrees on it, but sometimes people don’t agree. To some people, one particular aspect is more real than the others. Somehow, trying to prove what is real and what is not real isn’t particularly beneficial.

S:
Is it possible that a real world exists, but that even if we all agree as human beings, a catfish or a gopher might see it differently?

TR:
Well, it seems that reality, from a rational point of view, is something that you can relate to—when you’re hungry you eat food, when you’re cold you put on more clothes, and when you’re frightened you look for a protector. Those are the kinds of real things we do. Real things happen, experiences such as that happen.

Student:
Rinpoche, are you going to discuss ego at all during this seminar?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I suppose that subject will pop up. [
Laughter
]

Student:
Rinpoche, you said that you can’t get out of a situation, you have to get completely into it.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
You have to be completely fearless. And there should be communication with the ground you’re standing on. If you are in complete touch with that nowness of the ground, then all the other situations are automatically definite and obvious.