The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume 6 (24 page)

S:
You mean they’re all the same?

TR:
All the same, yes. But at the same time, the ground makes it possible to have a jigsaw puzzle displayed.

Student:
In the realm of the gods, does everybody that you see appear to you to be a god, and you yourself feel like a god?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I think so, yes. It’s the same thing with hatred, for instance. If you hate yourself, you hate everybody, and you hallucinate that everybody is aggravating your hatred. The same thing applies the other way around. As long as you centralize your attention inwardly, to a personal involvement with ego, that puts out similar kinds of radiation continuously.

S:
So the best you can do is to try somehow to realize that you’re in a given state. It’s like you get so caught up in it that if you can somehow realize that that’s what you’re doing, or somehow realize that you’re seeing everybody in a certain way, then you have a chance to get a bigger picture.

TR:
Well, yes. It’s a question of seeing things as they are, rather than your version. If you have jaundice, you see every white as yellow. That’s the analogy which has been used.

S:
So no matter what color of sunglasses you are wearing, you’re always tinting things one way or another.

TR:
Yes.

Student:
If I may I use the word
high
for a moment—whether it be mildly drug-induced or just suddenly feeling like you’re a god, you know, and you look around at your friends and you feel a definite change of consciousness and you feel like you’re in a royal court and you’re all gods and goddesses inhabiting the planet—is that sort of a bardo experience?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Well, I would say that’s the realm of the gods experience—the ground where bardo is developing.

Student:
You said that the hungry ghost world was the disease of the learner. My questions are from that framework—to learn. If that’s the framework, you said that the food given to the hungry ghost turns to fire in his stomach. Sometimes I get that same sensation from your answers—often. And other times I get the opposite feeling—of encouragement, or the suggestion to do it this way or such-and-such. But both questions seem to be motivated from that learning point of view.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
That’s the interesting point. It is like the idea of transmission, which takes place not only by the power of the teacher but also through the openness of the student. The meeting of the two minds takes place simultaneously, and then transmission takes place on the spot. So I would say that in the same way what happens generally is that we try to cover ourselves up—all the time. But there are occasional gaps where we forget ourselves, we forget to cover up. Likewise, in this case there will be gaps of open mind which transcend the hungry ghost level. That’s the whole point. Otherwise it would seem that whatever you do is hungry ghost, there would be no way out at all—but that is not so.

All the experiences of bardo and of the different types of realms are patches of experiences—not completely covered whole situations. That is why there are possibilities of sudden experiences like satori. Sudden experiences of intelligence, or buddha nature, come through on and off. One doesn’t have to achieve complete perfection trying to bring up that experience all the time, necessarily; but the occasion to acknowledge yourself as a hungry ghost and the occasion to acknowledge yourself as transcending the hungry ghosts take place alternatingly, all the time.

Student:
The desire of ego to be fulfilled—how does one liberate those desires of fulfillment that ego presents? Is it by fulfilling them and actually experiencing the fulfillment? Will that satisfy it? Does one have to see that and liberate it by going through the experience?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
It seems that trying to fulfill is another escape—equally the same as trying to suppress. Generally there is a conflict between you and your experiences, your desires. It is a kind of game between ego and its extensions. Sometimes ego tries to overpower the projections, and sometimes the projections try to overpower ego—that kind of battle goes on all the time. So the point is to see that battle as it is, rather than fulfill the desires or suppress them.

Student:
Is the hunger for enlightenment related to this other hunger that you’re talking about?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Definitely.

S:
Then you have to stop wanting to be enlightened, is that the idea? Because if you’re hungry for enlightenment, if you want it, it would seem as though you’d have to quit thinking about it or something.

TR:
Well, you see, the point is the same as in the bodhisattva path, in which you transcend the desire for the attainment of enlightenment and continuously work along the path. In that case, the path is the goal and the goal is the path. Then enlightenment becomes almost a by-product rather than a deliberate aim.

S:
You have to give up thinking about enlightenment and just do it?

TR:
In terms of ambitions, yes.

S:
But don’t we understand Buddha to have been a bodhisattva already before he sat down under the bodhi tree? Isn’t that the way he’s usually understood?

TR:
Yes, exactly.

S:
But you said that his vow when he sat down was an expression of the highest level of a hungry ghost. If he was a bodhisattva, how could he also be an expression of a hungry ghost?

TR:
Well, it happens continuously. That’s why he’s a bodhisattva; that’s why he’s not yet Buddha. It has been said that once a bodhisattva reaches the tenth stage of the path, which is next to the enlightenment state, his view of apparent phenomena, or his projections, is like vision by full moonlight. He sees things relatively precisely and clearly, but not as clearly as by sunlight. That’s why he is a bodhisattva; he has some more to go.

Student:
Would you give an example of being friendly to your ego?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
It is a kind of communication and understanding of the mechanism of ego and not trying to suppress it or condemn it, but using ego as a stepping-stone, as a ladder. All the concepts and ideas of path and vehicles that we discussed are partly the formation of ego. In fact, the very idea of enlightenment exists because of ego—because there is contrast. Without ego there wouldn’t be the very notion of enlightenment at all.

Student:
Could you say something about being fully awakened and the bardo levels? For instance, the bodhisattva is still treading through the six levels, but when he becomes fully awakened in buddhahood, does he still work through these levels in his bodhisattva role?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I don’t think so, for the very fact that there is no role. I mean, a buddha begins to realize that he has no role to play anymore, but to be.

S:
But then would he still be a bodhisattva?

TR:
He would be a compassionate person, in terms of a bodhisattva, but he would transcend changing into different levels because in that state, knowledge begins to become a part of him rather than being absolutely learned, in which case knowledge and oneself are still separate things.

Student:
Is awakening in one of the realms good for all of them?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Any kind of awake is just awake—in any realm.

Student:
I think you helped me see again today how a lot of the way I think about enlightenment has to do with my ego. Ego thinks it’s so special, that it deserves something special—this word
enlightenment
sounds like it’s right up ego’s alley. I watch how my ego seems repulsed by the idea that it could be something ordinary. I get very confused at that point, the way ego looks upon enlightenment. Right here, it’s very ordinary and simple—and then somehow it’s very revolting and repelling. It’s like I don’t want to be like the other people here or the ordinary people out in the street. Ego seems to take that attitude.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Yes, that’s quite an interesting point. The awake state is the ordinary of the ordinary—an absolutely insignificant thing, completely insignificant. It’s nothing, actually. And if you see it that way, then with all the expectations it built up, ego is really going to suffer and be irritated.

S:
But even the path sometimes inflates the ego.

TR:
Yes, sure it does. Therefore your relationship to the path should also be an ordinary one.

S:
But even with the ordinary, the ego is still there, choosing something or other.

TR:
Yes, that’s always the danger: if we place more emphasis on being extraordinary or on being ordinary, it’s almost saying the same thing in terms of ego.

S:
Then it seems that you can’t get away from it in any way.

TR:
That’s the whole point. Give in and stop trying to do anything at all. It is a kind of judo play: you don’t push ego but ego is pushing you, which becomes ego throwing itself away by itself.

Student:
Rinpoche, is there any difference between enlightenment and freedom, or are they one and the same?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
In the ultimate sense, they are the same.

Student:
In regard to seeing through one’s projections, I get the feeling sometimes that you can’t see anything at all, that all you can see is your projections. Does that have something to do with just shutting up?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I don’t think so. It’s the opposite.

S:
I don’t mean shutting up; I mean shutting up talking.

TR:
No, no. Even metaphorically it is not closing. It is the opposite—really connecting, communication.

EIGHT

The Bardo of Death

This talk began with a long period of silence during which Trungpa Rinpoche was hidden from the audience by a large folding mirror. From behind the mirror he shouted, “Hell!” This was followed by a loud and long burst of laughter from the audience, after which the mirror was removed, and the talk continued.

H
ELL.
T
HE EXPERIENCE OF
hell comes from deliberate, basic aggression. That aggression is the opposite of patience. Patience usually means being extremely kind and cool. But here patience seems to have a different meaning than just keeping your cool. In this case, it is not only keeping your cool, but it is seeing the situation in its fullest extent. Such patience could be said to be active, extremely active and energetic. It is not necessarily a lot of waiting—waiting for things to happen, waiting to see. Instead, patience is having a proper relationship or exchange with the situation as it is. And you are part of that situation. It is not that you are working on some strategy as to how to work with it.

The basic aggression of hell comes from your wanting to destroy your projection. It is natural aggression: you want to destroy the mirror. As projection works as it is, in a very efficient and accurate way, it becomes too embarrassing. You don’t want to go along with it. Instead of seeing the naked truth, you want to destroy the mirror—to the extent of not only destroying the projection, or the mirror, but also the perceiver of that mirror. The perceiver is also extremely painful, so there is the suicidal mentality of wanting to destroy the perceiver of the mirror as well as the mirror itself. There is constant struggle, destruction, going on.

The bardo connected with the experience of hell, the bardo of death, has to do with the claustrophobia of pain and pleasure, the sudden peak of anger in which you do not know whether you are actually trying to destroy something or whether you are trying to achieve something by destroying. It is this ambiguous quality of destruction and creation. Naturally, of course, destruction is in itself creation. But somehow there’s a conflict. You have created destruction, therefore it is creation. In other words, one is not quite certain—because of the energy, because of the speed that you go through—whether you are actually going or coming. The moment you think you are going, you discover that you are coming. That extreme speed of running, rushing, becomes confusing, which is the particular peak experience of the bardo of death.

Death could be said to be birth at the same time, from this point of view. The moment something ends, the next birth takes place naturally. So death is the re-creating of birth. It is the same idea as reincarnation, the rebirth process. There is also the realization of death as being constant death. Things cannot exist or develop without momentum. Changing is taking place always, constantly. That is why the teachings place tremendous importance on the realization of impermanence. Impermanence becomes extremely important at this particular point of aggression. Aggression is trying to freeze the space, still trying to sterilize the space. But when you begin to see the impermanence, you cannot solidify space anymore. That then is the peak experience of transcending aggression.

As we discussed yesterday in regard to hunger, if you are fully involved with the bardo experience of one of the six realms, you also experience your neighboring territory. This also applies to aggression, or the hell realm, which is next to the hungry ghost realm. So another aspect of aggression, or hell experience, could also be self-pity, completely closing in, self-condemnation. You condemn yourself because there is nothing attractive in you at all, nothing beautiful. You would basically like to destroy yourself or escape from yourself.

That kind of self-condemning quality in oneself could be said to be very positive in a way. You are just about to discover the opposite of that; you are just about to see the alternatives. Because of the possibility of alternatives, you ask questions based on being other than what you are, other than where you’re at, which is a very healthy situation. In that sense, condemnation could be said to be inspiration—as long as the person can proceed further with that condemnation, to a further experience of himself. The condemner, or the person who condemns, and that which is the object of condemnation are different. As long as one is able to get knowledge of the subject, that particular condemner is removed. In other words, the watcher is removed.