The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume 6 (35 page)

S:
But isn’t the alternative also there: that just as one can be confused by it, so it can also be the guru to teach you at that moment?

TR:
If you are confused, you will find it very difficult to learn from it—unless you realize your confusion as it is. If you become part of the confusion completely, you will not have any questions at all to ask. But if you are partially confused, or if you are enlightenedly confused, then the confusion brings more questions. In that case you are not really confused at all; you are beginning to find a way out of it—because you ask questions, because you begin to speculate, you are not trapped in it at all.

Student:
What happens if what you’re reaching for is not something you want to hold on to? What happens then, if you continue to be confused?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Well, then you get out of the situation. I mean, you don’t have to hold on to it anymore.

S:
What happens then?

TR:
At the beginning it is quite irritating, because there is nothing to relate with; the whole thing is very loose. Before, you had occupations—fixed and solid occupations. But it is the way out anyway, because you are not bound by anything at that point.

Student:
In the asura realm, it seems you are so wrapped up in its gamelike quality that you don’t even realize that what you are doing is a game.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
That gamelike quality of comparing situations in order to maintain one’s own paranoia is a way of maintaining itself. You feel you have found a very intricate way to interpret things. Things become fascinating, intricate. And seemingly you can work with those interpretations you have made: you feel that if somebody is trying to help you, you could read something into it and try to prove to yourself that that person is actually trying to destroy you.

Student:
Rinpoche, where is the pleasurable aspect of the realm of the asuras?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
The pleasure comes from the sense that you are being smart enough that you haven’t been caught anywhere. You manage even to interpret those who are trying to help you as trying to destroy you.

S:
What if the persons who are trying to help you really are trying to destroy you, in the sense that if you would be helped you would cease to be a jealous god?

TR:
Yes. Quite possibly. That is a kind of fascination with the occupation.

Student:
On the reaching process, you said that you reach for the wrong thing. Is the implication there that you could reach for the right thing?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
If you try to reach you can’t seem to do it—unless the situation is presented to you. Automatically there is some subtlety from the external situation.

Student:
Do all the bardo states contain grasping?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Of some kind or another, yes, like the absorption of the realm of the gods and the jealousy of the asuras. There is always the attempt to grasp something.

S:
How do you give up grasping, or step out of it?

TR:
Well, you can’t just give up grasping just like that. Automatically, you are aware of yourself giving up grasping, which means you are grasping nongrasping. So it seems that the ultimate and obvious thing is that one has to give up the person who is grasping.

S:
How do you do that?

TR:
By not doing anything—meditating.

Student:
Rinpoche, you said the asuras were associated with the karma family quality. What quality are the gods associated with?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
The world of the gods is associated with the buddha family, meditative absorption. Asuras are associated with the karma family. We are getting more complicated here.

Student:
How does one become an asura?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
You find yourself in it, I suppose.

S:
What drives persons from other states to the asuras?

TR:
Speculative and intellectual speculation, which is largely based on trying to maintain oneself constantly. If one tries to maintain oneself constantly, then one also has to look into the negative aspect of maintenance: Who is preventing our maintenance? What’s the problem with it? One has to develop jealousy.

Student:
It sounds as if becoming an asura is one of a variety of available practices for defending yourself.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Yes.

S:
Are there any special characteristics of a person who might choose this tactic over others?

TR:
I think it is largely based on the ambition to cover all areas. You make sure that you have the complete right to become emperor, yearning for ultimate comfort where there is not one small instant to irritate you at all and the whole thing is completely under control. It is sort of warlord-minded.

Student:
You talked about how all of these six realms coexist with each other and how one is predominant. Do you mean, in terms of an actual person over a period of weeks and months, that one is predominantly in one realm? Or can it even be a question of one day—that a person moves from being predominantly in the realm of the gods to the asura realm in one day? In that way it changes very quickly.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
It could change very quickly as well as you could be stuck for years and years. It is the same as the general idea of the bardo experience after death. The traditional estimate is that it lasts seven weeks, but it has been said that a person with strong karmic force could take his or her next birth immediately after death, or he also could be suspended for centuries and centuries. So the same thing could occur here. Those who are able to find themselves in such realms for a long time have more determination. They are more self-centered, and they have found their occupation for life. In some cases, we could say that we get ourselves into these six types of psychotic states constantly; we get into them and we come out of them all the time.

Student:
You said that the six realms, because of their extreme intensity, are a bardo of some sort. And then you said that each realm has the qualities of the six bardo states. I don’t quite understand what type of bardo the six realms are.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
All of it.

S:
But doesn’t one predominate? Isn’t there in each realm a predominance of one of the bardo states?

TR:
Well, that depends on the details of the psychological state. Whether it is predominantly a dreamlike quality, or a predominantly meditative-like quality, or whatever it may be. You see, each realm has to maintain itself by the different elements, and these elements contain six types, which are the six bardos.

S:
I understand that the six realms altogether are the sipa bardo. Is that correct?

TR:
You could say that our human life on earth, what we are now, is the basic sipa bardo state, in general. But within that we also have psychological states: godlike, hell-like, hungry ghost–like. Characteristic psychological states pertain all the time.

Student:
Rinpoche, do people in different realms have a tendency to seek each other out? Do they flock together? Do they try to destroy or conquer each other? I’m wondering how they interrelate?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I suppose you could have some kind of affinity, maybe; but on the other hand, if you are an asura, when you meet another asura, it would be regarded as a mockery of yourself.

S:
Rinpoche, if you were an asura, would you have a more comfortable affinity to a person in another realm?

TR:
That is very hard to say. It depends on the basic strength of your sense of security, how intent you are on being in that state.

Student:
I have a very specific, practical question. There are people with this characteristic around, and you may find yourself running into them, perhaps at work. It sounds rather hopeless, that there is no chance of communication. Yet if you are with a person who is in the asura realm, which sounds like a very dire kind of dilemma, you might want to do anything you could to communicate, to share yourself. You would like to do anything that you might be able to do to help him or her out of that realm. Is there anything you can do, or do you just simply have to recognize the hopelessness of it?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
It depends on how you find the means to communicate to them. It is very intricate, and you have to be extremely skillful, because you cannot attempt it several times—you have to do it accurately at once. That communication comes from your style and the style of the other person. It is feasible that you may be able to help, but quite likely it is impossible.

Student:
In pictures of the wheel of life, a buddha appears in each realm.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Yes, you have to be a buddha—that’s right.

S:
What is he doing in the realm of the asuras?

TR:
He is speaking their language in an enlightened way. In the iconography, the buddha of the asura realm is wearing armor and carrying a sword in his hand. That is their language.

Student:
Could you distinguish between a bardo and nonbardo state?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
It seems that in the nonbardo state, there are no extremes, but situations could be switched back and forth. It is quite loose. There are so many junctions that you are not stuck in it, but you can make your choices; whereas in a bardo state, you are completely stuck, you are trapped in between two extremes, like extreme pain and extreme pleasure. You are trapped in it: if you try to go too far, you find yourself in extreme pleasure and you don’t want to leave it; but if you go to the other extreme, you find yourself in extreme pain and you don’t know how to get out of it. So you are sort of trapped in that situation—like meditative absorption or the jealous god thing or whatever it might be. Each extreme case presents a prison of its own, so you have no way out of it. The nonbardo state is like the questioning mind, or the true function of buddha nature. It is the dissatisfaction that takes place in the actual realm of people: you could communicate, you have questions, you have doubts, you could make choices of all kinds.

S:
Then why is the clear light a bardo state? Is that a trap too?

TR:
Clear light, in this case, is a transparent situation which could be colored by all kinds of other experiences. Clear light is generally a state of no-man’s-land—and it could be made into someone’s territory.

S:
What if it isn’t colored?

TR:
Clear light is also the experience of buddha nature. It even transcends buddha nature. In that sense clear light becomes an aspect of nonreturning.

S:
In other words, you don’t have any sense of being in such a state?

TR:
You are part of it, yes. You are part of it.

S:
In actual practice how do bardo and nonbardo come together?

TR:
It seems that if you have found your fixed logic, your way of maintaining your ego, your occupation, then you are in a bardo state of some kind or other; whereas, if you are still searching, if you are still open—or if you are free from searching altogether—that is the nonbardo state.

S:
What about the transitions between bardo states? Are there moments of nonbardo there?

TR:
Well, there are occasional doubts as to whether you are actually in that state forever, whether you have actually found some answers or not. You are uncertain and your bardo state begins to shake; your conviction begins to fall apart. And as your conviction gets more and more shaken and falls apart more—then you come out of that particular extreme case. You come back to the nonbardo state. You become a student again.

S:
That’s the difference between searching and not searching? It seems that very often you give the message of not searching, and yet now you say that the characteristic of the nonbardo state is the searching.

TR:
Yes, it is so.

S:
Are you asking us to get back into the bardo?

TR:
I don’t think so. Quit searching.

Student:
Rinpoche, is the clear light comparable to the nonbardo state?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
It depends. The clear light seems to be like water which has no color. If you put colors into it, the clear light absorbs that color; but still the water quality, which is colorless, remains.

S:
How does that relate to the nonbardo state?

TR:
Because there is also a colorless quality, even while being colored. If you pour paint into water, the water still remains transparent while it is carrying the different colors.

Student:
Is there a state which is beyond bardo?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
That seems to be the final state of realization—you are not searching anymore and you are not trapped anymore.

S:
Is that taking the situation as it is all the time?

TR:
Yes.

S:
Is it a real possibility?

TR:
You have to find out.

S:
Do you feel you have some answers? Should we search for them?

TR:
Searching seems to be a kind of introduction, to open your mind toward something. The style of that search is nonsearch. Do you see what I mean?

S:
Nongrasping?

TR:
Nongrasping, yes. If you decide to search, you have questions, you have doubts—that’s good. But how to answer your problems, how to find a way out of doubts is nongrasping, which is not searching.