The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume 6 (37 page)

The whole process, in this case, is always one of grasping, holding on to something, holding on to high ideals. Of course, spiritually it is holding on to the higher spiritual truths of those who have achieved. And often, people who are in this realm of human beings have visions or identify themselves with Christ, Buddha, Krishna, Muhammad, or whomever. Historical characters mean a tremendous amount to you because they have achieved something. They have magnetized everything that you can possibly think of—fame and power. If they wanted to become rich, they could become so, because they have such tremendous influence over other people. Spiritually you would like to be someone like that. You have a competitive attitude toward them: you do not necessarily want to become better than them, but you would at least like to match them. And people also have visions in which they identify themselves with great politicians, great statesmen, great poets, great painters, great musicians, great scientists, and so on.

Such a competitive attitude of the human realm is overwhelming. It seems that the whole process of approaching things from that angle is based on magnetizing. That is why the human realm stresses the idea of knowledge and learning, education, collecting a wealth of wisdom of all kinds—scientific, philosophical, or what have you. It is based on intellect. The human realm is the highest point of the six realms of the world. The human realm has the greatest potential or quality of achieving, or of creating a monument of the rest of the six realms. One of the ideals of materialistic society, ambitious society, is to try to create the greatest, or the biggest, or the largest, or the longest, historical monument. Trying to break records of samsaric speed. That kind of heroic approach is based on magnetizing.

Such a heroic approach is also based on fascination, because you encounter such intellectual understanding, meeting with remarkable people. It is also based on self-consciousness, of course, as to what you do not possess. When you hear that somebody else possesses something, you regard yourself as insignificant; when you hear that somebody is significant, that impresses you. That competitiveness is the fixed state of the human realm. It is based on continual thought process which will never end because there is so much stuff going on in your mind as a result of collecting so many things, and as a result of so many plans to be made.

The extreme state of the human realm is that you are stuck in an absolute traffic jam of discursive thoughts. It is extremely busy. There is no end to it. One cannot really relate with any kind of learning or develop anything at all. Constantly all kinds of stuff churn out. All kinds of ideas and plans and hallucinations and dreams churn out constantly. It is quite different from the realm of the gods, where you are completely absorbed in a blissful state and you have a kind of self-snug satisfaction. In the case of the jealous gods also, you are completely drunk on extreme comparative mentality; you are stuck there. There seem to be fewer possibilities of thought process happening, because your experiences are so strong and they overpower you; you are hypnotized by that state. In the case of the human realm, there seems to be much more thought process happening constantly. The thinking process takes place much more actively. The intellectual or logical mind becomes so powerful that one is completely overwhelmed by all kinds of possibilities of magnetizing new things. You are trying to get hold of new situations and new ideas, along with all kinds of strategies that you might employ, as well as case histories, as well as quotations from the books you have read, as well as the overwhelming incidents that have happened in your life. The things recorded in your subconscious begin to play back constantly all the time, much more so than in other realms. So it is a very intelligent realm and extremely busy and extremely dissatisfied at the same time.

The human realm seems to have less pride than any of the other realms. If you are stuck in the other realms, you begin to find that your realm is some kind of occupation, you can hang on to it, and you begin to get satisfied with it; whereas in the case of the human realm, there is no satisfaction. There is constant searching, constant looking for a new situation to improve on the given situation.

Of course, the human realm also has the six bardo qualities in it: the fantasy or dreamlike quality, the quality of continuously giving birth, death, absorption, as well as the gap in which you can experience the clear light. All these experiences are happening simultaneously, which provides more varieties of speeding, more possible ways of speeding.

On the one hand, the human realm seems to be a rather intelligent situation. At the same time, it is the realm which is the least enjoyable, because suffering is not regarded as an occupation in the human realm, but suffering is a way of challenging yourself. So a constant reminder or ambition is created from the suffering.

Student:
Do all six realms have corresponding buddha families?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Yes. The god realm and the animal realm are both associated with the buddha family. The jealous god realm is associated with the karma family, the human realm with the padma family, the hungry ghost realm with the ratna family, and the hell realm with the vajra family.

Student:
Rinpoche, what about the extreme version? You say that each one of these realms could be considered a psychotic state. What is the extreme of the human realm? This sounds like a very normal state you’re describing.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
The extreme case is speed, trying to catch your own tail. You are so fast that you begin to see your own behind.

Student:
Rinpoche, is depression associated with any one of the realms in particular?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
If depression is connected with any of the realms, it seems to be the human realm in particular. As I’ve already mentioned, the least satisfied realm is the human realm, because it is intellectually highly strung and everything is regarded as tentative. There is the possibility of getting something, but one is not quite certain whether one is really getting it or not. There is a continual sense of failure all the time. So it seems that depression is dominant in the human realm.

Student:
Rinpoche, while you were talking, I was wondering whether there is anything statistical about this, whether in mankind in general you find rather more persons in one particular realm than the others, or whether it is pretty evenly split up? Is this human realm that you’re describing one in which more people tend to fall, or would it be some other?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I think you cannot know percentages as such. But it seems that the human realm is colored by all kinds of other situations, such as the realm of hell, or the hungry ghost or jealous god realms. It seems that generally there are more people involved in the other five realms than in the standard human realm. That is also associated with the cultural situation of the moment, the political situation of the moment.

S:
And how about the presentation of ideas? Yours is one particular form of presentation; do you find that it seems to appeal to one type more than others?

TR:
Well, that seems to be applicable to all of them. I mean, people have different makeups, as we have been talking about, they possess different buddha natures and they have their own way of viewing or understanding, in terms of magnetizing or enriching or whatever. So the presentation does not make any difference, but the presentation is sort of a neutral situation. It is there, and they adopt it according to their style. It is like the way we eat food, for instance. Some people eat food for taste, some people eat food because they are hungry, some people eat food because they feel it is part of their occupation of escape. There are all kinds of styles. There may be a hundred people in the audience watching a cinema, and each person would have a different way of regarding that particular movie: it could be seen as fascination or entertainment or expectation or educational. There are all kinds of ways of viewing it. It is the same thing with any situation. Presenting teaching is also the same; it is a very neutral thing. How people take it will vary according to how they sense that neutral situation according to their own state of being.

Student:
Rinpoche, is one way of getting out of this realm, or one problem of this realm, not identifying with yourself, not seeing external qualities in yourself?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
I think the attitude regarded as applicable to all of the realms is that if you are able to see situations clearly as they are—without being colored by what you want to see, what you like to see, what would be helpful for you to see, but just things as they are, directly and simply—then you begin to lose any ambition involved in the different realms of the world. Each realm has its own style of ambition, so stepping out is the absence of ambition, which is not colored by present confusion.

Student:
Rinpoche, what would be the quality of the buddha of this realm?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
The buddha of the human realm is a buddha with a begging bowl. It represents the mentality of poverty, which is the largest concern of the human realm. In order to relate with poverty, you have to speak the language of poverty. But by carrying a begging bowl, in fact, it is as though you always have something to put things into. In other words, the ultimate mentality of poverty is also the mentality of richness at the same time. Whenever situations need to be created you can create them, and you get it. You are in command of the whole situation. So that is extremely wealthy.

Student: Rinpoche, would one’s predominant buddha family have an affinity to a particular mental aberration of the six realms of existence? Would karma people have a greater psychological tendency to pick up the aberration of the asuras?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Not necessarily. You have your basic character, but at the same time, the different experiences of the different realms are purely instigated from your current situation. You may use the same style as the particular buddha family you belong to, but that style could be put into practice from a different state of being at the same time—always.

S:
You said the realm of the gods was basically buddha family. Would it be possible to relate to that in a vajra way?

TR:
Definitely, yes. There could also be the padma quality of magnetizing, as well as all kinds of other things.

Student:
For a person who has not yet achieved a simple awareness of things as they are, and who has this human quality of intellect and wants to understand things—for him it takes a certain effort, just sitting here and listening to you, a certain effort to concentrate, to hear and understand what you are saying. And that effort seems to be a kind of clinging, a kind of magnetism. Now, is there something that such a person can do directly in his realm of intellect to improve the situation, or can it only be done through the whole process of meditation?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Well, you see, when you talk about improving the situation, you are talking about a confusing topic. You have the basic idea of improving the situation, but you haven’t gotten to the point of the cause and effect of the improvement. Whether it should come from there or here is uncertain. So in order really to deal with situations, you have to start methodically, organically. That is to say, you need to know whether the situation is the hang-up, or the person who is experiencing the situation is the hang-up, or the style of experiencing the situation is the hang-up. That is very subtle and very, very delicate. It seems that in order to relate with a situation, you first have to let the inhibitions come through—the hidden qualities, the masked qualities, or the ambitious qualities. So the whole thing begins with not regarding apparent hang-up-type situations as hang-ups, but letting them be as they are, and letting further hang-ups come through. Then the hang-up coming through shows us its direction: whether it is really coming from here or there becomes quite obvious at some point. So it has to be a very individualistic style, a very personal style.

Student:
What is the point or circumstance at which a person in the human realm is going to change into another realm? What leads up to that?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Doubt, uncertainty—which requires a circumstance of double take. You see one situation, you are just about to get into it; then you doubt, and you look again. You are not speeding at that moment. In the process of your double take, you cannot speed anymore because you are stopping, you are looking back again.

S:
Which way is it more likely for the doubt to lead?

TR:
To all of the other realms, any of the rest. It doesn’t really matter. You could go up and down the realms or come back again. Doubt is a way of reducing the intensity of the human realm.

S:
Would it be good to try to create the doubt, or maybe to try and do a purposeful double take?

TR:
I don’t think so. It wouldn’t be honest. If you know that you are doing that, therefore, you’ve got yourself.

S:
How about other people, then?

TR:
There again it is the same problem, if it is deliberate.

Student:
Doesn’t meditation create doubt? You could say that is the purpose of meditation or at least one of the outcomes.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Obviously, yes.

S:
So, in a sense the question could be, the answer could be, to meditate.

TR:
Not just in order to create doubt. You just meditate for the sake of meditating. You just do it. Then all kinds of disappointment comes out of the meditation.

S:
Isn’t it true that anybody who goes into meditation goes in for some purpose?

TR:
You start with some purpose, definitely. But once you are in that meditative state, you do not have to dwell on that purpose at all. You forget why you’re meditating. Altogether you are completely involved with the technique or the practice.