The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume 6 (45 page)

S:
Isn’t that true of the idea of karma also?

TR:
Not necessarily, not necessarily at all. You could say the present situation is based on the past in some sense, but at the same time, you are free from the past. The present is free from the past; therefore, it could be present. Otherwise it would continue to be past all the time. And the future is an independent situation. So there is a sense of freedom happening constantly. For instance, we could say that we arrived and we entered into this hall and now we are here. That doesn’t mean that we cannot get out of it, because we decided to come here. We are not stuck in this hall. It is purely up to individuals if they decide to walk out of this hall or not. It is purely up to us. So the case history is that you are already here. Whether you walked here or you came here by car does not make any difference.

Student:
There seems to be a link between the past and the present, since we drag characteristics of the old realm into the new one.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Well, in a sense we do and in a sense we don’t. We have habitual patterns that we have developed, but those habitual patterns we have developed also have to maintain themselves by means of present situations. So the present is partly interdependent with the past, but it is also partly independent of the past. All the realms could exist or function as they are in the present circumstances.

S:
But it seems you are always the same.

TR:
You can’t be the same person constantly at all. And you can’t necessarily have a fixed situation of realms at all. Even the realms have a pulsating quality. They flicker between birth, death, and the others constantly. So each realm is a very tentative world. We do develop one particular heavy, strong experience, and we tend to reinforce that experience, but that doesn’t have to be the same realm all the time at all. It seems that the realms we are talking about are largely based on the different states of emotions that exist in our basic being. We can’t have one emotion happening constantly, but emotions change. Each emotion transforms itself into, or becomes, a realm. So a realm in this case is not only the intense state you are in alone, but the intense environment you are in as well—which you have created.

Student:
Rinpoche, what is mindfulness?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Mindfulness is simply seeing the accuracy or the precision of the moment, and you cannot help being right there. It is seeing or experiencing the abrupt and sharp nowness, with extremely sharp contrast, sharp edges. And awareness seems to have the quality of there being a lot of sharp edges happening simultaneously everywhere. So you are not focusing on one item alone, but there are many items, and each of them is clear and precise, coexisting in one space. So there seem to be a lot of differences between mindfulness and awareness.

Student:
What is the watcher?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
The watcher is a kind of informer who perceives and sees and comments and makes things presentable to you. So it is constantly editing all the time, the translator.

Student:
In your teaching you put a great deal of emphasis on meditation practice: when you meditate, how long you meditate, where you meditate. What I would like to know in particular is how you would contrast this with Zen.

Trungpa Rinpoche:
The meditation teachings developed in Zen and presented to the West have the quality of creating an island, so to speak. In the midst of an uncultured, if I may say so, environment, they are trying to create another civilization or culture. For instance, in a chaotic city, you have a very peaceful and quite zendo. There is a kind of Japanese world transported or transplanted into that particular zendo environment. The difference betweeen that and the Zen developed in Japan is that they don’t have to transport or import or create an island at all. because that whole style of environment is always there. The zendo is just purely one extra room where you come to sit and meditate. So there are two ways of dealing with things: re-creating a situation or accepting the situation as it is. The eccentric quality of transplanting one culture into the midst of another culture accentuates the fascination, and also accentuates a kind of extreme militant outlook. In other words, there is the definite idea that Americans have got to become Japanese, in spite of their physical differences, which one can’t help.

On the other hand, I think in regard to the essence of the teaching that has developed and the practice of meditation—as far as techniques go, there doesn’t seem to be any particular difference at all between the Tibetan teachings and Zen. Particularly the Soto school of Zen seems to have a lot in common with the style of meditation that the Tibetan teachers have taught. So as far as the technique of meditation goes, it seems to be almost identical, you could say. Zen students could practice Zen and then they could come and study with us and it would be just continuing their practice, rather than their having to give up anything in their practice. They just continue with meditation as they have been doing.

There seem to be some external differences of style, in that when Buddhism came to Tibet, the Tibetans adopted Buddhism as Tibetan Buddhism rather than trying to become Indians. In fact, they did not even bother to learn the Sanskrit language or the Indian language at all. The Buddhist teachings were translated into Tibetan—including the names of places like Bodhgaya or Benares or Kushinagara and names of people like Buddha and Ananda. The names of places were translated into Tibetan words so that they did not have to feel foreign to Tibetans. They were just other Tibetan names, as though they existed in Tibet. And such people also seemed to exist in Tibet, because they had Tibetan names. So the Tibetans used their own words, but they got the sense of it. So it seems to be largely based on different ways of transplanting the dharma in terms of basic environment. There could be American Buddhism—I don’t think this is a particularly ambitious project.

S:
This is a question of style, of a difference in style. In Zen, the teacher always comes to sit with the students. It is important as an example. I was wondering why you don’t come and sit with us.

TR:
Well, that is another sort of sociological issue, so to speak. The pattern happening in the world in the time of the Buddha and Christ was that it was an age of monarchy and of extreme leadership. For instance, the teachings of Buddha spread all over the Indian continent and Asia, from Japan and China to Afghanistan and up to Mongolia and Russia. There was a tremendous movement of one person spreading his teaching, like expanding an empire. And it seems that in the twentieth century, that dictatorial or imperial style has diminished. Mussolini and Hitler attempted to re-create that, in their way, but didn’t succeed. So today there is a more democratic pattern.

It seems that presently in the world there is not going to be one savior or one great guru, one savior of the world that everybody has to follow. Everything has to be individual style, democratic, an individual discovery. The same is true in the practice of meditation. Obviously somebody has to instigate the idea of meditation, but it has to be leaderless practice. So the process is decentralized.

The whole approach should not be based on one person; it should be based on the individualities of people. That seems to be a form of insurance policy for future spiritual development. If you lose a particular leader, if that person has left the country or died, you don’t look for somebody else to lead your meditation, but in the same way as you’ve been doing it all along, you can continue to do it all the time.

Student:
I find it a little bit disturbing, the expectations I have from leaders or people like teachers to tell me what to do. So I find what you are saying a bit unsettling. But apart from all that, do you meditate in the formal sense ever in your life? I know from reading your book that you have in the past. My question is a personal question. Do you feel like you ever need to meditate? Do you ever do it?

Trungpa Rinpoche:
Well, that seems to depend on the situation—but formal sitting, in terms of imposing it on oneself, somehow doesn’t apply anymore.

S:
To whom?

TR:
To whom. That’s it.

Well, perhaps we should close now. I hope that we can relate what we have discussed in this seminar with our personal experience. I sincerely hope that it will save us further expenses, in that we don’t have to go shopping and spend more money.

Appendix A

THE SIX STATES OF BARDO

Appendix B

THE CYCLE OF THE BARDOS

Becoming/Sipa

Birth/Kye-ne

Dream/Milam

Death/Chikha

Isness/Chönyi

Meditation/Samten

Illusory Body/Gyulü

Notes

1
. W. Y. Evans-Wentz, comp. and ed.,
The Tibetan Book of the Dead
(London: Oxford University Press, 1927).

2
.
The Heart Sutra:
one of the Prajnaparamita Sutras and a fundamental discourse on wisdom and emptiness.

3
. Chögyam Trungpa, foreword to
The Jewel Ornament of Liberation
, translated and annotated by Herbert V. Guenther (Berkeley: Shambhala Publications, 1971).

4
. E. V. Gold,
The American Book of the Dead
(Berkeley: And/Or Press, 1975).

5
. Chögyam Trungpa,
Born in Tibet
(London: George Allen & Unwin, 1966; Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1985).

From

T
HE
T
IBETAN
B
OOK OF THE
D
EAD

The Great Liberation through Hearing in the Bardo

COMMENTARY BY

C
HÖGYAM
T
RUNGPA

Foreword

T
HE
B
ARDO
T
HÖDRÖL
(bar-do’i-thos’grol) is one of a series of instructions on six types of liberation: liberation through hearing, liberation through wearing, liberation through seeing, liberation through remembering, liberation through tasting, and liberation through touching. They were composed by Padmasambhava and written down by his wife, Yeshe Tsogyal, along with the sadhana of the two mandalas of forty-two peaceful and fifty-eight wrathful deities.

Padmasambhava buried these texts in the Gampo hills in Central Tibet, where later the great teacher Gampopa established his monastery. Many other texts and sacred objects were buried in this way in different places throughout Tibet, and are known as terma, “hidden treasures.” Padmasambhava gave the transmission of power to discover the termas to his twenty-five chief disciples. The bardo texts were later discovered by Karma Lingpa, who was an incarnation of one of these disciples.

Liberation, in this case, means that whoever comes into contact with this teaching—even in the form of doubt, or with an open mind—receives a sudden glimpse of enlightenment through the power of the transmission contained in these treasures.

Karma Lingpa belonged to the Nyingma tradition but his students were all of the Kagyü tradition. He gave the first transmission of the six liberation teachings to Dödul Dorje, the thirteenth Karmapa, who in turn gave it to Gyurme Tenphel, the eighth Trungpa. This transmission was kept alive in the Surmang monasteries of the Trungpa lineage, and from there it spread back into the Nyingma tradition.

The student of this teaching practices the sadhana and studies the texts so as to become completely familiar with the two mandalas as part of his own experience.

I received this transmission at the age of eight, and was trained in this teaching by my tutors, who also guided me in dealing with dying people. Consequently I visited dying or dead people about four times a week from that time onward. Such continual contact with the process of death, particularly watching one’s close friends and relatives, is considered extremely important for students of this tradition, so that the notion of impermanence becomes a living experience rather than a philosophical view.