Transcending Madness
The Experience of the Six Bardos
Chögyam Trungpa
Edited by Judith L. Lief
Shambhala • Boston & London • 2010
SHAMBHALA PUBLICATIONS, INC.
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© 1999 by Diana J. Mukpo
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Trungpa, Chogyam, 1939–
Transcending madness: the experience of the six Bardos/
p. cm.—(Dharma ocean series)
eISBN 978-0-8348-2158-3
ISBN 978-0-87773-637-0
1. Intermediate state—Buddhism. 2. Death—Religious aspects—Buddhism
3. Eschatology, Buddhist 4. Meditation—Buddhism.
5. Buddhism—Psychology I. Title II. Series
BQ4490.T78.—1992 91-50879
294.3′423—dc20 CIP
BVG 01
Contents
Acknowledgments
Editor’s Foreword
PART ONE
THE SIX STATES OF BARDO
Allenspark, 1971
1 Bardo
2 The Six Realms of Being
3 The Bardo of Meditation
4 The Bardo of Birth
5 The Bardo of Illusory Body
6 The Bardo of Dreams
7 The Bardo of Existence
8 The Bardo of Death
9 The Lonely Journey
PART TWO
THE SIX STATES OF BEING
Karmê Chöling, 1971
1 Pain and Pleasure
2 The Realm of the Gods
3 The Jealous God Realm
4 The Human Realm
5 The Animal Realm
6 The Hungry Ghost and Hell Realms
7 The Sequence of Bardos
Appendixes
A The Six States of Bardo
B The Cycle of the Seven Bardos
Notes
Glossary
About the Author
Resources
I WOULD LIKE TO THANK the many people who helped in the preparation of this book: Carolyn Rose Gimian, Sherab Chödzin, Emily Hilburn Sell, Lilly Gleich, Hazel Bercholz, Alma Carpenter, and Helen Berliner. In addition, the recording, transcribing, and preservation of these materials has taken the work of countless volunteers, to whom I am most grateful.
I would like to thank Mrs. Diana Mukpo for her continued support of the Dharma Ocean Series and for her kind permission to work with this material.
Most especially I would like to thank the Vidyadhara, Venerable Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, who dedicated his life to making such precious teachings available to North Americans.
JUDITH L. LIEF
Editor
IN 1971, THE VIDYADHARA, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, gave three seminars in rapid succession on the topic of the six realms, the bardo experience, and the Tibetan Book of the Dead, one in Colorado and the other two in Vermont. At a time when there was great fascination with the notion of reincarnation and life after death, Trungpa Rinpoche emphasized the power of these teachings as a way of pointing to the traps and opportunities of present experience, rather than as fodder for intellectual speculation. At that time, he was also working on a translation of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, which he described as a detailed and sophisticated map displaying the potential of confusion and awakening in each moment of experience. These three seminars, two of which form the body of this book, were to be pivotal in the development of the Vidyadhara’s early students.
In the early seventies, Trungpa Rinpoche had attracted many students with a background in higher education, psychology, and the arts. These early students were strongly interested in integrating their Buddhist training with their practice of Western disciplines. Those with background in the arts studied “dharma art” teachings, which explored the connection between meditation experience and the creative process. The Vidyadhara worked with these students in a number of ways, ranging from holding theater conferences, creating theater exercises, and writing and producing plays, to establishing the arts programs in the newly formed Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. At that time, the Vidyadhara’s two bardo seminars were the core teachings studied by students preparing to establish a therapeutic community. The community he established, called Maitri, or “loving-kindness,” later evolved into the clinical psychology program at the Naropa Institute.
The Vidyadhara presented teachings on the realms and bardos as a way of understanding madness and sanity and learning to work directly and skillfully with extreme states of mind. Based on direct observation of mental patterns, these teachings provide a way “to see our situation along with that of our fellow human beings.” As is usual in the Buddhist approach, such a study is not done as though one were studying rats in a laboratory, but begins with oneself and one’s own state of mind. By familiarizing ourselves with our own insanity and making friends with mind in all its variety and extremes, we can learn to accommodate others and work with them without fear. So the process begins with a detailed exploration of our own mental states and of how we color our world through our preconceptions, expectations, hopes, and fears.
When we have developed the courage to look at ourselves without blinders, we can also begin to see others more clearly. We can connect with people, because we learn not to fear our mind, but to work with it through the practice of meditation. It is an approach based on nonviolence and acceptance, rather than on struggle or the overpowering of others. The acceptance of our experience with all its complexity and uncertainty provides the basis for any real change.
This volume could be considered a practical guide to Buddhist psychology. It is based on the interweaving of two core concepts: realm and bardo. The traditional Buddhist schema of the six realms—gods, jealous gods, human beings, animals, hungry ghosts, and hell beings—is sometimes taken to be a literal description of possible modes of existence. But in this case the schema of the six realms is used to describe the six complete worlds we create as the logical conclusions of such powerful emotional highlights as anger, greed, ignorance, lust, envy, and pride. Having disowned the power of our emotions and projected that power onto the world outside, we find ourselves trapped in a variety of ways and see no hope for escape.
The six realms provide a context for the bardo experience, which is described as the experience of no-man’s-land. The bardos arise as the heightened experience of each realm, providing at the same time the possibility of awakening or of complete confusion, sanity or insanity. They are the ultimate expression of the entrapment of the realms. Yet it is such heightened experience that opens the possibility of the sudden transformation of that solidity into complete freedom or open space. So even within the most solidified and seemingly hopeless accomplishment of ego’s domain, the possibility of awakening is ever-present.
The two seminars included in this book approach the topic of the realms and the bardos in two very different ways. The first seminar associates each realm with a characteristic bardo state. In this case, the realms are pictured as islands and the bardos as the peaks highlighting each island. In contrast, the second seminar emphasizes the process of continually cycling through the bardos. (It should be noted that the second seminar introduces the bardo of dharmata, thereby increasing the list from six to seven.) From this perspective, each realm contains the full cycle of bardos, which serves as a means to strengthen and sustain its power. By looking at the same topic in two contrasting yet complementary ways, we can begin to understand and appreciate the richness and complexity of these teachings.
In general, Trungpa Rinpoche placed great emphasis on dialogue and discussion with his students. In order to preserve that flavor, the extensive discussions following the talks have been included in this volume. In that way, readers who wish to follow the flow and development of the teachings through the two seminars may do so. Others may prefer to concentrate on the talks themselves.
May these subtle and practical teachings strike home and thereby help to alleviate the confusion and suffering of these current times. May they spark humor and gentleness in dealing with our states of mind and those of others.
Part One
ONE
Bardo
THERE SEEMS TO BE QUITE a misconception as to the idea of bardo, which is that it is purely connected with the death and after-death experience. But the experience of the six bardos is not concerned with the future alone; it also concerns the present moment. Every step of experience, every step of life, is bardo experience.
Bardo is a Tibetan word: bar means “in between” or, you could say, “no-man’s-land,” and do is like a tower or an island in that no-man’s-land. It’s like a flowing river which belongs neither to the other shore nor to this shore, but there is a little island in the middle, in between. In other words, it is present experience, the immediate experience of nowness—where you are, where you’re at. That is the basic idea of bardo.
The experience of such a thing also brings the idea of space, of course. Without seeing the spacious quality, which does not belong to you or others, you would not be able to see the little island in the middle at all. The living experience of bardo could only come from seeing the background of space. And from that, within space or an understanding of space, a brilliant spark or flash happens. So generally, all bardo experiences are situations in which we have emerged from the past and we have not yet formulated the future, but strangely enough, we happen to be somewhere. We are standing on some ground, which is very mysterious. Nobody knows how we happen to be there.
That mysterious ground, which belongs to neither that nor this, is the actual experience of bardo. It is very closely associated with the practice of meditation. In fact, it is the meditation experience. That is why I decided to introduce this subject. It is also connected with the subject of basic ego and one’s experience of ego, including all sorts of journeys through the six realms of the world.
Beyond that is the issue of how we happen to be in the six realms of the world; how we find that experience is not seen as an evolutionary process, as it should be, but as extremely patchy and rugged, purely a glimpse. Somehow, things don’t seem to be associated or connected with each other—they are very choppy and potent like gigantic boulders put together. Each experience is real, potent, impressionable, but generally we don’t find that there is any link between those potent experiences. It is like going through air pockets—emotionally, spiritually, domestically, politically. The human situation passes through these highlights or dramas, and on the other hand, the absence of drama, and boredom—which is another aspect of drama. We go through all these processes. And somehow these isolated situations, which from our confused way of thinking seem to have nothing to do with the basic quality of continuity, are the continuity itself. So the only way to approach this is to see the evolutionary process.
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Sharmik