The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume 6 (4 page)

Most of our time was spent in discussing how best to translate technical terms. This was always fascinating and a wonderful opportunity to hear him talk about dharma in the most profound and illuminating way. . . . Rinpoche had very strong views on the translation of dharma terms, but at the same time he was always open to suggestions; after all, he was continually enriching his own knowledge of English. He loved language, whether it was Tibetan, Sanskrit or English, and always approached it with the sensitivity of a poet. He often played with words, delighting in synonyms, puns, and allusions (he used to do this occasionally with Tibetan words, too, although hardly anyone in his audience was aware of what he was up to!). He was determined to avoid language that suggested a theistic approach, and equally any kind of theosophist or new age syncretism. He also disliked the lavish use of capital letters common in spiritual writing, which, he felt, gave the same kind of impression. In his later work with the Nālandā Translation Committee, he formulated these principles even more clearly. All of this arose from his wish to present Buddhism as simple, ordinary and straightforward: the expression of basic sanity.

We had many long and passionate discussions about various words, but I cannot remember any serious disagreements at the time; somehow we always managed to reach a decision we could both accept. This does not mean that I have not had second thoughts over the years, and there are certain terms that I would now translate differently. If I had the chance to ask his opinion, I feel sure that he would consider them all carefully and might agree at least to some of them. But there are remarkably few such cases, and I am continually struck by the precision and profundity of Rinpoche’s interpretations and his intuitive way with a language that was not his own. Many of the terms that he first introduced in his talks and translations have been widely adopted, and he has had an enormous influence on the way Buddhism, especially vajrayana, has subsequently been expressed in English.
⁶

In the introduction to Volume Two of
The Collected Works
, there is a discussion of how Chögyam Trungpa chose to present the Buddhist teachings in the West in the language of psychology rather than the language of religion. In her introduction to
The Tibetan Book of the Dead
, Fremantle goes into this phenomenon:

It is noticeable that several of the words which best express the teachings of Buddhism are part of the language of contemporary psychology, for the attitudes of certain schools of Western psychology often come closer to Buddhism than do those of Western philosophy or religion. . . . Concepts such as conditioning, neurotic patterns of thought, and unconscious influences seem more appropriate in this book than conventional religious terms. In the Commentary, words such as
neurosis
and
paranoia are
used to describe not pathological conditions but the natural results of this [ego’s] fundamental state of mind. [1975]

The basic understanding of bardo presented by Rinpoche in his commentary to
The Tibetan Book of the Dead
is the same view that is presented in
Transcending Madness.
In the opening passages of the commentary, Trungpa Rinpoche writes:

There seems to be a fundamental problem when we refer to the subject of the
Tibetan Book of the Dead.
The approach of comparing it with the
Egyptian Book of the Dead
in terms of mythology and lore of the dead person seems to miss the point, which is the fundamental principle of birth and death recurring constantly in this life. One could refer to this book as “The Tibetan Book of Birth.” . . . It is a “Book of Space.” Space contains birth and death; space creates the environment in which to behave, breathe and act; it is the fundamental environment which provides the inspiration for this book. . . .
Bardo
means gap; it is not only the interval of suspension after we die but also suspension in the living situation; death happens in the living situation as well. The bardo experience is part of our basic psychological makeup. [Commentary]

From this basic premise, Rinpoche goes on to discuss the six realms of confused existence, which appear and beckon to us in the bardo at the same time as peaceful deities appear, representing the principles of the five wisdoms, or the five buddha families. The choice is always between ego’s entanglements and the freedom of the egoless state, which is both irritating and terrifying from the viewpoint of ego. Trungpa Rinpoche also details the visions, or experiences, of the wrathful deities that arise in the bardo after death. He repeatedly relates the after-death state to the energies and the challenges that we face in life—after all, he says, we have suppressed or lost our memory of the state between death and rebirth, so it is speculation to discuss it. Yet he also lets these teachings speak for themselves, without psychologizing. He conveys the terrifying vividness of these experiences. His commentary lets the reality of the bardo speak for itself in its naked array. At the same time, Rinpoche shows us that the best preparation for death is in how we live our lives.

Rinpoche concludes the commentary with a discussion of relating compassionately and directly to a dying person. The publication of
The Tibetan Book of the Dead
was one of the forces that helped to transform the field of working with death and dying within the Western psychological and medical realms. When the translation was first published, there was very little being offered in the way of hospice or other services for the terminally ill. This translation was one of many factors that helped to open up the whole discussion of dying and helped to make death less of a taboo. This was clearly one of Chögyam Trungpa’s wishes for this book. In his foreword, he discusses his own training, which included visiting dying people four times a week. He speaks of the beneficial effects of being in close, continual contact with the process of death, “so that the notion of impermanence becomes a living experience rather than a philosophical view” (Foreword).

Francesca Fremantle has continued to work with these teachings for many years. Although she describes herself as having taken a long vacation from this material before embarking on her recent book,
Luminous Emptiness
, it is clear that neither these teachings nor her strong connection with Trungpa Rinpoche were ever far from her heart. In the reminiscences that she sent me to help prepare this introduction, she included a very touching story connected with her work on
The Tibetan Book of the Dead
. It seems fitting to end the discussion of the book with that story:

Undoubtedly the biggest problem in working on
The Tibetan Book of the Dead
was the difficulty of making time for our meetings in Rinpoche’s schedule. At one point, when our deadline was approaching, I became so frustrated at yet another cancelled appointment that I burst into tears and had a fit of hysterics over the telephone; I told him that if he was not interested enough to finish the translation, I would take it with me to India and find someone else to help me. I don’t know which of us was more shocked by this outburst, but it got results! Emissaries were sent to calm me down, and within the next few weeks Rinpoche found the time to complete our work.

As a postscript to these reminiscences, I did indeed go to India (although not as a result of my threat) before the final draft of the book was finished. There someone advised me to visit Khunu Rinpoche, a very great scholar and yogin who was renowned for his knowledge of the bardo teachings. I was extremely fortunate to meet him at that time, as he died about two years later. He immediately solved a couple of remaining problems, and spoke of the bardo deities in a most fascinating way, as though he knew them all intimately. But what impressed me most was his reaction to hearing news of Rinpoche. His face lit up with such a mixture of joy, love and devotion that I felt impelled to give him the photograph I carried everywhere with me. He pressed it to his forehead, murmuring “Trungpa Rinpoche, Trungpa Rinpoche!” over and over again. It was extraordinarily touching to see this display of emotion, especially towards a much younger man, from such a great lama.
⁷

How fortunate for all of us that Francesca Fremantle persevered in her translation work with Chögyam Trungpa. Together they created a translation that has stood the test of time; and, just as important, she helped to provide the space in which Trungpa Rinpoche could present these incomparable teachings to a greater world.

The final material on the bardo states in Volume Six is an article entitled “The Bardo,” which was published originally under the title “The Nyingma Teachings on the Intermediate State” in England in the late 1960s or early 1970s in the journal
Creative Space
.
⁸
Rigdzin Shikpo, who worked with Rinpoche on this material in England in the ’60s, reports that the article is “edited from various others I worked on with Rinpoche: these include ‘The Way of Maha Ati,’ another on breaking away from the primordial ground, another on Maha Ati terminology, yet another on the yangti dark retreat, something on the bardo itself, how to meditate in relation to it, etc.” He has also described it, in an earlier email, as “a bringing together of two other texts, ‘Emergence from the Alaya,’ and ‘Bardo and the Alaya.”’ It contains some material similar to the commentary to
The Tibetan Book of the Dead
but with a slightly different emphasis. It expands the understanding of bardo as a
practice
that one can do in the here and now, and relates the bardo states very directly to how we create ego and confusion on the spot in every moment of existence. This article has not been available in published form for many years; its inclusion here will be welcomed by many readers. For its publication in
The Collected Works
, Rigdzin Shikpo kindly went over his original notes from his work with Trungpa Rinpoche and prepared a definitive and new version of the material.

The next book included in Volume Six is
Orderly Chaos: The Mandala Principle.
This too is based on early material presented by Trungpa Rinpoche, in this case during two seminars at Karmê Chöling in 1972 and 1974. Rinpoche established this rural center as an intensive practice environment for his students. Students living on the East Coast traveled frequently to Tail of the Tiger, as it was called in the early days, to attend Rinpoche’s seminars there. Many students came to Karmê Chöling for a week or a month of intensive practice, and there were also facilities for solitary retreats. In the early days, seminars in the summer took place in a tent outside the main house. In the winter, small seminars were held in the original small farmhouse on the land; larger gatherings took place in a rented hall in Barnet, the nearest town. A major renovation in 1975 and ’76 added additional living quarters and several shrine rooms, including a main shrine hall—also used for lectures—that can accommodate several hundred people. However, when the seminars that make up
Orderly Chaos
took place, these facilities did not yet exist.

In addition to the “city people” who came to Karmê Chöling, there was a core of students in residence. In many respects, it was the closest thing to a monastery within the Buddhist community that Rinpoche established. It was not monastic in the sense that people wore robes or took vows of poverty, abstinence, or silence. Rather it provided a very tight and intense container in which people lived, practiced, and studied. The environment was not particularly seductive; it was in fact a claustrophobic situation, yet people became processed and tamed by living and practicing there, often in a much shorter time than in most ordinary living situations.

Each place that Rinpoche taught had its particular quality, which flavored his teaching there. When he taught at Karmê Chöling, he had a “captive” audience. There was a quality of attentiveness on the audience’s part and a sense of mutual communication, almost on an instinctual level. People seemed to grasp what he was saying faster and more directly, noticeably “clicking” to what he was talking about. The seminars that he gave at Karmê Chöling were often more in-depth and reflective. In the questions and answers in
Orderly Chaos
, he and the audience members often seemed to finish one another’s sentences, as though they were very much on the same wavelength.

In both
Orderly Chaos
and
Transcending Madness
, Trungpa Rinpoche seems to embody the material when he presents it. There is a way in which both of these books defy attempts to logically understand the material in an ordinary, sequential fashion. In
Transcending Madness
one feels oneself going through highlights of the bardos and the realms as one progresses through the book. Judith Lief reported to me that the tendency of this particular material to embody itself was very hard on her family while she was editing the book!
⁹
In
Orderly Chaos
, one finds oneself in a world with no straight lines to connect things. Understanding and insight are possible, but only if one drops the reference points usually applied to “studying” or “reading” a book. This quality may frustrate some readers, but for others it will provide an experiential glimpse of the material that is being discussed.

Mandala
is a Sanskrit word with many meanings. Literally, it refers to anything circular, a globe, or a wheel, and it also means a collection, group, society, or organization. Commonly, when people think of a mandala, they think of a circular drawing or a diagram that shows the arrangement of various deities, symbols, or energies. Many thangka paintings depict the mandalas, the palaces or environments, of vajrayana deities. There are also three-dimensional mandalas, or models. Both thangkas and three-dimensional mandalas show the details of a particular vajrayana deity’s palace and iconography as an aid to visualization. In addition to its association with the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, the term
mandala
has also been applied to similar representations in other spiritual traditions. The usage of mandalas in the Hindu religion is quite ancient, and undoubtedly predates their use in tantric Buddhism. Mandala-like representations are also found within various Native American traditions. The term has also been applied to some abstract and semi-abstract modern paintings. Many of these paintings were an outgrowth of the psychedelic movement in the 1960s and ’70s, after people first came into contact with Hindu and Tibetan Buddhist mandalas and thought that they were visions or artistic expressions, failing to understand their relationship to Hindu tantra or the practice of vajrayana Buddhism. Trungpa Rinpoche distinguishes between any of these approaches to mandala as symbolism and the understanding of mandala as the principle of orderly chaos. It is the latter that is the focus of
Orderly Chaos.