Dear Friends of the Chögyam Trungpa Institute,
As the leaves fall and return to the earth, we are releasing a powerful and timely pair of seminars on the bardos and six realms: The Six States of Bardo (Allenspark, Colorado) and The Six States of Being (Karmê Chöling, Vermont). In 1971, just a year after Chögyam Trungpa arrived in the US, he gave these tantric teachings through an experiential lens: how the bardos and realms are present in everyday life. Unexpectedly, he described the six realms of existence that sentient beings are reincarnated into (god, jealous god, human, animal, hungry ghost, and hell) as psychological states experienced within the human realm. In the same way, he applied the concept of bardo — the space between death and rebirth — to our everyday experience of nowness.
“There seems to be quite a misconception of the idea of bardo, which is that it is purely connected with the death and after-death experience. But in this case, the six experiences of bardo are not only something that purely concerns the future alone; it also concerns the present moment. Every step of experience, every step of life is bardo experience.”
Chögyam Trungpa, The Six States of Bardo, “Talk 1: Bardo”
Both seminars were published in the book Transcending Madness: The Experience of the Six Bardos, edited by Judith Lief. To introduce these special recordings, we present Lief’s foreword to the book, which provides historical context as well as insight into Trungpa Rinpoche’s specific delivery of these teachings.
“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.’ … 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.”
Judith Lief,, Editor’s Foreword to Transcending Madness
Yours in the dharma,
The Digital Library Team