|
|
|
Glimpses of Space: The Feminine Principle and EVAM (1999) This work contains material from two seminars on the tantric understanding of the feminine and masculine principles, exploring what they are and how they work together in vajrayana Buddhist practice as the nondual experience of wisdom and skillful means. The first section, “The Feminine Principle,” concerns various aspects of the feminine, including space as the mother principle and the feminine manifested in the dakini principle. The second section, “Evam,” discusses the union of the feminine and masculine principles.Orderly Chaos: The Mandala Principle (1991) According to the mandala principle, a prominent feature of tantric Buddhism, all phenomena are part of one reality. Whether good or bad, happy or sad, clear or obscure, everything is interrelated and reflects a single totality. As Chögyam Trungpa explains in this work, from the perspective of the mandala principle, existence is orderly chaos. There is chaos and confusion because everything happens by itself, without any external ordering principle. At the same time, whatever happens expresses order and intelligence, wakeful energy and precision. Through meditative practices associated with the mandala principle, the opposite ends of our experience—confusion and enlightenment, chaos and order, pain and pleasure—are revealed as inseparable parts of a total vision of reality.
Excerpts from The Tibetan Book of the Dead (1975) In the foreword and commentary to this classic text (the translation of which is omitted), Chögyam Trungpa stresses that these teachings are about how we live as well as how we die.Transcending Madness: The Experience of the Six Bardos (1992) The Tibetan word bardo is usually associated with life after death. Here, Chögyan Trungpa discusses bardo in a very different sense: as the peak experience of any given moment. Our experience of the present moment is always colored by one of the six psychological states: the god realm (bliss), the jealous god realm (jealousy and lust for entertainment), the human realm (passion and desire), the animal realm (ignorance), the hungry ghost realm (poverty and possessiveness), and the hell realm (aggression and hatred). In relating these realms to the six traditional Buddhist bardo experiences, Trungpa Rinpoche provides an insightful look at the “madness” of our familiar psychological patterns and shows how they present an opportunity to transmute daily experience into freedom.Selected Writings “The Bardo” (date of original publication unknown) is based on teachings given by Chögyam Trungpa in England in the 1960s. This article was edited by Rigdzin Shikpo, who worked closely with Trungpa on the material. 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.“Femininity” (1973) is a lighthearted and playful article about feminine energy and its role in the Buddhist teaching. |
