“Transcending Madness: The Experience of the Six Bardos”

The Tibetan word bardo is usually associated with life after death. Here, Chögyam Trungpa discusses bardo on a very different sense: as the peak experience of any given moment. Our experience of the present moment is always colored by one of 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 traditonal Buddhist bardo experiences, Trungpa 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.

Chögyam Trungpa – meditation master, scholar, and artist – founded the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado; Shambhala Training; and Vajradhatu, an international association of Buddhist meditation centres. Among his other books are “Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior” and “Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism”.