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 traditional 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.

”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 possinility 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.” – from the Editor’s Foreward by Acharya Judith L. Leif.

Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche (1939-1987)--meditation master, scholar, and artist--was well-known throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe as a Buddhist teacher as well as founder and president of Vajradhatu, Naropa University, and Shambhala Training.

341 pages. Paperback.