to have a world

 

Cueva de las Manos, Cave of the Hands, Argentina

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Trungpa Rinpoche once said, “Emotions are composed of energy, which can be likened to water, and a dualistic thought process, which could be likened to pigment or paint. When energy and thought are mixed together, they become vivid and colorful emotions. Concept gives the energy a particular location, a sense of relationship, which makes the emotions vivid and strong. Fundamentally, the reason emotions are discomforting, painful, frustrating is that our relationship to the emotions is not quite clear.”

And strangely enough, these experiences of the six realms - gods, jealous gods, human beings, animals, hungry ghosts, and hell - are ‘space’, different versions of space. It seems intense and solid, but in actual fact it isn’t at all. They are different aspects of space - that’s the exciting or interesting part. In fact, it is complete open space, without any colors or any particularly solid way of relating. 

That is why they have been described as six types of consciousness. It is pure consciousness rather than a solid situation - it almost could be called unconsciousness rather than even consciousness. The development of ego operates completely at the unconscious level, from one unconscious level to another unconscious level. That is why these levels are referred to as loka, which means ‘realm’ or 'world’. 

They are six types of 'world’. Each is a complete unit of its own. In order to have a world, you have to have an atmosphere; you have to have space to formulate things. So the six realms are the fundamental space through which any bardo experience operates. Because of that, it is possible to transmute these spaces into six types of awakened state, or freedom.

—Chögyam Trungpa

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The world is not populated by singular, autonomous, sovereign beings. It comprises a constantly oscillating network of dynamic interactions in which one thing changes through the change of another. The relationship counts, not the substance. 

And to make this relationship possible, it is necessary that the two sides touch each other, that they nestle into one another, penetrate one another, grind themselves against each other. This is the fundamental erotic that constantly makes new things out of other things.

—Andreas Weber
Matter and Desire

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I promise to make you more alive than you have ever been.
For the first time you will see your pores opening
like the gills of fish and you will hear
the noise of blood in galleries
and feel light gliding on your corneas
like the dragging of a dress across the floor. 

For the first time, you will note gravity’s prick
like a thorn in your heel,
and your shoulder blades will hurt from the imperative of wings. 

I promise to make you so alive that
the fall of dust on furniture will deafen you,
and you will feel your eyebrows like two wounds forming
and your memories will seem to begin
with the creation of the world.

—Nina Cassian
Ordeal 
Michael Impey and Brian Swann version from the Romanian 

 

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