Too many people find themselves facing the same mistake as the MahaSiddha “Loud-Mouth.” Before he found the true meaning of the path, he had a horrible time. Every time someone spoke with him, he heard arguing, attack, insult and insinuation in their voices. His anger habit was so strong that he experienced everything as an assault, whether it was actually an assault or not. Of course, he thought the problem was everyone else. He told himself that’s how they were. When we are in what are called the “Realms,” cycles of mind projections, that is the explanation we have for our situation. It is how women are or how men are; we tend to generalize and group people into “they” or box people into types and categories. Or if it is one individual, it is how they always are. The more we generalize, abstract and infer, the less we have to pay attention to those insidious specific details, which would expose our projections as projections.

The beauty, (and at times, peril), of being on the path as non-renunciates is that we are surrounded by all kinds of people. We are not living in an isolated retreat cave or wandering alone in the forest. We are surrounded by people, we are in relationship. And people do what they inevitably do – they reflect back to us, our own mind. Every experience we have of another is full of our own mind, our own subjectivity, our own reality habits. If unrecognized, we miss the relationship and relate more to our own projections than to how others actually are. Often a battle of the projections ensues and everyone loses. A key to relationships of any kind is a willingness to recognize how our own mind habits color our every experience. Otherwise, we walk around in confusion, like the person who smells bad and walks around complaining “Yuck! It stinks in here.”

In Buddhism, the way mind saturates our experiences is outlined in a teaching called the Six Realms. It is said that Buddha give this teaching to a King who asked for a way to become enlightened without leaving his kingdom. Buddha’s response was to send him a letter through a messenger with a drawing of the Six Realms. The Six Realms are a method for awakening within every day life, they make apparent how our experience of “reality” is often a projection based on our habitual state of being. Reality has no fixed, absolute quality, yet our own habits make it seem fixed. The Six Realms are our reality habits. Reality habits form when our mind poisons go unaddressed and bleed out into our lives. They seep out all over everything and we begin to experience everything in terms of that mind poison. Like “rose colored glasses,” these are anger-colored-glasses, conflict-colored-glasses, neediness-colored-glasses etc…

"...we attach values to things and events which they do not necessarily have. We have definite opinions about the way things are and should be. This is projection: we project our version of things onto what is out there. Thus we become completely immersed in a world of our own creation, a world of conflicting values and opinions. Hallucination in this sense, is a misinterpretation of things and events, reading into the phenomenal world meanings which it does not have."
- Trungpa Rinpoche, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism

For example, if it is our habitual reality to feel unloved, then even if we are with someone who genuinely and fully loves us, we don’t feel it (the Hungry Ghost Realm). If our habit is anger, we experience our Sangha members as irritating and aggravating. We feel assaulted and inconvenienced. We experience the Sangha members as rude, insensitive, mistaken idiots or mean-ies. We see all the ways that they are doing it wrong and we get exacerbated over and over again. We suffer all kinds of unwarranted invasions, obstructions and attacks from them. We find them intolerable. That is the hell realm.

If our reality habit is conflict we get caught up in the Jealous-God Realm where we fight, argue and compete. In this reality habit, we may be caught up in gossip about how they really are. Our negativity, backbiting and comparison mind consumes our experience. We scrutinize others and get disgusted with their flaws. We talk about people we don’t really know or understand and make declarations of how messed up they are. We may be overwhelmed by how neurotic and imperfect others are and use this as the explanation to ourselves for why we are so much better than them. We agonize about our own imperfections and try to hide them. We may see others as manipulative, even though it is really our own style to manipulate everything. Our own habit of duplicity gets assumed onto others and we read hidden meanings into everything, seeing scandal, betrayal and drama behind the scenes.

Or in the Animal Realm, we feel victimized by others, used. We talk about what they are doing to us and how helpless we are to that. Even after more than a year in a community we talk about the community as if it is some entity other than ourselves. We see the community as “them” and take no responsibility for how it is manifesting when something is missed or wrong. We see our lives and our spirituality as something that happens to us.

In romantic relationship we may have a sense that we have finally found “the one.” We are in paradise, on cloud nine, our partner is perfect, is a goddess even, has no flaws, we are so happy, so lucky. We only see the good... until at some point, we don’t. At some point we can no longer avoid real issues that were there all along, hidden by the distorted perception of the Realm of the Gods.

Whatever our own mind state is – easily gets mistaken for how others are. That’s the Realms.

Our dualistic neurosis and narcissism beckon us from behind the guise of other people’s imperfections. In any community there are people there with pure vision, conducting themselves with kindness. There are also people there with distorted vision, conducting themselves inappropriately, making obstacles for themselves and others and just generally being confused. It is not meant to be any other way. We are not attempting to create a perfect situation that is insulated from the troubles of life. Instead the only difference in Buddhist community that sets it apart from any other group of people is that some folks within that group are dedicated to using the imperfections, confusions and situations at hand as a spiritual practice, as a basis for awakening. We can only grow within Sangha if we are willing to recognize how our habitual mind can color every experience. It is not even necessary to be surrounded by ideal, perfect people to progress on the path. The students need only be sincere. The focus of the path is to make our view, method and conduct in relation to others ideal, whether they are ideal or not. Some people in Sangha do this while others behave as they always have, speak as they always have and see things as they always have. The Six Realms projections take over and while some people gratefully absorb and apply the teachings, others become blinded by their own habituality and miss the opportunity at hand altogether. It is up to each of us to not join them in hell. It is up to us to empty the hell out by realizing when the hell it is our own mind projection.

Likewise, in romantic relationship, we too often see the other person’s imperfections as some kind of fall from grace. We take it as a sign that the honeymoon is over. Suddenly we are caught up in some painful drama and it is easy to simply blame the other person, to think of them as the cause of our misery. But other people’s imperfections are often not the horrible problems we make them out to be. It is only when we mingle them with our own confused reality habits, that situations become as complex and ugly as they get. Without being lost in the realms, the situations we face are only as bad as they are and only for the moment.

It is not that people around us don't offer us less fortunate demeanors at times. We don't have to pretend that is not happening in some pale imitation of peaceful wisdom. It would be much easier if it was always either our fault or theirs, then no awareness would be required. Instead, circumstances are intricately nuanced and where the boundaries between self and other begin and end are blurred. But even in the times when others are acting like a mean person, acting as if they were rude, acting as if they were insensitive, our experience of that is up to our own mind. Bad behaviors happen. But how we experience these moments is entirely up to us, up to our own mind. That is why the same situation is experienced so differently by so many different people, it is empty of absolute qualities. "Bad" moments could be the occasion for furthering our sleep or for our awakening based on how we handle them. These moments could inspire our creativity as we explore the teachings and the scope of skillful means. They are exciting tests of our awareness. They are the most important moments for practice. When Yeshe Tsogyel was being harassed by demons while she was attempting to do her practices, these demons raged, wailed, wept, roared, threatened her with fire and weapons. Her response was,"Every situation is a play of empty being. Every event is a display of mental projections. Now stir my creative skill even more! Both good and bad are the lifts to peak experience. Now excite my creative skill still more! This is the magical illusion of the Lama's compassion. Now raise my creative potential still more!" Needless to say, the demons were in no way successful at hindering her. Without being lost in the realms, the situations we face become the opportunities for enlightenment.

"When you see your personal pain is self-inflicted,
Then the three jewels are your refuge from suffering."
- Yeshe Tsogyal, Sky Dancer

A great clue to catching our own mind in the act of tainting our perceptions is when we realize that we have had the same relationship drama before with a different person or in the case of community, with a different group of people. Then it becomes clear that the common ingredient has been our Self. If we suspect that we are the pivotal factor in how we experience, then the possibility emerges for looking into how our mind affects our experiences, causes dissatisfaction, blinds us or steers situations towards our neurosis. Then the importance of the path becomes apparent since precise guidance in unraveling this reality habit becomes relevant. If we begin to become aware that we do this, the highest wisdom methods and training can be appreciated. That’s the extraordinary power of Vajrayana Buddhism, when it is actually applied to one’s own mind - it kicks ass when it comes to defeating our own Self-deceptions. We are fortunate with the Inner Tantras to be given the most direct access to that opportunity. Why limit ourselves to studying about the path, when we could be discovering its lived meaning, seeing what the Buddhas saw? Oh – of course – there is a reason – it isn’t comfortable to see how our own minds shape our experience. Few people have a tolerance for that and it is often postponed indefinitely. Our relationships rot in the meantime and for those who can’t stand that any longer, even if it is uncomfortable to awaken, the teachings continue.

The realm is the realm because we believe it completely.

The trick with seeing beyond our Realms is that we actually believe the Realms to be reality. Without reflecting on our subjectivity and a subsequent sense of the emptiness of our projections, it is easy to live the Realms in a way that is unquestioned. A realm is a realm because it is believed 100%. No matter what else anyone does, we experience it through the interpretative screen of our Realm state. We may question the other person, but not the perceptions of them that we had in the first place. The realm is the realm because we believe it completely. It has a hold over us because we believe the rationale behind it completely. We believe it is actually how others are, how the community is. The moment we begin to suspect that our own mind, our own idea of what's happening may be confused, is the moment we begin to question our rationale - we have begun to practice. Now we are Buddhists. We have begun to use relationship, spiritual community and the Buddhist teachings for their original purpose when we begin to question our own mind and reflect with suspicion on our own reality assumptions.

It is the most interesting journey to explore - where does our mind end and the situation begin? Where is the boundary between how self and other manifests? What is the difference between our perceptions and what is actually happening? How do our reality habits color our perception? As we look back on our lives, what themes keep repeating themselves? How can we experience more directly beyond our reality habits? An openness or an uncertainty about our own experiences is the key. Our willingness to drop our rigidity and righteousness long enough to investigate where our own confusion might be affecting the situation is the key. Our suspicion, our willingness to question, to venture into ambiguity and track down our subjectivity is the key. Like the MahaSiddha Loud-Mouth, when we begin to look into the empty nature of our projections, we can encounter the greatest awareness.

Contextual Disclaimer
The Buddha introduced over 84,000 methods for awakening. Many of them seem contradictory, because they are different presentations of the path based on different starting points, different goals and differing propensities of the individual. To say a plane is superior to a car is missing the point of both vehicles. A plane is best for what it is best for and a car is best for what it is best for. To say there is one "right" way of practicing Buddhism would be to go against the Buddha's teaching which rests on the specificity of the particular path, and in the case of the Tantric Buddhist teachings, the instructions of one's own teacher.

The Sutric method for understanding the Realms is to focus on them as dimensions that we can be re-born into and stuck in during future lifetimes. In the Inner Tantras of the MahaSiddhas, we explore the root of how such a situation would even arise in the first place. At death, our mind is exactly how it has been during our lives, if we have had the habit of the Hell Realm during our lives, we have it at death and get stuck in those dimensions or are born into it again in future lives. The habit is a habit until we liberate it. More to the point, from the perspective of emptiness and form, birth and death are constantly happening and we are being born to the realms in each moment unless we are remaining in awareness.

In the Inner Tantras, the Realms are methods for discovering awareness, for observing the way our mind is reflected back to us in others and our environment. In this system each of the realms is one of the five poisons, with the God Realm being the combination of all five at once; when no particular one stands out, we fall into the daze that is this God Realm. In this system, the Realms appear here and now as mind states that arise when we do not recognize the fact of non-duality, the emptiness of fixed Self, subsequently the emptiness of our projections and the lack of definite, absolute qualities in any situation.

Likewise, there are differences in Sutra and Tantra for how emotions and disturbing situations are handled, according to which particular Buddhist vehicle we practice. Padmasambhava instructs that those who are practicing the view of the Sutric Vehicles should abandon disturbing emotions, where those who practice the Inner Tantras should take all disturbing emotions as the path. This can only happen at the level of the Inner Tantras because these practitioners no longer have the view of reality as solid or fixed. That non-fixedness in our view, allows us to perceive the dimension of openness and all possibility (also called emptiness) in whatever forms are arising. For more information about this approach visit our website, www.MahaSiddhas.org

For more information about how we can find the path within relationships, attend our two day July retreat the Red & White Essence. Registration 2008 .