Mandala of Love

Welcome to the Mandala of Love

Resting as Consciousness with the mandala wisdom as our guide, everything falls into place at last.

I hope you enjoy my articles. The various inter-related categories of my writing are described below, and my coaching and teaching work is described below that. Hover your mouse pointer over the categories in the menu bar above to reveal the sub-menus and listings of the articles.

* Three Current Writing Projects: *

1. Summaries of the ‘Meditation Guidance’ Series of Articles

There are currently 43 articles in this introductory series on meditation, self-enquiry, and the psychology of the mandala, which I initially chose to call ‘Meditation Guidance’. I strongly recommend this series of articles to anyone who is new to the Mandala of Love website. The first 34 summaries are now available for this series – by clicking here, or on image below. For more information on this series, see my description further down this page.

2. The Rūpa Skandha – A Twelve-Part Series

Click on the title above to read the first article in a series of twelve articles, which together take a very deep, broad and detailed look at what recognising the emptiness of the rūpa skandha, the ‘form-creating’ skandha, might mean in practice. This series is part of a larger series of articles, which can be found under the ‘5 Wisdoms’ menu above, and in which I will cover each of the five skandhas in turn. To read from the beginning of the ‘5 Wisdoms’ series click here.

The fact that the rūpa skandha is associated, in the Bardo Thodol, with both the Mirror-Like Wisdom and the Buddhist ‘Hell Realms’ (with their archetypal imagery of inhumane mental judgement, condemnation and hatred – leading to horrible tortures and punishments), establishes a very clear archetypal association between identification with the rūpa skandha and the Thinking function of the egoic mind. The rūpa skandha however, is usually rendered, not by more accurate and descriptive words like as ‘conceptualisation’, or ‘conceptual form’, but simply as ‘Form’. This introduces a confusion in which rūpa is therefore also frequently associated with ‘the body’ in the concrete, sensory, corporeal sense of the word – an association that is best reserved for vedanā, the skandha of Sensing, or Sensation. These articles aim to recover the great power of the Buddha’s ‘Five Skandhas‘ teaching by addressing this area of confusion.

3. The Ten Archetypal Buddhas of the Mandala

During the last couple of years I have had very little time for writing, but have begun work on a new series of longer articles on the ten deities of the Dharmadhātu mandala that were described by Padmasambhava in his Bardo Thodol teachings (which became known to Westerners as the ‘Tibetan Book of the Dead’). I have taken as my starting point, the central five verses in Padmasambhava’s ‘Inspiration-Prayer for Deliverance from the Dangerous Pathway of the Bardo’ (which you can read here). I have found these verses inspirational ever since I was introduced to them nearly 40 years ago, and I hope you will find them the same.

In this series, I am aiming to show meditators how each one of the five male Buddhas and the five female Buddhas of the Dharmadhātu Mandala can be felt in the fields of the body as profound suprapersonal sources of somatic healing and wisdom. Those who read the whole series of articles – and it is intended that these articles should be read in sequence – will be able to incorporate these reflections into their meditation practice in a systematic way. The first article in the series can be found here, and brief summaries of all the articles can be found here.

#Consciousness #Meditation — Teaching at Temple Byron in 2018

Meditation and Self-Enquiry

(under the ‘Meditation’ menu above)

The introductory series of 43 articles on meditation and self-enquiry, which I chose to call the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series, and which is listed under the ‘Meditation’ menu above, was my main focus in 2017 and 2018. I have tried to write these articles in a way that makes them accessible to anyone who may be interested in meditation, self-awareness, and spiritual development. My approach to meditation and Mindfulness is distinctive, and perhaps idiosyncratic, because, although it is based on the Buddhist psychology of non-duality, and on the mandala-wisdom of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, it also makes use of the language of the English translations of Carl Jung. Jung borrowed very heavily from Buddhism in the development of his own mandala model of the psyche – unfortunately without acknowledging his debt. I am borrowing back from Jung – and I certainly acknowledge a great debt to him.

An important source of inspiration for these articles was my deepening appreciation of the meeting of Quantum Physics and Quantum Biology with Neuroscience, which is now taking place. I find this to be most fully articulated in the brilliant Penrose-Hameroff hypothesis in regard to the nature of the brain-Consciousness interface – a hypothesis that is steadily accumulating experimental support.

Brief summaries of the articles in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series can be found here, or by clicking the image below.

Although I am most strongly influenced by Buddhist thought, my approach could be characterised as a ‘Western Buddhist’ one – and one in which I have tried as much as possible to address the general reader. Where they can serve to illuminate and ground the deep non-dual psychology of the Buddhist mandala wisdom, I therefore make connections with other psychologies that share the same inspiration – especially that of Carl Jung. I have also been a passionate student of the deep humanistic psychology of Marshall Rosenberg (founder of Nonviolent Communication – NVC), and of Eugene Gendlin (founder of the ‘Focusing‘ self-empathy/self-enquiry dyad practice) and, since I have found these to be of enormous value on my understanding of Buddhist psychology, I have woven these perspectives into this Mandala of Love approach to meditation and self-enquiry.

This series of articles aims to bring fresh insights into several common approaches to meditation – the Mindfulness of Breathing, Mettā Bhavana (‘Cultivation of Loving Kindness’), and the Zen ‘Just Sitting’ practice for example. The initial framework for the Mandala of Love approach, and for this whole series also, is provided by the four brahmavihāras (Loving Kindness, Appreciative Joy, Equanimity and Compassion) – a four-fold meditation-cycle and self-enquiry practice from ancient India, which was given a very important place in the Buddha’s teaching framework, and in the subsequent development of the Buddhist tradition. Central to my approach is the conceptualisation of meditation practice as ‘resting as Consciousness’, and the recognition of the brahmavihāras as ‘attitudes of Consciousness’. The word Consciousness as I use it in its capitalised form refers to the ’empty’ vijñāna skandha of Buddhist tradition, which we find placed at the centre of the Buddhist mandalas. ‘Internally’ the vijñāna skandha is the non-personal experiencing subject; and ‘externally’ it is the space of Consciousness in which all our experiencing arises.

By re-framing meditation and Mindfulness practices as expressions of ‘resting as Consciousness’, and acknowledging the ’empty’ and impersonal nature of all the components of cognition and perception that arise in Consciousness (the skandhas of Buddhist tradition), there is an opportunity to set these practices in a non-dual context – one that is, I hope, much more true to the Buddha’s teaching than many of the modern derivatives. The Buddha bore witness to the impersonal nature of all psychological phenomena, and to the ’empty’ and non-locatable nature of Consciousness, and urged his students to take these insights as the foundation of their practice. When we step out of the egoic perspective, we can re-discover meditation as an activity whose purpose is to reveal our true nature and recover our natural state – the compassion and intelligence of our natural humanity.

The Five Wisdoms Mandala and the Emptiness of the Five Skandhas

(under the ‘5 Wisdoms’ menu above)

Since the beginning of 2019, I have been aiming, in my articles, to provide some more in-depth analysis on the Five Wisdoms; the Buddha’s ‘Emptiness of the Five Skandhas‘ teaching, and on the closely-related ‘Four Foundations of Mindfulness’. I have created a new menu category for some of these articles, which I have called simply, ‘5 Wisdoms’. Under this menu you will find a group of introductory, or overview, articles on the five skandhas, followed by the first of five groups of articles. There will eventually be a group for each of the five skandhas. I have begun the first group; one focused on the all-important, but much misunderstood rūpa skandha – the ’empty’ conceptualising, or ‘form-creating’, function of the mind.

You can access brief summaries of the articles in this ‘5 Wisdoms’ series by clicking here, and you can access the first post in the series by clicking here.

Communication, Relationships, Empathy and Self-Empathy

(under the ‘NVC/Focusing’ menu above)

I have been a passionate student of Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication (NVC) model for over twenty years, and have taught several courses based on his work and on the work of Eugene Gendlin, the originator of the Focusing self-empathy dyad practice. I have also developed an innovative approach to the NVC model, which I call the NVC Mandala, and which sees the ‘four components’ of Rosenberg’s model as a beautiful example of the universal mandala wisdom that we find in Tibetan Buddhism, and in the psychology of Carl Jung – though Carl Jung, it should be noted, borrowed much from Tibetan Buddhism in the creation of his mandala model of the psyche.

The ‘NVC Mandala’ that becomes clear when Marshall Rosenberg’s ‘four components’ model is arranged with Observations and Feelings at east and west, and Needs and Requests at north and south, is all the more remarkable for the fact that he developed his model without any knowledge of Tibetan Buddhism or the work of Carl Jung. The obvious connections between the non-dual psychology of the Tibetan Buddhist mandala and the practical psychological analysis of thought and language that is provided by Marshall Rosenberg, provide the basis for an extremely rich synthesis of ideas and very profound support for the Buddhist practice of Mindfulness.

I have placed Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication and Eugene Gendlin’s Focusing under the same heading because I have found it helpful to combine them into a single model. The outer clarity of communication, which Nonviolent Communication aspires to, requires a foundation of deep Presence and self-empathy – and these qualities can be more powerfully cultivated and more fully understood through self-enquiry dyad practice based on the core ideas in Gendlin’s Focusing model.

I hope that the articles in the ‘NVC/Focusing’ series will be thought-provoking for anyone with an interest in bringing harmony and compassion to their relationships and communities; in the psychology and spirituality of everyday life; and in the Buddhist ideals of nonviolence, loving-kindness, and creativity. I would like to find the time to write some in-depth reflections on how both Nonviolent Communication and Focusing can support a deepening of Buddhist practice; and how Buddhist insights that support a deepening of the practice of Nonviolent Communication and Focusing.

You can access the first post in this series by clicking here, or by clicking on ‘NVC/Focusing’ in the top menu.

Book Sections

(under the ‘Book’ menu above)

The Mandala of Love website started as a book project called A Mandala of Love: Consciousness, Ethics and Society. I have published some of the drafts of the early sections of that book (from 2016) in the form of articles in a ‘Book Sections’ series, which can be accessed by clicking on the ‘Book’ menu above.

Alternatively, you can access the first post in the ‘Book Sections’ series by clicking here.

Hui Neng and the Mirror-Like Wisdom – A Zen Story

(listed under the ‘Buddhism’ menu above)

The earliest piece of writing in the site, this is a longer piece from 2012. Even though it is not quite complete, it covers the most significant events on the Hui Neng story. To access it click here, or on the title above. I am hoping that this article will provide inspiration and guidance to students of both meditation and non-duality. I find the story of Hui Neng to be one of the most beautiful and illuminating in the whole of the Buddhist tradition. Among the many deep themes in this rich and multi-dimensional story, you will find, I believe, the essence of Zen.

Those who have been reading my articles on the mandala wisdom on this website, will find that Hui Neng’s story brings us back, in a fresh new way, to the traditional point of entry into the mandala: the blue Eastern Quadrant; the ’empty’ rūpa skandha; the Mirror-Like Wisdom; and the brahmavihāra of Equanimity.

Individual Coaching, Mandala Innerwork, and Meditation Teaching

Although I am currently very busy with personal commitments, I may be able to provide individual meditation guidance and coaching sessions via Zoom to people who are interested in my work. My Mandala Innerwork approach to coaching is a form of self-enquiry that students of meditation will find very supportive. These sessions are also especially valuable to students of the Nonviolent Communication (NVC) model, since these sessions focus on the development of the attitudes and skills of self-empathy, which is foundational to that model. I am particularly keen to work with those who are interested in the Mandala of Love approach to self-enquiry, meditation, and self-empathetic innerwork, and who would value my support to apply the principles that I have been outlining in my articles.

My approach to innerwork draws on various sources of inspiration, but makes extensive use of the work of Eugene Gendlin, and his student Anne Weiser-Cornell. I have also completed the Inner Presence Coaching training of Jerry Donoghue, an NVC teacher who is based in Ashville, North Carolina, in the USA – an NVC teacher who, like me, is engaged with integrating NVC with the non-dual wisdom of the Buddhist tradition.

Jerry Donoghue and I also share the conviction that the practice of self-empathy, which is a foundational element of the NVC model, requires the acknowledgement of psychological parts – a theme that I have addressed frequently in my ‘Meditation Guidance’ articles (including here, here, here, and here). Indeed the self-empathy / self-enquiry approach that I have come to call Mandala Innerwork is founded on my observation, over several decades of my own innerwork practice, that the ability to self-empathetically recognise and work with psychological parts is an essential self-awareness skill, and a necessary skill if we wish to become more conscious; to recover an authentic self; and to integrate non-dual wisdom.

In the context of my individual coaching sessions, I like to integrate my meditation and self-enquiry work with my facilitation of self-empathetic innerwork. Both skills take the idea of ‘resting as Consciousness’ as their starting point. Indeed, my coaching work is best characterised as a form of self-enquiry facilitation, or of Mindfulness with the goal of Insight – seeing through the self-illusion. The depth of that enquiry depends on the choice of those that I am working with, but my own personal framework is rooted in the rich and powerful psychology of the Buddhist non-duality teachings.

If you would like to read more on my approach to NVC Self-Empathy work and Mandala Innerwork, please consider looking at the articles that can be found under the NVC/Focusing menu above. A brief summary of my approach can be found here.

William Parker 2021

January 7, 2018

NVC and Focusing – Summaries of Related Articles in Other Categories

Because Marshall Rosenberg’s ‘Nonviolent Communication’ (NVC) and Eugene Gendlin’s ‘Focusing’ self-empathy practice, have been such a strong influence on me, and have been so valuable in my understanding of the mandala wisdom of Buddhist tradition, I have incorporated these perspectives into several of my articles. References to NVC and Focusing can therefore be found in other categories on this website – especially the introductory series on meditation and self-enquiry, which can be found under ‘Meditation’ in the top menu.

I would very much like to find the time to write some articles focused entirely on both NVC and Focusing, and hope that those will more fully articulate my conviction that these models are enormously relevant to modern students of Buddhism. In the meantime, I have listed below some of the articles on this site that reference NVC and Focusing – with brief summaries of each, which are different from the summaries that I have written for these articles when they appear elsewhere. Click on any of the titles or images to be taken to the corresponding article.

December 31, 2021

The Uyghur ‘Genocide’ Narrative and the Propaganda War against China

I am publishing this embedded YouTube video in my new Anti-War category. For some time now, I have felt a need to supplement my engagement with the problem of the egoic mind – which has been through meditation and self-enquiry – with some engagement with the disturbing reflection of that egoic violence and hatred that we can see when we look in a penetrating way at values, systems, and structures (and individuals), that govern the outer world. While most of us in the modern West have a complacent sense of safety and stability, those around the world in less fortunate countries are finding themselves in the cross-hairs – the object of regime change operations funded by our governments, and supported by various well-funded pro-war propaganda agencies. This war has two enemies – because the propaganda war is always being simultaneously waged against ourselves, by these same agencies, who desperately need to cover up or justify what is being done in our name.

We live in extraordinary times; dark times in which great crimes are being committed both covertly and in plain sight; times in which the economic and political culture of the liberal democracies of the West has degraded to such an extent that both government and media are frequently acting in way that is not only not at all in the interests of their populations, but very dangerous for the future of our planet. In a modern world where both nation states and international institutions are failing to maintain their integrity in the face of corporate and oligarchic forces and the march of new technologies, we need to create a culture of non-violence and wisdom – and as part of this we need to support those embattled independant voices for peace, truth and justice that are trying to push back against these dangerous collective manifestations of the egoic mind.

In this video, Max Blumenthal, an anti-war journalist for whom I have enormous admiration, is participating in a panel discussion held on March 19, 2021, hosted on Daniel Dumbrill’s YouTube channel. With extraordinary diligence and persistence he has been documenting the deceptions behind the US government’s allegation that China is committing “genocide” against Uyghur Muslims in its Xinjiang region, challenging the dishonesty of the studies funded by the US government’s ‘National Endowment for Democracy’ (NED). He especially exposes the error-filled research of Christian fundamentalist and fanatical anti-Communist Adrian Zenz, the man who most of this anti-China disinformation can be traced back to. It is an astonishing reflection of the state of our world that Zenz is taken by the NATO government (and the Australian government), and by the whole of the mainstream media around the world, to be a genuine expert on China. The principles of diplomacy and international law are no longer being applied – China is being arbitrarily declared guilty, which almost no chance of proving its innocence, but for the handful of voices like those of Max Blumenthal and Daniel Dumbrill.

May 10, 2021

The Ten Archetypal Buddhas of the Mandala – Part 6: Vajrasattva-Akshobya

This article is the sixth of fifteen articles inspired by the central five verses of the ‘Inspiration-Prayer for Deliverance from the Dangerous Pathway of the Bardo’, in which I shall be aiming to show meditators how each one of the ten deities of the Dharmadhātu Mandala can be felt in the fields of the body as profound suprapersonal sources of somatic healing and wisdom. Those who read the whole series of articles – and it is intended that these articles should be read in sequence – will be able to incorporate these reflections into their meditation practice in a systematic way. The first article in the series can be found here; brief summaries of all the articles can be found here; and you can read the five verses here.

The Mandala of ‘Receptive’ Deities Continued

This series of articles is essentially a systematic description of the ten deities of the Dharmadhātu mandala, and in this article I shall be going one step deeper into what I have chosen to call the mandala of the five ‘receptive’ deities. This division of the ten deities into two groups – five ‘yin’, or ‘receptive’, deities, and five ‘yang’, or ‘expansive’ ones – is not a traditional formulation as far as I know, though it has several parallels in the traditional teachings. I feel very motivated to share it however, because I have found it to be such a powerful framework in my own meditation practice. It is my hope that readers will wish to experiment with meditating systematically on the somatic resonance of each of these deities as I have done. While you may wish to simply meditate on the deities as a ‘meditation cycle’, as I initially did, I hope to be able to demonstrate that these deities are best approached in pairs – since the pairs of Dharmic principles that are behind the west-east and south-north pairs of deities, represent profound spiritual oppositions that must be reconciled and integrated if we are to fully embody the energies of the Five Wisdoms.

The two-stage model that I have adopted (meditating on the ‘receptive’ Dharmic principles first, followed by the ‘expansive’ ones) correspond to the two initial stages – ‘Integration’ and ‘Positive Emotion’ – in the ‘System of Meditation Practice’ that was first proposed by Sangharakshita in the 1970s. The five deities in the first group, which we are currently investigating, are ‘receptive’ in that they are associated with ‘yin’ ,or ‘receptive’, energies in the somatic anatomy of the body, and because of this can serve to create a foundation of psychological integration in the early stages of meditation practice. They represent five key Dharmic principles, in the necessarily more introverted and self-empathetic process of our initial self-healing, and of gaining familiarity with the experience of ‘resting as’ embodied Consciousness.

August 15, 2020

The Ten Archetypal Buddhas of the Mandala – Part 5: Pandaravārsini

This article is the fifth of fifteen articles inspired by the ‘Inspiration-Prayer for Deliverance from the Dangerous Pathway of the Bardo’, in which I shall be aiming to show meditators how each one of the ten deities of the Dharmadhātu Mandala can be felt in the fields of the body as profound suprapersonal sources of somatic healing and wisdom. Those who read the whole series of articles – and it is intended that these articles should be read in sequence – will be able to incorporate these reflections into their meditation practice in a systematic way. The first article in the series can be found here; brief summaries of all the articles can be found here; and you can read the five verses here.

I offer these reflections without any claim to the authority of any particular tradition, or school of thought. I am adding my own personal and idiosyncratic commentary to the other commentaries that are available on the Five Wisdoms, and on the archetypal Buddhas of the Dharmadhātu Mandala, only because I believe passionately in the preciousness of this information. I cannot help feeling that there should be much more engagement with this knowledge than is evidenced on the Internet – much more discussion, reflection, contemplation and meditative self-enquiry which takes this primordial mandala as the integrated whole that it is. I sincerely hope that the thoughts that I am sharing will be supportive of this work, and supportive of those who share my love of the mandala wisdom.

In this article, I make reference to the five-fold ‘System of Practice’, that has been used, within the Triratna Buddhist Community, as a framework for thinking about the dimensions of meditation practice and the Dharma life more generally. Sangharakshita’s model originally identified Integration, Positive Emotion, Spiritual Death (i.e. Insight), and Spiritual Rebirth, as four key stages. To these four, a fifth component – Receptivity – was later added – usually as a third ‘stage’. While I am in complete agreement regarding the importance of receptivity and the need for its inclusion in the model, but I do not agree with the addition of it as an additional stage. In my own experience Receptivity is integral to the foundational Integration stage – and therefore to all the subsequent stages. The placement of Receptivity third in a series of five stages, does however reflect the reality that meditators generally come to an appreciation of the importance of Receptivity after they have been engaged with the goals of Integration and Positive Emotion for some time. It certainly fits my experience that a reframing of meditation through an emphasis on Receptivity is necessary for the sort of deepening of practice that is necessary for the emergence of the subsequent stages of Spiritual Death (Insight) and Spiritual Rebirth (Bodhicitta).

I need to acknowledge, and indeed emphasise, that where I have suggested, in these articles, that Receptivity should be given greater primacy, and have proposed that five of the ten deities can be considered to embody Receptivity are particularly supportive of the initial ‘Integration’ phase (and that the other five are more ‘expansive’ can strongly support us during the subsequent ‘Positive Emotion’ stage), this is an observation from my own explorations, and certainly goes beyond the standard interpretation of Sangharakshita’s model. I do not however, believe my suggestions are in conflict with Sangharakshita’s emphasis. I prefer to think of my ideas as a respectful engagement with his; as building on the foundation that his work has given us; as affirming the value of his original four-fold model; and as a tentative contribution to the process by which the Triratna meditation practice model is being forged in the furnace of experience.

The Mandala of Receptive Deities

In my last article (here), I spoke about the way in which the ten deities of the mandala fall into two groups of five. In the first of these two groups there are three female Buddhas and two male Buddhas, but all of them can be characterised as more ‘yin’, or ‘receptive’ in their energy as they are experienced in meditation. In the second group there are three male Buddhas and two female Buddhas, but all of them can be characterised as more ‘yang’, or ‘expansive’ in their energy as they are experienced in meditation. In the next five articles, I shall be talking about the first group of five deities – the ‘yin’, or ‘receptive’ group of deities – which are shown below. I shall starting with the deities of the mandala quadrants and finishing with White Tāra, in the centre.

I have chosen to start, in this article, with an exploration of the figure of Pandaravārsini; with the Discriminating Wisdom; and with the Dharmic principle that I have come to call ‘Uncaused Happiness’. It will not be possible to separate Pandaravārsini and the experience she represents, from Amitābha and the experience that he represents, but my focus will be on Pandaravārsini. I hope to show that for meditators, she is of enormous importance for our healing of the klesha of rāga, or ‘craving’, which is one of our greatest obstacles to realisation. More than this, because she represents the essence of our capacity to truly love ourselves, she can be regarded as the source of our capacity for emotional self-healing through meditation practice.

The Samjñā Skandha, the Klesha of Craving (rāga), and the Preta Realms

When, through craving, I wander in samsara,
on the luminous light-path of Discriminating Wisdom,
may Blessed Amitābha go before me,
and Pandaravārsini behind me;
help me to cross the bardo’s dangerous pathway,
and bring me to the perfect buddha state.

The five verses in the ‘Inspiration-Prayer for Deliverance from the Dangerous Pathway of the Bardo’ take us clockwise around the mandala in the traditional way, starting in the centre and then the eastern quadrant. In this exploration, I shall be taking us on a different journey – a journey that aims to explore and embrace the hidden polarities and dynamic tensions within the mandala structure. We shall be starting in the western quadrant with the red light-path of the ’empty’ sanjñā skandha and the Discriminating Wisdom, which leads us away from the egoic reactivity of the Preta Realm and towards the emotionally nourishing influence of Pandaravārsini and Amitābha. Only then will we move across to the eastern quadrant to look at the blue light-path of the ’empty’ rūpa skandha and the Mirror-Like Wisdom, which leads us away from the Hell Realms, and towards the peace and mental clarity of Vajrasattva and Buddha-Locana.

July 15, 2020

The Ten Archetypal Buddhas of the Mandala – Part 4: Integration and Positive Emotion

This article is the fourth of fifteen articles inspired by the ‘Inspiration-Prayer for Deliverance from the Dangerous Pathway of the Bardo’, in which I shall be aiming to show meditators how each one of the ten deities of the Dharmadhātu Mandala can be felt in the fields of the body as profound suprapersonal sources of somatic healing and wisdom. Those who read the whole series of articles – and it is intended that these articles should be read in sequence – will be able to incorporate these reflections into their meditation practice in a systematic way. The first article in the series can be found here; and brief summaries of all the articles can be found here.

In this article, I hope I can begin to tentatively explore how the kleshas and Wisdom energies, that I spoke about in the last article in this series (here), are located in the fields of the body, and on how we can begin to ‘hold the tension’ between those opposite groups of energies – as they appear as polarities within our bodily-felt experience in meditation practice. Each quadrant of the mandala points to an opposition between an egoic manifestation on one side, and a mysterious transcendent aspect on the other – which we can think of an aspect of our true nature as embodied Consciousness. We need to hold the tension between these opposites. By being careful not to deny the reality of either pole, while paying special attention to the ever-present somatic resonance of the transcendent reality, we begin to heal, and move towards our goal. Mandalas are complex multi-dimensional images of the many and various inherent oppositions within the psyche – which are the obstacles to our integration. Each quadrant of the mandala therefore describes a tension to be held – a polarity to be reconciled – and each axis of the mandala describes a tension to be held and reconciled also.

The Dharmadhātu Mandala as a Ten-Fold Meditation Cycle

I prefer to meditate on the ten archetypal Buddhas, not only as five apparent ‘couples’ as in the ‘Inspiration-Prayer’ – with one male-female pair representing each of the Five Wisdoms – or as five female Buddhas and five male Buddhas. Rather, I meditate first on what I have come to think of as the five ‘receptive’ deities (three female Buddhas and two male ones), and then on the five ‘expansive’ deities (three male Buddhas and two female ones). The two diagrams below, show these two groups of five deities – each with the ‘Dharmic Principles’ that I find useful for identifying the aspect of the Five Wisdoms that they personify, represent, or embody.

In the course of the articles in this series, I shall be explaining the words that I have chosen for the ‘Dharmic Principles’ and expanding upon them. There are two of these ‘Dharmic Principles’ for each Wisdom – one for each of the ten archetypal Buddhas in the mandala. The eight ‘Dharmic principles’ that are shown in the four quadrants of the two mandala are either brahmavihāras (Equanimity, Appreciative Joy, Loving Kindness, and Compassion), or are closely related Dharmic principles, which I call Qualia (Being, Embodiment, Uncaused Happiness, and Life Energy). While the Five Wisdoms are usually defined as the aspects of wisdom that arise as the emptiness of each of the skandhas is recognised, I, like many others, regard the brahmavihāras as an equally important way in to an understanding of them – and absolutely key to our bodily-felt experience of the Wisdoms in meditation. In previous articles on this website, I have already written quite extensively on each of the brahmavihāras and their related Qualia, but will be systematically examining each one of these Dharmic principles as we progress in this series of articles.

June 15, 2020

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 3: The Body

This is Article No. 7 in the ‘5 Wisdoms’ series, and is Part 3 of the Rūpa Skandha mini series.

The aim of this Rūpa Skandha mini series is to outline what is meant by the ’emptiness’, or non-personal nature, of the ‘concretising’, form-creating’, ‘conceptualising’, or ‘conceptual form’, aspect of our cognitive-perceptual experiencing process, which Buddhist tradition calls the rūpa skandha – usually translated simply as ‘Form’. Together these articles make up a single exploration over several articles, which are best read in order. When all these articles are published, you will be able to click on the titles below to access the other parts.

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 1: Thinking and Wisdom

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 2: The Mirror-Like Wisdom

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 4: Mindfulness and Emptiness

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 5: Dharma and Truth

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 6: Consciousness and Qualia

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 7: The Heart Sutra

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 8: Perfect Speech

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 9: Equanimity and Being

Bringing Awareness ‘Into the Body’

I find the notion of Being, which I introduced in my last article (here) to be an extremely useful notion for making a deeper connection with the practice of Mindfulness of ‘the Form of the Body’ (kaya), which is the first of the ‘ Four Foundations of Mindfulness’ and corresponds with the rūpa skandha. In that article, I also pointed out the way the Buddha, not only took the existing ancient Indian ‘Five Skandhas’ teaching and gave his own interpretation of it – but adapted the same five-fold enquiry framework in the creation of his ‘Four Foundations of Mindfulness’ model. The diagram below shows the correspondences between the skandhas and ‘Foundations’.

The implicit choice on the part of the Buddha, to address the rūpa skandha, or ‘Form’, or Thinking aspect of the mind, by the advice to bring awareness into the ‘Form of the Body’ (Kaya) is deeply significant, and has, for me, a wonderfully contemporary feel about it. Many modern psychotherapists, heirs to the various traditions within psychoanalysis and humanistic psychotherapy, would say the same. We could even think of this first ‘Foundation of Mindfulness’ as the first ‘exercise’ at the Buddha’s Mindfulness workshop. The first step in his ’embodied Consciousness’ training – in the Buddha’s systematic and comprehensive program of personal, transpersonal and spiritual healing – was to ‘bring awareness into the body’ by being aware of our body’s position in space as we go about our lives.

‘Bringing awareness into the body’ does not stop there however – with the rūpa skandha and the first ‘Foundation of Mindfulness’, which is kaya, or Mindfulness of ‘the Form of the Body’. It is important to understand, that what the Buddha is addressing in his ‘Four Foundations of Mindfulness’ framework, is not a model in which the first ‘Foundation’, and first skandha, relates to the ‘body’ and all the rest are aspects of ‘mind’. On the contrary, all the Foundations, and all the skandhas, are aspects of an integrated ‘body-mind’ experience. Moreover, the whole four-fold process is one of deepening into the experience of embodied Consciousness, at successively deeper levels – starting with Mindfulness of ‘the Form of the Body’ (kaya), and then working round the mandala in a clockwise direction.

This notion of embodied Consciousness is fundamental to our understanding – there is no Mind / Body split in the Buddha’s model, and it would be a terrible mistake for us to introduce one. This is why it is so important that we do not mistake the rūpa skandha for ‘body’, and do not take Mindfulness of Kaya literally and narrowly as somehow denoting the totality of bodily experience. We would do well perhaps, to think of ‘the form of the body’ (rūpa / kaya), not as ‘the body’ but as our doorway into the body-mind – our doorway into that deeper and fuller experience of ourselves which can be spoken of in terms of ‘ the somatic’, or of ’embodiment’. The form of the body is the venue for, and the starting point for, our exploration – and while as the apparent container of our somatic process, it is, more importantly, itself contained by Consciousness.

June 6, 2020

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 2: The Mirror-Like Wisdom

This is Article No. 6 in the ‘5 Wisdoms’ series, and is Part 2 of the Rūpa Skandha mini series.

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 1: Thinking and Wisdom

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 2: The Mirror-Like Wisdom

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 3: The Body

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 4: Mindfulness and Emptiness

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 5: Dharma and Truth

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 6: Consciousness and Qualia

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 7: The Heart Sutra

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 8: Perfect Speech

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 9: Equanimity and Being

Objectivity, Clarity, Equanimity and Being

In the previous article in this series I began to explore what is meant in Buddhist tradition by a recognition of the ’emptiness’ of the rūpa skandha. This recognition is also called the Mirror-Like Wisdom, and in the mandalas of Indian Mahayana Buddhist tradition and early Tibetan Buddhist tradition, it is represented by the blue eastern quadrant. In later versions of the Tibetan meditation mandalas we see the blue eastern quadrant replaced by a white one – I shall be endeavouring to explain this in a later article in this series. In the Tibetan Bardo Thodol teachings, which were given to us by the great Padmasambhava, we are given the wonderful image of the ‘luminous light-path’ of the Mirror-Like Wisdom. This notion of a light-path can also be thought of a transformational journey, or a purification process, that we undergo as we move from our habitual and unconscious identification with the rūpa skandha to a state of mental objectivity, clarity, and equanimity.

I have suggested that rūpa, which is conventionally translated as ‘Form’, is perhaps best thought of in terms of its association with the Thinking function of the mind. ‘Form’ is that aspect of our experience that can be conceptually described by thoughts, and thoughts are always thought-forms – conceptual forms of various degrees of subtlety. So, rūpa is that aspect of the mind which creates conceptual forms, or works with conceptual forms, and manages our experience, and makes our decisions using conceptual forms.

The rūpa skandha is that aspect of mind that names and manipulates concepts using words, language and various forms of verbal communication – sometimes very crudely, sometimes with great sophistication, and often very dishonestly. Mirror-Like Wisdom, on the other hand, involves a different order of thinking – a different quality of intelligence, which arises directly from the experience of Being, and which creatively addresses the central questions of the nature of mind and its implications for human suffering, human development and human freedom.

We are also told, as I explained in the previous article, that our identification with the rūpa skandha, generates and sustains an energetic residue in the mind – the kleshas of dvesha, or hatred. Dvesha, or hatred, is the characteristic mental state of the Hell Realms, and it is our identification with the rūpa skandha that leads to the Hell Realms – and it is only by releasing that identification that we can finally and completely free ourselves from the mental tendency towards the particularly extreme forms of mental suffering that the Hell Realms represent. We need to cleanse ourselves of the judgemental, hostile and aggressive kleshas in the dvesha category, in order to return to rest in the experience of Being, and to the Mirror-Like Wisdom.

Vajrasattva-Akshobhya and Buddhalocanā

If we are lucky enough to have the Bardo Thodol teachings recited over our body in the hours and days after our death, we may hear our spirit being invited to recognise the emptiness of the rūpa skandha, so that we are released into the Mirrror-Like Wisdom. The ‘hearing in the bardo’ teachings coach us through the experience of being newly deceased but not yet re-born, systematically warning us about each of the Realms of Conditioned Existence, and reminding us that the intermediate state is precious opportunity for complete liberation. For example, we are told to be aware of the great danger that our accumulated kleshas of dvesha, or hatred, may cause us to be drawn to the dull blue light of the Hell Realms. At the same time we are urged to allow ourselves to be drawn to the beautiful blue-white light of the Buddha Vajrasattva-Akshobhya and his female Buddha partner Buddhalocanā (pronounced buddha-loach-anar). Buddhalocanā’s name means ‘She of the Buddha Eye’, or ‘Eye of Awakening’ – I shall be reflecting on this name later in this article.

May 21, 2020

The Ten Archetypal Buddhas of the Mandala – Part 3: Resting as Consciousness

This article is the third of fifteen articles inspired by the central five verses of the ‘Inspiration-Prayer for Deliverance from the Dangerous Pathway of the Bardo’, in which I shall be aiming to show meditators how each one of the ten deities of the Dharmadhātu Mandala can be felt in the fields of the body as profound suprapersonal sources of somatic healing and wisdom. Those who read the whole series of articles – and it is intended that these articles should be read in sequence – will be able to incorporate these reflections into their meditation practice in a systematic way. The first article in the series can be found here; brief summaries of all the articles can be found here; and you can read the five verses here.

In the five central verses of the ‘Inspiration-Prayer for Deliverance from the Dangerous Pathway of the Bardo’ (you can read those verses here), we are shown the five ‘light-paths’ that lead us from ignorance to wisdom – from identification with the skandhas, and with the self-illusion, to a recognition of the ’emptiness’ of the skandhas and to the realisation of the five Wisdoms. In order to begin to explore each skandha / Wisdom light-path, I shall be describing each of the five kleshas and five Realms; and each of the five Wisdoms, and the five ‘Buddha couples’ that correspond to them.

The Vijñāna Skandha, the Klesha of Spiritual Ignorance (avidyā), and the Deva Realms

When, through spiritual ignorance, I wander in samsara,
on the luminous light-path of the dharmadhātu wisdom,
may Blessed Vairocana go before me,
and White Tara behind me.

We need to start in the centre of the mandala, with the central skandha / Wisdom light-path, which is the white light-path of the ’empty’ vijñāna skandha, which is Consciousness. In conventional egoic perception, we identify with the vijñāna skandha and personalise it – we take Consciousness to be personal. It could be said that this ignorance of the suprapersonal nature of Consciousness is the foundational klesha – the ‘spiritual ignorance’ from which all the other kleshas inevitably follow. To release this personalisation of Consciousness, and the egoic self-view idea that springs from it, is the beginning of Wisdom. When we are truly mindful, and learn to ‘rest as Consciousness’ in meditation, we are resting in the recognition that Consciousness is in fact an objective and collective reality. By ‘seeing through’ our habitual personalisation of Consciousness we begin to recognise that personal self-hood is just an illusion that we have created – an illusion that we will inevitably continue to create, and will move in an out of, until we are fully realised.

In the Buddhist texts there are two words used for this spiritual ignorance. These are moha and avidyā, and both are sometimes used in the ‘five kleshas‘ list. While the term moha is also taken to mean delusion, confusion, and dullness, or unconsciousness in general, the term avidyā is preferable, in my view, because it generally refers more specifically to the spiritual ignorance of personalising Consciousness, and to the egoic belief in a separate self.

It is clarifying to remember that the klesha of ‘spiritual ignorance’ is the deep rooted habit of egoic personalisation that is the distinguishing characteristic of the Deva Realms – and is the reason for the devas’ bondage to conditioned existence, despite their ability to dwell in ultra-refined and extremely ‘positive’ mental states. When we are talking in the context of the five-fold mandala model of mind, which crystalised during the Mahayana period of Indian Buddhism, and became the underlying structure for the Vajrayana teachings of Tibetan Buddhism, it is also helpful to think of this klesha as the ‘spiritual ignorance’ that is the opposite of the Dharmadhātu Wisdom. In other words, avidyā is that ignorance which is our failure to recognise the ’emptiness’, or non-personal nature of Consciousness – the ’emptiness’ of the vijñāna skandha. So avidyā is the klesha that leads us, when we are in the ‘intermediate state’ – the bardo between lives – to be drawn toward rebirth in the Deva Realms, rather than toward recognition of our true nature as the white light of the Dharmadhātu Wisdom, which shines from the figures of Vairocana and White Tara (originally Ākāshadhātvishvari).

May 15, 2020

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 1: Thinking and Wisdom

This is Article No. 5 in the ‘5 Wisdoms’ series, and is Part 1 of the Rūpa Skandha mini- series.

The aim of this Rūpa Skandha mini-series is to outline what is meant by the ’emptiness’, or non-personal nature, of the ‘concretising’, form-creating’, ‘conceptualising’, or ‘conceptual form’, aspect of our cognitive-perceptual experiencing process, which Buddhist tradition calls the rūpa skandha – usually translated simply as ‘Form’. Together these articles make up a single exploration over several articles, which are best read in order. When all these articles are published, you will be able to click on the titles below to access the other parts.

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 1: Thinking and Wisdom

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 2: The Mirror-Like Wisdom

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 3: The Body

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 4: Mindfulness and Emptiness

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 5: Dharma and Truth

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 6: Consciousness and Qualia

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 7: The Heart Sutra

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 8: Perfect Speech

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 9: Equanimity and Being

In my last article (here), I attempted a broad outline of the Buddha’s ‘Five Skandhas‘ teaching as I have come to understand it. I recommend that you read that article first if you have not done so already. Those who have been reading the previous articles in this series, know that I have been drawing on the larger body of Mahayana Buddhist mandala wisdom, of which the skandhas form the basis – and receiving quite a bit of assistance from Carl Jung. We are very blessed, as modern students of Buddhism, to be able to draw on the whole of the Buddhist tradition – its Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana stages – when we wish to be able to understand any particular aspect of it. This is particularly valuable in the case of the ‘Emptiness (Skt: shunyatā) of the Five Skandhas‘ teaching, because the Pali Canon does not give us enough of the detail of the Buddha’s analysis, and much of the meaning appears to have been lost. By drawing on the wisdom of the later enlightened teachers in the Buddhist tradition – especially Padmasambhava’s teachings in the Bardo Thodol (Tibetan Book of the Dead) – we are better able to understand the meaning of what the Buddha was saying.

In this enquiry we are also blessed to have the perspective of Carl Jung (1875 – 1961), who was a keen student of Buddhism, and whose scholarship and wisdom is unfortunately poorly understood, but was an extraordinary gift to humanity. Jung’s views are particularly valuable in this context, because he took the skandhas and incorporated them into the heart of his mandala model of the psyche, and into his very profound psychological typology framework.

The Rūpa Skandha and the Mirror-Like Wisdom

Traditionally the first skandha is rūpa, and it is usually translated as ‘Form’. When a Buddhist practitioner sits in meditation before a carved image of a Buddha, that image is often called a ‘rūpa’, yet many interpreters associate the word rūpa with ‘the body’, without adequately explaining that rūpa refers to the ‘form of the body’, and not to the sensory experience of the body, which is associated with the vedanā skandha. This error is in part because ‘the body’ is often conceptualised in a narrow way – one that fails to acknowledge the subtle, interior, and energetic dimensions of bodily felt experience that come under the broad heading of the somatic. I have explained this distinction in some detail in my previous article (here), and shall be explaining further below.

To avoid the multiple misunderstandings that arise when we confuse ‘Form’ with the physical, sensory body, I have been suggesting that ‘conceptual form’ is a better translation. By adding the word ‘conceptual’ we are making it more clear that rūpa includes the all-important thinking, judging, and conceptualising function of the mind. Padmasambhava’s teachings in the Bardo Thodol (Tibetan Book of the Dead), make it very clear that this was the Buddha’s intention, because they show us the rūpa skandha as an egoic reflection of that ultimate degree of mental clarity and objectivity that is described as the Mirror-Like Wisdom – the ‘Thinking’ aspect of the enlightened mind that emerges when all conceptualisations and points of view are recognised as ’empty’.

May 7, 2020

The Ten Archetypal Buddhas of the Mandala – Part 2: Ten Dharmic Principles

This article is the second of fifteen articles inspired by the ‘Inspiration-Prayer for Deliverance from the Dangerous Pathway of the Bardo’, in which I shall be aiming to show meditators how each one of the ten deities of the Dharmadhātu Mandala can be felt in the fields of the body as profound suprapersonal sources of somatic healing and wisdom. Those who read the whole series of articles – and it is intended that these articles should be read in sequence – will be able to incorporate these reflections into their meditation practice in a systematic way. The first article in the series can be found here; brief summaries of all the articles can be found here; and you can read the five verses here.

Padmasambhava – The Second Buddha

I have a great love of the Bardo Thodol, or ‘Tibetan Book of the Dead’. It contains powerful truths about the nature of mind. I regard Padmasambhava, it’s author, as the second Buddha, as the Tibetan Buddhists do. I see the Bardo Thodol as a wonderful distillation of many of the essential elements of the Mahayana phase of Buddhism, at a crucial time when its Vajrayana phase was being born. While I love early Buddhism and the historical Buddha, my belief is that, if we are seeking radical transformation and self-realisation in this lifetime, our approach to meditation and insight practice benefits enormously from the incorporation of the key Mahayana and Vajrayana insights that can be found in the Bardo Thodol.

An important thing to understand about the Bardo Thodol is that we do not have to believe in it as a literal description of how rebirth takes place, to find it nevertheless, to be of the utmost value. The profound wisdom that it contains is in the form of archetypal psychology. It speaks to us, in the language of imagery and symbolism, of things that can only be pointed to, and felt as a resonance in the fields of the body – not known objectively and conceptually.

The fact that the Bardo Thodol came to be called the ‘Tibetan Book of the Dead’ is probably unfortunate. That was the name, given to it by early Western students of Tibetan Buddhism, of the collection of Padmasambhava’s teachings that includes verses to be read over the corpse after a person has died. It is nothing like the ‘Egyptian Book of the Dead’ with which comparison was made at that time. Bardo, or more correctly the two words bar do, are Tibetan for ‘intermediate state’; and Thodol, is actually two Tibetan words – thos, which is Tibetan for ‘hearing’ as well as ‘philosophical studies’, and grol, which means ‘liberation’. Hence a better translation of Bardo Thodol would be Liberation Through Hearing in the Intermediate State.

Padmasambhava, the ‘Lotus Born’ – also called Guru Rinpoche.

To understand the great value and importance to the Bardo Thodol, we need to understand that a bardo is more than just an intermediate state between lives – i.e. when we have died and are in the process of being reincarnated. Rather, a bardo is any moment of transition, any moment of choice – indeed any moment of Consciousness. To be truly conscious is to recognise that every moment of every life situation is a bardo – a moment of freedom and potentiality in which profound transformation is possible.

April 15, 2020

Resting as Consciousness with the mandala wisdom as our guide, everything falls into place at last.

******* Three Current Writing Projects: *******

Individual Coaching, Mandala Innerwork, and Meditation Teaching

The Mandala of ‘Receptive’ Deities Continued

The Mandala of Receptive Deities

The Samjñā Skandha, the Klesha of Craving (rāga), and the Preta Realms

The Dharmadhātu Mandala as a Ten-Fold Meditation Cycle

Bringing Awareness ‘Into the Body’

Objectivity, Clarity, Equanimity and Being

Vajrasattva-Akshobhya and Buddhalocanā

The Vijñāna Skandha, the Klesha of Spiritual Ignorance (avidyā), and the Deva Realms

The Rūpa Skandha and the Mirror-Like Wisdom

Padmasambhava – The Second Buddha

* Three Current Writing Projects: *