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 top menu above to reveal the drop-down sub-menus, and to see listings of the articles in date order.

* Two New Multi-Part Articles: *

The Rūpa Skandha – A Six-Part Series

Click on the title above to read the first article in a series of six articles. Together they take a very deep, broad and detailed look at what recognising the emptiness of the rūpa skandha, or Form, might mean in practice. The fact that the rūpa skandha is associated, in the Bardo Thodol, with both the Mirror-Like Wisdom and the Buddhist Hell Realms, establishes a very clear archetypal association between the rūpa skandha and the Thinking function of the mind. Rūpa is however, frequently rendered as ‘body’. These articles aim to recover the great power of the Buddha’s ‘Five Skandhas‘ teaching by addressing this area of confusion. Brief summaries of each article in the series can be found here.

The Ten Archetypal Buddhas of the Mandala

In recent months, I have also begun work on a new series of 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 the ‘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 five female Buddhas of the Dharmadātu 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

The “Meditation Guidance’ series of articles, which were my main focus in 2017 and 2018 can be accessed via the ‘Meditation’ menu above, or as reverse date-order listing by clicking here, or on the title above. My approach to meditation and mindfulness draws on the spiritual psychology of non-duality; on the mandala-wisdom of Buddhism (and other ancient traditions), which is amplified in the psychology of Carl Jung; and on the meeting of Quantum Physics / Quantum Biology with Neuroscience 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 this series can be found here.

Although I am strongly influenced by Buddhist thought, I have tried to as much as possible in this series of articles to address the general reader. I have also been a passionate student of the deep humanistic psychology of Marshall Rosenberg (founder of Nonviolent Communication – NVC) and Eugene Gendlin (founder of the ‘Focusing‘ self-empathy/self-enquiry dyad practice), and have woven these perspectives into this ‘Mandala of Love’ approach to meditation and self-enquiry.

This series of articles aims to bring fresh insights to several common approaches to meditation (the Mindfulness of Breathing, Mettā Bhavana, and the Zen ‘Just Sitting’ practice for example). The initial framework for the Mandala of Love approach, and for this series also, is provided by the four brahmavihāras (Loving Kindness, Appreciative Joy, Equanimity and Compassion) – a four-fold meditation-cycle and self-enquiry framework from ancient India, that was incorporated into the Buddha’s teaching. Central to this approach is the conceptualisation of meditation practice as ‘resting as Consciousness’, and the recognition of the brahmavihāras as aspects of Consciousness.

By re-framing meditation and mindfulness as ‘resting as Consciousness’, there is an opportunity to set them in a non-dual context that is much more true to the Buddha’s teaching. The Buddha bore witness to the impersonal nature of all psychological phenomena, and to the 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 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.

‘Overview’ Articles (and other uncategorised ‘Buddhism’ pages)

Because of my intensive training in, and study of, Buddhism over many years, I tend to approach meditation and self-enquiry though a Buddhist frame of reference. If you have enjoyed the ‘Meditation Guidance’ posts and would like to read an additional series of in-depth articles that take a broader and more explicitly Buddhist view, and explain my overall approach to that series, please click here to see summaries of my uncategorised articles, or here to read the first of the ‘Overview’ articles.

The Five Wisdoms Mandala – Articles on Buddhism

Since the beginning of 2019, I have been aiming, in my articles, to provide some in-depth analysis on the Five Wisdoms; the Buddha’s ‘Emptiness of the Five Skandhas‘ teaching; the Four Foundations of Mindfulness; and on the male and female archetypal Buddhas of the Dharmadhātu mandala. I have created a new menu category for these articles, which I have called ‘Buddhism’. A reverse-date-order listing of these articles can be accessed by clicking here or on the title above.

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

As an experiment, I have also created a Facebook Group, which may be able to function as a venue for discussion in association with this new series of articles. To access the group click here.

Communication and Relationships (NVC)

I have been a passionate student of Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication (NVC) model for over twenty years, and have taught several courses during that time, based on NVC, 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.

The ‘NVC Mandala’ that becomes clear when the ‘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 Marshall Rosenberg 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. The posts in the ‘NVC’ series will be of great interest to anyone with an interest in psychology; in spirituality; and in harmony and compassion in their relationships and communities – and to anyone who is interested in the Buddhist ideals of nonviolence, compassion, and creativity, or in the Nonviolent Communication approach to communication and self-awareness.

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

Book Sections

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 sections of that book in the form of articles in the ‘Book Sections’ series.

You can access the first post in the ‘Book Sections’ series by clicking here.

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

This is a longer piece of writing from 2012, that I have published as a page on this website. To access it click here, or 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 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ category on this website, will find that it also brings us back, in a fresh new way, to our entry point into the mandala: the blue Eastern Quadrant; the Mirror-Like Wisdom; and the brahmavihāra of Equanimity.

Individual Coaching, Mandala Innerwork, and Meditation Teaching

I can provide individual meditation guidance and coaching sessions. My Mandala Innerwork approach to coaching is a form of self-enquiry that students of meditation find very supportive. These sessions are also especially valuable to students of the ‘Nonviolent Communication‘ 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 exploring in my blog posts.

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 9-month online training of Jerry Donoghue, an NVC teacher who is based in Ashville, North Carolina, in the USA (www.innerpresencecoaching.com), who is also engaged with integrating NVC with non-dual wisdom.

Jerry Donghue 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 absolutely 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 a Consciousness’ as their starting point. Indeed my coaching work is best characterised as a form of self-enquiry facilitation. The depth of that enquiry depends on the choice of my clients, but my own personal framework is rooted in a the rich and powerful psychology of the Buddhist non-duality teachings.

For more information on Mandala Innerwork, Inner Presence Coaching, one-to-one Meditation Teaching, and facilitated self-enqury please click here.

I welcome enquiries. Please contact me via the Contact Form here.

January 7, 2018

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 6: Consciousness and Qualia

This is Article No. 8 in the ‘Buddhism’ series.

This is also the fifth of six articles, which explore the ’emptiness’, or non-personal nature, of the ‘Form’, or ‘conceptual form’, aspect of our cognitive-perceptual experience – that which Buddhist tradition calls the rūpa skandha. Together these articles make up a single longer article, or six-part mini-series of 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: Consciousness and Qualia

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 9: Equanimity and Being

The Rūpa Skandha and the Qualia of Being

To understand why Mindfulness of the Form of the Body should be so important however, it may be helpful to return to the notion of Being, which is an idea in Western thought that is very useful for understanding the Emptiness of the rūpa skandha. Being is what philosophy and neuroscience call a qualia – an unexplainable and indefinable experience associated with Consciousness. It turns out that all phenomena whatsoever are unexplainable and ultimately indefinable experiences associated with Consciousness, as the Buddha asserted in his ‘Emptiness of the Five Skandhas‘ teaching, but there are particular qualia that we need to pay attention to if we wish to understand what the Buddha meant by Emptiness – and Being is one of these.

Being, is one of four ‘principles that defy description’ (Being; Embodiment; Uncaused Happiness; Life Energy) that I have called the Four Qualia, which I have talked about above in this article, and in previous articles (here, here, here, and here) – it is one of four key principles, which can together serve to point us to the ’empty’ experience of embodied Consciousness. Consciousness is itself also a qualia – indeed it is the most fundamental of all qualia, and all the words by which we attempt to define it are also qualia. Emptiness, for example is a qualia; and the Tibetan notions of ‘the Luminosity’, or ‘Basic Space’ that are used to point to Consciousness, are also qualia.

The Buddhist tradition loves rational language, and clear, logical conceptual forms, but at a certain point when it is approaching the ultimate nature of mind, it drops all pretense of rationality and uses qualia – words that are invitations to see beyond conceptual form (rūpa skandha). Reflecting on Being and other powerful qualia is very relevant to our current investigation of the skandhas. It may help us to understand that the skandhas are themselves qualia. As words that refer to concepts that are inherently beyond the rational mind, it is a mistake for us to reduce the subtle meanings of the skandhas to conceptualisations that we can more easily grasp.

The Emptiness and Mutability of Words

Because the skandhas – the five words used for Consciousness and its cognitive perceptual components in Buddhist tradition – are of the nature of qualia, they are only understandable by their context and their associations. The implication of this is that these words carry particular difficult-to-define meanings that the Buddha attached to them in the context of numerous detailed discourses and enquiry dialogues with his students that could not be memorised and passed down in their totality. Although we were not able to be present on all those occasions when the Buddha was referring to these terms, we are not completely lost – but we do need to be careful. Thankfully, there were later Buddhas, like Padmasambhava – who provided us with a beautiful clarification and summary of the skandhas in his Bardo Thodol text.

We need to accept the inherent limitations of the oral tradition that preserved the Buddha’s teachings in chant-able, poetic form. We have no guarantee that those devoted monks who were memorising the Buddha’s words and passing them from generation to generation for 400 years, were themselves realised souls. The meanings of words are by nature mutable, and will change slightly even within a century, and within four centuries they may change their meanings entirely.

Our task therefore, as we engage with the skandhas, needs to recognise the limitations of the rūpa skandha – the limitations of language. We need to use the Thinking mind in a way that is informed by the Mirror-Like Wisdom – which, in part, means thinking with much more subtlety and rigour, and also means being willing to let go of the rational mind entirely, recognising that it can only ever be a raft, or a finger pointing at the moon.

The Five Qualia – Words that Point Beyond the Rūpa Skandha

If we include Consciousness as a qualia, we can speak of Five Qualia, with one of the Five Qualia associated with each of the five skandhas – as shown in the diagram below. When we are entering territory in which the intellectual mind can no longer help us, these words that defy definition can sometimes be of great assistance – as pointers to a reality that is beyond the rūpa skandha – beyond conceptual form.

The diagram above shows the Five Qualia arranged as a mandala with their corresponding associations among the Five Wisdoms. When we sit in meditation and just rest as Consciousness, all of these Five Qualia are present, but probably the most obvious of these, for most people, is Being. The power of Being as a pointer to our experience of Emptiness, is precisely in its intangibility. Being cannot be precisely described or located – it is an ever present experience, but it is not just personal. It appears to be related to the field of the body, and the practice of Mindfulness of the Body brings our attention to it, but it is bigger than the body – it connects us inwardly and outwardly and expands us beyond ourselves, in a way that is very undramatic and still.

Being is word we use to talk about the existential confrontation with the source of our Consciousness and the source of our apparent self-hood, in which we ultimately recognise the presence of something far greater than ourselves – something within, that is objectively present but beyond the personal. To recognise Being is to recognise and embrace the fact and the necessity of our relational unity with Consciousness. It is normal to overlook Being completely, but when we are just sitting, or walking, or standing, or lying down, we have an opportunity to acknowledge it, and familiarise ourselves with it, and to notice the effect of our recognition of it.

The Five Qualia – Attempting to Describe Emptiness

I have spoken about the Qualia previously, and will be returning to them again because they are extremely relevant to the ‘Five Skandhas‘ teaching. To those who find the words that I have chosen for the Qualia to be rather vague and intangible, I would like to say, hopefully as some form of reassurance, that this vagueness is inevitable. When the purpose of our conceptual framework of self-enquiry is to point to that which cannot be conceptualised, there is great value in words that inherently defy the rational mind – and serve as a container for an intuitive knowing that can reach beyond ordinary Thinking, and begin to apprehend the unknowable.

I initially created the Four Qualia formulation to support myself in my meditations on the cycle of the four brahmavihāras – and I have presented them in my articles (here, and here) as a possible ‘way in’ for those wishing to familiarise themselves with the brahmavihāras. As soon as I started using them however, it was clear that they also provide a ‘way in’ for exploring the Five Wisdoms – the Buddhist Five Wisdoms and the ancient Indian brahmavihāras, being different ways of approaching the same inner territory of samādhi. The Buddhist tradition by developing the notion of the mahabrahmavihāras, or ‘great’ brahmavihāras – one corresponding to each of the brahmavihāras – was able to set the previously established Vedic framework on a new, non-personal, footing. Once it is understood that the brahmavihāras have a transpersonal source in Consciousness, there can be no doubt that there are direct correspondences between the Five Wisdoms and the brahmavihāras. These correspondences are shown in the mandala diagram below.

The Qualia therefore, are intended to help us to enter a dimension in which we give up trying to understand our experience with the rational mind, and just rest ‘as’ the universal cognitive-perceptual processes of Consciousness. The Qualia are just experiential pointers to that wisdom state in which the personalising habits of mind are released; and in which we acknowledge that everything is process. They are an attempt to find conceptual forms that reflect the unknowability of the territory that we find ourselves in. Again and again we are reminded of the Buddha’s teaching that the Dharma is like a ‘raft’ or a ‘finger pointing at the moon’. We need to recognise that all our concepts and formulations can only ever be pointers – and we need to be ready to release those conceptual forms as soon as they no longer serve us.

William Parker 2019

If you wish to share this article you can do so by clicking the buttons below.

For summaries of all of the articles in this ‘Buddhism’ series, click here.

For more on the themes addressed in this article consider reading these previous articles:

Egoic Consciousness and its Shadow

The Content of the Mind is Not Important

Non-Duality – Buddha, Jesus, and Plato

Objectivity – Meditation and Thinking

René Descartes’ Error

Upekshā – Equanimity – Touching the Cosmic Stillness

Resting the Mental Body in the Field of Consciousness

The Mirror of Consciousness and the Mirror of Narcissism

The Hara – the Mysterious Second Chakra

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

August 17, 2020

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 3: The Body

This is Article No. 7 in the ‘Buddhism’ series.

It is also the third of ten articles, which explore the ’emptiness’, or non-personal nature, of the ‘Form’, or ‘conceptual form’, aspect of our cognitive-perceptual experience – that which Buddhist tradition calls the rūpa skandha. Together these articles make up a single longer article, or ten-part mini-series of 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: Consciousness and Qualia

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 is 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 ‘Buddhism’ series.

It is also the second of ten articles, which explore the ’emptiness’, or non-personal nature, of the ‘Form’, or ‘conceptual form’, aspect of our cognitive-perceptual experience – that which Buddhist tradition calls the rūpa skandha. Together these articles make up a single longer article, or ten-part mini-series of 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: Consciousness and Qualia

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 Rūpa Skandha – Part 1: Thinking and Wisdom

This is Article No. 5 in the ‘Buddhism’ series.

It is also the first of ten articles, which explore the ’emptiness’, or non-personal nature, of the ‘Form’, or ‘conceptual form’, aspect of our cognitive-perceptual experience – that which Buddhist tradition calls the rūpa skandha. Together these articles make up a single longer article, or ten-part mini-series of 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: Consciousness and Qualia

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 9: Equanimity and Being

In my last article (here) in this ‘Buddhism’ series, 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 Five Skandhas – the Cognitive-Perceptual Components

This is Article No. 4 in the ‘Buddhism’ series.

This is the second of several articles on the ‘Five Skandhas‘ of ancient Indian tradition, which were the five ‘heaps’ of materials, or cognitive-perceptual components, from which the metaphorical ‘house of the self’ was believed to have been built. The mandala of the Five Wisdoms in Mahayana Buddhist tradition is based on the idea that each of the Five Wisdoms arises from recognising the Emptiness of one the skandhas. In the first two articles in this ‘Buddhism’ series (here and here), I have introduced the first of the Wisdoms – the Dharmadhātu Wisdom – and the notion of Emptiness (Skt: Shunyatā). I would like, in future, to provide more articles on the Dharmadhātu Wisdom, and several articles on each of the other Wisdoms, but I need first to provide an overview of the Buddha’s ‘Emptiness of the Five Skandhas‘ teaching, and this will include an outline of the Five Wisdoms.

I have been referring to the skandhas as ‘cognitive-perceptual components’, or as ‘cognitive-perceptual functions’. This term ‘cognitive-perceptual’ is borrowed from modern science – from medicine and psychology. I trained as an Occupational Therapist and worked in both physical rehabilitation services and mental health services for many years, so I have a very good understanding, and a deep appreciation, if not a sense of wonder, in regard to the biological dimensions of cognition and perception. For professionals in the fields of Neurology and Psychiatry, the two-part word ‘cognitive-perceptual’ refers in part to the different functioning of the two hemispheres of the brain – the left brain being, loosely speaking, more ‘cognitive’ and the right brain being, loosely speaking, more ‘perceptual’. What we are talking about in regard to the skandhas however, is something much deeper. We are talking about the underlying archetypal pattern, or eternal structure, by which Consciousness unfolds into manifestation – the mandala structure within Consciousness that caused the human brain to evolve in the spectacular way that it did.

Carl Jung – a Passionate Student of Tibetan Buddhism

To be clear, we need to define what we mean, in this context, by ‘cognitive-perceptual’. The Buddha’s approach is very much closer to that of Carl Jung and his ‘Four Functions of Consciousness’, than it is to the scientific materialism of modern medicine and psychology. As I have mentioned frequently in previous articles, our unconscious identification with the pre-Quantum-Physics worldview of scientific materialism is a major obstacle to our understanding of the Buddha’s non-duality teachings. Carl Jung was a student of both the early Quantum Physics (he had a long-standing personal friendship with Wolfgang Pauli), and of the universal spiritual psychology that underlies all the spiritual traditions – and one of his most valued sources in his pursuit of that knowledge, was Tibetan Buddhism. It is unfortunately little known that Jung was passionate about the Bardo Thodol, or Tibetan Book of the Dead, and was reported by Marie-Louise Von Franz to have carried a translation of it with him whenever he was traveling. The contents of that book profoundly affected the development of his ideas, including his psychological typology framework, which has a mandala structure, and is essentially identical with the mandala of the Skandhas/Realms/Wisdoms that I am currently exploring in these articles.

October 29, 2019

The Five Skandhas – Dakini Wisdom

This is Article No 3 in the ‘Buddhism’ series.

The Dharmādhatu Wisdom, the central Wisdom in the Five Wisdoms mandala, refers to the non-dual understanding that the historical Buddha referred to in terms of Emptiness (Pali – suññatā; Sanskrit – shūnyatā) – the absence of any separate self-nature in all beings and in all things. So the Dharmādhatu Wisdom can be thought of as the ability to rest as Consciousness knowing that the root of that experience is entirely impersonal. It can also be characterised as the knowledge that Consciousness is like a single universal light; or an all-pervading expanse of benevolent intelligence; or as a infinite compassionate space in which we, and everything else, are held and loved.

The Dharmādhatu Wisdom is also the wisdom of Mindfulness, the wisdom of Balance, the wisdom of Humility – but especially, it is the wisdom of Emptiness. Importantly, Buddhist tradition tells us that if we attempt to develop spiritually without endeavouring to recognise Emptiness, we will personalise our experience of Consciousness, and will be trapped in the spiritual delusion and refined narcissism that are the culture and consciousness of the Deva Lokas, or God Realms – which I briefly described in my previous article (here).

Consciousness, Mindfulness, and ‘Remembering’

Mindfulness and Consciousness are very closely related, but not synonymous. The objective and collective space of Consciousness does not need to be cultivated, but Mindfulness does. To be Mindful is to be choosing to rest as Consciousness in the midst of life. We cultivate Mindfulness by a process of more fully ‘embodying’ Consciousness in various ways. The Buddha talked about this process of embodying Consciousness in a variety of ways – often using four-fold mandala formulations like the brahmavihāras, or five-fold mandala formulations like the ‘Five Skandhas‘ and the ‘Five Spiritual Faculties’ (indriyas). One of the Buddha’s most important formulations however, was the four ‘Foundations of Mindfulness’ (satipatthāna – Pali; smrtyupasthāna – Sanskrit) – yet another expression of the mandala archetype. I shall be exploring these four categories in detail in future articles, but have listed them in the table below, and in the second of the two mandala diagrams below that.

While we might at first think that we become conscious, or realise Consciousness, by a heroic effort of personal will power, this is an inadequate way of describing the process. Rather, we become conscious by acknowledging that Consciousness is who we are – in essence. The path therefore is one of ‘resting’, and allowing Consciousness to pervade all our activities. This allowing, this surrender to our true nature, this ‘letting go’ process, by which the light and space of Consciousness is received into every fibre of our being, and pervades every nook and cranny of our lives, is Mindfulness. This process of the embodiment of Consciousness via an attitude of receptivity, relaxation, surrender, and ‘resting’, which can be characterised as feminine, relative to the intentional, purposeful, willful attitude, which is more often associated with Mindfulness, and which might be characterised as masculine. The validation of this more neglected attitude, which we can think of as archetypally feminine, is the main theme of this article.

October 6, 2019

Akashadhateshvari / White Tara – Luminous Space

This is Article No. 2 in the ‘Buddhism’ series.

Following on from my last article (here), there is much more that we need to explore in regard to the Dharmadhātu Wisdom. This is the Wisdom which is associated with the recognition of Consciousness, and with the centre of the mandala, and may be regarded as representing the source of the other four Wisdoms. Metaphorically, we can think of the relationship between the white centre of the Buddhist mandalas and its associated Dharmadhātu Wisdom, and the four colours of the quadrants – the other four Wisdoms – in a somewhat similar way to the way we might think of a source of pure white sunlight being split into the colours of the rainbow.

The Dharmadhātu Wisdom is the Wisdom that Buddhist tradition personifies in the figure of the archetypal Buddha Vairocana, the ‘Illuminator’, or more accurately in his female Buddha partner, the mysterious and powerful figure of Akashadhatvishvari (please see my note at the end of this article on the two different spellings of this name). Strictly speaking the male Buddha Vairocana represents the compassionate activities of wisdom teaching that arise from the experience or the Dharmadhātu Wisdom, whereas the female buddha Akashadhatvishvari personifies the Dharmadhātu Wisdom itself. The Sanskrit word ākāsha has a ring of profound mystery about it. It is akin to the quintessence, or ether, in western alchemical thought – the subtle, intelligent substance that pervades all space, and from which the other four elements are created. Perhaps the best modern equivalent would be something like ‘Quantum Space’ or ‘the Quantum Field’. Vibrant with energy and information, ākāsha is the primordial space of Consciousness that is the basis of everything. A reasonable English translation therefore, of Akashadhatvishvari, would be something like ‘Sovereign Lady of Infinite Space’.

Consciousness: Presence and Connection; Light and Space

I have previously talked of the Buddha couple in the centre of the mandala as personifications of Presence and Connection (here), which are the principles at the centre of my ‘NVC mandala’ (the four components in Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication model – more on that here), but these archetypal Buddhas are multidimensional figures, and are much more than this – indeed all conceptualisations in regard to them are only ways of drawing a little closer to an indefinable mystery. My first response personally, when I reflect on this central ‘divine marriage’ image and its traditional names and associations, is to think of them as representing the metaphorical union of Light and Space in the experience of Consciousness.

The experience of Consciousness, or awareness of being aware, is difficult to describe. The words and images that various spiritual traditions have used to approach that experience are often misleading – being religious projections rather than attempts at objective description. Buddhist tradition, especially that of the Indian Mahayana, whose libraries and culture were unfortunately destroyed by Moslem invasions, is clearly distinguishable from other religions by both its commitment to objectivity in its intellectual analysis, and by the subtlety of the myths, images and metaphors by which it points to the unconditioned reality of Consciousness. Central among these metaphorical pointers were Light and Space.

It is as if Consciousness is an ever-present light within – a bright inner luminosity that never fails us, but is rarely acknowledged or examined. It is the diamond in our pocket that we do not know about; the beautiful gift that has been delivered to us, never to be actually received and unwrapped. It is not surprising perhaps, that in general, humanity fails to recognise Consciousness. While Consciousness is an objective reality, it is not an object like any other, and neither is it the subjective personal self that we often take it to be. The Buddha described it as ’empty’ – empty of self. As the Buddhist tradition established itself over the centuries, it increasingly acknowledged that this impersonal emptiness was also luminous and spacious – still difficult metaphors, but they bring us closer to the experience. And the word shunyata, Sanskrit for Emptiness, came to have these extremely positive associations of luminosity and spaciousness – connoting an infinitely abundant collective source of all truth, goodness, healing and positive transformation.

June 15, 2019

The Dharmadhātu Wisdom

This is Article No.1 in the ‘Buddhism’ series.

In the last article (here) we looked at Compassion through the lens of the All-Accomplishing Wisdom, the wisdom which supports healing, wholeness and compassionate activity, by grounding it in balanced, all-encompassing and multidimensional awareness of the energetic dimensions of our experience. This balanced and comprehensive quality is symbolised by the mandalas of Buddhist tradition. One of the curiosities of the All-Accomplishing Wisdom is that it is associated with the mandala-like symbol of the vishva vajra – the universal vajra, or Vajra Cross – which is usually understood to symbolise ‘the separation and reconciliation of the opposites‘. The mandala, we are being told, is a vishva vajra, and the vishva vajra is a mandala. Non-dual wisdom, it would seem therefore, is most comprehensive, and finds its most practical and effective expression as Compassion, when it is recognised as having five dimensions. And because of the particular dynamics between the components of the egoic mind and their relationship to Consciousness, it is well symbolised by a mandala or a cross.

My intention with the previous articles – in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series – has been to provide information that may be of interest to readers with a general interest in meditation, self-enquiry practice, and non-duality teachings, while also drawing on relevant information from Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication (NVC) model, and from other relevant psychological models, especially that of Carl Jung . While I hope to engage the same broad audience in my future articles, this article is the first of a series of longer articles that is aiming to go much deeper into the Buddha’s teachings, so I have created a new ‘Buddhism’ category for them.

The Four Brahmavihāras and the Five Wisdoms

Although my previous writing in this ‘Meditation Guidance’ series has been informed by an awareness of the corresponding Wisdoms in the Five Wisdoms framework from Mahayana Buddhism, the main mandala framework used in the early articles was that of the ancient Indian brahmavihāras: Equanimity, Appreciative Joy, Loving Kindness and Compassion. The Five Wisdoms, which I introduced in a previous article here, have some advantages over the four-fold brahmavihāras framework, but the brahmavihāras give us a simpler ‘way in’ to the experience of meditation, and they give us a necessary initial focus on the ethical and relational aspects of the personal transformation that arises from resting as Consciousness.

The brahmavihāras also represent an earlier, foundational stage in the development of the mandala wisdom within the Buddhist tradition. The Buddha appears to have adopted them enthusiastically and re-framed them, adapting them to the new context of his anatma (no-self) doctrine – more on this below. In the four-fold brahmavihāras framework, the central, fifth part of the model, which is Consciousness, is implied – the brahmavihāras can be seen as the four ‘attitudes’ of Consciousness. In the five-fold Five Wisdoms model, the central principle, of Consciousness, is explicitly included as one of the Wisdoms – the Dharmadhātu Wisdom.

January 1, 2019

Compassion and the All-Accomplishing Wisdom

This is Post 41 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series.

Making use of the rich mandala-form analysis of the dynamics of cognition and perception that Carl Jung called the ‘Four Functions of Consciousness’ (which parallels the ancient Indian skandhas), we recognise that the green Northern Quadrant in the Buddhist meditation mandalas, is related to the perceptual function of Intuition-Volition. Carl Jung, who identified himself as an Introverted Intuitive type, was writing in the face of great intellectual resistance from the scientific materialist consensus, when he presented his mandala-form psychological model – a model that is distinguished not just by its inclusion of the function of Intuition, but by its embrace of the archetypal and energetic dimensions of psychological reality.

All Life Energies are Compassionate and Life-Serving

In my last two articles (here and here) I have also been drawing heavily on the psychological model of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) which was developed by Marshall Rosenberg, as a way of illuminating the non-dual wisdom of the green Northern Quadrant, which the Buddhist tradition calls the All-Accomplishing Wisdom. The NVC model stands out as another mandala-form psychological framework, which not only includes the Intuition-Volition component, but includes this dimension in the most practical and powerful way in relation to the practice of self-empathy.

NVC does this by recognising that what we experience as a situation of need or apparent lack, is arising not only from an objective Current Reality in the world of Sensation (Southern Quadrant), but from volitional Life Energies (Northern Quadrant), which are apprehended by the function of Intuition in those who are observing the situation. We can say therefore, that it is our internal relationship to the Life Energies of desire, longing and aspiration, that gives us our perception of a Need – and is the key to the creative and self-empathetic attitude that will bring healing to our psychological parts on the inside, and the communication style that will ‘get our needs met’ on the outside.

December 16, 2018

Life Energies of Presence and Connection

This is Post 40 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series.

Consciousness is a phenomenon of the interface, the boundary, and the discontinuity, between the knowable world of Classical Physics, and the unknowable world of Quantum Mechanics. This interface pervades the universe as an infinite pure space that is an eternal present moment, and is equal and everywhere the same. It is also, at the same time, single – a unity. Mathematically it is a single point – a one point field.

The Classical world of matter is, quite literally, a beautiful illusion. Space and time are just relative phenomena, and matter is also just an appearance – an appearance on the surface of a universe that is mostly unknowable energy and information. Thankfully, the ephemeral perception that is our universe, is pervaded by the absolute reality of Consciousness. It is this animating power that makes it knowable, and makes it so beautiful. Without Consciousness, there would be no life, no meaning, no possibility of evolution, and no human self-conscious experience, with all its richness and relational complexity.

Consciousness and the present moment are inseparable phenomena. When we look out through the dense, ‘milky’ band of stars that is our own galaxy and glimpse the galaxies beyond, we are seeing the universe as it was many millions of years ago. The light by which we perceive some of those distant stars left them long before our own planet was even formed, and has been traversing the vast expanse of space for billions of years. It is a little disturbing to perceive that everything in the Classical world appears fundamentally disconnected and separated by time and space. In the simple human experience of Consciousness however, and in the experience of the present moment, the whole vast expanse is completely connected and unified – as Quantum Physics has also now shown us.

While these sorts of reflections may at first appear somewhat abstract, I hope to be able to show that they also have extremely practical implications. For those of us that aspire to express our deepest human potential – in ourselves, our relationships and our communities – there is enormous value in familiarising ourselves experientially with the more fundamental, non-dual level of reality in which we all rest, because it is such a rich source of psychological insights and personal transformation.

While this exploration of the Present Moment, Connectedness, and Consciousness, is associated with the intrapersonal path of meditation, it is also deeply relevant to our interpersonal lives. We need a high degree of familiarity with Presence, Connection and Consciousness if we are to communicate effectively in our relationships and communities. If we fail to acknowledge, and acknowledge deeply, the present moment of Consciousness in which we are already connected, we will be frustrated in our efforts to relate empathetically and collaborate effectively.

Living ‘in’ and ‘as’ the Life Energy of Consciousness

Knowing that the Classical world is just an appearance of subject-object perception, and that the Quantum world is unknowable, gives great importance to the mysterious boundary phenomenon that is Consciousness. Consciousness is the only thing that exists absolutely for us – that is reliable and ultimately trustworthy in our experience. Consciousness, to borrow a phase from the apostle Paul, is that in which we “live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28), and resting as Consciousness, through the practice of meditation and mindfulness, is our surest path to authenticity, integrity, and to knowing whatever may actually be known. Continue reading

October 5, 2018

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

******* Two New Multi-Part Articles: *******

The Rūpa Skandha and the Qualia of Being

The Emptiness and Mutability of Words

The Five Qualia – Words that Point Beyond the Rūpa Skandha

The Five Qualia – Attempting to Describe Emptiness

If you wish to share this article you can do so by clicking the buttons below.

For summaries of all of the articles in this ‘Buddhism’ series, click here.

For more on the themes addressed in this article consider reading these previous articles:

Bringing Awareness ‘Into the Body’

Objectivity, Clarity, Equanimity and Being

Vajrasattva-Akshobhya and Buddhalocanā

The Rūpa Skandha and the Mirror-Like Wisdom

Carl Jung – a Passionate Student of Tibetan Buddhism

Consciousness, Mindfulness, and ‘Remembering’

Consciousness: Presence and Connection; Light and Space

The Four Brahmavihāras and the Five Wisdoms

All Life Energies are Compassionate and Life-Serving

Living ‘in’ and ‘as’ the Life Energy of Consciousness

* Two New Multi-Part Articles: *