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.

* Three Current Writing Projects: *

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

There are currently 43 articles in this introductory series on the psychology of the mandala, which I called ‘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 – 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 the rūpa skandha and the Thinking function of the 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’. Rūpa is therefore also frequently associated with ‘the body’ in the concrete, sensory, corporeal sense of the word – an associations 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.

January 7, 2018

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 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

Overview Part 2 – Resting as Consciousness

This is the second of two articles that were written with the intention of providing an overview of the approach to meditation and self-enquiry, that I took in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series. To access the previous article, please click here.

I believe that the true practice of meditation, such as was taught by the Buddha, must be rooted in his psychology of non-dual wisdom. Hence my characterisation of meditation as resting as Consciousness. I have used these words frequently, to point to a core idea that is easy to miss. I have tried to explain them several times, but will take the time here to outline this principle once again. In the terms of the Buddhist ‘Five Skandhas‘ self-enquiry framework, what I am referring to as Consciousness (i.e. capitalised), is the ’empty’ vijñāna skandha – the non-personal, non-locatable, and indeed Transcendental principle that is at the centre of mandala of the five skandhas.

A Deeper Conceptual Framework for Mindfulness Practice

While the adoption of this sort of approach at the outset, as our entry point into meditation practice, is unfortunately currently relatively unusual, it is by no means without precedent in Buddhist tradition. Indeed it is, in my view, the approach that is now being adopted by all the best meditation teachers around the world. The modern audience of spiritual students is sophisticated, and is exposed, via the internet, to high-level non-duality teachings that only fifty years ago, would only have been available to dedicated ‘seekers’ – usually through prolonged periods of meditation and study in the East. For example, the traditional Buddhist dzogchen and mahamudra teachings, which express this idea of resting as Consciousness, are now available on YouTube in most languages.

The spiritual practitioners of the modern West (and the westernised East), as it begins to face into the psychological implications of the way that Quantum Physics describes reality, are I believe, ready for these so called ‘advanced’ or ‘high-level’ teachings – perspectives on practice that were previously only available to the most experienced and the most committed. Indeed, the whole idea that these are ‘advanced’ ‘high-level’ teachings seems erroneous – since they are just more sophisticated of talking about Mindfulness practice. Non-duality is a confusing notion to grasp however. This is partly because non-duality runs so strongly counter to everything that we generally assume about the nature of ourselves and our world. But we should not expect Mindfulness, the practice that the Buddha called ‘the Way to the Immortal’ to be unchallenging to the basic assumptions of the egoic mind.

There is perhaps, a failure on the part of many meditation teachers to engage with, and to effectively explain, the huge practical benefits of a non-dual approach to human psychology. There is a tendency to put non-duality, and the Buddha’s challenging anattā (no-self) doctrine in the ‘too hard’ basket, and to make it irrelevant by thinking of it as a difficult-to-understand feature of the distant goal, rather than a foundation for meditation practice – a perspective to embraced at the earliest possible stage. The Buddha’s ‘Noble Eightfold Path’ is best conceived a path made up of two stages or processes – an initial process of Vision, followed by a longer process of Transformation. Hence, the first limb of the Noble Eightfold Path, Perfect Vision, is the process of Vision, and the remaining seven limbs constitute the process of Transformation. This framing of the Buddha’s model gives great importance to the attainment the clearest possible vision of the goal, as a precondition for our effective practice of the subsequent stages.

It is not surprising that Buddhist non-duality teachings have tended to find themselves in the ‘too hard’ basket. Ultimately non-duality cannot be completely ‘understood’ in the ordinary way by the thinking mind. We can ‘point’ to it with concepts and with symbols, but ultimately we need to seek the actual experience of it within ourselves in meditation or meditative enquiry. The mandala is particularly valuable as a guide for those engaged in such an experiential exploration of non-dual wisdom, because it shows the multiple dimensions of our meditative experiencing in a very systematic and comprehensive way, and gives a great many pointers to the ultimate nature of mind – several pointers from each of the four directions of the mandala.

Resting as Consciousness – a brief explanation

In my ‘Meditation Guidance’ articles, on this website, I have been using the notion of resting as Consciousness as a shorthand for an approach to meditation that can tentatively be termed a ‘non-dual’ approach, and once you have experienced resting as Consciousness you will recognise that this phrase is very descriptive. I hope you find the explanation that follows in the paragraphs below to be helpful elucidation of this illusive idea.

January 16, 2020

Overview Part 1 – A Mandala Framework for Meditation and Self-Enquiry

The approach to meditation that I have adopted in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series of articles, is unusual because it brings together elements from philosophical, spiritual, and psychological traditions that do not usually cross-pollinate, and tend not to understand each other. My aim in this article is to provide an overview of my approach, and to show why I have found the relatively unknown brahmavihāras to be so essential to my framework for meditation and self-enquiry.

My Psychological and Spiritual Influences

Although I was born into a nominally Christian family and a nominally Christian culture, my first real spiritual education, during my twenties, was in the context of the Triratna Buddhist Community, a Western Buddhist tradition that integrates Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana elements, with a special emphasis on re-creating something of the spirit of the lost Indian Mahayana in a Western cultural context – especially the spirit of the Bodhisattva Ideal. In my thirties I became a Quaker for 10 years, and subsequently studied with several different non-Buddhist non-duality teachers.

Although I worked in General Psychiatry settings for many years (I became an Occupational Therapist and made use of the very Buddhist ‘open system’ model of the person, developed by Gary Kielhofner), the main psychological perspectives that I have drawn on personally are those are Carl Jung, Eugene Gendlin (original developer of the ‘Focusing’ self-empathy/self-enquiry practice), and Marshall Rosenberg (originator of the Nonviolent Communication model).

Returning to Meditation – A Fresh Approach

Since my return to meditation in 2016, my daily practice has been experimental, personal, and driven by my own self-enquiry into the nature of Consciousness – the ’empty’ vijnāna skandha of Buddhist tradition. Although it has been informed to some extent by my Buddhist studies in my twenties, the new approach to meditation that emerged from my meditative enquiry was somewhat different. While the focus on mettā (Loving Kindness) and the other brahmavihāras; on ‘Mindfulness of Breathing’; and on ‘Just Sitting’ practice, has remained, my emphasis and my frame of reference for these practices has subtly changed.

I believe the frame of reference that evolved was still characteristically Buddhist, but was one which is much more focused on Consciousness (the ’empty’ vijñāna skandha); on self-enquiry; and the ultimate goal of fundamentally releasing the energies (the kleshas) that reinforce the personalising tendency of the egoic mind, rather than on modifying the egoic minds contents. The success of this new approach – in supporting my own mental and emotional development, and helping me to face the considerable challenges that I was facing – has been so marked that I have felt strongly motivated to share my experience as best I can.

January 2, 2020

The Five Skandhas – the Cognitive-Perceptual Components

This is Article No. 4 in the ‘5 Wisdoms’ 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 ‘5 Wisdoms’ 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 ‘5 Wisdoms’ series. It is one of three introductory articles to a longer series of articles in which I shall be exploring each the five ’empty’ skandhas of Buddhist tradition – the five non-personal cognitive-perceptual components, which come together to create the illusion of a separate self.

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 manage to acheive a degree of spiritual development without endeavouring to also 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 better characterised as one in which we ‘rest’, and allow 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’, can be characterised as feminine, relative to the intentional, purposeful, willful attitude, which is more often associated with Mindfulness, and which can be characterised as masculine. The validation of this more neglected attitude, which we can think of as archetypally feminine, is one of the main themes of this article.

October 6, 2019

Akashadhateshvari / White Tara – Luminous Space

This article was written as Post 43 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series, but like the previous one (here) it also serves as part of a series of introductory articles in the ‘5 Wisdoms’ series, in which my intention is to guide my readers even deeper into some focused reflection on what the Buddha meant when he spoke of the ’emptiness of the five skandhas’, and of the illusory nature of the self.

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 article was written as Post 42 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series, but it also it also serves as bridge to, and is the first article in, a series of introductory articles in the ‘5 Wisdoms’ series, in which my intention is to guide my readers even deeper into some focused reflection on what the Buddha meant when he spoke of the ’emptiness of the five skandhas’, and of the illusory nature of the self.

In my last article (here) I looked at Compassion through the lens of the All-Accomplishing Wisdom, the wisdom which supports healing, wholeness and compassionate activity, by grounding it in a 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 – and 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 the ‘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

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

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

Bringing Awareness ‘Into the Body’

Objectivity, Clarity, Equanimity and Being

Vajrasattva-Akshobhya and Buddhalocanā

The Rūpa Skandha and the Mirror-Like Wisdom

A Deeper Conceptual Framework for Mindfulness Practice

Resting as Consciousness – a brief explanation

My Psychological and Spiritual Influences

Returning to Meditation – A Fresh Approach

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

* Three Current Writing Projects: *