This article is the eighth of fifteen articles inspired by the central five verses of Padmasambhava’s ‘Inspiration-Prayer for Deliverance from the Dangerous Pathway of the Bardo’, in which I shall be aiming to show meditators how each one of the ten deities of the Dharmadhātu Mandala can be felt in the fields of the body as profound suprapersonal sources of somatic healing and wisdom. Those who read the whole series of articles – and it is intended that these articles should be read in sequence – will be able to incorporate these reflections into their meditation practice in a systematic way. The first article in the series can be found here; brief summaries of all the articles can be found here; you can read the previous article in the series here; and you can read the five verses here.
In these articles, I am choosing once again to use a partly non-traditional terminology for talking about the process of transformation that the Dharmadhātu Mandala invites us to engage in. Those who have read the previous articles on this series may recognise Integration, Positive Emotion, Spiritual Death and Spiritual Rebirth as the stages of a system of meditative practice that was suggested by Sangharakshita in the 1970s. This being the case, I need to point out once again, that while I find that these four general stages fit my experience very well indeed, the detail of my own approach to these stages of meditation practice is not based on any detailed exposition by Sangharakshita, but on my own explorations.
I should also make it clear that what I am presenting here does not necessarily represent the consensus within the global Triratna Buddhist Community regarding Sangharakshita’s ‘System of Practice’. My intention is only to share my own experience, and to share my own somewhat personal and perhaps idiosyncratic reflections. My hope is that others will find my exploration of that four-fold conceptual frame of reference to be meaningful and useful, and will be stimulated to engage in there own meditative enquiry into the profound spiritual psychology of the Dharmadhātu Mandala.
This article began as a longer piece of writing, which I subsequently decided to split into two sections – the first section being an introduction to this one, and in part a recapitulation of themes from earlier in this series. I gave the introductory section the title: Part 7: Somatic Body-Mind. If you have not already read it, you may want to consider reading the previous article first – by clicking here.
Vajrayāna Meditation – A Somatic Approach to Practice
The Buddhist tradition unfolded through three great historical and spiritual stages – usually called the Hinayāna, Mahayāna and Vajrayāna. While it can be shown that the Mahayāna, and Vajrayāna stages where implicit in the historical Buddha’s teaching (nominally Hinayāna), the Mahayāna and Vajrayāna teachings of later centuries gave even richer cultural expression to ways of thinking about realisation, about meditation, and about Mindfulness – ways which, while they were not completely new to the tradition, had not been fully expressed either in Gautama Buddha’s teaching, or in the earlier centuries. While the Mahayāna could be characterised as emphasising the seeming ‘otherness’ of the suprapersonal spiritual forces of Consciousness and the importance of an attitude of devotional receptivity towards those forces; the Vajrayāna goes a step further, by acknowledging that our personal experience of embodied Consciousness cannot ultimately be separated from the Transcendental – that all of human experience is pervaded by the transcendental dharmadhātu, or dharmic dimension, and that all beings, without exception, are subject to its evolutionary energy.
So the Vajrayana can be characterised as advocating, not just a fierce determination to become more conscious (the Hinayana emphasis); and not just a profound receptivity to benevolent spiritual forces that are beyond the egoic mind but inherent in Consciousness (the Mahayāna emphasis); but also a recognition that realisation is already present in the experience of embodied Consciousness – albeit very profoundly obscured by the egoic kleshas that have seized the body-mind. The Vajrayāna Buddhism of Tibet therefore sees psychological development as involving, not only a broadening and deepening of cognitive-perceptual awareness, and a differentiation of every human function and skill, but, through meditation practice, a direct transformation and profound expansion of the way we embody Consciousness somatically. So, the Vajrayāna sees meditation practice as a bodily, or somatic, process – one in which the accumulated kleshas are systematically driven out by our consistent return to states of alignment with our ultimate true nature.
Recognising Embodied Consciousness
This approach holds the possibility of rapidly accelerating our process of healing, personal development, and realisation. Those meditation and Mindfulness practitioners within the Buddhist tradition, who engage with this level of practice, achieve this acceleration of their process by resting ‘as’ Consciousness, and recognising that the ’empty’ vijñāna skandha of Consciousness, is itself a phenomenon of the transcendent dharmic order of conditionality within the universe. When we practice in the spirit of the Vajrayāna, we set out to systematically familiarise ourselves with all aspects of our experience of embodied Consciousness – using the mandala and its archetypal Buddhas as our guide. While I have no wish to denigrate other approaches as ‘lower’, or to identify my own approach as ‘higher’, it is this more comprehensive approach to Mindfulness and meditation, such as we find in the Tibetan Vajrayana, that I have been seeking to present in these Mandala of Love articles.
This integration of the ‘self-discovery’ perspective of the Vajrayāna, into the way we think about meditation practice, allows us to see both the earlier ‘self-development’ perspective of the Hinayāna, and the subsequent devotional-receptive ‘self-surrender’ perspective of the Mahayāna, much more clearly. As I have been explaining in previous articles, the meditation practices of Buddhist tradition can be thought of as methods for releasing the energetic residue of our egoic patterning – which Buddhist tradition calls the kleshas – from the somatic body-mind. As this releasing takes place, we reveal the somatic energies of embodied Consciousness that were always present, but were previously obscured by the energetic residue that is accumulated through egoic identification – we reveal the dharmic order of conditionality to be the most fundamental and reliable aspect of mind, even as it is clearly non-personal.
While many Buddhist teachers claim that any act of intense concentration will help us develop Mindfulness and samādhi this is not necessarily true. The practice of samādhi, or meditation, is unfortunately usually understood merely as ‘meditative absorption’, or ‘concentration’. ‘Concentration’ is an especially limited and limiting conceptualisation. I find it much more helpful to think of samādhi as a process in which we endeavour to integrate and embody the suprapersonal forces of Consciousness. It is an active process, but that activity is the subtle one of an active and systematic ‘meditative receptivity’. So, Mindfulness is not a merely mental process, or a neurological ‘executive function’ skill of the brain, and it is certainly not about developing awareness in a single narrow areas – like body position in space; sensations; feeling states, etc. If we study the Buddha’s ‘Four Foundations of Mindfulness’ with an imagination informed by the mandala wisdom of later Buddhist tradition, we recognise that Mindfulness requires the cultivation of a broad, multidimensional, and comprehensive embodiment of Consciousness, and requires our willingness to enter into the non-conceptual inner-world of somatic energy and of indefinable bodily-felt experience. All this is implied by the idea of Mindfulness of vedanā. We cannot engage with either Mindfulness practice, or samādhi practice, without entering this non-rational somatic realm of ‘internal’ vedanā , since it here, in our bodily-felt experience that the psychological opposites are most concretely confronted, held and reconciled, so that the invisible forces that have held us back can at last be released.
Meditation as a Somatic Healing Process
Our ultimate aim in the somatic transformation process of meditation, is to challenge the bodily-felt illusion of the egoic self that is created by our identification with the five cognitive-perceptual skandhas and the five associated categories of klesha energies that arise from that identification. As a way of creating familiarity with the five corresponding categories of evolutionary energies, which Buddhist tradition calls the Five Wisdoms, I have been presenting the ten archetypal Buddhas of the mandala – a male-female pair of Buddhas for each of the Wisdoms. These archetypal images have gained prominence in the tradition precisely because of the archetypal healing power that they carry. They work both directly on the somatic level and more subtly on the cognitive-perceptual level. Each of these archetypal Buddhas evokes a particular healing resonance in the body-mind, while also serve to fundamentally challenge the cognitive-perceptual structures of the egoic body-mind.
Because of the importance of this principle of releasing our identification with the cognitive-perceptual skandhas and somatic kleshas, by learning to embody the corresponding Wisdom energies, I have felt a need to be specific about how we locate these Wisdom energies in the field of the body. Those who have read my previous ‘Mandala of Love’ articles, and the previous articles in this series, will be familiar with the approach I have taken to this question of locating the energies associated with the Dharmic principles in the field of the body, but I shall briefly explain it again.
In this endeavour, I have been using Padmasambhava’s guidance in the ‘Inspiration Prayer for Deliverance from the Dangerous Pathway of the Bardo’ (the five central verses of which I have reproduced here), but also applying the seldom acknowledged phenomena of the alternating yin-yang polarities of the subtle bodies and chakras. I have found enormous value as a meditator in recognising the way these somatic phenomena alternate – and alternate in the opposite way in the two sexes. While this engagement with the somatic anatomy of the subtle bodies and chakras is generally not explored by students of the Theravada, it is recognised to be integral in many Tibetan Vajrayana approaches – and while the understanding that I am presenting is unusual, I believe it is one that any serious meditator will recognise in their experience, and find extremely useful.
The Vedanā Skandha, the Klesha of Pride (māna), and the Human Realm
Of the ten archetypal Buddhas, the female Buddha Māmaki, and the principles of embodied Consciousness and of Appreciative Joy that she represents, are particularly relevant to the overcoming of the bodily-felt, or ‘internal sensory’ component of the illusion of an egoic self, which we all carry with us as human beings. Indeed Māmaki and male Buddha partner Ratnasambhava are associated with the Human Realm, and with the skandha of vedanā (Sensation, or Sensing), and with the klesha category of māna, or ‘pride’, by which the Human Realm is characterised. If we wish to deeply understand the Equalising Wisdom, and to understand that aspect of the Equalising Wisdom that is personified by Māmaki – the ‘self-regarding’ aspect of the brahmavihāra of muditā, which I have chosen to call Appreciative Joy – we need to fully understand the egoic opposite of the Equalising Wisdom that is expressed by the klesha category of māna, or ‘pride’. But first let’s contemplate the positive pole in this dichotomy – as personified in the image of Māmaki herself.
I was delighted to come across this wonderful contemporary image of Māmaki (above) rendered by Buddhist artist Dharmacharini Mumukshu. Mamaki is here shown holding, in her left hand, the ratna, or Jewel – the ‘wish-fulfilling jewel’ of insight into the true nature of this embodied and sensory reality. With the outward-facing right hand she makes the gesture, or mudra, of Supreme Generosity. Māmaki and her male archetypal Buddha counterpart, Ratnasambhava, are the central figures of the ‘Ratna Family’ of deities, who occupy the southern quadrant of the mandala. Indeed, ratna is a symbol, in the symbolic system of the Tibetan Buddhism, of the abundance, practical skills, concrete creative accomplishment, and sense of beauty and blessedness, that springs from recognising the ’emptiness’ of the sensory vedanā skandha. The production of beautiful works of art like this – concrete artistic expressions that support a culture of Enlightenment – is, for me, a perfect expression of the ratna aspect of Enlightenment. By giving herself the freedom to let the objective reality of the imagination speak to her, this artist has caught, I believe, the ‘internal’ aspect of the brahmavihāra of muditā, which I like to call Appreciative Joy.
The Buddhist tradition tells us that the vedanā skandha causes us to accumulate the klesha of māna, or ‘pride’, and that this leads us to rebirth in the Human Realm. The Human Realm is an archetypal situation of great importance and spiritual potentiality. We are told, especially in Tibetan tradition, that the Human Realm is an extremely positive and rare place to be reborn. Indeed, human beings, in comparison with the beings in other realms, are seen to be blessed with qualities of intelligence, empathy, and innate spirituality – while at the same time being cursed by an obsessive preoccupation with the concrete and sensory aspects of personal identity and with the tasks involved in wrestling with the material dimension of reality. In this realm there is a relative balance between positive achievements, capabilities, and capacities for spiritual development, on one side, and the challenges and difficulties of life on the other. In Buddhist terms, we can say that, in the Human Realm there is a keen awareness of suffering and unsatisfactoriness, or dukkha, but that this is manageable – being balanced by human resourcefulness and the universal gift of Consciousness.
The Vedanā Skandha and the Human Realm
To see the Human Realm more clearly, it is helpful to briefly re-visit the two other realms that we have looked at so far in this series of articles. In the compulsive craving and the vague emotional distress of the archetypal Preta Realm we saw an extreme egoic expression of the evaluative samjñā skandha – where judgment is one-sided, and based on narrow and crude evaluative instincts, where all discernment is lost, and where addictive behaviours predominate. Similarly, we saw in the cruelty and unbridled hatred of the archetypal Hell Realms, an extreme egoic expression of the form-creating, conceptualising rūpa skandha – where thinking takes the form of unfeeling rationality, rationalisation, condemnation, and sophisticated denials of the value and humanity of the other (and even of ourselves).
In the light of these reflections, it becomes clear that the archetypal Human Realm is a place in which the sensory and experiential vedanā skandha finds a similarly extreme expression. Here, a particular sensory, or sensing, style of egoic perception predominates – and there is a preoccupation with our physical body, with our physical world, and with our physical skills, experiences, and achievements, and with our material property. More subtly, the ‘internal’ dimension of vedanā – the cloud of ‘somatic’ sensations within the field of the body – are taken as an absolute confirmation of separate self-hood, even though they are, in reality, so intangible, indefinable, and so clearly non-personal.
Our identification with the vedanā skandha heightens our sense of separation. That which might, if recognised correctly, be taken as the basis of a deep solidarity with our fellow human beings, is unfortunately taken as confirmation of our separateness. In reality, we only have the experience of ‘internal’ and ‘external’ Sensation (vedanā) because of the universal background phenomena of Consciousness, which pervades the universe equally and evenly. It is the absolutely equal nature phenomena of Consciousness, which evenly pervades the physical, sensory universe, blessing us all with the same potentiality for Buddhahood, that led Buddhist tradition to the notion of the Equalising Wisdom. To step back out of identification with vedanā, and to recognise its ’empty’ and non-personal nature, even momentarily, is to begin the journey of the Equalising Wisdom.
The Archetypal Human Realm
The third of the five central verses in Padmasambhava’s ‘Inspiration Prayer’ in the Bardo Thodol is this one:
When, through pride, I wander in samsara,
on the luminous light-path of the Equalising Wisdom,
may Blessed Ratnasambhava go before me,
and Māmaki behind me;
help me to cross the bardo’s dangerous pathway,
and bring me to the perfect buddha state.
Once we are able to clearly grasp how an undifferentiated and unconscious identification with the vedanā skandha leads to the collective psychology of the Human Realm, we in turn gain a much deeper understanding of what is meant, in the context of the Bardo Thodol, by the māna category of kleshas – the kleshas that arise from unconscious identification with the vedanā skandha. The klesha of māna is more than ‘pride’ or ‘conceit’ – it is that energetic predisposition towards separateness and the self-preoccupation that comes from a narrowly materialistic view of life. While the archetypal Human experience is made possible by the mysterious transcendental reality that I have been calling Consciousness, it is at the same time constrained. It is constrained by the fact that our experience of embodied Consciousness is largely unconscious and misconceived – by the fact that we personalise and concretise that experience, believing it to be evidence of a separate self, where no such evidence in fact exists.
So we need to think of māna as the energetic momentum of a particular style of egoic identification – an identification with vedanā, or sensing – and we need to acknowledge both the ‘internal’ and ‘external’ aspects of our sensory experience, before we can begin to recognise the ’emptiness’ of both. It is easy to miss the great importance of this problem of our materialistic assumptions about, and materialistic identification with, our bodily experience, but the Buddha very strongly highlighted the importance of this. His approach to the body, was much more subtle than that of Christianity, and certainly very much more sophisticated than that of scientific materialism – but we are strongly conditioned by these two historical processes, and they can easily cause us to misconstrue what he was saying.
The Equalising Wisdom – an Appreciative, Non-Hierarchical Sensibility
The Buddha was not ‘anti-body’ – indeed his Enlightenment dawned precisely at the point in his process of spiritual practice when he had gave up the ascetic, ‘anti-body’ stance that prevailed in the Indian spirituality of his time. Nor was the Buddha ‘against’ the material reality of this world. His attitude to vedanā and to the bodily and sensory dimensions of experience is perhaps best characterised as appreciative, balanced, and inclusive. His approach involved an acknowledgement of the part played in sensory perception by the non-personal vijñāna skandha of Consciousness.
The Buddha’s approach to vedanā was similar to that advised in relation to the other skandhas. It was one of ‘just sensing’ without reifying, or mentally elaborating the experience, while simultaneously resting as Consciousness. This balance of attention in the practice of Mindfulness of vedanā – resting as Consciousness while attending to Sensation – allows us to progressively release the habitual personalisation in our Sensing. We continue to recognise sensations as pleasant, or painful, or neutral, but by simultaneously ‘resting as Consciousness’, we learn to release the intensity of our personalisation of them.
We can also say, if we are trying to summarise the Buddha’s approach to meditation for a modern audience, that it is characterised by an emphasis on the ‘somatic’ and the bodily-felt. The subtle appreciative sensibility of Mindfulness of vedanā is a distinguishing characteristic of Gautama Buddha’s life and teachings, and of the Buddhist tradition as a whole. And this appreciative and embodied sensibility is beautifully personified in the female Buddha Māmaki, and finds fullest expression in the brahmavihāra of Appreciative Joy (muditā).
The egoic view of the body and the material world – the domain of the vedanā skandha – strongly emphasises separateness and the differences of physical genetic inheritance, of physical appearance, of physical capability, of physical ownership, and of life-experience – differences which set us apart from each other, and serve to structure human society. While some meditators tend to carry over this materialistic and hierarchical thinking into the way they think about their practice, true meditation, being informed by a recognition that the vedanā skandha is ’empty’, is non-materialistic, non-hierarchical and appreciative – the characteristics of the Equalising Wisdom.
The Body in Vajrayana Buddhism
In order to illuminate this appreciative perspective on bodily experience, and to highlight the attitude of Appreciative Joy and meditative receptivity which Māmaki opens up for us, it is probably helpful for me to acknowledge the features of the sophisticated approach to the body that we find in Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism. In the first article in this series, I spoke of the way in which the three yānas, or historical phases of development, can also be very usefully taken as three frames of reference for thinking about the spiritual life – three frames of reference that together form a nested series and a philosophical unity. While this way of thinking validates and celebrates each of the yānas for their particular contribution to the whole, it also views the Vajrayana as the most philosophically and practically complete of the three perspectives. Since the Vajrayāna integrates and builds upon the previous two yānas, it is the most comprehensive in its description of the nature of mind.
This is relevant to our current discussion because the three yānas offer us three successively deeper ways of thinking about the body, and about our Mindfulness of the ‘internal’ and ‘external’ aspects of the vedanā skandha. They represent, in effect, three successively deeper degrees of integration of a truly dharmic perspective on meditation. I am using the word dharmic (lower case ‘d’), in this context, to mean ‘pertaining to the dharma niyama order of conditionality in the universe’ – that dimension which we can also call ‘the Transcendental’, or ‘the Unconditioned’. Māmaki, we can say, personifies that receptive and appreciate way of being in our bodily experience (i.e. vedanā) that is keenly aware of the dharmic order as not only equal, even, pervasive, and ever-present – but felt within the body.
Perhaps the easiest point of entry for gaining an appreciation of the fundamental equality that the Equalising Wisdom highlights for us, is in the the idea of ‘resting as Consciousness’. The approach to Mindfulness and meditation in Vajrayana Buddhism is informed by the insight that the vijñāna skandha Consciousness is ’empty’, non-personal and pervasive – like an infinite luminosity spreading equally and evenly throughout the universe. The invitation of the Vajrayana approach to mindfulness and meditation therefore, is to relax and rest ‘as Consciousness’. Since it is by nature ‘equal’ (and even), Consciousness is not located more in one person that in another – it is just more obscured in one person than in another. The obscuring kleshas are differently arranged in each one of us, but the universal dharmic dimension of mind – the dharma niyama, or dharmadhātu, or dharmakāya – is absolutely the same in us all.
The perspectives and practices of Vajrayana Buddhism grew out of the earlier Mahayana phase, where Enlightenment had increasing become located in the external figures of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas – ‘out there’ in the universe as objects of worship. With this receptive and devotional attitude as a foundation, but emphasising Emptiness (shunyatā), and recognising that the dharmic order of the universe is universally available and pervasively present, the Vajrayana may be characterised as a ‘return to the body’ – but in a new way.
The Vajrayana practitioner recognises that the light of Consciousness, the light of the dharmadhātu, pervades the universe with a perfect equality and evenness that excludes nothing and no-one. He therefore approaches meditation in a spirit of ‘self-discovery’ – and in the spirit of the Equalising Wisdom. He entertains the logical possibility that Buddhahood is present right now. He therefore integrates and reconciles three seemingly incongruous perspectives into his practice: the Vajrayāna idea that Buddhahood is obscured within the body, but nevertheless always present there; the Mahayāna idea that Buddhahood is ‘outside’ of himself – or at least beyond the egoic mind – as the benevolent presences of the archetypal Buddhas; and the Hinayāna idea that Buddhahood is something that he must strive for.
Far from being ‘anti-body’, the Vajrayana practitioner recognises the very real possibility of Enlightenment in this very life, and therefore in this very body. This is an idea that we also find beautifully expressed in parts of the Zen tradition – as in the Song of Zazen by Zen Master ‘Hakuin’ Ekaku (1685-1768), the last few lines of which are copied below.
Going and coming, we are never astray,
With thought that is no-thought,
Singing and dancing are the voice of the Law.
Boundless and free is the sky of Samādhi!
Bright the full moon of wisdom!
Truly, is anything missing now?
Nirvana is right here, before our eyes,
This very place is the Lotus Land,
This very body, the Buddha.
(Norman Waddell translation)
Appreciative Joy and the ‘Spiritual Faculty’ of Samādhi (Meditation)
In these articles, I have been emphasising the way that the Five Wisdoms mandala that we are exploring here, while it emerged during the Mahayana period, has its roots in the earlier teachings of the historical Buddha – not only in his teachings on the ’emptiness’ of the Five Skandhas; but in his ‘Five Spiritual Faculties’ formulation; in his ‘ Four Foundations of Mindfulness’; and in the ancient Indian brahmavihāras, which he adopted into his own teaching framework. It is a great help, if we wish to understand the Five Wisdoms, to acknowledge their antecedent roots in early Buddhism. When we do this, we recognise correspondences between the ‘Spiritual Faculty’ of samādhi, or meditation; the brahmavihāra of muditā, or Appreciative Joy; the skandha of vedanā; and the Equalising Wisdom – and these connections have much to tell us about the figure of Māmaki, who is our focus in this article.
The connection between the brahmavihāra of muditā, or Appreciative Joy, and the ‘Spiritual Faculty’ of samādhi, or meditation, is very instructive if we wish to understand the way in which a recognition of the ’emptiness’ of the vedanā skandha came to be called the Equalising Wisdom. Closely related to this, is the notion of the somatic. There is a need for us to expand our understanding of Mindfulness of vedanā to include our subtle ‘internal’ experience of the body – and integral to that is the need to recognise the bodily-felt experience of the skandha of samskāras (the volitional energies and our intuitive perception of them), which is the skandha that is opposite across the mandala – the samskāras skandha being associated with the north, while the vedanā skandha is associated with the south. The samskaras, while they are energetic phenomena – the energies of motivation – nevertheless resonate as subtle sensations (vedanā) in the internal space of the body, and cannot be separated from the experience of vedanā.
To gain a deep understanding of how meditation works as a vehicle for radical spiritual transformation and non-dual realisation, we have to go far beyond our crude materialistic notions of what it is to be a human being. We need to open to an energetic perspective in which we think of the body as a mysterious and indefinable ‘somatic’ phenomena; as embodied Consciousness; and as vibrantly resonating with the dharma niyama, the dharmic order of conditionality within the body-mind. We need to start to see the body in a new, more appreciative way, which recognises that the dharmic energies of Consciousness are alive in us; that they have been driving biological evolution since the beginning of life on earth; that they are leading us forward; that they are available to us; and that they are inseparable from who we are.
The Somatic Anatomy of Embodied Consciousness
The seemingly modest figure of Māmaki is one of the keys to our understanding of the foundational Integration stage of meditation. I have suggested that she personifies ‘Appreciative Joy’ (the ‘internal’ or ‘self-regarding’ aspect of muditā), and also the introverted aspect of the Equalising Wisdom that arises when the ‘internal’ aspect of the vedanā skandha is recognised as ’empty’. This inclusive sensory awareness of our ‘internal’ bodily-felt experience of vedanā, goes far beyond the merely ‘physical’ – indeed, as I have explained, we do well to think of the ‘internal’ aspect of vedanā as ‘the somatic’.
I describe this aspect of vedanā (Sensation, or Sensing) as ‘inclusive’ because, although the physical body is its starting point, it needs to e understood as including all aspects of our internal experience – not just gross physical sensation, but all of the other three layers of mental, emotional and volitional phenomena that find a resonance in our ‘internal’ sensory perception. After all, our emotional and evaluative responses also register as sensations – as do our volitional energies. Even our thoughts find a reflection in body sensations. The sublime brahmavihāras, of Loving Kindness, Compassion, Equanimity, and Appreciative Joy, while they are ultimately objective and collective phenomena, and woven into the fabric of Consciousness, also find reflection in us as ‘internal’ sensations – as vedanā.
In Indian and Himalayan spirituality, there are many meditation traditions (both Buddhist and non-Buddhist) that name the energetic layers, or ‘subtle bodies’, within the internal space of the body and distinguish their energetic qualities – and identify the ‘chakra’ points where each of the subtle bodies is most keenly felt. There is centuries of accumulated knowledge within the esoteric traditions of Tibetan Buddhism that offers convincing conceptualisations of a subtle anatomy of subtle bodies and chakras and gives great importance to this understanding. While many practitioners and writers avoid this somatic territory, I have found this exploration extremely necessary and very fruitful – and strongly validated by the female archetypal Buddha Māmaki.
Samādhi and Meditative Receptivity
Māmaki is associated with the Earth Element. She sometimes appears in Tibetan Buddhist tradition as Ratnadakini (depicted below), the archetypal dākini of the Earth Element, dancing in the sky and abandoned to her experience of the divine – surrendered to the dharmic level of reality as it manifests in her as sensory experience. Clearly, she is an extremely powerful support in meditation practice – an archetype which guides practitioners into the experience of samādhi. She personifies the appreciative and receptive ‘internal’ Sensing that is foundational for the practice of the samādhi, or Meditation – samādhi being the ‘Spiritual Faculty’ that corresponds to vedanā, to the Earth element, to muditā, and to the Equalising Wisdom, etc. She represents that attitude of non-identification which brings lightness to the relationship between Consciousness and the bodily experience of vedanā, and allows meditators to rise easily through the dhyanas.
In the image of Ratnadakini above, you may notice a very striking sexual symbolism in her iconography. I am referring to the curious way that she is depicted not only with her vagina (Sanskrit: yoni) open and clearly visible – as is often seen in images of dakinis. Her iconography takes sexual symbolism a step further – and perhaps a step too far for some sensibilities – since she has an open yoni in every one of her many hands. I hesitate to share this image, but the symbolism is profound and impactful and begs to be acknowledged. In this form Māmaki highlights especially strongly the importance and power of the attitude of ‘meditative receptivity’ and Appreciative Joy. She personifies in her symbolism, a reflection, in the inner world of meditation practice, of the passionate and appreciative sensual receptivity of a human woman in an erotic encounter.
This is a classic example of the way the Vajrayāna sensibility challenges and subverts our presuppositions. The bold sexual imagery of this iconography is intended to free us from samsara rather that bind us to it. We are being invited to approach our meditation practice with a passionate receptivity – with the subtle and ‘internal’ sensuality of the ‘meditative receptivity’ that leads to samādhi, and to Appreciative Joy. All of the elements of this symbolic language serve to point us in a fresh and challenging way towards the importance of the ‘internal’ aspect of the ’empty’ vedanā skandha, and to the Equalising Wisdom – and to the enormous integrative power of the female archetypal Buddha Māmaki, and everything she represents.
The Subtle Physical Body and the Somatic
For the sake of brevity, we might want to identify Māmaki and Ratnasambhava with the Physical Body, but it is more accurate to say that they are associated with the ‘most physical’ of the somatic fields – all of which are best thought of as energetic if we are to avoid reifying them. The Buddha explained that everything is process and perception, and this is borne out by the modern neuroscience of perception – and even more radically by Quantum Science, which shows us that everything that we perceive as ‘physical’ is actually only a constellation of energy.
The powerfully beneficial, concretely generous, and practically effective figure of Ratnasambhava is associated with the ‘external’ aspect of the vedanā skandha – and therefore with the ‘external’, or extraverted aspect of the Equalising Wisdom. I shall be returning to him in a later article in this series. Māmaki however, is associated with the ‘internal’ aspect of the Equalising Wisdom and Sensing function (vedanā), and she highlights the fact that the level in the human somatic anatomy that is associated with Ratnasambhava and Māmaki is better called the Subtle Physical Body – since our actual felt experience of the body is that it is primarily a ‘somatic’, or energetic, reality.
The somatic reality of embodied Consciousness is complex and very difficult to talk about, but we cannot fully understand meditation without making some attempt to conceptualise the somatic. The Buddha’s ‘Mindfulness of Breathing’ practice, for example, can usefully be understood as one in which we follow the breath in order to gain a deeper and more embodied familiarity with the internal space of sensory experience (vedanā) in which the breath is felt to move. Similarly, the Buddhist practice of familiarising ourselves with the four brahmavihāras of ancient Indian tradition, the most well-known of which is mettā/maitri, or Loving Kindness, is also best understood as a systematic engagement with the way the loving, compassionate, appreciative, and equanimous ‘attitudes’ of the universal Consciousness (the ’empty vijñāna skandha) find somatic embodiment in us.
The familiar seven-subtle-body model that we find in Indian tradition, was adopted into later Buddhist tradition as a way of attempting to describe the mysterious and complex felt-experience of the body – and of conceptualising how a universal Consciousness finds embodiment in apparent persons. While some Buddhists, understandably perhaps, reject these conceptualisations, I find them extremely useful – and actually necessary. I have many very strong criticisms of the way the seven-body model is generally presented, but feel that we cannot afford to ignore these pointers to an objective somatic anatomy – however vague there usual presentation appears to be.
There are a couple of points that I should make here in order to distinguish my own approach. Firstly, my approach to the seven-body model has been to follow Tibetan Buddhist tradition, and to use it is a way of locating the mandala in the body. This means that my focus is on the first four subtle-bodies, which correspond to the four quadrants of mandala. Like many other practitioners, I have found that an awareness of the first four subtle bodies – which are sometimes called the surface bodies – to be of especially great value.
Secondly, and again following Tibetan Buddhist tradition, I find it important the emphasise that the subtle bodies are the fundamental structures on the somatic anatomy, and that the chakras are secondary. The importance of the chakras is in the fact that they are the places in the field of the body where the corresponding subtle bodies can be felt. All experienced meditators become familiar the first four chakras – base chakra, hara, solar plexus, and heart centre. Even non-meditators experience them as places of great significance, and as places that are associated with particular energetic qualities – a distinctly different energetic quality in each of the chakra locations.
While I understand the reservations that Western practitioners feel, my concern is that if we fail to try to reach for some tentative understanding of the mysterious phenomenon by which a universal Consciousness finds embodiment in apparent ‘persons’, we end up falling back into the prevailing materialistic and individualistic assumptions of our culture. The danger of becoming spiritually shackled by the unconscious ‘mind-forged manacles’ that William Blake spoke of in relation to the pervasive and poisonous scientific materialism narrative, is a greater danger, in my view, than the dangers that many have come to associate with delving into the difficult-to-define, difficult-to-talk-about territory of the somatic.
There is, of course, an unfortunate tendency for people to talk about the subtle-bodies and chakras without reference to actual somatic experience. Indeed writers on meditation within the yoga community usually appear to be taking their authority from other writers, rather than talking from their actual experience. They appear to talk confidently about the colours of the chakras for example – very frequently attributing the severn colours of the rainbow to the chakras. In reality the chakras are subtle energetic phenomena, and therefor perhaps best thought of either as having no colour at all, or only as having those colours that serve to associate them with the Dharmic principles that are found to be located in those positions in the somatic field of the body. Red, for example is an appropriate colour for Love (maitri), and for the great ‘Love Buddha’ Amitābha. I wish I could find some images of the first four chakras depicted in the colours of the corresponding deities in Tibetan Buddhist tradition, but the convention of attributing rainbow colours to the chakras appears to be nearly universal.
The value of having knowledge of the somatic anatomy of the body has been compared to the knowledge of the workshop manual of a car. While these details are not absolutely essential, it is extremely useful to be able to access that information when our energetic vehicle is malfunctioning due to trauma, and to a have at least a general overview of the vehicle’s mechanics. This allows us to better inhabit this apparently personal somatic vehicle that is nevertheless animated by universal forces, with a lot more awareness of its functioning – and of what may be happening ‘under the hood’, when it is not functioning very well. If we are going to talk about these phenomena at all, we need to do so with great deal of discernment and care, however. Our goal after all, is to loosen our identification with vedanā and to explore the meaning of ’emptiness’ – not just to create a more sophisticated and complex personalisation of our felt experience.
The Poetry of the Body and Matter
I am not advocating an abandonment of reason here – far from it. Rather I am pointing out that reason (even the most refined introverted thinking rooted in a comprehensive set of logical first principles, or the most well-researched extroverted thinking calling on respectable authorities and masses of ‘objective data’), is entirely inadequate for addressing the subjective reality of bodily felt experience. Almost anything that the form-creating conceptualising mind (the rūpa skandha) might come up with – even interpretations of the Buddha’s teachings – will potentially take us away from our actual experience. All the mind can do is point us in roughly the right direction – and all that I am proposing is that the direction we need to take is the one that leads towards a phenomenological honesty that allows our experience to be as it is.
It is my belief, that when the Buddhist tradition tells us that our identification with the ‘internal’ aspect of the vedanā skandha (Sensation or Sensing) leads to an accumulation of the kleshas of māna (pride, conceit, separateness, and self-obsession), we are being pointed in a particular direction. We are being pointed to a phenomenological enquiry into bodily-felt experience – a domain of experience in which the conceptualising mind (rūpa skandha) claims to have expertise, but is usually actually useless. What is needed is not the concretising, conceptualising, form-creating mind of the rūpa skandha, but the Mirror-Like Wisdom – an attitude of Objectivity, sustained even in a domain of sensory experience (vedanā) where nothing can ultimately be objectively known.
In 1790, William Blake wrote the following, in a visionary poem called The Marriage of Heaven and Hell:
“Man has no Body distinct from his soul; for that called Body is a portion of a Soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age.”
William Blake
A poet whose unique and personal spirituality combined elements of Christianity and Neoplatonism, Blake was on his own journey into the mystery of the somatic. His statement serves to suggest perhaps, that the complex truth of the Body, cannot be approached via a conceptual description of its nature – but via poetry. Poetry certainly takes us closer to spiritual realities than do the narrow Newtonian concepts that scientific materialism has given us. Blake is inviting us to go beyond our conceptual compartmentalisation of matter and spirit – of Body and Soul. He is suggesting that a reconciliation of those apparent opposites is already present, and that our experience of the ‘internal’ and ‘external’ aspects of the sensory (vedanā skandha) cannot actually be separated from our experience of the energetic movements of the soul’s drives, longings and aspirations (samskaras skandha).
When we are engaging with the Equalising Wisdom we are actually engaging with the whole mandala – but especially with the vertical axis of the mandala, the axis between the All-Accomplishing Wisdom in the north and the Equalising Wisdom in the south. The Equalising Wisdom invites us, not only to see the ’empty’ and impersonal nature of the vedanā skandha, but to reconcile and transcend the vedanā-samskāras opposition. This means recognising that, as an experience, the Body is never just matter – it is always animated by volitional energies. And more than that, it is always animated by the energies of the Transcendental. The Body is our starting point when we sit down to meditate, and it is within the Body in the course of our meditation practice that we glimpse a resonance of Transcendental and begin to familiarise ourselves with it. This was the poetic vision that Blake was trying to offer us.
A Marriage of Air and Earth
The various strange pre-scientific views that we see as we look back through history, and in aboriginal spiritual traditions, also give us poetic pointers to the deeper or internal dimensions of the physical world – poetic pointers that we might want to listen to. These traditions usually see life as a cosmic drama of creation, in which spiritual forces collaborate with the forces of Nature – in which spirit and matter are reconciled. And they usually see this as happening either eternally, or in a mythic past – a mythic past that nevertheless serves to explain our current reality. When we learn to understand the soul’s language of archetypal symbols and myths, we can find much truth in such archaic and poetic visions.
In the history of almost all ancient cultures we find an alchemical description of the physical world in terms of the Four Elements – Earth, Air, Fire and Water. These obviously reflect physical phenomena, but in the pre-scientific world-view they also carry the projection of the cognitive-perceptual functions of mind from which reality is assembled – the skandhas of Buddhist tradition. These projections are different in different cultures. Earth however, carries the projection of the Sensing function (vedanā) in all cultures – it is the perceptual function which engages with tangible, sensory, bodily-felt reality.
The opposite function of mind (opposite across the mandala of the four elements) is Intuition – the perceptual function which registers intangible realities like the volitional energies of desire and of the human will (the samskāras of Buddhist tradition). Because the main ‘internal’ objects of the intuiting function of mind are the volitional energies, we can usefully speak of this function of mind as Intuition-Volition. In Buddhist (and in Indian/Himalayan tradition) this Intuition-Volition function of mind is symbolised by Air, but in European tradition it carries the projection of Fire.
For completeness, I should point out that the Fire Element in Indian tradition is associated with the evaluative and emotional, or ‘Feeling’, function of mind, which Buddhist tradition calls samjñā. In European tradition this evaluative function is projected onto the Water Element. Confusingly, the Water Element in Indian tradition is associated with the concretising, conceptualising, or ‘Thinking’ function of mind – the rūpa skandha of Buddhist tradition. In European tradition this conceptualising function of mind is projected onto the Air Element. Although these cultural differences are confusing, it is important, if we are to engage in this area of contemplative enquiry, that we are aware of this confusion. Although I have come to prefer the Indian element symbolism, I have shared the European correspondences here in order to warn those of my readers who may be unaware of these important differences. In my writing on this website, I shall always be use the element symbolism from Indian/Himalayan tradition, unless I state otherwise.
The archetype of the alchemical marriage of the opposites Air and Earth in Indian tradition, has great power. Like the physical phenomena of Fire and Water these Elements seem very incompatible. They symbolise our aspiration towards a state of integration between the most tangible and the most intangible of elements – on one side, the concrete and practical and seemingly fixed (Earth), and on the other, the subtle, motivational, dynamic and changeable (Air). This combination of Earth and Air however, is an eloquent symbol of the integration that we must achieve in our meditation practice. It describes an integration that, while it seems so difficult for the egoic mind, is actually already present as a potential in Consciousness – the state of reconciliation and integration that is described by the vertical axis of the mandala.
Eugene Gendlin and the Five Wisdoms
We now have the great philosopher-scientist Iain McGilchrist (author of The Master and his Emissary, and The Matter with Things) to encourage us on the intellectual journey of integrating those things that the egoic mind finds incompatible. He points out that the left hemisphere of the brain – whose cognitive-perceptual perspective is dominant in Western culture, is unconscious of its refusal to embrace and reconcile psychological opposites. McGilchrist is a wonderful philosophical explorer and map-maker in this territory, but as a guide and a tracker in the deep forest of bodily experience we would do well to also turn to the late Eugene Gendlin, a modern philosopher and psychotherapeutic innovator, whose Focusing self-empathy/self-enquiry practice I explored for many years. Those who know my articles will know that I refer to Gendlin often, to reinforce the meditative and experiential principles that we find in the Buddhist tradition. In my view, he is one of the Buddhadharma’s greatest allies in modern times.
Eugene Gendlin was a philosopher of phenomenology – his philosophical attitude was a very Buddhist one, in that he advocated an examination of our experience of internal bodily-felt experience just as it is, in all its richness and complexity, with the absolute minimum of intellectual or metaphysical speculation or theory building as to what is going on. From a Buddhist perspective, we can see a very keen reflection of the Five Wisdoms in Gendlin’s approach. His work provides a wonderful guide to the realm of the somatic. Students of Buddhism might want to think of him as an un-knowing devotee of Māmaki – his life’s work was a passionate and rigorous engagement with her domain of insight and experience.
Buddhists reflecting on Gendlin’s approach to innerwork, might recognise that he was advocating not just a full acknowledgement of the universal, rich, soulful, complexity, and indeed the inherent spirituality, of our bodily-felt experience as human beings (the Equalising Wisdom); but an attitude of phenomenological objectivity (Mirror-Like Wisdom) towards that experience; and an acknowledgement of the ‘life-forward’, and inherently evolutionary, psychological forces that are experienced in the body (the All-Accomplishing Wisdom). Through Gendlin’s Focusing practice, the development of fine discernment through an awareness of the felt-sense level of feeling, brings great sensitivity, differentiation, and consciousness to the way we evaluate, and this attitude is clearly much akin to the Discriminating Wisdom of Buddhist tradition. And his reminder that the whole Focusing process is founded on an ability to establish a ‘clear space’ of non-identification, is clearly a direct parallel of the central Dharmadhātu Wisdom in the Buddhist mandala of the Five Wisdoms.
Padmasambhava’s Mandala of the Skandhas
While I believe we need to be willing to see a reflection of the mandala description of mind in the work of philosophers and psychological thinkers outside of the Buddhist tradition, my greatest reverence goes to Padmasambhava – and to the great spiritual philosophers of the Buddhist tradition who contributed to the evolution of the Dharmadhātu Mandala, which we find in Padmasambhava’s Bardo Thodol texts.
Reflecting on Padmasambhava, the thought may come to us that the presentation that we find in the Bardo Thodol, of the samskaras skandha in the north, and the vedanā skandha in the south, with the samjñā skandha and rūpa skandha at west and east, is pure genius. But the mandala is not a ‘model’ created as a visual aid by a brilliant mind. Rather, the embodiment of Consciousness through cognition-perception has an archetypal structure – and the mandala simply is the objective archetypal structure of the mind. In their presentation of the image of the mandala, the great masters of Buddhist tradition were simply describing an objective spiritual reality. Students of any spiritual tradition, or none, could benefit from studying this knowledge.
Of course, the mandala is also a visual-aid, and a conceptual map, and a guide on our spiritual journey. It perfectly encompasses the totality of cognition and perception in a single image. In the skandhas and kleshas, it lays out a description of egoic psychology, and in the Realms it lays out a corresponding analysis of not just individual and group dynamics, but also cultural tendencies. Even more fundamentally, the mandala presents a five-fold path to spiritual liberation – or a single path in which five spiritual principles come together in a progressive unfoldment process. Our spiral integration progress through the mandala energies requires us to return to each principle at least four times, and we can speak of this spiral path in the language of Integration, Positive Emotion, Spiritual Death and Spiritual Rebirth – the ‘System of Practice’ that Sangharakshita presented in the 1970s.
It is not sufficiently acknowledged that the familiar ‘Mandala of the Five Buddhas’ is also a mandala of the five ’empty’ skandhas – a mandala model of the cognitive-perceptual processes from which, in the egoic mind, the illusion of a separate self is assembled. When we appreciate that the Five Buddha mandala is also a diagram of the five skandhas, and of the five associated egoic kleshas; we also recognise that it is a description of the creative process – not just personal creativity, but creativity in interpersonal relationships, and creativity in groups and community collaboration processes. The ’empty’ skandhas, when more fully understood, are recognised everywhere – not just in cognition and perception, but in the embodiment of bodily-felt experience, in the creative process, and in larger social embodiment processes of creative collaboration.
Padmasambhava developed a reputation as a powerful magician, and I have no doubt that there was some actual historical truth in that, but it is important that we do not allow this to distance his experience from ours. For me, he was a magician in that his well-rounded and integrated personality included the knowledge and skills of a great archetypal psychologist – one who knows and understands the way in which our material lives are ordered and animated by the energy of archetypal principles. I shall be talking more about this style of spiritual intelligence in my next post on Amoghasiddhi. While Amoghasiddhi is clearly an archetypal Buddha, he is somewhat like the historical figure of Padmasambhava. He is the archetypal Buddha who is most associated with magic, and with an intimate knowledge of the transformative energy of Compassion – as an objectively and collectively existing force, that is woven into the fabric of the universe.
The Skandhas in the Body
In order to achieve a dis-identification from the ‘internal’ and ‘external’ perceptual functions of the samskāras skandha and of the ‘internal’ and ‘external’ perceptual functions of the vedanā skandha (i.e. four functions in all) we need to understand the dynamics of their relationships. We need to understand the way they come together in a way that leads to perceptual blind-spots and unconsciousness. There are actually six complementary relationships, or polarities, between the four functions associated with vedanā and samskāras – and with each of those relationships, the egoic mind generally fails to hold both poles of the polarities in full awareness. Failing to reconcile and integrate these polarities, patterns of unconsciousness are established – ways of being, and of cognitive-perceptual operation, that are only partially embodied. One of our most significant doorways into this healing – into this integration and cognitive-perceptual wholeness – is via the bodily-felt experience of ‘internal’ vedanā. Indeed, all of the six polarities related to the relationship of vedanā and samskāras, can be felt in the body in the practice of samādhi – the meditative receptivity of meditation. As can all the six polarities related to the relationship of samjñā skandha and rūpa skandha.
So, the Vajrayāna reveals the ‘internal’ aspect of the vedanā skandha to be a path to cognitive-perceptual wholeness that involves a recognition of several closely-related aspects of experience: the bodily-felt dimension of the vedanā skandha itself; the obscuring kleshas in the category of māna, or pride; and the underlying brahmavihāra of Appreciative Joy – all of which are experienced in the internal field of the body. Indeed, the ‘internal’ aspect of the vedanā skandha and the corresponding ‘internal’ aspect of the Equalising Wisdom and ‘self-regarding’ aspect of the brahmavihāra of muditā (Appreciative Joy) may be recognised as foundational keys to our understanding of how meditation practice leads to the radical transformation and Enlightenment. There is much more to this ‘internal’ aspect of the Equalising Wisdom, however, because everything in the material world has an internal dimension – a dimension of meaning and purpose enfolded within it.
Enlightenment requires our somatic transformation, and therefore requires our engagement with the difficult-to-define reality of the somatic through meditation practice – though the practice of samādhi. Any of the ten archetypal Buddhas can provide a doorway into the totality of the mandala, but Māmaki appears to have a special role because she models the critical attitude of meditative receptivity and embodiment, without which spiritual transformation cannot happen. She personifies then, the inner wisdom of the body, and the path to wisdom through embodiment. Through a refinement of our capacity to sense inwardly and through our deepening familiarity with the somatic realm of ‘internal’ vedanā, we come to recognise, as the Buddha did, that the vedana skandha is ’empty’ – that it is non-personal.
The embodiment process, that Buddhism speaks of in term of Mindfulness and meditation (samādhi), includes ten dimensions – ten dimensions that correspond to the five skandhas, in their ‘internal’ and ‘external’ aspects. Of these ten, there are five ‘internal’ dimensions that can be well characterised as dimensions of Integration; and a further five ‘external’ dimensions that can be well characterised as dimensions of Positive Emotion. While all meditation practice involves receptivity, this is more obviously the case with the ‘internal’ skandhas and the initial Integration stage of practice – a stage in which archetypal energies are ‘gathered’ to the apparent self.
The Positive Emotion stage is still receptive, but there is simultaneously a sense of expansiveness and an ‘external’ or extraverted focus. Positive Emotion does require receptivity to the brahmavihāras, but also requires the shift of identity that comes from integrating these suprapersonal energies and recognising them within. The attitudinal shifts of the Integration and Positive Emotional stages lay the groundwork for the self-illusion-releasing insights of Spiritual Death, and for the deep empathetic understanding, skilled communication and the spontaneously kind and generous action of Spiritual Rebirth. I shall be talking more about these subsequent stages in later articles in this series. The five male and female Buddhas of the Integration stage – Pandāravarsini, Vajrasattva-Akshobhya, Māmaki, Amoghasiddhi, and Ākāshadhātvishvari, provide our foundation for these three subsequent stages of development.
So, I find it helpful to think of the female Buddha, Māmaki, as the third of the five Buddhas that guide us in the receptive and self-empathetic Integration stage of spiritual practice. As I have been explaining, our doorway into a recognition of Māmaki is through the brahmavihāra of muditā, or Appreciative Joy. Because most Buddhist teachers and writers do not distinguish between the receptive, ‘self-regarding’ and self-empathetic aspect of muditā, and its expansive, other-regarding and relationally empathetic aspect, it is often translated as Sympathetic Joy – a term which is much better reserved for muditā‘s extraverted aspect.
As with all the brahmavihāras however, the ‘other-regarding’ aspect of muditā is not well understood and not effectively cultivated unless we first deeply understand and establish the ‘self-regarding’ aspect, which is much better rendered as Appreciative Joy. The Sympathetic Joy of ‘other-regarding’ muditā may be thought of, at least in part, as a recognition in others of something that has first been recognised in ourselves. Our joy and appreciative sense of wonder at the achievements of other human beings is greatly heightened when we have come to know the mystery of embodied Consciousness in ourselves.
Māmaki – ‘Mine Maker’ and Meditator
A very important place in human somatic anatomy is the so-called Base Chakra, or Root Chakra, which Indian tradition calls the muladhāra chakra, and if we were to place Māmaki, and the principle of Appreciative Joy that she personifies, in the field of the body, this is where we would find them. It can be extremely useful in meditation to have a place where we can put our attention in order to sense the Dharmic principles of the mandala most keenly. When we follow the guidance of Padmasambhava’s ‘Inspiration Prayer’ (a text that I have copied here) and feel the impact, in our own of bodily-felt experience, of the somatically Sensing and receptive presence of the archetypal Buddha Māmaki ‘behind us’, we naturally become aware of the receptive aspect of the subtle body that we can call the Subtle Physical Body – and the place where this subtle body is most keenly felt is the Base Chakra.
Māmaki’s name means ‘Mine-Maker’. She reminds us that what we are experiencing when we sit to meditate, is not a ‘self’ as such, but a self that we have ‘made’ – assembled from the five skandhas, and from their corresponding somatic energies. What we are experiencing is embodied Consciousness – a cognitive-perceptual constellation of body-mind energies, which together create the appearance of a person. The experience that we think of as a self, can be described in term of the ‘internal’ and ‘external’ aspects of the five skandhas. Our ultimate true nature however, is better described by the ten deities of the mandala – the ten suprapersonal components of embodied Consciousness that I am describing in this series of articles. What gives this experience its self-like quality of ‘me’ or ‘mine’ is the five kleshas – which are, quite simply, the somatic energies associated with our habitual identification with the five skandhas.
Hence, the figure of Māmaki – the female Buddha who presides over the southern quadrant for the mandala – provides one of the keys to seeing through the self-illusion. We can think of her as the archetype of the body as the doorway to the realisation of the non-personal nature of Consciousness. So, she is absolutely fundamental. She is like a patron goddess of all meditators. She is the archetypal reflection of every human practitioner of the Dharma who ever sat down the meditate and experienced the ‘internal’ aspect of the vedanā skandha. We might even call Māmaki the archetypal meditator. Māmaki is not the only female Buddha who holds us in our healing process – there are others, who I shall also be talking about in these articles – but she is our point of entry into the mystery of the somatic.
Māmaki and the Second Dhyāna
The difference, we can say, between ourselves and Māmaki, if such a comparison could be made, is that Māmaki personifies an attitude that recognises the Body for what it is – an energetic and systemic phenomenon that is empty of self – whereas the egoic mind takes the body as an absolute confirmation of the self-illusion. At the risk perhaps, of personalising her, we can say that the Appreciative Joy with which she experiences the body, arises precisely because she recognises that both Consciousness (vijnāna) and the internal cloud of sensations (vedanā) which is the sensory experience of the body, are not personal. When the kleshas of the māna category are released, and when the impulse to personalise everything in our sensory and somatic experience is released, there is no obstacle to samādhi – no obstacle to the states of psycho-physical integration and meditative absorption that we call the dhyānas.
In my experience, Māmaki has a particular connection with the second dhyāna, which the Buddha described using the image of a lake into which fresh water is flowing via a subterranean stream into its depths. The Buddha’s image of a spring in bottom of a lake was very specific. If we make the obvious connection with the Base, or Root, Chakra (the muladāra), we recognise that this image invites us to recognise a particular energetic and bodily-felt sense of receptivity in the Subtle-Physical Body – a receptivity that is most keenly felt in the perineum.
If this bodily-felt image-sense, or ‘felt-sense’ (to use Eugene Gendlin’s eloquent term) was not so profoundly descriptive, I would hesitate in making this association, but the connection seems clear. The invitation into a receptive acknowledgement of the ground on which we rest, and of the ‘energy of the Earth’ is frequently used by meditation teachers to ground their students in the somatic experience of the internal space of the body. It seems that full embodiment always involves both this sense of receptive openness in the perineum, and a corresponding receptive aliveness to internal sensation in the whole body.
Our receptive acknowledgement of the somatic and of the quality of Appreciate Joy, creates a foundation for the expansive quality of Sympathetic Joy. It also naturally leads to an expansion into our ‘external’ sensing function, our sensory physicality and our concrete acts of Generosity – a category of awareness for which I use the term Embodiment as well as Sympathetic Joy. This will be the subject of a future article on the symbolism of that most concretely generous and ‘externally’ sensory and embodied of the archetypal Buddhas, the male Buddha Ratnasambhava.
The Somatic, the Relational, and the Erotic
As Westerners, it is not unusual for us to develop a confused attitude to the Body – a confusion that finds expression in our attitude to the sensory vedanā skandha also. Some of us are strongly subject to the strands of cultural conditioning within Christianity that might be characterised as ‘anti-body’, or ‘body-negative’. The historical-cultural process of the polarisation of Christianity against the previous, more instinctual, and perhaps in some respects more healthy, pagan religions, has led us to see the Matter-Spirit dichotomy in a polarised and absolute way. While the Buddhist tradition seeks a Middle Way in this regard, it is common for some Western students of Buddhism to nevertheless find themselves projecting culturally Christian assumptions onto Buddhism.
To understand the Buddha correctly, we need to remember that while he saw humanity wandering helplessly, and subject to a whole range of biological and egoic conditioning factors, he also saw the dharma niyama (the unconditioned, or eternal, or dharmic dimension of conditionality) at play everywhere – immanent, emergent, and always inwardly present and ready to reveal itself as the primary reality of this world, as soon as the spell of egoic identification is broken. It is this recognition of the universal and immanent presence of the Transcendental in the somatic anatomy of all human beings, that is being referred to when the Buddhist tradition talks of the Equalising Wisdom.
Māmaki, it would seem, has deep and paradoxical messages for us, both about the means of our access to a realisation of the Transcendental, and about the nature of the erotic. She expresses an especially keenly receptive and appreciative form of feminine embodiment – an ‘inner’ style of sensuality that is most deeply felt in the Base Chakra and in the whole of the corresponding Subtle Physical Body, which we may regard as the first and most obvious layer of our progressive deepening into the somatic. At first we may not recognise the spiritual importance of Māmaki’s archetypal dimension. We might, at first find it hard to reconcile this symbolism and this dimension of embodiment with a tradition that started out as a monastic one, but when we look more deeper we see that the Māmaki principle – the principle of meditative receptivity and Appreciate Joy, as absolutely foundational to the monastic life.
For social and cultural reasons the Buddha and his students practiced celibacy – the reputation and social survival of the Buddha’s monastic order, and the mental and emotion stability of his male monastic students, depended on the strong discipline of renouncing the pull of the instinctual life and the comforts of sexual relationship and family. This required vigilance, determination and an effort of will, but even more importantly it required the monks to immerse themselves in samādhi – in an appreciative ‘internal’ sensibility of Mindfulness of vedanā, in the emotional nourishment of meditative receptivity, and in a real moment-to-moment openness to the Transcendental reality. When we allow ourselves to think within the archetypal psychology framework of Tibetan Buddhism, we recognise, as I hope I have been able to show, the paradoxical fact that our entry into such deeply nourishing and transformative meditation experience is through the meditative receptivity and ‘internal’ appreciative sensibility that Māmaki represents. Paradoxically, this embodiment of the ‘internal’ aspect of the vedanā skandha, when embodied in human woman, can make her compellingly attractive to a man.
In the light of this paradox, it is understandable that Buddhism, over the centuries, created a culture that was no longer so polarised against human sexuality – no longer so hierarchical in the way it viewed the monk related to the ‘lay’ practitioner. Indeed Buddhism increasingly created a culture in which traditions of monasticism existed side-by-side traditions of very high-level lay-practice. This is important because, there is very limited scope for a shrāmana tradition in Western Buddhism. A shrāmana is one who labours spiritually on behalf of his society – one whose spiritual work is acknowledged by his community providing him with food on a daily alms round.
In the West the most common Buddhist lifestyle is non-celibate. It is important not to see this as a falling away from a ‘purer’ and more transformative spiritual lifestyle of the the monk or nun. It is good thing if both these spiritual lifestyle choices are validated and available to the passionately engaged practitioner, but their relationship should not necessarily be viewed hierarchically. ‘Lay’ is not a good word in this context, because it tends to take on an inherently pejorative meaning as opposed to, and inferior to, ‘monastic’. Within the rich social ecosystem of the Tibetan Buddhist world there is a word that is useful in this regard – the terms ngagpa (for men) and ngagmo (for women) are used to describe deeply committed practitioners who are ‘lay’ rather than monastic. In terms and the vows and social roles associated with them, the ngagpa and ngagmo roles in Tibetan society provide and much better parallel to the Western lay practitioner than does role of the lay Buddhists in Theravada Buddhism for example. Indeed, many of the greatest Enlightened masters of Buddhist tradition within the last century were nagpas.
It helps us the overcome the apparent dichotomy of monastic and lay, and of celibate and non-celibate, if we understand that both the monastic strand in the tradition and the ‘lay’ strand, inevitably embraced and integrated a profound respect for, and profound valuing of, the feminine principle. The highest personifications of Enlightenment were given feminine form. In the light of this fact, the celibacy path, and the path of the married ngagpa and ngagmo are just two options – two different strategies for integrating the contra-sexual principle. For the male celibate monk, the feminine principle was sought within, rather than projected and integrated through intimate relationship. For the ngagpa and ngagmo the projection is consciously allowed and celebrated and integrated into daily practice, and the play of the masculine and feminine principles in the psyche of each, is made conscious at ever higher levels.
It’s worth noting in passing that the integration process for a gay man or lesbian woman is closer to that of the traditional monastic. It is difficult to talk of ‘monastic’ in that context however, since a gay man in a male monastic environment is not avoiding the distraction caused of erotic attraction – at least not in the same way as a heterosexual male in an all-male cultural situation. For me, one of the paradoxical powers of the yab-yum (father-mother) images that are so fundamental to the structure of the Dharmadhātu Mandala, is that they can speak to monastic and lay, gay and straight. We may relate to them differently, depending on our sexual orientation or chosen spiritual lifestyle, but the underlaying archetypal symbolism of integration is the same.
There is great value for us as modern Western practitioners of Buddhism, to be willing to go where the tradition’s development eventually leads us, however paradoxical that leading may seem. I believe that Māmaki is telling us something very important about what it is to be truly connected, relational and present. She is telling us that to be present is to be somatically embodied; and that to be present and somatically embodied is to be in relationship – in relationship to bodily-felt experience within ourselves, and empathetic present with the same rich internal experience within our fellow human beings. So, Māmaki is showing us something foundational about spiritual friendship and relationship in general, and she is also telling us something about the nature of the erotic in the deepest sense of that word – the erotic as a deep acknowledgement of the mystery of the other. She is telling us something about value and necessity of surrendering deeply into every complex indefinable moment of relational experience – resting ‘in’ and ‘as’ benevolent and creative Consciousness that pervades the body and pervades our world.
While scientific materialism leads us to see human sexuality almost exclusively in terms of physiological instincts and the ‘external’ sensory reality of the body; Māmaki challenges to go deeper – to recognise that any external human sexual connection is always a reflection of deeper archetypal processes and somatic realities. She shows us the deeply paradoxical truth that the Dharmic principle of Appreciative Joy – an essential aspect of Consciousness, and of ultimate reality – is paradoxically present both in a full experience of human sexuality and in the contentment of celibacy. While all four brahmavihāras are needed to achieve the contentment of nirvāna, or to guide a fully developed ethical and relational sensibility, it would seem that the foundation of a spiritual approach to both human sexuality and celibacy is to be found in an appreciative sensibility – in the appreciative dimension of love that the Buddhist tradition speaks of in terms of muditā.
Whenever the Buddha spoke of the vedanā skandha – the perception of sensation – he referred to its ‘internal’ and ‘external’ aspects. Indeed, for each of the skandhas, the Buddha would refer to this polarity of complementary ‘internal’ and ‘external’. He spoke of the same polarity of ‘internal’ and ‘external’ in his parallel ‘Foundation of Mindfulness’ teaching – again inviting us to recognise these complementary dimensions of awareness. It is of the nature of the egoic mind that we always neglect one aspect of each of the skandhas – and the aspect of vedanā that is most misunderstood and most often neglected, is the ‘internal’ aspect that I have been highlighting in this article. ‘Internal’ and ‘external’ vedanā, and their corresponding egoic klesha energies (the energies of māna, or ‘pride’), are opposites that must be made conscious and integrated – and Māmaki is a archetypal psychological container within which this integration can begin to happen.
Māmaki as a Force in Human Evolution
Consciousness is the defining feature of the species homo sapiens, so we can say that all the dimensions of Consciousness that we see personified in the Dharmadhātu Mandala have been drivers of human evolution. Māmaki’s connection with the erotic has perhaps given her a special place in human evolution however, because she represents that in us which savours and appreciates the experience of Consciousness as it manifests in bodily-felt experience, and in all the subtle appreciative and aesthetic sensibilities that flow from that. In the process of human evolution it has been mate selection, just as much as survival, that has, over the millions of years, and millions of generations, produced homo sapiens, a species of hominid that is optimised for the embodiment of Consciousness. It is not just human sexuality, and sexual pleasure that is driving evolution. What has been selected for just as strongly in homo sapiens, and continues to be selected for, is embodied Consciousness – appreciation, erotic relatedness, aesthetic sensibility and a sense of somatic embodiment
To finish this perhaps overlong and rambling article, I would like to point out another way in which Māmaki is the ‘Mine Maker’. I believe she tells us something about how human identity was forged in the course of human evolution. In a related way, she also tells us something about the essence of Mindfulness practice – because Mindfulness includes noticing the way Consciousness makes us who we are, and makes us human. The simple act of ‘resting as Consciousness’ while simultaneously connecting in an embodied way with another human being, is a much overlooked pleasure. It is overlooked because the implications of that experience, when we examine it, are so unfathomable. There is relationship within us, and there is relationship between us, but there is no self present – just an appreciative sense of Being, and a process of becoming, and a sense of connection. The quality of the internal relationships within each of us, and the quality of the connection between in us is the most important thing – and in some sense is the only thing. When we take a moment of Mindfulness, to savour, appreciate and fully receive the relational experience of embodied Consciousness, we are recapitulating one of the moments that has driven human evolution – and connecting with one of the suprapersonal forces that have made us who we are.
William Roy Parker 2023
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