Meditation Guidance

The Mandala and the Stupa

This is Post 35 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series.

Taking the mandala as our guide, I have been presenting the journey of self-enquiry into the nature of mind, as a four-fold one, and as a circumambulation of the mandala – a clockwise series of enquiries into Thinking (east), Sensing (south), Feeling (west), and now Intuition-Volition (north). There has been a traditional logic in this sequence, but in meditation practice there are many orders of priority that can be used, as we systematically progress our integration – or simply respond intuitively and spontaneously to the needs of our integration process.

In this post I shall be exploring, in conjunction with the symbolism and psychological dynamics of the mandala, the psychological symbolism of the stupa – the traditional symbolic monument that is seen in various forms across the Buddhist world. Much like the mandala, the stupa is a five-fold symbolic representation of an ideal state of psychological and spiritual integration. It is a very useful pointer to the nature of mind, because it brings us back to the enormous importance of the energy anatomy of the subtle bodies.

The Stupa – a Monument to the Experience of the Liberation

Whereas the mandala can perhaps be thought of as a larger symbol, which represents both Consciousness itself and also the tensions, or polarities, that exist within the egoic mind, the stupa represents the somatic embodiment, or reflection, or resonance, of Consciousness in the energetic fields of the body, in the so-called ‘subtle bodies’, and highlights the hierarchical dimension of the relationship between them. So, the stupa brings a hierarchical dimension to the way we approach the corresponding brahmavihāras, and the egoic cognitive-perceptual functions (which Buddhist tradition calls the skandhas, as mentioned previously here). While different cultures have elaborated their symbolism in different ways, ultimately the stupas of the east are monuments that celebrate the profound mystery of the energetic embodiment of Consciousness in this world – in the lives of individual human beings.

Consciousness exists everywhere. Indeed it is because of Consciousness that life exists, and because of Consciousness that we are capable of knowing and experiencing life. Paradoxically however, although we are all resting in the field of Consciousness, very few of us have ‘recognised’ Consciousness and fully embraced the non-dual reality that pervades all experiencing. But it is only by deeply acknowledging Consciousness, and learning to ‘turn towards’, or ‘rest back into’ Consciousness, that we allow Consciousness to become energetically embodied in us. Continue reading

August 2, 2018

The Asura Realm – Intuition and the Egoic Will

This is Post 34 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series.

Before we can go further in our exploration of the wisdom of the green Northern Quadrant of the mandala, we need to ask why it is that the perceptual function of Intuition-Volition, which Buddhist tradition speaks of in terms of the samskaras skandha, and which so naturally finds expression as Empathy, and as a compassionate recognition of the needs of ourselves and others, should so often manifest instead as fear and dis-integration, and as actions characterised by deep inhumanity. This takes us to the heart of the distinction between resting as Consciousness on one side, and living in egoic identifications on the other.

When we are in identification with egoic psychological parts, Intuition serves those parts in a crude self-serving way, primarily by anticipating dangers and unmet needs, and therefore generating anxiety and fear. Our reflex response to that intuitive mode of perception is to act to manipulate our internal and external world in the light of those fears. While Intuition and Volition are entirely integrated on the level of Consciousness, in the egoic psyche they give rise to fused pairs of psychological parts. Often the vulnerable, predominantly intuitive part is more deeply exiled from awareness, and the more volitional part, which carries and energy of protection, defence and attack, is more conscious in the personality.

The Psychology of Bullies and Bullying

If these pairs of parts predominate within the psyche, they can form a narcissistic dissociation – a deeply unconscious and defensive psychological dynamic, which usually manifests in a range of extremely unconscious, violent, and unethical behaviours. These destructive and self-destructive behaviours might be described psychologically as sociopathic or psychopathic, but they are actually much more common than those diagnostic terms might suggest – and are very frequently seen as personality traits in many of the ‘successful’ high profile individuals in politics, in business, and in the military and its intelligence agencies – the people who shape the culture of our world.

One part in each of the pairs of psychological parts has an intuitive recognition of a vulnerability or threat, while the other part carries the impulse to control that vulnerability or threat. And the greater the unconscious fear and vulnerability of the intuitive part, the more destructive and heartless will be the volitional impulse of egoic control, to protect from vulnerability by destroying the threat, or otherwise preventing the emergence of the vulnerability into awareness. This is the stark truth of the deep heartlessness that we face in the egoic psychology of the green Northern Quadrant – which is also, paradoxically, the quadrant of Compassion. Continue reading

July 21, 2018

The Yin and Yang of Love and Compassion

This is Post 33 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series. It continues the theme of the previous article, which you can read here. Summaries of the other articles in this series can be found by clicking here.

In this article we are once again in the territory of the Northern Quadrant – if we use the traditional directions of the Buddhist mandalas – so we are also addressing what Jung called the perceptual function of Intuition. Intuition is probably the most difficult of the four cognitive-perceptual functions to define, but as a starting point we can say that Intuition is that function of Consciousness by which we perceive dynamics, patterns, processes, and motivations – in the world; in the people in our lives; and in ourselves.

Intuition is the function by which we recognise volitional processes. These include our needs, desires, wishes and wants – and also our fears and the energies of aversion and of ‘not-wanting’ that arise in connection with fear. Volitional, in this context, means pertaining to the Will, and to the energies of desire and motivation – energies that can be unconscious or conscious; egoic or suprapersonal. The highest form of intuition is empathy – our responsive, unflinching, and compassionate recognition of the needs and desires of others, and of ourselves. Empathy and Compassion can therefore be seen as two sides of the same experience. They are closely related and are in many ways interchangeable – indeed they are related in exactly the same way that Intuition and Volition are related.

To rest as Consciousness and to recognise, through Intuition, that an energetic reflection of the compassionate and creative energies of Consciousness are always present in the field of the body, has a profoundly transformative effect on our experience of volition – the fearful Egoic Will begins to undergo a healing process. This blissful self-surrender into effortless and fearless compassionate connection, is a key feature of all the genuine spiritual paths.

But while this will begin to arise naturally as we rest as Consciousness, it requires an expansion of our vision of what it is to be human being. We need to acknowledge the mysterious and benevolent energetic dimensions of the universe, which are always present in our lives – and inherent in the ever-present experience of Consciousness.

Intuition and Volition – Empathy and Compassion

When we learn to rest as Consciousness, and become familiar with the somatic experience of the Volitional Body – the deepest of the four surface bodies, and the one associated with the Heart Chakra – we come to recognise, usually with some surprise that, at core, our motivations are always compassionate and life serving. Continue reading

June 15, 2018

Feminine and Masculine – Energy and Presence

This is Post 32 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series. Summaries of the other articles in this series can be found by clicking here.

In this ‘Meditation Guidance’ series, I have frequently drawn on the wisdom that Carl Jung articulated in his mandala-form psychological model of the ‘Four Functions of Consciousness’, as we have been exploring the corresponding mandala of the four brahmavihāras – the ancient Indian ‘attitudes’ of Consciousness that were adopted so enthusiastically by the Buddha. Also, drawing on the Tibetan Buddhist form of the mandala, I have, in recent months been looking in detail at the dichotomies within each of the first three Quadrants of the mandala. Sometimes these dichotomies appears as clear oppositions, but I have endeavoured to show that they can also resolve into relationships in which we recognise the two poles as expressions of the same archetypal principle – but manifesting as dysfunction and limitation on the egoic level, and as wisdom and supreme benefit on the level of Consciousness. We saw this in the apparent opposition of the egoic Thinking function and Equanimity in the East; then the apparent opposition of the egoic Sensation function and Appreciative Joy in the South; and most recently the apparent opposition of the egoic Feeling function and Loving Kindness in the West.

In each of these polarities, I have been highlighting the spiritual choices that are presented to us in life, between the ‘attitudes of Consciousness’ (the brahmavihāras) that we experience when we rest naturally as Consciousness, and the egoic expressions of the same archetypal principles, that we experience when we fall into identification with psychological parts. By exploring the imagery of the Buddha’s Six Realms, we have seen that the extreme of egoic identification through Thinking (rūpa skandha) is expressed in the archetypal psychology of the Hell Realms, or Narakas (here); that the extreme of egoic identification through Sensation (vedanā skandha) is expressed in the archetypal psychology of the Human Realm (here); and that the extreme of egoic identification through Feeling (samjñā skandha) is expressed in the archetypal psychology of the Preta Realms (here).

The Northern Quadrant – Compassion versus the Egoic Will

I would like now to move on clockwise round this mandala, to the Northern Quadrant, where we shall be looking at the egoic function of Intuition / Volition and the corresponding Volitional aspect Consciousness, which expresses itself in the brahmavihāra of Compassion. In Buddhist tradition, the archetypal Buddhas who preside over the Northern Quadrant are the male Buddha Amoghasiddhi and the female Buddha Green Tara, who embody two aspects of the All-Accomplishing Wisdom.

In the next few articles I will be addressing the core of the egoic will, that deep volitional aspect of the egoic mind, which the Buddha personified, in an extreme but very illuminating way, in the archetypal imagery of the Asura Realm – a realm of demonic, power-seeking anti-gods, or ‘Jealous Gods’. It is extremely valuable to have a familiarity with, and an acceptance of the style of egoic identification with Intuition/Volition (samskaras skandha), which the asura archetype represents – our envy-based, and fear-based drives for control. By first recognising this category of obscuring egoic energies (the kleshas of Buddhist tradition), we can in turn learn to let them go, and can thus reveal the universally present and universally benevolent spiritual energies that are hidden by them. Continue reading

May 26, 2018

Empathy and Self-Empathy – Communication and Self-Enquiry

This is Post 31 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series. Summaries of the other articles in this series can be found by clicking here.

In interpersonal relationships, when we are reflecting silently about someone, especially someone we are concerned about, it is natural to engage empathetically using the the four perceptual components, or functions of Consciousness, in the following way:

‘How do they understand this situation?’ (Thinking); ‘How do they feel about this?’ (Feeling); ‘What is the need in them that is causing them to feel that way?’ (Intuition / Volition); ‘What solution would concretely fulfil that need in a practical way? (Sensation).

So, the mandala of the functions of Consciousness is not only an analysis of the process of perception – it is a framework to guide empathetic connection, communication and action. Those on the path of the inner life can also ask the same questions inside. In the intra-personal relationship between Consciousness and our psychological parts that I have been exploring in the last two posts (here and here), we have been acknowledging the enormous value of connecting self-empathetically in this way. When we do this work of inner empathy, it is the same four perceptual components, or functions of Consciousness, that provide us with a guiding framework.

Self-Empathy with a Companion

In self-empathy the whole process place takes place inwardly and does not have to be externally verbalised. If we were however, to bear witness to our internal self-empathetic connection by describing our experience to a spiritual companion who is ‘holding space’ for us, there are several ways we might approach it – but usually it feels best to silently connect with the part and then speak for the part as we describe our internal dialogue to our friend.

We might for example ask ourselves inwardly: ‘How is this part of me thinking about this situation? What is its point of view?’ (Thinking); ‘What does this part of me feel about this? What is the emotional history of this part, that it should feel this way?’ (Feeling); ‘What is the need that leads this part of me to feel that way?’ (Intuition / Volition); ‘What solution or strategy would concretely fulfil this part’s needs / my needs in a practical way? (Sensation).

April 18, 2018

Mettā – Being Unconditionally Present with Feeling

This is Post 30 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series. Summaries of the other articles in this series can be found by clicking here.

The ultimate source of the attitude that the Buddhist tradition calls mettā, or Loving Kindness, is unconditioned. Being unconditioned, it is inherent in Consciousness, and always available to us, but cannot be cultivated by an effort of the egoic will. This is a difficult but very important distinction to understand.

The Buddhist tradition, as it progressed into into its Mahayana (Great Vehicle) phase, began to use Sanskrit as its main language – so the Pali word mettā, or Loving Kindness, was replaced by the Sanskrit word maitri. It was also during the centuries of Buddhist meditation practice and scholarship during the Mahayana period, that an important understanding arose, which distinguished two levels of maitri: firstly, the universal, or archetypal source of maitri, which was called mahamaitri, or ‘great’ maitri; and secondly, the embodied reflection of that in our relationships and communication, and in the energetic fields of the body. Much of the time, I have not been making this formal distinction, because I believe that it is essential that we see mettā/maitri as always having these two inseparable levels, because maitri is ultimately best ‘cultivated’ by a paradoxical process in which we acknowledge its already existing presence in our experience as mahamaitri inherently present in Consciousness.

The Power of Consciousness to Heal the Emotional Body

Mettā, in essence then, can be thought of as the attitude, already inherent in Consciousness, of being unconditionally present with Feeling (samjñā skandha). It is therefore best understood as a process – a process by which our Emotional Body and our capacity for relationship is progressively healed by the power of Consciousness. Continue reading

March 23, 2018

Flowing with the Currents of Feeling – our Psychological Parts

This is Post 29 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series. Summaries of the other articles in this series can be found by clicking here.

The psychological function of Feeling, is symbolised in the Western poetic imagination, and in the esoteric lore of Western tradition, by the element of Water. Whereas the Indian imagination generally uses the element of Fire to symbolise Feeling, as I have described previously (here), I would like to now draw on Western tradition to very briefly acknowledge something that the symbolism of the Water element can teach us about the nature of Feeling. As the parallel with Water might suggest, Feeling is a phenomena that is almost always in a state of flow and change: like tides, or waves, or the tributaries of a river, or the eddies in a sparkling stream, or like a stormy ocean.

Feeling, like Water can seem chaotic, but it carries energy and moves with purpose – a purpose that may sometimes be hard to discern, but is nevertheless always present. Just as the Fire element in the symbolic language of India, can be seen to be reaching consistently upwards towards the Divine, so the Water element in the West can be seen as relentless and purposeful in its downward course towards the universal ocean.

Psychological Parts – the Apparent Persons behind our Currents of Feeling

It is perhaps helpful, to see Feeling as analogous to currents or tributaries in a body of Water, because Feeling is certainly not single. Feeling is also much more like a surging wave that recedes and appears to disappear, only to surge again when we don’t expect it. When we examine our experience carefully we notice that it is inaccurate to say “I feel sad” or “I feel afraid” – and worse still to say “I am sad” or “I am afraid”.

Both sadness and the fear are actually only single currents among the many currents of feeling that surge in us from time to time – but more importantly, if we look carefully at our experience, we have to acknowledge that the ‘I’ in both those statements, is always separate from those currents of Feeling. It is never the ‘I’ that feels sad or afraid. The ‘I’ is the imperturbable field of Consciousness within which Feeling is experienced. The conventional verbal forms “I feel …….. “, “I am feeling …….. “, or “I am …….. ” followed by words identifying the category of our feeling state, are not only inaccurate, but very unhelpful psychologically – because they encourage identification with Feeling rather than self-empathetic connection with it.

March 5, 2018

The Preta Realm – Deprivation, Despair, and Addiction

This is Post 28 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series. Summaries of the articles in this series can be found by clicking here.

Each of the four Quadrants of the mandala can be a point of entry into the experience of embodied Consciousness. Each is distinctive, and each is as powerful and as important, as all the others. The Western Quadrant, which we have been examining in the last few posts, takes us into the mystery through the experience of the evaluative and discriminative psychological function of Feeling, which the Buddhist tradition calls the samjñā skandha. The distinctive red male Buddha of the Western Quadrant, who is always seen with his hands resting together in meditation posture, is Amitābha – the Buddha of love, or mettā, or Loving Kindness. The invitation of Amitābha is that we rest as Consciousness and evaluate our experience from that place – to relate to others and evaluate our experience not from egoic Feeling, but from the Feeling aspect of Consciousness, which the Buddhist tradition speaks of in terms of the Discriminating Wisdom, and in terms of mettā.

Pandaravārsini, the female Buddha partner of Amitābha is an archetypal figure of enormous spiritual importance. While we can say that Amitābha personifies the extraverted aspect of love – love poured out towards others – Pandaravārsini personifies the subtle introverted counterpart of that, which is love received. So, Pandaravārsini is a personification of that in us, which is able to rest as Consciousness so completely that our emotional life (the somatic energies of our Emotional Body) are taken over by mettā. She could therefore associated with what may be called our ability to ‘love ourselves’, but this a crude conceptualisation. More accurately, she is that in us which recognises the source of love within with instinctive confidence – and who, through absolute Faith and devotional receptivity rests always in a state of uncaused happiness. Pandaravārsini represents ‘the confidence that we are loved’ in the most absolute and impersonal sense of that notion. The principle that Pandaravārsini embodies is so absolutely foundational for the meditator (and for humanity), that I have chosen in these articles to give this Dharmic principle of primordial contentment, this introverted dimension of Loving Kindness, its own name – Uncaused Happiness.

Consciousness does not evaluate like the egoic mind does – it does not simply distinguish between that which it ‘likes’ and that which it ‘does not like’; or between that which it values and that which it de-values. It might seem, at least at first, that Consciousness makes no evaluation at all. When we allow ourselves to rest as Consciousness however, and familiarise ourselves with Consciousness and with the experience of the Emotional Body through meditative enquiry, we notice that Consciousness is indeed evaluative – but it evaluates unconditionally. It seems that Consciousness unconditionally values everything in our experience. We might say that, paradoxically without lacking discrimination, it feels everything, values everything, accepts everything, embraces everything, loves everything – and even perhaps, is happy with everything. This attitude, and this transformative state of alignment of the Emotional Body layer of our somatic anatomy with the great love that is inherent in Consciousness and inherent in the universe, is what the Buddhist tradition calls mettā, or Loving Kindness.

December 12, 2017

Mettā – Healing the Egoic Shadow of Love

This is Post 27 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series. Summaries of the other articles in this series can be found by clicking here.

When we rest as Consciousness, the Feeling aspect of that experience is the brahmavihāra of mettā, or Loving Kindness. Mettā is associated in Buddhist tradition with the colour red, with the end of the day, and with sunset. Although, in Western tradition, the Feeling function is associated with the water element, in Indian tradition it is associated with the element of fire.

In the poetry and imagination of India (and that of the first nation peoples of North America) fire is the element that turns the gross into the subtle, that cooks and transforms things, that extracts bright metals from dull ores. When the body is cremated, fire helps the soul on its journey to the heavenly realms. Fire is the element that radiates a nourishing warmth – but we instinctively recoil from it when it threatens to scorch us. It is the upward-rising and aspirational element that dances, and appears to reach up to heaven. All this fire imagery provides eloquent symbolism of the Feeling function. In India, the Hindu religious ascetic, or sannyasin, will usually put on robes that are the colour of fire when he or she abandons the worldly life – signifying the fire of their aspiration, and the self-transformation that they are undertaking.

In the context of the mandalas of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, the fiery Feeling function in the red Western Quadrant appears to carry us upward from the earthy Sensation function in the yellow Southern Quadrant, to the airy function of Volition / Intuition in the green Northern Quadrant. The downward-flowing water element in the blue, or white, Eastern Quadrant, which symbolises the Thinking function, carries us back down to the yellow Southern Quadrant, the earth element, and the Sensation function, and so completes the cycle. The elements, in this context, are symbols of the cognitive-perceptual functions that Indian tradition calls the skandhas – something that students of the mandala wisdom need to be keenly aware of.

It is traditional among the Tibetan people to orientate their maps to the path of the sun, so they put the blue eastern sunrise point at the bottom of the mandala, and the red western sunset point at the top – so the way in which the element symbolism highlights the cyclical process of the mandala is unfortunately usually lost. While it is very much my wish to honour the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, I find the western-style orientation of the mandala, which puts the north-point at the top, to be much more symbolically meaningful.

The archetypal symbolism of the two axes – the two main pairs of polarities within the mandala – are so important. By placing the Earth-Air axis vertically, with the Earth Element, which in Buddhist tradition symbolises the basic and foundational skandha of vedanā (Sensation) at the bottom; and the Air Element, which symbolises the subtle and energetic skandha of samskaras (Intuition/Volition) at the top, we allow the mandala to express important truths that would otherwise be missed – important truths that in other traditions might be suggested symbolically by the dichotomies of Heaven and Earth, or Spirit and Matter.

A Four-fold Embodiment of Consciousness

The foundational stages of meditation practice require that we familiarise ourselves deeply with embodied Consciousness in all four of the surface bodies, and one of our best guides to this four-fold embodiment is the cycle of the four brahmavihāras. The Emotional Body is the third of the surface bodies, and is associated with the Western Quadrant of the mandala, and with the brahmavihāra of mettā. It is the Emotional Body that is felt most keenly in the region of the maṇipūra, or Solar Plexus Chakra, which is a point in the centre of the trunk of body just below the sternum, which I have written about in the previous post (here). Continue reading

December 1, 2017

Mettā – Living as Love and Contentment

This is Post 26 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series. Summaries of the other articles in this series can be found by clicking here.

It has been the experience of the ancient meditation traditions of India and Tibet that the internal space of the human body is filled with not one but seven different energetic, or somatic, fields – the seven auras, or ‘subtle bodies’. Many readers will already be aware that each deeper layer in the succession of auric layers is slightly larger than the last, so that the layers that are closer to the surface are enclosed within the deeper ones.

An important feature of this spiritual anatomy that readers may not be aware of however, is the way the polarity of the layers alternates between receptive and expansive – yin and yang – and in way that is opposite in the two sexes. I have outlined this phenomenon in previous posts (here and here) and will be returning to it – this understanding is essential, in my view, for the meditator, and provides wonderful insights into the very different emotional life of men and women.

An understanding of the ways in which these fields of our spiritual anatomy interpenetrate each other and interact, is very useful information for the meditator. Of the seven fields, by far the most important are the first four, which I have been calling the surface bodies – these are somatic fields through which our sense of ‘being a person’ finds a sense of energetic embodiment. While these four key subtle bodies, and the relationships between them, are most comprehensively described by the meditation mandalas of Tibetan Buddhism, the implicit description of embodied Consciousness that we find in the four brahmavihāras of early Buddhism (and in the pre-Buddhist teaching of the four brahmavihāras) gives us a much simpler ‘way in’ to this mandala wisdom.

Each of the subtle bodies is felt most keenly at the points in the body that we call the chakras. So, as previously in connection with the Mental Body and the subtle Physical Body (which I described here and here), we will find it useful in understanding our experience of the Emotional Body when we are resting as Consciousness, if we look briefly at the traditional Indian description of the Solar Plexus Chakra, which is outlined below.

The Manipūra Chakra – City of Jewels

The traditional Indian name of the third chakra, the chakra at the Solar Plexus, is maṇipūra, which is a Sanskrit word made up of the word maṇi, which means ‘jewel’, and pūra, which means city or place. Maṇipūra gives us an image of a sort of paradise – a place of extraordinary wealth and beauty – sparkling and radiant. In this context, the image of a landscape glittering with jewels is being used to symbolise not only ultimate beauty and value, but also unlimited ease, grace, contentment and happiness – a world of pleasurable and joyful feelings. Continue reading

November 15, 2017