Book

Buddha; Dharma; Sangha, and the Five Wisdoms Mandala – Preface

The text below is the Preface to a book that I am currently working on – Buddha; Dharma; Sangha, and the Five Wisdoms Mandala – the first chapter of which I will be giving away free to ‘Mandala of Love’ subscribers.

Preface

There are three archetypal ideas that have guided Buddhist tradition for twenty-five centuries – Buddha; Dharma; and Sangha. This triad of archetypal principles is often called the Three Jewels (triratna) and also referred to as the Three Refuges. In each of the three long essays, that are the chapters of this book, I have taken one of these three principles, and in the course of the book, I have set out to weave them together in way that reveals both their underlying unity, and the completeness of the model that they present. Most of my readers will have some familiarity with the Three Jewels, but my intention with this book is to challenge myself, and to challenge my readers also, to go deeper into this familiar formulation. I feel a desire to bear witness to the universality of these three principles – to reveal them as universal spiritual principles – principles that can be regarded, ultimately, as going beyond the Buddhist tradition. The Three Jewels are three universal human values; values that ennoble humanity; values by which humanity may reach its potential.

I believe that we live in a time of great moral, and indeed mortal, danger – a time in which, even when humanity’s potential for peace and prosperity is at its height, key institutions and cultural forces for the good and for truth appear to be failing. This is a time in which the forces of evil and untruth and have drawn powerful new resources to themselves. By contrast, Buddha, Dharma and Sangha are, in essence, three powerful universal truths that are much needed by humanity at this time of global crisis. There is a liberating wisdom and a natural compassion at the heart of all three of these principles, without which human civilisation will not survive.

While this may seem ambitious, to approach the Three Jewels in a lesser way would be to reduce them, in my view – to reduce them to a merely historical, cultural and religious phenomena. This awareness of Buddhist principles as universal, or archetypal, principles, is easily lost within the dominant post-modern worldview that we are educated into in the West. Although the Buddhist tradition has, historically, seen itself as naming the universal principles at play in our psychology and in our world, I feel grateful to have also gained a particularly keen sense of this sensibility through my reading in the area of archetypal psychology (predominantly through the work of Carl Jung and his students) – which I studied concurrently with Buddhism, in my twenties.

In addition to Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, there are several other major themes that I have set out to weave through these three essays. Most obviously, there is the theme of the Five Wisdoms Mandala. When I speak of the Five Wisdoms Mandala, I am speaking of the universal mandala structure of the body-mind, which the Buddha spoke of in terms of the five cognitive-perceptual skandhas – a model which we find particularly well elucidated in the psychology of Carl Jung. These skandhas, when we are completely identified with them, give structure to the egoic mind and appear as a fixed and separate self. When, however, we begin to recognise, as the Buddha did, that the skandhas are universal and non-personal cognitive-perceptual components, they show us the structure of the Enlightened mind – the five Wisdoms.

It is one of my most important aims in this book to communicate this dual and reconciliatory function of the ‘mandala wisdom’. It provides us with both a powerful description of the various dimensions our egoic dysfunction, our suffering, our ignorance, our empathy failure and our cruelty, on one side; and a beautiful description of our sublime potentiality, on the other. The spiritual psychology of the mandala that we find in Tibetan Buddhist tradition, is extremely rich and profound, and I can only provide the barest introduction to this richness and profundity in this short book – but I hope to at least provide an overview of this vast and multidimensional inner terrain.

May 14, 2023

Egoic Consciousness and its Shadow

This is Post 8 in the ‘Mandala of Love’ book blog series.

Students of Carl Jung’s ideas will be aware that he associated the four physical elements (Earth, Water, Air, and Fire), and the four perceptual-psychological functions (Sensation, Thinking, Feeling, and Intuition-Volition). These four perceptual-psychological functions are usually arranged as a mandala, like a compass rose, with the rational-discriminative functions of Feeling and Thinking forming an opposition across the horizontal axis at West and East; and the perceptual-creative functions of Intuition / Volition and Sensation forming an opposition in the vertical axis at North and South.

On a superficial level Sensation, Thinking, Feeling and Intuition-Volition are egoic functions – the four primary functions by which individuals know and relate to their experience, and construct their identity. Jung, however, named these the Four Functions of Consciousness. Fully aware that these four functions are, in essence, four aspects of the Divine, he presented a rich and compelling analysis of how the potential for Consciousness and self-realisation is, sadly, usually unrealised, and how the same four functions give rise instead, to the various styles of limited egoic consciousness, each with a particular style of unconsciousness that goes with it. Continue reading

May 11, 2017

Jung’s Phenomenology of the Soul

This is article No 7 in a series of early articles that I have called my ‘book blog’ series. These articles were originally written for incorporation into a book project which was to be called ‘Mandala of Love: Consciousness, Ethics and Society’, which I abandoned in favour of publishing on this website.

A prime expression of the mandala archetype, and a good way for us to embark upon an exploration of mandala imagery, is the arrangement of the four classical physical elements, Earth, Air, Water, and Fire, into a four-fold pattern, which resembles the four directions of the compass rose. In Western thought, Fire and Earth, are often found opposed as the north and south quadrants, while Water and Air are opposed in the western and eastern directions respectively. In this mandala of the physical elements, the unifying element, Ether, is often included. Ether, which symbolises the space of Consciousness in which the four classical physical elements arise, takes the central position as the quintessence.

Words are Symbols

Carl Jung had a very keen understanding of the way in which all language is symbolic – that all words are symbols. In particular, he understood that in the pre-modern world-view the concrete physical world was (and is) felt to be, not just symbolically, but actually, connected with inner psychological and spiritual principles. Hence the four elements, which we still find in belief systems around the world from North America to Tibet, are usually associated with ancient and deeply insightful systems of psychological and spiritual thought. In these systems of thought, physical elements are either associated with personality types, or have recognised symbolic associations with psychological and spiritual principles, or components of the creative process. Continue reading

May 8, 2017

Buddhas and Bodhisattvas – Archetypes of Consciousness

This is Post 6 in the ‘Mandala of Love’ book blog series.

In previous posts, I have spoken about our need for a psychology that gives us a language with which to talk about soul and spirit and Consciousness, and of my belief that we do not have to be scholars or psychotherapists trained in Carl Jung’s tradition, in order to make use of his powerful psychology of the archetypes, or archetypal psychology. The Mandala of the Five Buddhas, which was such an inspiration to Carl Jung, came out the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, and I would like to talk briefly about that tradition before moving on to talk about the mandala archetype in more general terms.

The Mahayana – the Expansion of the Buddha’s Vision

The Mahayana or ‘Great Vehicle’ is the phase of development of Buddhism that emerged in the Indian subcontinent during the 1st Century BCE, and thereafter spread to most of the countries of Asia. Although the rich and refined culture of the Indian Mahayana was almost entirely destroyed by the invasions of India in the Middle Ages, the vestiges of it remain because it was translated, before its demise in India, into so many other Asian cultural forms – in Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet, Mongolia, China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, and Singapore. Continue reading

May 6, 2017

The Mandala as the Landscape of the Soul

This is Post 5 in the ‘Mandala of Love’ book blog series.

The Sanskrit word mandala is comprised of two words: manda, which means ‘essence’; and la, which means ‘container’. Hence we have the wider association of the word mandala with the idea of a ‘sacred space’, but also the deeper idea of mandalas as visual presentations of the archetypal essences that govern of our lives; of a collection of visual images depicting the essential qualities of the Divine – the essential qualities of Consciousness.

The Mandala as Sacred Container

Importantly, the mandala that I am presenting in this book blog series – the universal mandala that I like to call the Mandala of Love – does not exclude anything from the container. It contains not just the essence of the Divine, but also, since the Divine interpenetrates all things, it contains imagery of the ways in which the same archetypal principles can also manifest their mirror opposite – as egoic patterns, as psychological shadow, and even as the appearance of evil. The psychological possibilities, which might, in religious language, be called ‘Grace’ and the ‘fall from Grace’, are both ever-present – and if we better understand the nature of the choice between these two, a choice that we are making in every moment, the greater is our power to chose between them. Continue reading

May 4, 2017

Carl Jung’s Psychology of the Archetypes

This is Post 4 in the ‘Mandala of Love’ book blog series.

Carl Jung was a psychiatrist, and he started his professional life working in large psychiatric institutions. He was a student of the neurologist Sigmund Freud who was developing his psychoanalytic method of treatment at that time. Jung had a close friendship with Freud, but his voracious appetite for understanding lead him to his own distinctive style of psychological thinking, which is of great importance for the modern world. His Analytical Psychology was distinguished two powerful concepts: the archetypes; and the collective unconscious.

Because of his pragmatism and alignment with the emerging scientific materialism in medicine, Freud’s more reductive approach was subsequently more widely adopted during the 20th Century. Jung was altogether more ambitious. It is as if he was writing for the 21st Century – and specifically setting himself against both the scientific materialism and religious fundamentalism of the 20th Century. His perspective was, I believe, aiming to be much more comprehensive and – despite his careful efforts to avoid metaphysical speculation – more spiritual.

Jung the Scientist of the Inner World

While Jung was in some ways actually more rigorously scientific and forward looking than Freud, he was also looking back to the roots of psychology in the literature, mythology and psychological reflections of the classical, medieval and Renaissance periods. His archetypes can be thought of as the eternal principles at work in human psychology, and also as the collective psychological forces at work in nations and human groups – forces that the ancients projected onto their gods. Continue reading

April 28, 2017

The Cross and the Mandala

This is Post 3 in the ‘Mandala of Love’ book blog series.

The Mandala is an archetype – a universal symbol or pattern. Images that reflect this archetypal pattern are found in all cultures throughout history, and in the dreams and visions of humanity since the beginning of recorded history. For Carl Jung, the great Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist, the mandala was a symbol of the wholeness of the psyche and of the cosmos – even a symbol of God. The Cross, the symbol of Christianity, is the most prominent example of a mandala image in world history. For Jung, the life of Jesus was a profound spiritual mystery – one that preoccupied him for the whole of his life. For him, Jesus was a man who lived a mythic life; and the crucifixion of Jesus was, for Jung, both an historical event and a mythic mandala image. It was one of the most important parts of his life’s work, that humanity should better understand this great symbol. Indeed, he found the lack of understanding of that symbol, and of the person of Jesus, to be both tragic and dangerous for the future of humanity.

Carl Jung’s Mandala Archetype

Carl Jung passionately wanted to bring about a healing and a renewal of Christianity, so that it could meet the modern world with a new wisdom and integrity. His search for understanding of the mandala archetype played a key part in that quest. To understand the depth of Jung’s passion in this regard, it is important to understand that he was the son of a protestant pastor, and that he had witnessed, in the course of his childhood, his father’s loss of faith, a painful experience whose impact never left him. He was also painfully conscious by the end of his life that Christianity had failed to prevent a bloody revolution in Russia, two horrific world wars, the rise of modern fascism, the Holocaust, and the nuclear arms race of the cold war era. Continue reading

April 21, 2017

Introduction to the Mandala of Love book blog

This is Post 2 in the ‘Mandala of Love’ book blog series.

I am disturbed by what I see in the world. Even as I am personally seeking to orient myself to that which is eternal and satisfactory, I am keenly aware of the suffering that we are collectively creating for ourselves on this planet. While I hear others expressing wilful optimism, I cannot help but see a world in the grip of a frightening unconsciousness, and making deeply unsustainable choices that will lead to misery. Our world appears to be caught between, on one side, a postmodern world-view that rejects as ideology, the notions of social progress, objective reality, morality, truth and reason (following, it would seem, Friedrich Nietzsche’s dictum – “there is no truth, only interpretations’), leading to various forms of nihilism and narcissism; and, on the other side, fierce amoral world-shaping ideologies such as neoliberalism and religious extremism.

There is however, in the 21st Century, an emerging community of people throughout the world, who are seeking a new ethical basis for humanity; who would wish to seek out and establish a post-postmodern foundation for ethics and social justice. They seek a movement forward culturally and spiritually – one which specifically avoids merely retreating back to either conventional religious belief or the limitations of a merely humanistic moral philosophy. These are the creative and reflective people that will be interested in the content available on this website, where I hope to present understandings and practices that support a grounded spirituality that is deeply ethical because it is rooted in the experiential study of Consciousness. Continue reading

April 20, 2017

Preface to ‘Mandala of Love: Consciousness, Ethics and Society’

This article was written as the first article, and as the Preface to a series of articles, that were written as chapters for a book project, which I provisionally called ‘Mandala of Love: Consciousness, Ethics and Society’. The plan to write and publish a book, soon evolved into the idea of publishing on this ‘Mandala of Love’ website. Essentially, the subject of the book was the four-fold nature of mind; the four-fold nature of the Divine; the four-fold nature of a comprehensive ethical sensibility; and the four-fold nature of creativity – themes that have fascinated me since my twenties. At that time I was living and working in Triratna Buddhist Order communities, and as a result of the very broad and rich cultural and religious education that I was receiving, I fell in love with the work of the visionary English poet William Blake. Blake had his own very profound understanding of the four-fold nature of the Divine – one which in some ways mirrors that found in the Buddhist tradition and in other spiritual traditions down through history.

In my twenties, when I was a passionate full-time student of Buddhism and living and working in a Buddhist community, I was surprised, one day in my meditation, by a strong visionary experience of the energetic presence of Jesus – Blake’s Jesus. I experienced him as a purifying light descending from heaven. This ecstatic and visionary meditative state was evoked not by any devotional form of words from Buddhist tradition, but by a single recitation of William Blake’s words: “Jesus, the Imagination, the forgiver of Sins” that just burst out of me in a spirit of devotion and petitionary prayer. As a Buddhist, I also recognised this pure-white descending light as the energy of Vajrasattva [more on him here], and the cross-cultural ambiguity of this religious experience was one of several around that time that taught me about the universality of the ultimate spiritual reality. It was revealed to me that the ultimate nature of the divine is beyond any culture or religion, and that every genuine religious or spiritual cultural form may be seen as attempting to approach, and surrender to, the same transcendental reality – though clearly some religious cultures are more effective in that approach than others.

One of Blake’s better known poems is ‘Jerusalem’, which is copied below. Blake wrote it as a preface to one of his longer poetic works. Because I resonate so strongly with so many of the themes of Blake’s poetry, and perhaps because I aspire to follow in his footsteps in some modest way, I would like to use it as a preface to these reflections.

And did those feet in ancient time,
Walk upon England’s mountains green.
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On England’s pleasant pastures seen!
And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my Bow of burning gold;
Bring me my Arrows of desire;
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England’s green & pleasant Land.

by William Blake (1757 − 1827) – part of a preface to his epic poem: Milton (written and illustrated between 1804 and 1810)

William Blake was a dissenting voice in a world that was in the throes of early capitalism – industrialisation, colonialism, scientific materialism, the privatisation of the commons, and the horrors of the Atlantic Slave Trade. He despaired of Christianity’s failure to provide a voice for spiritual truth and social justice in that world. His poems are a call to a humanitarian vision rooted in a spiritual view of man. The ‘Jerusalem’ of this particular poem is a symbolic city – the symbol of a just and sustainable society in Blake’s imaginal world. Continue reading

April 17, 2017