#Equanimity

The Ten Archetypal Buddhas of the Mandala – Part 6: Vajrasattva-Akshobya

This article is the sixth of fifteen articles inspired by the central five verses of the ‘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.

The Mandala of ‘Receptive’ Deities Continued

This series of articles is essentially a systematic description of the ten deities of the Dharmadhātu mandala, and in this article I shall be going one step deeper into what I have chosen to call the mandala of the five ‘receptive’ deities. This division of the ten deities into two groups – five ‘yin’, or ‘receptive’, deities, and five ‘yang’, or ‘expansive’ ones – is not a traditional formulation as far as I know, though it has several parallels in the traditional teachings. I feel very motivated to share it however, because I have found it to be such a powerful framework in my own meditation practice. It is my hope that readers will wish to experiment with meditating systematically on the somatic resonance of each of these deities as I have done. While you may wish to simply meditate on the deities as a ‘meditation cycle’, as I initially did, I hope to be able to demonstrate that these deities are best approached in pairs – since the pairs of Dharmic principles that are behind the west-east and south-north pairs of deities, represent profound spiritual oppositions that must be reconciled and integrated if we are to fully embody the energies of the Five Wisdoms.

The two-stage model that I have adopted (meditating on the ‘receptive’ Dharmic principles first, followed by the ‘expansive’ ones) correspond to the two initial stages – ‘Integration’ and ‘Positive Emotion’ – in the ‘System of Meditation Practice’ that was first proposed by Sangharakshita in the 1970s. The five deities in the first group, which we are currently investigating, are ‘receptive’ in that they are associated with ‘yin’ ,or ‘receptive’, energies in the somatic anatomy of the body, and because of this can serve to create a foundation of psychological integration in the early stages of meditation practice. They represent five key Dharmic principles, in the necessarily more introverted and self-empathetic process of our initial self-healing, and of gaining familiarity with the experience of ‘resting as’ embodied Consciousness.

September 30, 2020

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 3: The Body

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

It is also the third of ten articles, which explore the ’emptiness’, or non-personal nature, of the ‘Form’, or ‘conceptual form’, aspect of our cognitive-perceptual experience – that which Buddhist tradition calls the rūpa skandha. Together these articles make up a single longer article, or ten-part mini-series of articles, which are best read in order. When all these articles are published, you will be able to click on the titles below to access the other parts.

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 1: Thinking and Wisdom

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 2: The Mirror-Like Wisdom

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 4: Mindfulness and Emptiness

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 5: Dharma and Truth

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 6: Consciousness and Qualia

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 7: The Heart Sutra

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 8: Consciousness and Qualia

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 9: Equanimity and Being

Bringing Awareness ‘Into the Body’

I find the notion of Being, which I introduced in my last article (here) to be an extremely useful notion for making a deeper connection with the practice of Mindfulness of ‘the Form of the Body’ (kaya), which is the first of the ‘ Four Foundations of Mindfulness’ and corresponds with the rūpa skandha. In that article, I also pointed out the way the Buddha, not only took the existing ancient Indian ‘Five Skandhas’ teaching and gave his own interpretation of it – but adapted the same five-fold enquiry framework in the creation of his ‘Four Foundations of Mindfulness’ model. The diagram below shows the correspondences between the skandhas and ‘Foundations’.

The implicit choice on the part of the Buddha, to address the rūpa skandha, or ‘Form’, or Thinking aspect of the mind, by the advice to bring awareness into the ‘Form of the Body’ (Kaya) is deeply significant, and has, for me, a wonderfully contemporary feel about it. Many modern psychotherapists, heirs to the various traditions within psychoanalysis and humanistic psychotherapy, would say the same. We could even think of this first ‘Foundation of Mindfulness’ as the first ‘exercise’ at the Buddha’s Mindfulness workshop. The first step in his ’embodied Consciousness’ training – in the Buddha’s systematic and comprehensive program of personal, transpersonal and spiritual healing – was to ‘bring awareness into the body’ by being aware of our body’s position in space as we go about our lives.

‘Bringing awareness into the body’ does not stop there however – with the rūpa skandha and the first ‘Foundation of Mindfulness’, which is kaya, or Mindfulness of ‘the Form of the Body’. It is important to understand, that what the Buddha is addressing in his ‘Four Foundations of Mindfulness’ framework, is not a model in which the first ‘Foundation’, and first skandha, relates to the ‘body’ and all the rest are aspects of ‘mind’. On the contrary, all the Foundations, and all the skandhas, are aspects of an integrated ‘body-mind’ experience. Moreover, the whole four-fold process is one of deepening into the experience of embodied Consciousness, at successively deeper levels – starting with Mindfulness of ‘the Form of the Body’ (kaya), and then working round the mandala in a clockwise direction.

This notion of embodied Consciousness is fundamental to our understanding – there is no Mind / Body split in the Buddha’s model, and it would be a terrible mistake for us to introduce one. This is why it is so important that we do not mistake the rūpa skandha for ‘body’, and do not take Mindfulness of Kaya literally and narrowly as somehow denoting the totality of bodily experience. We would do well perhaps, to think of ‘the form of the body’ (rūpa / kaya), not as ‘the body’ but as our doorway into the body-mind – our doorway into that deeper and fuller experience of ourselves which can be spoken of in terms of ‘ the somatic’, or of ’embodiment’. The form of the body is the venue for, and the starting point for, our exploration – and while is the apparent container of our somatic process, it is, more importantly, itself contained by Consciousness.

June 6, 2020

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 2: The Mirror-Like Wisdom

This is Article No. 6 in the ‘Buddhism’ series.

It is also the second of ten articles, which explore the ’emptiness’, or non-personal nature, of the ‘Form’, or ‘conceptual form’, aspect of our cognitive-perceptual experience – that which Buddhist tradition calls the rūpa skandha. Together these articles make up a single longer article, or ten-part mini-series of articles, which are best read in order. When all these articles are published, you will be able to click on the titles below to access the other parts.

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 1: Thinking and Wisdom

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 2: The Mirror-Like Wisdom

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 3: The Body

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 4: Mindfulness and Emptiness

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 5: Dharma and Truth

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 6: Consciousness and Qualia

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 7: The Heart Sutra

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 8: Consciousness and Qualia

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 9: Equanimity and Being

Objectivity, Clarity, Equanimity and Being

In the previous article in this series I began to explore what is meant in Buddhist tradition by a recognition of the ’emptiness’ of the rūpa skandha. This recognition is also called the Mirror-Like Wisdom, and in the mandalas of Indian Mahayana Buddhist tradition and early Tibetan Buddhist tradition, it is represented by the blue eastern quadrant. In later versions of the Tibetan meditation mandalas we see the blue eastern quadrant replaced by a white one – I shall be endeavouring to explain this in a later article in this series. In the Tibetan Bardo Thodol teachings, which were given to us by the great Padmasambhava, we are given the wonderful image of the ‘luminous light-path’ of the Mirror-Like Wisdom. This notion of a light-path can also be thought of a transformational journey, or a purification process, that we undergo as we move from our habitual and unconscious identification with the rūpa skandha to a state of mental objectivity, clarity, and equanimity.

I have suggested that rūpa, which is conventionally translated as ‘Form’, is perhaps best thought of in terms of its association with the Thinking function of the mind. ‘Form’ is that aspect of our experience that can be conceptually described by thoughts, and thoughts are always thought-forms – conceptual forms of various degrees of subtlety. So, rūpa is that aspect of the mind which creates conceptual forms, or works with conceptual forms, and manages our experience, and makes our decisions using conceptual forms.

The rūpa skandha is that aspect of mind that names and manipulates concepts using words, language and various forms of verbal communication – sometimes very crudely, sometimes with great sophistication, and often very dishonestly. Mirror-Like Wisdom, on the other hand, involves a different order of thinking – a different quality of intelligence, which arises directly from the experience of Being, and which creatively addresses the central questions of the nature of mind and its implications for human suffering, human development and human freedom.

We are also told, as I explained in the previous article, that our identification with the rūpa skandha, generates and sustains an energetic residue in the mind – the kleshas of dvesha, or hatred. Dvesha, or hatred, is the characteristic mental state of the Hell Realms, and it is our identification with the rūpa skandha that leads to the Hell Realms – and it is only by releasing that identification that we can finally and completely free ourselves from the mental tendency towards the particularly extreme forms of mental suffering that the Hell Realms represent. We need to cleanse ourselves of the judgemental, hostile and aggressive kleshas in the dvesha category, in order to return to rest in the experience of Being, and to the Mirror-Like Wisdom.

Vajrasattva-Akshobhya and Buddhalocanā

If we are lucky enough to have the Bardo Thodol teachings recited over our body in the hours and days after our death, we may hear our spirit being invited to recognise the emptiness of the rūpa skandha, so that we are released into the Mirrror-Like Wisdom. The ‘hearing in the bardo’ teachings coach us through the experience of being newly deceased but not yet re-born, systematically warning us about each of the Realms of Conditioned Existence, and reminding us that the intermediate state is precious opportunity for complete liberation. For example, we are told to be aware of the great danger that our accumulated kleshas of dvesha, or hatred, may cause us to be drawn to the dull blue light of the Hell Realms. At the same time we are urged to allow ourselves to be drawn to the beautiful blue-white light of the Buddha Vajrasattva-Akshobhya and his female Buddha partner Buddhalocanā (pronounced buddha-loach-anar). Buddhalocanā’s name means ‘She of the Buddha Eye’, or ‘Eye of Awakening’ – I shall be reflecting on this name later in this article.

May 21, 2020

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 1: Thinking and Wisdom

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

It is also the first of ten articles, which explore the ’emptiness’, or non-personal nature, of the ‘Form’, or ‘conceptual form’, aspect of our cognitive-perceptual experience – that which Buddhist tradition calls the rūpa skandha. Together these articles make up a single longer article, or ten-part mini-series of articles, which are best read in order. When all these articles are published, you will be able to click on the titles below to access the other parts.

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 1: Thinking and Wisdom

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 2: The Mirror-Like Wisdom

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 3: The Body

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 4: Mindfulness and Emptiness

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 5: Dharma and Truth

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 6: Consciousness and Qualia

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 7: The Heart Sutra

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 8: Consciousness and Qualia

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 9: Equanimity and Being

In my last article (here) in this ‘Buddhism’ series, I attempted a broad outline of the Buddha’s ‘Five Skandhas‘ teaching as I have come to understand it. I recommend that you read that article first if you have not done so already. Those who have been reading the previous articles in this series, know that I have been drawing on the larger body of Mahayana Buddhist mandala wisdom, of which the skandhas form the basis – and receiving quite a bit of assistance from Carl Jung. We are very blessed, as modern students of Buddhism, to be able to draw on the whole of the Buddhist tradition – its Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana stages – when we wish to be able to understand any particular aspect of it. This is particularly valuable in the case of the ‘Emptiness (Skt: shunyatā) of the Five Skandhas‘ teaching, because the Pali Canon does not give us enough of the detail of the Buddha’s analysis, and much of the meaning appears to have been lost. By drawing on the wisdom of the later enlightened teachers in the Buddhist tradition – especially Padmasambhava’s teachings in the Bardo Thodol (Tibetan Book of the Dead) – we are better able to understand the meaning of what the Buddha was saying.

In this enquiry we are also blessed to have the perspective of Carl Jung (1875 – 1961), who was a keen student of Buddhism, and whose scholarship and wisdom is unfortunately poorly understood, but was an extraordinary gift to humanity. Jung’s views are particularly valuable in this context, because he took the skandhas and incorporated them into the heart of his mandala model of the psyche, and into his very profound psychological typology framework.

The Rūpa Skandha and the Mirror-Like Wisdom

Traditionally the first skandha is rūpa, and it is usually translated as ‘Form’. When a Buddhist practitioner sits in meditation before a carved image of a Buddha, that image is often called a ‘rūpa’, yet many interpreters associate the word rūpa with ‘the body’, without adequately explaining that rūpa refers to the ‘form of the body’, and not to the sensory experience of the body, which is associated with the vedanā skandha. This error is in part because ‘the body’ is often conceptualised in a narrow way – one that fails to acknowledge the subtle, interior, and energetic dimensions of bodily felt experience that come under the broad heading of the somatic. I have explained this distinction in some detail in my previous article (here), and shall be explaining further below.

To avoid the multiple misunderstandings that arise when we confuse ‘Form’ with the physical, sensory body, I have been suggesting that ‘conceptual form’ is a better translation. By adding the word ‘conceptual’ we are making it more clear that rūpa includes the all-important thinking, judging, and conceptualising function of the mind. Padmasambhava’s teachings in the Bardo Thodol (Tibetan Book of the Dead), make it very clear that this was the Buddha’s intention, because they show us the rūpa skandha as an egoic reflection of that ultimate degree of mental clarity and objectivity that is described as the Mirror-Like Wisdom – the ‘Thinking’ aspect of the enlightened mind that emerges when all conceptualisations and points of view are recognised as ’empty’.

May 7, 2020

Consciousness, Meditation and the Four Qualia

This is Post 38 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series.

The four brahmavihāras are a description of Consciousness, and of our innately compassionate nature, and together they give us a very powerful approach to meditation. This extremely important ancient Indian framework for personal transformation is unfortunately however, very little known and poorly understood. I am very keen to do what I can to help the brahmavihāras to be better known – the world sorely needs this practice and this understanding.

In my efforts to find ways of making this approach to meditation more accessible, I have developed a somewhat simpler, and more experiential approach, which supports the original brahmavihāras framework, and which I call the Four Qualia. I have been introducing this Four Qualia framework in detail in recent posts (here, here and here), and I recommend that you read those articles first – as they will provide context for this one. I hope, students of meditation and non-duality will find that these four Qualia – these four ever-present, but subtle and difficult-to-define experiences – provide a useful foundation from which the brahmavihāras can more easily be integrated into their practice and their understanding.

The Four Qualia are a mandala framework, and can be approached in meditation as a mandala-cycle – usually starting with the Eastern Quadrant. The exploration of the Four Qualia that I have set out below however, is presented in the order that is suggested by the stupa – by the natural hierarchy of the subtle bodies and chakras – and which I have described previously (here). Those wishing to incorporate this approach into their meditative enquiry, may wish to return to this article several times.

Embodiment, the Physical Body, and Appreciative Joy

The Qualia associated with the experienced reflection of Consciousness in the Physical Body, is Embodiment. When we sit to meditate, and we bring the word Embodiment to mind, we find that we can use it as a pointer to the whole experience of embodied Consciousness in the field of the Physical Body. Continue reading

August 30, 2018

The Mandala of the Four Brahmavihāras

This is Post 37 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series.

The overall framework for the articles in this ‘Meditation Guidance’ series has been provided by the mandala of the four brahmavihāras: Equanimity (upekshā), Appreciative Joy (muditā), Loving Kindness (mettā), and Compassion (karunā). In order to make these four ‘attitudes of Consciousness’ more accessible, and in order to help people recognise them in their experience, I have, in recent articles, been exploring to the Four Qualia – a formulation of my own, which I have found to be very useful.

The qualia are difficult-to-define, difficult-to-describe, difficult-to-account-for experiences, and there a four of them that together provide a helpful experiential framework for meditation practice: Embodiment; Being; Uncaused Happiness; and Life Energy. Deepening into our experience of resting as Consciousness using this ‘Four Qualia’ formulation as our guide, is essentially an easier, more modest, and more experiential way of approaching the sublime brahmavihāras.

In the next article in this series, I shall be presenting some more detailed reflections on each of the Four Qualia and their corresponding brahmavihāras, for those wishing to experiment with them in their meditation practice, but first, in this article, I would like to reflect on the importance of these practices, and also on why, given their great value, they appear to have been relatively neglected.

Why are the brahmavihāras not better known?

The brahmavihāras are literally the vihāras or ‘dwelling places’ of the great four-faced creator god Brahma – they are the states in which Brahma was believed to abide. Importantly the word vihāra does not denote a permanent home, but a lodging or retreat, like the accommodation for travellers to rest overnight while on a pilgrimage. So the term immediately suggests a staged form of meditation, in which the practitioner moves systematically through a series of four stages corresponding to the brahmavihāras, in order perhaps to achieve a fifth stage, the state of balance, wholeness and internal energetic coherence that Indian tradition calls samadhi. We are being invited, in the brahmavihāras meditation-cycle, to ‘rest’ for a period of time in each vihāra – to rest and find refreshment and renewal in our true nature, both in our meditation practice, and on the journey of life. Continue reading

August 22, 2018

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), Sensation (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 – at the same time bringing 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

Flowing with the Currents of Feeling – our Psychological Parts

This is Post 29 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series.

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. Continue reading

March 5, 2018

Overview Part 2 – Embodied Consciousness

This is the second of a series of pages that are intended to provide an overview of my approach to meditation ad self-enquiry. To access the previous page in the series please click here.

I believe that the true practice of meditation – such as was taught by the Buddha – must be rooted in the psychology of non-dual wisdom. Hence my characterisation of meditation as resting as Consciousness.

While the adoption of this sort of approach at the outset is unfortunately currently relatively unusual, it is by no means without precedent. Indeed it is, in my view, the approach that is now being adopted by all the best meditation teachers around the world. Non-duality is a confusing notion to grasp however. This is partly because non-duality runs so strongly counter to everything that we generally assume about the nature of ourselves and our world.

There is also perhaps, a failure on the part of many meditation teachers to engage with, and to effectively explain, the huge practical benefits of a non-dual approach to human psychology. There is a tendency to put non-duality in the ‘too hard’ basket, and to make it irrelevant by thinking of it as a difficult-to-understand feature of a distant goal, rather than as a starting point and a foundation for meditation practice.

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

Resting as Consciousness – a brief explanation

In my ‘Meditation Guidance’ articles, on this website, I have been using the notion of resting as Consciousness as a shorthand for my approach to meditation. Once you have experienced resting as Consciousness you will recognise that this phrase as very descriptive. You will find an explanation of this idea in the paragraphs below.

Resting

Firstly, it needs to be understood that the notion of ‘resting’, when we talk of ‘resting as Consciousness’, is an invitation to relax – to rest; to step back; to let go; and to just allow ourselves to experience Consciousness and everything that we are experiencing within Consciousness.

In this ‘resting’ approach to meditation there may be ‘pointers’ to help the beginner to ‘know what to be open to’, but there is nothing particular that we have to do, or be, by an effort of will. In Zen tradition, meditation is sometimes described as ‘just sitting’ or even as ‘doing nothing’. While the egoic mind assumes that the integration that we seek in meditation practice, can only achieved by the effort of egoic will, the reality is opposite. It is very important that we relax and let the harmonious energies of Consciousness take over from the inherently conflicted energies of the egoic will.

Consciousness

The invitation to notice ‘Consciousness’ is a invitation to recognise that which is normally overlooked – the illusive, non-locatable ‘I’ that is aware of experiences and aware of itself. I use the word ‘Consciousness’, with a capital ‘C’, to refer to this ’empty’, non-personal, experiencing ‘self’ in order to highlight the fact that this source of knowing confounds our assumptions about its personal nature as soon as we investigate it though self enquiry. This is the ’empty’ vijñāna skandha that the Buddha spoke of, and that Mahayana Buddhism placed in the centre of the mandala.

The discovery that the apparent ‘self’ has no discernible location, centre, or boundary, is not as alarming or as dramatic as we might expect. We may have to go back to the enquiry many times before we start to fully register the enormous implications of this odd discovery. Even when we have recognised what Consciousness is not, and are starting to relax about not knowing what it is, and perhaps starting to sense that it is something that contains and pervades our experience like space, we will continue to move in and out of identification with our egoic parts, but it is wonderfully liberating to start to realise that none of these egoic parts is the previously assumed self – that all are ‘empty’ of self-nature, and ‘full’ of the energy of Consciousness.

When we start to release our erroneous conviction that the thoughts, feelings, intuitions and sensations, which are the cognitive-perceptual components of our psychological parts, constitute a fixed and substantial ‘self’, we are on the road to psychological freedom. The approach to meditation that I advocate, allows us to move beyond our identifications in a systematic way. The four brahmavihāras and the first four subtle bodies, together provide the framework we need to progressively embody Consciousness though meditation – to discover an energetic reflection, in the internal space of the body, of the essential attitudes or qualities of Consciousness.

Once we recognise that Consciousness is not just a personal point of view within, we are free to experience Consciousness as a ‘field’ – as the shared multidimensional space in which all our experience is arising. But Consciousness is not just ‘out there’ like space, and not just ‘in here’ in a vague general sense as a disembodied knower of our experience – it is also ‘in here’ in a very particular embodied way, in the field of the body, as embodied Consciousness. This is why I find the brahmavihāras to be such a powerful description of Consciousness – the cosmic attitudes of Consciousness that are the brahmavihāras, are simultaneously embodied in us as an energetic reality in our bodily-felt experience, and as integral dimensions of the psychology of any happy, healthy human being.

Those that are familiar with the distinction will notice that when I refer to the brahmavihāras as attitudes of the absolute reality of Consciousness, I am actually referring to the absolute brahmavihāras, or mahabrahmavihāras – the ‘great’ brahmavihāras, of which the relative brahmavihāras are a reflection in our human psychology. While this Mahayana Buddhist distinction between the relative and absolute levels is extremely important and helpful, in general, I do not make the distinction. Our experience in relative existence is always a reflection of the absolute level – meditation practice is implicitly about opening to the non-separation of those levels in our experience.

Resting ‘as’ Consciousness

Before talking about resting ‘as’ Consciousness, I would like to talk briefly about resting ‘in’ Consciousness. Although it is ultimately limiting, and does not quite fit our experience, it would be a huge step forward to think of meditation as resting ‘in’ Consciousness, and this is indeed, in my view, a very good way of initially approaching the self-inquiry and beginning to breaking our egoic identifications. The process of non-dual realisation seems to require that, before we can realise non-duality, we must first acknowledge and embrace the duality of the experienced internal relationship between the universal Consciousness and our various psychological parts and psychological fragments that make up our illusion of a personal self or soul. Initially at least, the relational attitude of receptivity towards the universal Consciousness is essential to the process of our deepening embodiment of it.

As we look within and explore the experience of being aware of being aware, we find that at first it does indeed seem that we can peer out, or ‘feel’ out in all directions into the universal field of Consciousness. This relational ‘looking out’ at the field of Consciousness from the point of view of the experiencing personal self or soul, has the profound and paradoxical effect of intensifying our sense that the universal Consciousness is not just some form of disembodied ultimate observer, but is embodied in each of us.

This is why the notion of resting ‘as’ Consciousness, and the conceptualisation of meditation as a process of letting go of identification with the egoic patterning in the four surface bodies in order to reveal the underlying reality of embodied Consciousness, is so descriptive of our experience in meditation. Our experience when we sit to meditate is always one of embodied Consciousness – and of sensing the presence of energies in the internal space of the body. And as we sit regularly, committing ourselves to familiarising ourselves with Consciousness, the internal energetic structure of the way in which we embody Consciousness becomes increasingly clear.

The Mandala – the Psychodynamics of Consciousness

For me, the essential structure of the maps and diagrams of the internal energetic structure of Consciousness that are provided by the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, are superbly accurate – they fit my internal experience very well indeed, and function as a very effective guide in meditative enquiry. I am thinking here of the mandala especially, but also of the stupa, which I will talk about below.

The Westerner can find the symbolism of the mandala and stupa somewhat overwhelming however. Both these symbolic arrangements are so heavily adorned with cultural elements that it is hard to see the archetypal structures themselves. While the cultural details and culture-bound personifications of Consciousness in the great variety of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, male and female, peaceful and wrathful, can be very illuminating, and definitely worth studying and connecting with, unfortunately it helps if we strip these complex multidimensional symbols down to their most essential and universal structural elements.

I have talked in Part 1 of this ‘Overview’ series (here) about how I have found it necessary to clarify and simplify the structure of the mandala that we find in the Bardo Thodol (Tibetan Book of the Dead) by using Jung’s Functions of Consciousness in place of the Skandas, and by using the brahmavihāras in place of the Wisdoms. When we see the way that the egoic tendencies in Jung’s four Functions are clearly represented in the four main Realms that are represented in the Buddhist Wheel of Life, and the way in which these egoic tendencies find healing through Consciousness in the brahmavihāras, we have almost all we need to gain access to the storehouse of Tibetan mandala wisdom.

The Stupa – the Hierarchy of Embodied Consciousness

The stupa is usually understood primarily as a memorial monument, which in Buddhist tradition is often built over the grave site of, or to house the cremated remains or relics of, a great spiritual teacher. In the course of the development of the tradition however, stupas came to take forms that were specifically intended to symbolise the components of the experience of embodied Consciousness that the great teachers had achieved.

I find the hierarchical arrangement that we see in both the physical and symbolic structure of the stupa to be a great support in our conceptualisation of the relationship of the personal to the universal in meditation. In the brief summary of the typical structural and symbolic elements of the Tibetan Buddhist stupa monuments that I have provided in the paragraph below, I have included the associated brahmavihāras in brackets. My aim is to reinforce the connection, and ultimately the inseparability of, on one side, the brahmavihāras as the cosmic attitudes of Consciousness, that I have been presenting primarily in the context of the mandala structure, and on the other side, the brahmavihāras as the levels or dimensions of the embodiment of Consciousness in the subtle bodies, such as are highlighted by the hierarchical structure of the stupa.

The square base of a stupa symbolises the earth element and the embodiment of Consciousness in the Physical Body (i.e. Appreciative Joy); the spherical or rounded structure above that symbolises the element of water and our embodiment of Consciousness in the Thinking Body (i.e. Equanimity); the conical structure above that symbolises the fire element and our embodiment of Consciousness in the Emotional Body (i.e. Loving Kindness); the dish shaped or up-turned crescent form above that symbolises the air element and our embodiment of Consciousness in the Volitional/Intuitional Body (i.e. Compassion); and the spire or flame-like feature on the top of the stupa symbolises the element of space, and Consciousness itself.

Stupa_Bodies

One of my aims in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series has been to highlight this correspondence and inseparability between the hierarchical somatic structure of the subtle bodies and their corresponding chakras, and the purely psychological (or what Jung distinquished from the somatic using the term psychic), but equally important archetypal principles, which are the brahmavihāra attitudes and their corresponding opposites among the Six Realms. Taken together, these two aspects of the brahmavihāras give us a wonderfully comprehensive conceptual understanding of the paradoxical way in which the psychic and somatic reflections of Consciousness manifest themselves in meditation as two sides of the same experience.

Individual Embodiment of a Universal Consciousness

In the ‘Meditation Guidance’ articles on the brahmavihāras, I have been acknowledging the hierarchy of the subtle bodies that we see in the stupa, but emphasising the all-important polarity dynamics within the surface bodies, that are highlighted by the vertical and horizontal pairs of opposites in the mandala structure.

Brahma_Bodies

I believe it is important to give primacy to the way Consciousness is organised according to a mandala structure. The mandala structure gives emphasises to the need to cultivate balance and wholeness, and to heal our Shadow dynamics by always holding both poles of the polar oppositions simultaneously in Consciousness. The stupa highlights a very different inherent structure in the way Consciousness is organised – a hierarchical structure that corresponds to the universally experienced somatic structures of Consciousness in the subtle bodies that we experience within and around us.

A wonderful implication of the ancient Indian ‘seven bodies / seven chakras’ system is that the surface is contained within the deep, and the personal is contained within the universal. The non-dual wisdom with its focus on the universal Consciousness, and its recognition that the appearance of selves is an illusion, paradoxically does not devalue or dismiss the appearance of individual beings. On the contrary it deeply appreciates and celebrates the lives of all sentient beings by revealing and honouring each one as a manifestation of the universal Consciousness.

And the spiritual traditions give special appreciation and honour to those who make the universal Consciousness the context for their lives, because these people eventually come to embody the ethical and compassionate qualities of the universal Consciousness in every energetic layer of their being – right down to the Physical Body.

Oneness is the Context for the Plurality of our Embodied Experience

When the whole hierarchy of the way Consciousness is embodied is experienced fully in meditation, we naturally move towards taking the universal as the basis of our identity, and the physical body, the breath, and the sense of ‘being a person’, are each experienced in the context of the universal. We come to see each of these as merely a doorway – a doorway that seems to want to disappear as soon as we walk through it.

Non-dual wisdom becomes much more accessible, and is of much greater practical value, when we recognise that an experience of a separate self seems to remain even when the oneness of the field of Consciousness is recognised and embraced as the basis of our identity, and as the context for a lives. The more that we recognise the way that the unity of Consciousness completely pervades every experience however, the more the distinctively egoic nature of our perception, with its conviction of separateness, falls away.

So, in a non-dual approach to meditation we are invited to embrace the universal Consciousness in our process of embodiment of its qualities – to make ourselves profoundly receptive to it, by recognising it as who we already are in our most essential nature. The Oneness, it would seem, is the context for, and the evolutionary driving force for, the inevitable plurality of our experience as human beings – as rich and complex personal embodiments of Consciousness, living in an extraordinarily beautiful and diverse world.

January 8, 2018

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

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

My Psychological and Spiritual Influences

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

Although I worked in General Psychiatry settings for many years (as an Occupational Therapist), the main psychological perspectives that I have drawn on personally are those are Carl Jung, Eugene Gendlin (original developer of the ‘Focusing’ self-empathy/self-enquiry practice), and Marshall Rosenberg (originator of the Nonviolent Communication model).

Returning to Meditation – A Fresh Approach

Since my return to meditation in 2016, my daily practice has been experimental, personal, and driven by my own self-enquiry into the nature of Consciousness. Although it has been informed to some extent by my reflections on my Buddhist studies in my twenties, the new approach that has emerged from my meditative enquiry bares almost no relation to anything that I was formally taught at that time. The success of this new approach – in supporting my own mental and emotional development – has been so marked that I have felt strongly motivated to share my experience as best I can.

The Mandala as a Psychological Map

Like Carl Jung, I love to make connections, and to notice the archetypal patterns that inform our lives and inform our psychological and spiritual models. A particular fascination since I discovered the archetype in my early twenties, has been the mandala. A great diversity of mandala images, representing forms of cosmology and psychology that are based on a four-fold model of the Divine, are seen in vastly different cultures across history and across the globe. The most refined expressions of the mandala archetype, in Carl Jung’s view, and in mine, are the mandala images that can still be seen today in Tibetan Buddhism, but which originally emerged in the form that we are familiar with, during the Indian Mahayana period.

The Bardo Thodol – Tibetan Book of the Dead

Carl Jung found the mandala that is described in the Bardo Thodol (or Tibetan Book of the Dead) to be a revelation. Among other things, the mandala wisdom of the Bardo Thodol integrates, and establishes correspondences between, three key symbolic formulations, each of which can be arranged as a mandala or quaternity: the Five Wisdoms; the Five Skandhas; and five of the Six Realms (all except the Animal Realm). The combination of his understanding of the Tibetan symbolic system, and his years of dream analysis with his patients, gave Jung the conviction he needed to publish his ground-breaking and comprehensively detailed Psychological Types essay, which described a mandala-form model of the psyche.

Carl Jung’s Genius and Gift to Humanity

The importance of Jung’s Psychological Types is not widely appreciated. What made the ideas in that essay so important as a spiritual document was the way it explained the egoic Shadow in such detail, and so comprehensively described the oppositions within the archetypal mandala structure of the egoic mind. It explained, via these oppositions, the various ways in which the natural human ethical sensibility is so easily lost, so that profound inhumanity becomes possible, and has been witnessed so frequently in human history. The weight of the understanding that Jung presented in that paper, was equal to, and similar in importance in my view, to the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths, since, like that teaching, it demonstrated both the nature of our psychological dysfunction and egoic bondage, and the means of our liberation from it, through Consciousness.

Jung_Functions

These oppositions (between Feeling and Thinking; and between Intuition/Volition and Sensation in particular) are a key feature of Jung’s mandala – symbolising the way that Consciousness allows us to ‘hold the tension’ between these opposites. This need to achieve a separation of these opposites and a reconciliation of them at a higher level, that was so well descried by Jung – is seldom highlighted, even in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition where knowledge of these dynamics is identified symbolically as a key aspect of the All-Accomplishing Wisdom, which plays such an important part in that model.

The Five Skandas – Lost in Translation?

In the articles in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series, I have for the sake of brevity, avoided engaging with the understandable but disastrous historical mistranslations and loss of meaning that has made the wonderful Five Skandhas teaching so impenetrable and almost valueless for most modern students of Buddhism. Instead I have made use of Jung’s Four Functions of Consciousness, which I believe play the same role in Jung’s mandala structure of the psyche that the Five Skandhas teaching is intended to do in the Buddhist tradition.

Skandhas_Jung

Both Carl Jung’s four perceptual functions, and the ancient Indian Skandhas provide a framework for analysing the way in which, in the absence of a deep recognition of the nature of Consciousness, the component elements of the perceptual process collapse into the illusion of a separate self. I would very much like to present an analysis of where the Skandhas appear to have got lost in the course of history. Although I have not yet published on this, I have written about it, I would very much like to post an article on this important theme in the future.

The Male and Female Archetypal Buddhas of the Mandala

Although I have personally found the beautiful symbolic personifications of Consciousness in the Bardo Thodol to be very valuable, a have also chosen, at least in the context of the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series, to avoid reference to the five pairs of male and female buddhas, which the Five Wisdoms are associated with. While it might be interesting to explore these beautiful archetypal figures at a future time, my concern has been that the symbolic imagery of these forms tends to overwhelm us. The cultural richness of Tibetan Buddhist iconography can easily become a distraction from the simple and bodily-felt nature of the non-dual wisdom that these images are intended to point us towards. It is always important, in my view, for spiritual students to be able extract the universal spiritual knowledge from the cultural form in which it comes – as the highest-level Buddhist practitioners have always been able to do, even in regard to their own tradition.

The Four Brahmavihāras and the Five Wisdoms

In place of the Five Wisdoms therefore, I have initially used the Four Brahmavihāras, which are very similar, very closely associated, and very much more accessible as a framework for self-enquiry. Indeed they are so closely related in their symbolic associations, and in the somatic experience that they present in the body, that we can only assume that the brahmavihāras were a precursor in the earlier teachings of the historical Buddha, of the later Mahayana Buddhist teaching of the Five Wisdoms. I have found that studying the two systems concurrently and recognising their inseparability has brought a richness and clarity to my understanding of both – and I thoroughly recommend this study to others.

Brahma_Wisdoms

The Inherently Ethical Nature of Consciousness

In my view the four Brahmavihāras also have the advantage over the four corresponding Wisdoms among the Five Wisdoms, of being much more obviously relational and connected to ethical principles. They point very clearly and concretely to the inherently ethical and beneficial nature of Consciousness, and the way in which, as we explore them in meditation and self-enquiry, the cultivation of a familiarity with the somatic experience of the brahmavihāras is inseparable from the development a natural ethical sensibility and naturally compassionate orientation in life.

The Six Realms – Extreme Cultural Manifestations of the Egoic Mind

It is important to recognise, that while the brahmavihāras are aspects of Consciousness – and can be regarded as a description of the ultimate nature of mind – they also have great practical relevance in everyday life. Indeed the brahmavihāras provide us with foundational insights about conscious communication and ethical behaviour.

Brahma_Realms

These insights become especially keen and incisive when the brahmavihāras are considered in opposition to their counterparts among the Six Realms. The implication when we make these connections, is that the five key Realms can be seen as cultural tendencies that arise out of our collective failure to recognise Consciousness and the four ‘attitudes’ of Consciousness that are the brahmavihāras. The brahmavihāras on the other hand, can be seen as specific antidotes to the Realms – to the psychological and cultural problems that are inevitably generated by the egoic mind – antidotes that are inherent in the nature of Consciousness and always available to us.

The Realms, the Skandas, and the Functions of Consciousness

By opposing the brahmavihāras and the Realms, I have been addressing exactly the same fundamental spiritual choices that we are shown in the symbolic language of Tibetan Buddhism, but hopefully in more accessible form. Indeed the Bardo Thodol associates five of the Six Realms with the Five Skandhas, to give us a powerful way of reflecting on how, to the extent that they are not informed by Consciousness, and recognised as ’empty’, these five components of the cognitive-perceptual process, or categories of cognitive-perceptual data, lead inevitably to five unhelpful egoic mental states and forms of unconscious behaviour that can be seen in individuals and groups – and can be seen represented in the Realms.

So we have five opposed pairs: the Hell Realms or Narakas represent the egoic tendency that is inherent in the Thinking function, and a failure to recognise the brahmavihāra of Equanimity; the Human Realm represents the egoic tendency that is inherent in the Sensation function, and a failure to recognise the brahmavihāra of Sympathetic Joy; the Preta Realm represents the egoic tendency that is inherent in the Feeling function, and a failure to recognise the brahmavihāra of Loving Kindness; the Asura Realm represents the egoic tendency that is inherent in the function of Intuition / Volition, and a failure to recognise the brahmavihāra of Compassion; and the Deva Realms represent an egoic appropriation of Consciousness itself, and a failure to recognise its ultimately impersonal nature.

Brahma_Realm_Function

Gaining Familiarity with the Shadow – Personal and Collective

The immense value of this set of associations does not appear to be widely known, mainly because it is undermined by the previously mentioned problems with the Five Skandhas teaching. The recovery of meaning that we achieve by replacing that formulation with Jung’s Four Functions of Consciousness, is further enhanced by opposing the Realms and brahmavihāras rather that the Realms and the Wisdoms.

The five Realms are powerfully illuminated by these juxtapositions, and hopefully rescued from their status as merely a perplexing curiosity of Buddhist cosmology. When we use Jung’s Functions in place of the Skandhas, and start to see the Realms as the collective psychological landscapes that are generated by the corresponding egoic Functions of Consciousness. By seeing the Realms as the archetypal landscapes of the ever-present psychological Shadow in the individual and collective psyche, we come closer, I believe, both to the Buddha’s intention, and to the intention of the great Padmasambhava, the author of the Bardo Thodol.

The Brahmavihāras – Consciousness Embodied

The fact that the brahmavihāras are very obviously and precisely related to bodily felt states in the first four subtle bodies makes them extremely important for anyone interested in meditation. Essentially, they are four aspects of the deeply paradoxical, but very beautiful way, in which an energetic reflection of the boundless and universal field of Consciousness is embodied in us as a personal and bodily-felt, or ‘somatic’, experience. I shall be providing a summary of this in my next article in this ‘Overview’ series.

Although the subtle bodies have well established associations in Tibetan Buddhist tradition with the Wisdoms, and these can also be recognised in our felt experience when we explore them, the associations with the brahmavihāras that I have been emphasising in this ‘Meditation Guidance’ series are less known, but are actually much more obvious in our felt experience than are the associations with the Wisdoms.

Effortless Transformation by Resting as Consciousness

The associations between the brahmavihāras and the subtle bodies are as follows: Muditā, or Sympathetic Joy, is felt as the resonance of Consciousness in the Physical Body (and Base Chakra); Upekṣā, or Equanimity is felt as the resonance of Consciousness in the Mental Body (and Hara Chakra); Mettā, or Loving Kindness, is felt as the resonance of Consciousness in the Emotional Body (and Solar Plexus Chakra); Karuṇā, or Compassion is felt as the resonance of Consciousness in the Volitional / Intuition Body (or Heart Chakra). Viewing the brahmavihāras as the embodiment of, or as the resonance of, Consciousness, allows us to recognise their entirely impersonal nature. It also releases us from the suggestion that we should be cultivating the brahmavihāras by an effort of the egoic will.

Brahma_Bodies

Rather the brahmavihāras can be seen as innate – as aspects of Consciousness and as aspects of our natural state, that can easily be recognised in self-enquiry. The ‘cultivation’ of them therefore, does not happen by the egoic will holding an intention to do so, but primarily by a recognition of that which has previously been obscured – and by the spontaneous self-release of the energetic residue of egoic habits of mind that have previously been held in place by our egoic identifications. Hence my essential characterisation of meditation practice as resting as Consciousness.

The Direct Path – Every-day Non-Duality

I will be giving more time in future articles to the way in which our unconscious identification with egoic parts – even identification with positive and aspirational egoic parts – locks us down energetically and prevents psychological change. When we approach meditation via the notion of resting as Consciousness, we have a wonderfully simple way of entering experientially into the sort of non-dual way of being that is necessary to break this deadlock, and a powerful way of facilitating the inner energetic transformation that we are seeking.

To read the next article in this overview series – Overview Part 2 – Embodied Consciousness – click here.

December 23, 2017