#Ethical

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 1: Thinking and Wisdom

This is Article No. 5 in the ‘5 Wisdoms’ series, and is Part 1 of the Rūpa Skandha mini- series.

The aim of this Rūpa Skandha mini-series is to outline what is meant by the ’emptiness’, or non-personal nature, of the ‘concretising’, form-creating’, ‘conceptualising’, or ‘conceptual form’, aspect of our cognitive-perceptual experiencing process, which Buddhist tradition calls the rūpa skandha – usually translated simply as ‘Form’. Together these articles make up a single exploration over several articles, which are best read in order. When all these articles are published, you will be able to click on the titles below to access the other parts.

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 1: Thinking and Wisdom

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

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 3: The Body

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 4: Mindfulness and Emptiness

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 5: Dharma and Truth

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 6: Consciousness and Qualia

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 7: The Heart Sutra

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 8: Perfect Speech

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 9: Equanimity and Being

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

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

The Rūpa Skandha and the Mirror-Like Wisdom

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

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

May 7, 2020

The Ten Archetypal Buddhas of the Mandala – Part 1: Three Yānas / Three Myths

This article is the first 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. Brief summaries of all the articles can be found here and you can read the five verses here.

As I begin this new series of articles, I would like to express gratitude to Dharmachari Subhuti, a member of the Triratna Buddhist Order. It was Subhuti who set me on the five-fold light-path of the Five Wisdoms, when I attended a seminar on the Bardo Thodol with him in the1980s. Having said that, I should however make it very clear, that the perspective that I am presenting here is entirely my own, and is not intended to reflect any current consensus of thinking that may exist within the Triratna Buddhist Order. All I am doing here is sharing the fruits of my own enquiry – and hoping that this may stimulate others to engage in their own.

I also need to thank Subhuti for the central idea in this introductory article – the notion that the three yānas, the three phases of development of the Buddhist tradition, are like three ‘myths’, or defining frames of reference, within Buddhism – an idea which comes from a talk that he gave in 2003 (and later published online here in 2004). Once again however, I need to make it clear that I have reframed this conceptualisation somewhat, and elaborated it in my own way.

Three Ways of Relating to the Archetypal Buddhas

There is a foundational conceptual framework, which I would like to share as we embark on this exploration of the Dharmadhātu mandala – the great Five Wisdoms mandala of Mahayāna and Vajrayāna Buddhism, with its five pairs of Buddhas. This is the three-fold conceptual framework of the three yānas. While most Buddhists will be aware of the three yānas – the three great historical phases of the development of the Buddhist tradition: Hinayāna; Mahayāna; and Vajrayāna – it is less common to see these three yānas associated with the three stages of our progressively deepening engagement with the archetypal Buddhas. This however, is a conceptualisation that I find very useful, and I would like to share it at the outset, because it not only guides us in our evolving relationship with the mandala deities; it also guides us in our deepening familiarity with mind and Consciousness, as we progress in our meditation practice.

Essentially there are three ways of relating to the mandala deities. Firstly, we can think of them as personifications of the various extremely positive characteristics of Enlightenment – as personifications of the various aspects of Enlightenment, which we aspire to, and would like to cultivate in ourselves. This perspective, we can say, is an expression of the attitudes of striving and idealism that we associate with early Buddhism – with the stage that the later Mahayāna (the Greater Vehicle) came to call the Hinayāna (the Lesser Vehicle). I do not really like this pejorative and somewhat disdainful characterisation – especially as the spirit of the Mahayāna and Vajrayāna phases are clearly discernible in the Pali records of the Buddha’s life and teachings. The term Hinayāna does however, allow us to make an important distinction. It denotes a set of more limited cultural attitudes and psychological frames of reference in which the later elements of Buddhist tradition (i.e, the Mahayāna and Vajrayāna elements) are nevertheless present in a germinal form, but are not yet fully explored and articulated.

In the second, Mahayāna, phase, we can think of the archetypal Buddhas as existing objectively ‘out there’ in the universe – in a very real but non-material world beyond this material one in which we exist. The popular Mahayāna world-view of many ethnic Buddhists in the east, appears to see the archetypal Buddhas in a personalising way – as if they are gods. The more accurate and more sophisticated understanding within Mahayāna tradition however, sees them as ’empty’ and non-personal. In the terminology of modern psychology, we can say that the Buddhist deities exist as archetypes in the collective psyche. Although we encounter them subjectively and inwardly, the more we familiarise ourselves with them, the more we naturally come to think of them as objectively existing archetypal realities. When we say that they are archetypal, we mean that they are beyond the egoic mind but at the same time are not separate from us at all. Indeed they are personifications of our most essential nature.

Through the Buddha’s invitation to recognise that all things are insubstantial and ’empty’, we come full circle. The idealisation of the Hinayāna and the projection of the Mahayāna are resolved as we recognise that all things are ‘appearances’. The Vajrayāna perspective, deeply rooted as it is in the recognition of Emptiness (shunyatā), acknowledges that while these archetypes appear as objectively existing beings ‘out there’ in an objectively existing imaginal realm, they are also speak in the language of imagery and symbolism of the way Consciousness (the ’empty’ vijñāna skandha) unfolds into cognition and perception. Further to this they lead us into the mystery of how those archetypal energies find somatic embodiment in us as bodily-felt energies.

Just as the Mahayāna perspective is a natural extension of the Hinayana one, so the Vajrayāna is a natural extension of the Mahayāna view. I shall be trying to characterise it in more detail below, but very briefly we can characterise the Vajrayāna as a perspective that sees the archetypal Buddhas as personifications of energies of Enlightenment that already exist, embodied within ourselves – albeit obscured by the energies of the egoic mind. The Vajrayāna is concerned above all with deep transformation, and with the energetic and bodily-felt processes by which we come to know our true nature – the Buddha within – and begin to recognise that the play of the Transcendental is ever-present in this world.

The Three Yānas as Aspects of the Bodhisattva Archetype

So, the Buddhist tradition presents three somewhat different perspectives on meditation practice and on the spiritual life – and there is great value in taking the Buddhist tradition in its totality, and therefore developing the ability to move easily between these three perspectives, understanding the way they fit together into a whole. It is also important for us to be fully cognisant of which conceptual perspective we are thinking from, or thinking within, at any one time – and to recognise that each of those perspectives lacks comprehensiveness and objectivity when taken on its own.

March 15, 2020

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

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

My Psychological and Spiritual Influences

Although I was born into a nominally Christian family and a nominally Christian culture, my first real spiritual education, during my twenties, was in the context of the Triratna Buddhist Community, a Western Buddhist tradition that integrates Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana elements, with a special emphasis on re-creating something of the spirit of the lost Indian Mahayana in a Western cultural context – especially the spirit of the Bodhisattva Ideal. During that time I have a number of very strong and deeply affecting visionary experiences during meditation sessions. I also, in my mid-twenties, made a deep study of Padmasambhava’s Bardo Thodol texts, the so-called ‘Tibetan Book of the Dead’ – symbolic teachings that I continued to reflect on over the decades since.

In my thirties I became a Quaker for 10 years, and subsequently studied Eugene Gendlin’s ‘Focusing’, Marshal Rosenberg’s ‘Nonviolent Communication’ (NVC), with a few different non-Buddhist non-duality teachers, before returning to Buddhism in my early sixties.

I worked in General Psychiatry settings for many years, where I became an Occupational Therapist and made use of the very Buddhist ‘open system’ model of the person, developed by the Occupational Therapist, Gary Kielhofner. During those years, when my profession required me to speak the language of medical model psychiatry and the various models in use by Clinical Psychologists, but I maintained a keen sense that human experience cannot fully explained by merely humanistic or brain-based models. For me a comprehensive psychology has to include a transcendental dimension, so it was perhaps inevitable that I would return to Padmasambhava’s Buddhist non-dual psychology of the mandala.

January 2, 2020

Compassion and the All-Accomplishing Wisdom

This is Post 41 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series.

Making use of the rich mandala-form analysis of the dynamics of cognition and perception that Carl Jung called the ‘Four Functions of Consciousness’ (which parallels the ancient Indian skandhas), we recognise that the green Northern Quadrant in the Buddhist meditation mandalas, is related to the perceptual function of Intuition-Volition. Carl Jung, who identified himself as an Introverted Intuitive type, was writing in the face of great intellectual resistance from the scientific materialist consensus, when he presented his mandala-form psychological model – a model that is distinguished not just by its inclusion of the function of Intuition, but by its embrace of the archetypal and energetic dimensions of psychological reality.

All Life Energies are Compassionate and Life-Serving

In my last two articles (here and here) I have also been drawing heavily on the psychological model of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) which was developed by Marshall Rosenberg, as a way of illuminating the non-dual wisdom of the green Northern Quadrant, which the Buddhist tradition calls the All-Accomplishing Wisdom. The NVC model stands out as another mandala-form psychological framework, which not only includes the Intuition-Volition component, but includes this dimension in the most practical and powerful way in relation to the practice of self-empathy.

NVC does this by recognising that what we experience as a situation of need or apparent lack, is arising not only from an objective Current Reality in the world of Sensation (Southern Quadrant), but from volitional Life Energies (Northern Quadrant), which are apprehended by the function of Intuition in those who are observing the situation. We can say therefore, that it is our internal relationship to the Life Energies of desire, longing and aspiration, that gives us our perception of a Need – and is the key to the creative and self-empathetic attitude that will bring healing to our psychological parts on the inside, and the communication style that will ‘get our needs met’ on the outside.

December 16, 2018

Life Energies of Presence and Connection

This is Post 40 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series.

Consciousness is a phenomenon of the interface, the boundary, and the discontinuity, between the knowable world of Classical Physics, and the unknowable world of Quantum Mechanics. This interface pervades the universe as an infinite pure space that is an eternal present moment, and is equal and everywhere the same. It is also, at the same time, single – a unity. Mathematically it is a single point – a one point field.

The Classical world of matter is, quite literally, a beautiful illusion. Space and time are just relative phenomena, and matter is also just an appearance – an appearance on the surface of a universe that is mostly unknowable energy and information. Thankfully, the ephemeral perception that is our universe, is pervaded by the absolute reality of Consciousness. It is this animating power that makes it knowable, and makes it so beautiful. Without Consciousness, there would be no life, no meaning, no possibility of evolution, and no human self-conscious experience, with all its richness and relational complexity.

Consciousness and the present moment are inseparable phenomena. When we look out through the dense, ‘milky’ band of stars that is our own galaxy and glimpse the galaxies beyond, we are seeing the universe as it was many millions of years ago. The light by which we perceive some of those distant stars left them long before our own planet was even formed, and has been traversing the vast expanse of space for billions of years. It is a little disturbing to perceive that everything in the Classical world appears fundamentally disconnected and separated by time and space. In the simple human experience of Consciousness however, and in the experience of the present moment, the whole vast expanse is completely connected and unified – as Quantum Physics has also now shown us.

While these sorts of reflections may at first appear somewhat abstract, I hope to be able to show that they also have extremely practical implications. For those of us that aspire to express our deepest human potential – in ourselves, our relationships and our communities – there is enormous value in familiarising ourselves experientially with the more fundamental, non-dual level of reality in which we all rest, because it is such a rich source of psychological insights and personal transformation.

While this exploration of the Present Moment, Connectedness, and Consciousness, is associated with the intrapersonal path of meditation, it is also deeply relevant to our interpersonal lives. We need a high degree of familiarity with Presence, Connection and Consciousness if we are to communicate effectively in our relationships and communities. If we fail to acknowledge, and acknowledge deeply, the present moment of Consciousness in which we are already connected, we will be frustrated in our efforts to relate empathetically and collaborate effectively.

Living ‘in’ and ‘as’ the Life Energy of Consciousness

Knowing that the Classical world is just an appearance of subject-object perception, and that the Quantum world is unknowable, gives great importance to the mysterious boundary phenomenon that is Consciousness. Consciousness is the only thing that exists absolutely for us – that is reliable and ultimately trustworthy in our experience. Consciousness, to borrow a phase from the apostle Paul, is that in which we “live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28), and resting as Consciousness, through the practice of meditation and mindfulness, is our surest path to authenticity, integrity, and to knowing whatever may actually be known. Continue reading

October 5, 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 Somatic Anatomy of the Energy Bodies

This is Post 36 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series.

While meditation can initially be thought of as an exploration of our felt experience, or Sensation, in the field of the body, the wisdom of Intuition-Volition and of the green Northern Quadrant, is telling us that we need more than a medical anatomy textbook as our guide. Rather, we need self-enquiry frameworks that can guide our exploration down into the subtle, multidimensional, and energetic territory of Consciousness, and into the energetic reflection, or resonance, of Consciousness, in the energy fields of the body.

A Nested Hierarchy of Subtle Bodies

These maps to navigate by, are provided firstly the mandala, which has been my main frame of reference in these articles, but also by the stupa, which is a symbolic structure that reflects the nested hierarchy of the subtle bodies, and the subtle energy anatomy of the human body.

In my last article (here), I wrote about this subtle anatomy in three main ways: (1) in relation to non-duality; (2) as a way of locating the brahmavihāras in the fields of the body; and (3) as a way of understanding and systematically cultivating the experience of samādhi – the meditative state of integration and effortless concentration that arises as we learn to know our wholeness, and embrace the deeper and more subtle levels of our somatic experience.

Although our focus in this article is still the green Northern Quadrant and the Volitional, or energetic, dimension of experience, and the perceptual function of Intuition by which we know that dimension, I need now to continue further in addressing the important but paradoxical fact that the energetic reflection of Consciousness in the fields of the body appears to be available to sensory experience – in other words they are also aspects of Sensation, or vedana, in the ancient Indian languages.

August 8, 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

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

Mandala Innerwork and NVC Self-Empathy

I have practised various forms of self-empathetic innerwork over the years. In the past, my personal method has been a distillation of, and a combination of, the innerwork approaches of Eugene Gendlin (Focusing), Ann Weiser-Cornell (Focusing), James Hillman (Jungian Innerwork), Marshall Rosenberg (Nonviolent Communication), Richard Schwarz (Inner Family Systems), Jerry Donoghue (Inner Presence Coaching), Steve De Shazer (Brief Solution Focused Therapy). While I continue to draw on the specific methods of these innovators in the fields of psychology and psychotherapy practice, I have more recently found it helpful to set these learnings in the context of the non-dual mandala-wisdom that we find in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, and which Carl Jung helped to make so much more available and accessible in the West. Hence my own personal name for the form of self-empathic innerwork that I now practice, is ‘Mandala Innerwork’, reflecting the fact that it is essentially a form of Buddhist self-enquiry.

The Buddha’s Self-Enquiry / Self-Empathy Dyads

As I have developed my approach to self-empathetic innerwork, and studied the various other self-enquiry dyad models that I have mentioned above, I have increasingly found myself coming back to the Buddha’s approach and to the Buddhist terminology of the Five Skandhas, the Five Realms, the Five Wisdoms, and the brahmavhāras. I have begun to outline the details of how these fit together in various articles on this website. By making these connections we can bring the richness and power of the Buddhist wisdom tradition to our Western approaches to psychotherapeutic innerwork, while also bringing a much needed psychological sophistication to Buddhist Mindfulness, meditation and self-enquiry practice.

In this article however, I will be avoiding the complexity that arises for us when we try to use the Sanskrit terminology of ancient Buddhism – by mainly using the language of the self-empathy aspect of Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication (NVC) model.

In the language of Nonviolent Communication, we can conceptualise Mandala Innerwork as a self-empathy practice, and the person doing it as a ‘self-empathiser’ and the person holding space is the ’empathiser’. In Eugene Gendlin’s Focusing model the activity of self-enquiry came to be called ‘focusing’, and the person turning their attention inward was called the ‘focuser’, and the person holding space is the ‘companion’. In the context of Mandala Innerwork, I prefer to think of the activity simply as ‘doing self-enquiry’, but I acknowledge a debt to Eugene Gendlin by using the terminology of ‘focuser’ and ‘companion’ for the roles.

The Buddha had his monks do meditative self-enquiry dyads, the details of which got lost down the centuries. The modern Buddhists and historians of Buddhism understand the practice as some form of ‘confession’, which is an unfortunate projection of Christian cultural practice onto the much more complex and subtle culture of early Buddhist self-enquiry. It is my belief that these early Buddhist ‘Confession’ dyads would have more closely resembled the self-empathy / self-enquiry dyad practices of today, and my Mandala Innerwork model has in part been an attempt to recreate the sort of Buddhist self-enquiry that would have characterised them.

The notion of ‘Confession’ is not completely illegitimate – of course. It just needs to be freed from the assumptions that tend to attach to it. I shall be sharing more of my thoughts on this in future articles, but the main thing I would like to highlight here is that in a confession process we are addressing that which is incongruous with our deeper true nature. In other words, not merely incongruous with an external religious creed, but incongruous with our deeper ethically and aspirational sense of ourselves, which is felt to be more essential and more authentic. So, ‘confession’ is always about our inner relationship between this deep inner knowing (which I like to call Consciousness) and something more superficial which is incongruous with that.

Resting as Consciousness; Relating to Psychological Parts

Their are two close related features in my approach, and they are both rooted in the profound early Buddhist psychology of the five skandhas and the four brahmavihāras. The first, could be characterised as ‘resting as Consciousness’: a focus on familiarising ourselves with, and learning to ‘rest as’ the ’empty’ impersonal Consciousness (the ’empty’ vijñāna skandha), that is capable of witnessing our experience objectively, and ‘relating’ to our experience with a warmly accepting quality of Presence. In my articles – especially those on meditation and self-enquiry that are to be found under the Meditation’ menu above – I have been highlighting the fact that the character of that the ’empty’ field of Consciousness, as it becomes embodied in us as Presence, is beautifully and comprehensively described by the four brahmavihāras.

The second feature of my Mandala Innerwork, or ‘Buddhist Self-Enquiry’ model, is based on our development of a deep familiarity with the other four skandhas – essentially the conceptualising (rūpa), sensing (vedanā), evaluating (samjñā), and volitional (samskaras) functions of Consciousness – and this involves learning to ‘work with psychological parts’. By working with psychological parts I mean, essentially, that we look at our experience closely, and learn to recognise that our conventionally experienced self never does actually have the character of a self at all. Rather, on close examination is it found to be an aggregation of cognitive-perceptual processes and cognitive-perceptual data that are assembled into the appearance of a self. What’s more, when we engage in this enquiry, we also become keenly aware of the fact that the egoic self is certainly not single. Rather, it is multiple – each of our separate egoic selves or ‘psychological parts’ are an adaption, in the course of our development to particular developmental stages and challenges.

I have come to regard these two features: resting as Consciousness; and working with psychological parts, as inseparable. Whether our focus is on learning to be self-empathetically present with yourselves for the purpose of self-knowledge and psychological healing; or we are spiritual seekers wishing to know the ultimate nature of mind, we cannot avoid acknowledging these two features of the process. It is one of foundational paradoxes of the process of spiritual integration and psychological healing that in order to become more unified and whole, we need to acknowledge that our egoic self is made up of many psychological parts; and need to develop a sense of the inner relationship between Consciousness and those psychological parts.

January 16, 2018