#Evolution

The Ten Archetypal Buddhas of the Mandala – Part 8: Māmaki

This article is the eighth of fifteen articles inspired by the central five verses of Padmasambhava’s ‘Inspiration-Prayer for Deliverance from the Dangerous Pathway of the Bardo’, in which I shall be aiming to show meditators how each one of the ten deities of the Dharmadhātu Mandala can be felt in the fields of the body as profound suprapersonal sources of somatic healing and wisdom. Those who read the whole series of articles – and it is intended that these articles should be read in sequence – will be able to incorporate these reflections into their meditation practice in a systematic way. The first article in the series can be found here; brief summaries of all the articles can be found here; you can read the previous article in the series here; and you can read the five verses here.

In these articles, I am choosing once again to use a partly non-traditional terminology for talking about the process of transformation that the Dharmadhātu Mandala invites us to engage in. Those who have read the previous articles on this series may recognise Integration, Positive Emotion, Spiritual Death and Spiritual Rebirth as the stages of a system of meditative practice that was suggested by Sangharakshita in the 1970s. This being the case, I need to point out once again, that while I find that these four general stages fit my experience very well indeed, the detail of my own approach to these stages of meditation practice is not based on any detailed exposition by Sangharakshita, but on my own explorations.

I should also make it clear that what I am presenting here does not necessarily represent the consensus within the global Triratna Buddhist Community regarding Sangharakshita’s ‘System of Practice’. My intention is only to share my own experience, and to share my own somewhat personal and perhaps idiosyncratic reflections. My hope is that others will find my exploration of that four-fold conceptual frame of reference to be meaningful and useful, and will be stimulated to engage in there own meditative enquiry into the profound spiritual psychology of the Dharmadhātu Mandala.

This article began as a longer piece of writing, which I subsequently decided to split into two sections – the first section being an introduction to this one, and in part a recapitulation of themes from earlier in this series. I gave the introductory section the title: Part 7: Somatic Body-Mind. If you have not already read it, you may want to consider reading the previous article first – by clicking here.

Vajrayāna Meditation – A Somatic Approach to Practice

The Buddhist tradition unfolded through three great historical and spiritual stages – usually called the Hinayāna, Mahayāna and Vajrayāna. While it can be shown that the Mahayāna, and Vajrayāna stages where implicit in the historical Buddha’s teaching (nominally Hinayāna), the Mahayāna and Vajrayāna teachings of later centuries gave even richer cultural expression to ways of thinking about realisation, about meditation, and about Mindfulness – ways which, while they were not completely new to the tradition, had not been fully expressed either in Gautama Buddha’s teaching, or in the earlier centuries. While the Mahayāna could be characterised as emphasising the seeming ‘otherness’ of the suprapersonal spiritual forces of Consciousness and the importance of an attitude of devotional receptivity towards those forces; the Vajrayāna goes a step further, by acknowledging that our personal experience of embodied Consciousness cannot ultimately be separated from the Transcendental – that all of human experience is pervaded by the transcendental dharmadhātu, or dharmic dimension, and that all beings, without exception, are subject to its evolutionary energy.

So the Vajrayana can be characterised as advocating, not just a fierce determination to become more conscious (the Hinayana emphasis); and not just a profound receptivity to benevolent spiritual forces that are beyond the egoic mind but inherent in Consciousness (the Mahayāna emphasis); but also a recognition that realisation is already present in the experience of embodied Consciousness – albeit very profoundly obscured by the egoic kleshas that have seized the body-mind. The Vajrayāna Buddhism of Tibet therefore sees psychological development as involving, not only a broadening and deepening of cognitive-perceptual awareness, and a differentiation of every human function and skill, but, through meditation practice, a direct transformation and profound expansion of the way we embody Consciousness somatically. So, the Vajrayāna sees meditation practice as a bodily, or somatic, process – one in which the accumulated kleshas are systematically driven out by our consistent return to states of alignment with our ultimate true nature.

Recognising Embodied Consciousness

This approach holds the possibility of rapidly accelerating our process of healing, personal development, and realisation. Those meditation and Mindfulness practitioners within the Buddhist tradition, who engage with this level of practice, achieve this acceleration of their process by resting ‘as’ Consciousness, and recognising that the ’empty’ vijñāna skandha of Consciousness, is itself a phenomenon of the transcendent dharmic order of conditionality within the universe. When we practice in the spirit of the Vajrayāna, we set out to systematically familiarise ourselves with all aspects of our experience of embodied Consciousness – using the mandala and its archetypal Buddhas as our guide. While I have no wish to denigrate other approaches as ‘lower’, or to identify my own approach as ‘higher’, it is this more comprehensive approach to Mindfulness and meditation, such as we find in the Tibetan Vajrayana, that I have been seeking to present in these Mandala of Love articles.

This integration of the ‘self-discovery’ perspective of the Vajrayāna, into the way we think about meditation practice, allows us to see both the earlier ‘self-development’ perspective of the Hinayāna, and the subsequent devotional-receptive ‘self-surrender’ perspective of the Mahayāna, much more clearly. As I have been explaining in previous articles, the meditation practices of Buddhist tradition can be thought of as methods for releasing the energetic residue of our egoic patterning – which Buddhist tradition calls the kleshas – from the somatic body-mind. As this releasing takes place, we reveal the somatic energies of embodied Consciousness that were always present, but were previously obscured by the energetic residue that is accumulated through egoic identification – we reveal the dharmic order of conditionality to be the most fundamental and reliable aspect of mind, even as it is clearly non-personal.

While many Buddhist teachers claim that any act of intense concentration will help us develop Mindfulness and samādhi this is not necessarily true. The practice of samādhi, or meditation, is unfortunately usually understood merely as ‘meditative absorption’, or ‘concentration’. ‘Concentration’ is an especially limited and limiting conceptualisation. I find it much more helpful to think of samādhi as a process in which we endeavour to integrate and embody the suprapersonal forces of Consciousness. It is an active process, but that activity is the subtle one of an active and systematic ‘meditative receptivity’. So, Mindfulness is not a merely mental process, or a neurological ‘executive function’ skill of the brain, and it is certainly not about developing awareness in a single narrow areas – like body position in space; sensations; feeling states, etc. If we study the Buddha’s ‘Four Foundations of Mindfulness’ with an imagination informed by the mandala wisdom of later Buddhist tradition, we recognise that Mindfulness requires the cultivation of a broad, multidimensional, and comprehensive embodiment of Consciousness, and requires our willingness to enter into the non-conceptual inner-world of somatic energy and of indefinable bodily-felt experience. All this is implied by the idea of Mindfulness of vedanā. We cannot engage with either Mindfulness practice, or samādhi practice, without entering this non-rational somatic realm of ‘internal’ vedanā , since it here, in our bodily-felt experience that the psychological opposites are most concretely confronted, held and reconciled, so that the invisible forces that have held us back can at last be released. Continue reading

July 21, 2023

Muditā – Appreciative Joy – A Sense of Wonder

This is Post 19 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series. Summaries of the other articles in this series can be found by clicking here.

In the previous five posts I have been talking about the inner landscape of the blue Eastern Quadrant of the mandala – the Thinking function; the Mental Body; the Hara chakra (second chakra); the brahmavihāra of Equanimity; the qualia of Being; the attitude of objectivity; the ethical characteristics of honesty and integrity; and the mirror as a symbol of Consciousness and of non-dual wisdom. We also started to explore the polarity between, or the choice between: the peaceful, objectively observing, and embodied, style of consciousness, which is associated with Equanimity and Being; and the fragile, judgemental, mentally-constructed, and obsessively self-referencing form of identity, which psychology might speak of in terms of narcissism.

Cosmic Appreciation and Gratitude

Circumambulating clockwise round the mandala, we come next to the Southern Quadrant of the mandala and to the brahmavihāra of muditā. In Tibetan Buddhist tradition the Southern Quadrant is yellow – the colour of gold and of the earth. Muditā is often translated as Sympathetic Joy, and occasionally translated as Empathetic Joy, but Appreciative Joy is, in my view, a better translation. While I have sometimes been happy to translate muditā as Sympathetic Joy, as I was first taught, many years ago, I now prefer to use Appreciative Joy.

Traditionally muditā is understood to refer to our innate sympathetic response to the happiness and achievements of others. It is certainly this, and it is naturally present in all those types of social interactions and responses to events in the world that are in any way genuine expressions of appreciation and gratitude. It is important however, to recognise that muditā, in its archetypal and suprapersonal essence as mahamuditā, or Great Appreciative Joy, is a cosmic principle – an attitude of Consciousness itself. Continue reading

August 22, 2017

The ‘Hell Realms’ – Inner Victims and Inner Persecutors

This is Post 18 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series. Summaries of the other articles in this series can be found here.

In order to fully understand the brahmavihāra, or attitude of Consciousness, that the Buddha called upekṣā, or Equanimity, it is very valuable to contrast it with its polar opposite in egoic consciousness. Indeed each of the four brahmavihāras is essentially an archetypal or transpersonal power by which a particular aspect of the egoic mind is healed. To help us consistently experience the transformative effect of the four brahmavihāras we need to understand the nature of the close relationship between these four beneficent cosmic principles on the one hand – and the four corresponding tendencies in the egoic mind on the other.

A Spiritual Choice within each Quadrant of the Mandala

In previous posts I have talked about the choices we face, in every moment, between each of the qualities of Consciousness on one hand, and each of the corresponding qualities of the egoic mind on the other. In regard to the Thinking function and the Mental Body, we find that Equanimity and the quality of Objectivity that is integral to it, are in polar opposition to the egoic tendency towards judgement and the inability to just be with things (and people) and let them be as they are. An important way in which this opposition was previously highlighted (in a previous post – here) was in the stark contrast between the positive mirror of Consciousness and the negative mirror of narcissism.

As we start to practice the mandala wisdom we recognise that each quadrant of the mandala presents us with a spiritual choice – and to recognise that we have a choice where we previously were not even aware that choice was possible, is always an experience of empowerment. We live in a world that claims to give us choices, and which even overwhelms us with choices, but ultimately the only thing that really gives us choices is Consciousness. Continue reading

August 12, 2017

The Ethical and Relational Nature of Consciousness

This is Post 12 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series. Summaries of the other articles in this series can be found here.

Consciousness is like the space we move through – it is easy to go through life completely unaware of it. And even though it is always there when we look for it, its nature can be difficult to grasp. If we are setting out to systematically familiarise ourselves with the ultimate nature of mind, the four brahmavihāras provide us with an extremely good, and relatively simple framework for engaging in this exploration – one that highlights the inherently ethical and relational nature of Consciousness. They also offer us four very attractive and relatively easy ways of moving out of ordinary egoic consciousness into states of alignment and healing.

The Four Mahabrahmavihāras

In Mahayana Buddhist tradition, reflection on the brahmavihāras brought a development to the early Buddhist approach to that teaching, which is of enormous practical and philosophical significance for those who wish to use the brahmavihāras as a framework for meditation and self-inquiry, and I would like to share it here.

Essentially, the understanding arose that it is helpful to see each one of the brahmavihāras as having both a personal, egoic and conditional aspect, and a transpersonal, or archetypal, or unconditional aspect – even though these two aspects can never be completely separated. The implication was that the most effective way to connect with the brahmavihāras is by opening ourselves to the transpersonal aspect of each one – and allowing the energies of each one to flow through us.

For example mettā, or Loving-Kindness came to be seen as a reflection, in personal felt experience, of mahamettā, or Great Loving-Kindness, which is unconditional, archetypal and transpersonal – an aspect of the field of Consciousness in which we rest. Each of the personally experienced brahmavihāras has a corresponding archetypal source in Consciousness – a mahabrahmavihāra. Continue reading

June 12, 2017

Mettā – Consciousness as Loving-Kindness

This is Post 11 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series. Summaries of the other articles in this series can be found here.

It is understandable that mettā, or Loving-Kindness, would be the best understood of the four brahmavihāras. It is the one which has its own short recorded discourse in the Pali Cannon of early Buddhist tradition, but more importantly, it is the one which most resonates with our experience in ordinary life. Mettā extends our ordinary notions of love to express an attitude of unconditionally valuing everything in our experience, and unconditionally valuing all of the people in our world. People who practice the mettābhāvanā meditation practice, would generally describe mettā as being characterised by a feeling or attitude of warmth, kindness, care, and of love – in the sense of a deep valuing and well-wishing. The most common translation of mettā is Loving Kindness, but it includes qualities of ‘unconditional love’, ‘unconditional valuing’, and ‘unconditional acceptance’.

The mettābhāvanā practice is often felt by practitioners to be powerfully transformative – a powerful support to psychological integration, and to social interaction. Because mettā is that attitude of Consciousness, which unconditionally values and accepts our experience, it powerfully transforms the evaluative, or ‘Feeling’ function of the human mind. In ordinary egoic consciousness, the evaluative, or ‘Feeling’, function discerns that which is of value to us by attending to the internal flow of pleasant and unpleasant feeling states that are our emotional guidance system throughout life.

This discernment between that which is of value to us and that which is not, may be conscious or unconscious, and plays a very important role in the egoic construction of identity, and in the establishment of the defensive threshold between egoic feeling, which we are happy to identify with, and the feeling aspect of the unconscious – emotional content of the mind that we would rather not feel, or that which we would rather not remember, or that which we would rather not recognise as an aspect of ourselves.

Mettā – Healing and Evolving the Emotional Body

In regard to how this Feeling aspect of the personal unconscious is experienced, there is a useful notion in esoteric Buddhism and other spiritual traditions – the Emotional Body. In my view, the idea that we have a psycho-spiritual anatomy made up of subtle energy bodies and ‘chakra’ points or areas, where the energetic state of the subtle bodies is most keenly felt, is a very useful one – and is one that fits the experience of myself and other meditators. I am in general very critical of the way this ‘somatic’ anatomy is described, and shall be attempting to bring some clarity to this area ‘Meditation Guidance’ series. Continue reading

June 6, 2017

Buddhas and Bodhisattvas – Archetypes of Consciousness

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

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

The Mahayana – the Expansion of the Buddha’s Vision

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

May 6, 2017

Introduction to the Mandala of Love book blog

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

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

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

April 20, 2017

Self-Enquiry – Familiarising ourselves with Consciousness

This is Post 2 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series.

Our mental functioning is multidimensional, so there are many perspectives on the mind within Psychology. Hence, there are dozens of ways of conceptualising what meditation is, and because the mind is malleable, and very much subject to our various beliefs about its nature, all the various techniques and methods may appear to work to some extent. Meditation however, can be very time consuming, and much time will be wasted in internal conflict, if we fail to conceptualise the practice in a way that reflects the ultimate nature of mind. I would like therefore, to first establish what meditation is in the ultimate sense. Other teachers present ‘introductory practices’ in full awareness that they are holding back knowledge that is necessary for a more complete understanding, and necessary for transformative insight. I will not be doing you the disservice of adopting this sort of approach.

The approach described in this blog post series is based on the idea that meditation, if it is to be profoundly transformative, cannot limit itself to an engagement with only the personal experience of mind and body. Rather, it must specifically address that wider field of intelligence in which the phenomena of the personal mind arise and ultimately rest. That field of intelligence is what the theistic religious traditions call God, but which I have been choosing to call Consciousness.

Consciousness, in this context, has some of the scope that others might associate with metaphysics and with a divine, or transcendent, reality, but here it is a purely psychological term – a label for an objective psychological experience, albeit an illusive and difficult to define one – and in the context of a psychology that is expanded far beyond the bounds of academic Psychology’s usual merely personal perspective.

While there is clearly value in striving to become more focused, more emotionally positive, and more self-aware – heroically struggling to modify mental states by an effort of will, I hope to show that there is much greater practical value and effectiveness, for the practice of meditation, in the development of a profound openness to the field of Consciousness in all its aspects, so that we utilise the qualities, and the energy, of Consciousness in our transformation. Continue reading

April 17, 2017