#Kleshas

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

This is Article No. 6 in the ‘5 Wisdoms’ series, and is Part 2 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

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 Inspiration-Prayer for Deliverance from the Dangerous Pathway of the Bardo

I created this page in connection with the series of articles which I have called ‘The Ten Archetypal Buddhas of the Mandala’, which can be accessed via the ’10 Buddhas’ menu above. The first article in the series can be accessed here, and summaries of the articles can be accessed here.

Below are the five central verses from the ‘Inspiration-Prayer for Deliverance from the Dangerous Pathway of the Bardo’. I regard these five verses as a presentation of the essential core of the profound collection of Padmasambhava’s teachings on the Dharmadhātu mandala, which have come down to us in a collection of texts called the Bardo Thodol, or bar do thos grol, or Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State (often referred to in the English speaking world as the ‘Tibetan Book of the Dead’). These verses introduce us to the ten archetypal Buddhas of the mandala – five female and five male – and these are the subject of the ’10 Buddhas’ series. The words that I have highlighted in bold are the five kleshas – the five groups of bodily-felt egoic patterns, which are usually called ‘defilements’, or ‘obscurations’ – in the sense that they defile or obscure our true nature.

I have outlined the kleshas in many of my earlier articles, and in some detail in the ’10 Buddhas’ series. I believe that they are much more important than is commonly acknowledged. The more keen our familiarity is with these energies, the more able we are to deliver ourselves ‘from the Dangerous Pathway of the Bardo’. The ‘Dangerous Pathway of the Bardo’ refers to the dangerous journey through samsara that we are all undertaking – where, paradoxically, there is, in every moment, both the danger of deepening our bondage to our conditioning, or of liberation through insight.

Even when, though basic self-awareness and self-restraint, we no longer engage in grossly unethical acts of body, or speech – we will nevertheless, if we are conscious enough, be aware of the presence of these five kleshas, and of their incongruous and obscuring energetic momentum in the somatic fields of the body-mind. They give energetic substance to the illusion of separate self-hood, so we need to recognise them, and release them in a systematic way. In the text below, Padmasambhava shows us ten archetypal Buddhas, and ten corresponding Dharmic principles, which can do just that. My ’10 Buddhas’ series takes up Padmasambhava’s challenge and takes the reader on a mandala journey of meditative self-enquiry, with these ten Buddhas as our guides.

When, through spiritual ignorance, I wander in samsara,
on the luminous light-path of the Dharmadhātu Wisdom,
may Blessed Vairocana go before me,
and Ākāshadhāteshvari / White Tara behind me;
help me to cross the bardo’s dangerous pathway
and bring me to the perfect buddha state.

When, through hatred, I wander in samsara,
on the luminous light-path of the Mirror-like Wisdom,
may Blessed Vajrasattva-Akshobhya go before me,
and Buddhalocana behind me;
help me to cross the bardo’s dangerous pathway
and bring me to the perfect buddha state.

When, through pride, I wander in samsara,
on the luminous light-path of the Wisdom of Equality,
may Blessed Ratnasambhava go before me,
and Mamaki behind me;
help me to cross the bardo’s dangerous pathway
and bring me to the perfect buddha state.

When, through craving, I wander in samsara,
on the luminous light-path of Discriminating Wisdom,
may Blessed Amitabha go before me,
and Pandaravarsini behind me;
help me to cross the bardo’s dangerous pathway
and bring me to the perfect buddha state.

When, through envy, I wander in samsara,
on the luminous light-path of All-Accomplishing Wisdom,
may Blessed Amoghasiddhi go before me,
and Samaya-Tara behind me;
help me to cross the bardo’s dangerous pathway
and bring me to the perfect buddha state.

February 15, 2020

Feminine and Masculine – Energy and Presence

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

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

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

The Northern Quadrant – Compassion versus the Egoic Will

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

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

May 26, 2018