This article is the fifth 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.
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 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.
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 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 rūpaskandha 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.
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
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
This longer piece of writing is from 2012. I am hoping it will be enjoyed and will provide inspiration and guidance to students of both meditation and non-duality. I find the story of Hui Neng to be one of the most beautiful and illuminating in the whole of the Buddhist tradition. Among the many deep themes in this rich and multi-dimensional story, you will find, I believe, the essence of Zen.
Those who have been reading my articles on the ‘mandala wisdom’ in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ category on this website, will find that it also brings us back, in a fresh new way, to our entry point into the mandala: the Eastern Quadrant; the Mirror-Like Wisdom; and the brahmavihāra of Equanimity.
Although the psychological model and approach to meditation, that I have been advocating in my writing comes primarily from the Tibetan Buddhism, its foundations are in early Buddhism and in the pre-Buddhist psychological and spiritual models that Gautama Buddha himself used when talking about the ultimate nature of mind.
The story that I would like to tell here however, comes from Zen, a strand of Buddhism that was initiated by Mahakashapa, an enlightened student of the Buddha who took the tradition to China. Culturally, Zen has something of the simplicity of early Buddhism, but is informed by the expansive compassionate mission, and by the beautiful Sanskrit texts, of the Indian Mahayana. At the time of this story, Zen was still a Chinese Buddhist tradition (the Chan tradition) and had not yet spread to Japan.
The spiritual teachers who passed on the living experience of enlightenment within the Zen tradition over many centuries have become known as the Zen Patriarchs. This is the story the man who became the Sixth Zen Patriarch. It is the story of Hui Neng.
Hui Neng is perhaps the perfect exemplar of the dimension of spirituality that the Buddhist tradition has come to call the Mirror-like Wisdom. Though a completely uneducated man he had a spiritual clarity that stands as a beacon for us all many centuries later. Though his influence in his lifetime and the written records of his teachings he personally brought about a renewal of Chinese Buddhism, and set it on the path to becoming the spiritual force that it became and still is in the modern world.
A Zen Story – Hui Neng, the Sixth Zen Patriarch
Hui Neng was a very ordinary man, an illiterate Chinese peasant. He was born in Guangdong Province in the agricultural South of China in the seventh century CE. Our main source for his story is The Platform Sutra, the first section of which records an autobiographical talk that Hui Neng gave long after he was accepted as the Sixth Patriarch by the Buddhist community of China.
We are told that Hui Neng’s father died when he was three, but even before his father died, there was extreme hardship for his family. The text tells us that his father had originally held an official position but had been banished from his native town. So it seems that Hui Neng probably grew up in poverty but had an extremely resourceful mother who worked very hard to support him through childhood despite her own heartbreak and deprivation.
As a young man Hui Neng supported himself and his mother by chopping and carting firewood. We are given very little information about him but we can imagine perhaps that he was too poor to think of marriage, and spending time alone in the woods and bamboo groves, found peace in nature, in the experience of being, and in reflection. I imagine him as a man of instinctive kindness and honesty who, while not educated, had a naturally inquiring mind and a contemplative if not mystical temperament, and who was always interested and open to the truth from wherever it may come.
Hui Neng first hears the Dharma
I imagine Hui Neng having many moments of resting in the imperturbable stillness of awareness, and consciously appreciating and familiarising himself with that peace. We are told however that for him the great turning point in the process of his realisation came when he heard the words of the Diamond Sutra being recited in the market place by a lay Buddhist, a man who has attended talks given by Hung Jen, the Fifth Patriarch. We can imagine Hui Neng taking time after making a delivery to listen respectfully and with single-minded intensity to the mysterious words of this powerful, dramatic and challenging text. The Diamond Sutra had originated in the India Mahayana, and had been translated from Sanskrit into Chinese. It contain many bold statements about the ultimate nature of mind. It appears to most people to be full of riddles – completely defying the rational mind.
In one version of the story we are told that there was a particular line in the text that made a profound impact. In translation these are the words:
“One should produce that thought which is nowhere dwelled.”
On hearing this, we are told, Hui Neng was swept into that stream of being that the Buddhist tradition calls Enlightenment. From that moment on, the process of realisation that was at work in him became irreversible; he was destined to became a realised soul; one who knows and rests inseparably in the oneness of awareness; one in whom the background has become the foreground, and the foreground the background; one who no longer suffers in their suffering; one who knows the ultimate nature of mind.
It seems he found a confirmation in this text of a way of seeing and being and knowing that was perhaps already familiar to him. The significance of this way of seeing was suddenly made clear for him. The idea that the field of awareness in which thought arises is ultimately a “nowhere” empty of egoic self-nature, resonated with his experience, and in fully acknowledging the importance of this, he would have realised also, that paradoxically this nowhere place of awareness itself, is the only place of true objectivity, the only basis for truly objective observation of self, and other, and world. The impression given is that from this moment of confirmation onward, he understood this truth with such penetrating clarity, that in all the many challenges of his life from that point on, he never returned from that peaceful knowing.
Enlightenment: Sudden or Gradual?
Hui Neng is usually identified in the minds of students of Buddhism, with the idea of ‘sudden’ as opposed to ‘gradual’ awakening, and in his later life as an enlightened teacher he appears to have been something of a champion of an approach that is best characterised as ‘direct’ rather than ‘sudden’. It is instructive to notice that the story of his enlightenment, although it shows this directness, can also be seen as gradual process with several distinct stages of deepening, surrender, and learning; a process in which he was coming more and more fully into alignment with his original realisation.
Hui Neng’s story becomes more accessible to us if we acknowledge that he was undergoing a process. There is even a danger that we distance ourselves from him and his experience if we over-idealise his experience and place this ‘sudden’ realisation through direct engagement with the nature of mind, outside of the realm of possibilities for ourselves. If we fail to feel the resonance of his experience in our own moments of knowing, we are refusing the gift in the story.
The power of Hui Neng’s influence on the China of his day lay in his ordinariness. He had no education, but rather than this being an obstacle, for him it was a blessing. He had the innocence and openness of mind that in Zen tradition has called ‘Beginners Mind’, and this allowed him to enter the mystery, when others could not. He was like Parsival, the ‘fool’, the pure uncultivated Arthurian knight who is the one who finds the Holy Grail when all others have failed.
A Spiritual Friendship
Whatever else it was, this meeting with the man in the market place was for Hui Neng a meeting with his destiny, the moment of his entry into his true identity and path in life. It was also a point of no return, a point of no falling back. From here on in, he was in the gravitational force field of enlightenment. We can imagine perhaps a powerful purifying peace descending over him like a gentle cascade. We can imagine perhaps a benign and radiant quality in his presence. We can imagine the completeness of his relatedness, the sparkle in his eyes, and the intimacy and mutual gratitude in his connection with this passionate lay student of Buddhism, but please let’s not distance ourselves from this experience. We all have these moments of innocent receptivity that can change our lives forever if we let them.
Clearly the discussion that followed made a huge impact on the man who had been reciting the text. I imagine him as a prosperous, scholarly, and richly-dressed man with a deep love the Buddha Dharma; a man who could read and write, and probably owned copies of the Buddhist texts. He is perhaps a man who has been deeply affected by the missionary spirit of Mahayana Buddhism, and filled with the passionate wish to spread the Buddha’s teachings; a man who has made inspiring visits to a far away Buddhist monastery, and returned determined to create a community of students and practitioners in his home town. I see him immediately compelled to invite Hui Neng the poor woodcutter to come to his home many times over the following days and weeks, to have tea with him, and perhaps to read together and to talk about the teachings he had received.
We can imagine this man’s growing excitement and perplexity as the illiterate Hui Neng in his rough and dirty peasant clothes consistently shows complete understanding of the strange and wonderful texts that he has been studying, and appears to show the qualities of a Buddha in aspects of his manner, communication and presence. We can also imagine the profound effect of these meetings on Hui Neng, as he recognises his innate kinship with this mysterious and wonderful spiritual tradition from India. His new friend would have explained the central Mahayana ideal, the ideal of the Bodhisattva, the being who lives for the wellbeing and salvation of all beings, and Hui Neng would have recognised that motivation as the guiding purpose in his own heart.
Hui Neng’s Journey North
In the text, all we are told is that this man enthusiastically urged, and subsequently sponsored, Hui Neng to travel north to visit master Hung Jen, the Fifth Patriarch, at the Huang Mei monastery, providing both money for his journey and his maintenance there, and ongoing financial support for his mother while he was away. But I cannot help but see them as deep spiritual friends, each profoundly affected by the other, each feeling deep appreciation for the other, and each fully connected with the others needs, each intent on supporting the other; and both fully aware that the ultimate purpose of the their friendship was to serve the greatest good of all.
The journey to the monastery took Hui Neng thirty days. It is probably fair to assume that Hui Neng has never before travelled more than a few days journey from his home town, so this would have been a time of great expansion and deepening for him on many levels. We can imagine him learning much about the world along the way, and reflecting deeply on what he saw. In a sense this was the time of his ‘going forth’, the time of his life in which, having recognised his destiny, having been blessed with an intuitive knowledge of his way forward, and the resources he needs, he responds completely to the calling, and throws himself forward into a new life. Each new day on this journey would have brought new challenges and new fears and new witness of suffering. And each challenge faced would have brought new knowledge and confidence. And each new fear faced would have brought new trust in life. And each new witness of suffering would have brought new depths of compassion.
“Buddhahood and Nothing Else!”
It seems that Hui Neng arrives at the end of his journey in a state of utterly single minded spiritual purpose, and on meeting Hung Jen the Abbot of the monastery, he boldly states that his interest is in the complete realisation of Buddhahood in this life “and nothing else!”. The tradition gives a very much distilled account of Hui Neng’s interview with Hung Jen, the enlightened Fifth Patriarch of the tradition. My instinct tells me that Hung Jen would have almost immediately recognised the high level of Hui Neng’s realisation. It must have been a profoundly affecting meeting for both of them. We can imagine Hung Jen testing Hui Neng’s realisation in various ways and each time finding his original instinct confirmed.
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The text tells us that a key theme of their conversation was that Hung Jen was concerned about how Hui Neng, an illiterate ‘barbarian’ from the agricultural south, would be received within the refined and educated culture of this monastery in the north. The fact that he cannot read is, it seems, regarded as an overwhelming practical obstacle, as the locals appear to feel nothing but extreme disdain towards the country bumpkins from the south. We can also assume that a very different dialect of Chinese was being spoken in the monastery, than that which Hui Neng had grown up speaking in the south.
A Meeting of Minds
One of the ways Hung Jen tests Hui Neng is to ask him directly how he thinks he is going to participate in the life of the monastery and gain realisation if he is cannot even read. Hui Neng’s response, as recorded by the tradition, is very clear:
“Although there are northern men and southern men, north and south make no difference to their Buddha-nature. A barbarian is different from Your Holiness physically, but there is no difference in our Buddha-nature.”
If Hung Jen was not already convinced of Hui Neng’s realisation, it seems that the conversation paraphrased in these lines was more than enough to eliminate all doubt. He would have recognised that Hui Neng was stating an absolutely fundamental spiritual truth, and was speaking not from learning or egalitarian idealism, but directly from his realisation; directly from his complete familiarity with the one mind of awareness in which all beings rest equally. Both men knew that the unitary field of awareness in which everything arises, is equal and even throughout the infinity of space. They both knew that all human beings participate inseparably in this radical and sacred equality, despite their apparent differences.
Both men also knew that almost all human cultures either ignore or actively reject this foundational insight and principle. More even than this, it is probable that both knew that the egoic mental habit of judging people as better or worse, worthy or less worthy, more or less able, or more or less enlightened, is nowhere more rife than in a monastery.
The Patriarch’s Dilemma
At one level, the situation that Hung Jen found himself in was very simple and beautiful: a precious moment of connection such as he perhaps has not experienced since the passing of the previous Patriarch. We can imagine them gazing into each other’s eyes and feeling acknowledged in a new and perhaps unfamiliar way – another lovely moment of spiritual friendship. We can even imagine feelings of celebration and delight – even of relief – in the Fifth Patriach, as he recognises that his teaching efforts have borne fruit in an unexpected way; that Hui Neng appears to have gained realisation outside of the Buddhist community, but has recognised the Chinese Zen tradition as their spiritual home and vocation; and that even if no-one else realises the one mind in that generation, Hung Jen has at last found someone who might be able to keep the lineage alive when he dies.
However, it is clear that Hung Jen has been presented with a difficulty. Hui Neng was presenting him with the dilemma that faces all men in positions of religious authority in one way or another. As Abbot of the monastery he was running an inherently hierarchical organisation that has a need to honour the commitment of its senior members. He also needs to honour the committed laity, especially the wealthy laity, that were supporting the monastery financially. There was a pragmatic and even political dimension to his role. His greatest need, the guiding purpose of his life, was to live and communicate his own realisation, to keep the tradition truly alive and grounded in the actual experience of enlightenment. However he also needed to keep the tradition and its teaching program progressing and running smoothly in the cultural context of Chinese society at that time.
He also needed to acknowledge that in a monastery there are many levels of development happening that all serve to support the overall goal of the transmission of the experience of enlightenment. There is wide range of skills, knowledge and personality development happening, which is also necessary, and also highly valued.
A Temporary Solution
More even than this, Hung Jen appears to have been very much afraid of the jealous rage and the possibility of actual physical violence, which might be stirred up if Hui Neng’s realisation was to be publicly acknowledged. As horrific a reflection as it may seem upon the political dynamics of life in a Buddhist monastery in seventh century China, it has to be said that Hung Jen was actually afraid that this wonderful young man from the south might be murdered, and immediately made the protection of Hui Neng’s life his highest priority.
We are told that they had to cut their meeting short due to the presence of other disciples, so Hung Jen had to make a decision on the spur of the moment. His solution was radical. It seems he decided that the safest option was to do nothing, at least for the time being; to make no acknowledgement of Hui Neng’s realisation to anyone in the monastery; to have no further contact with him; to ask him to remain silent as much as possible; and to ask him not to attend the teaching sessions or make any show of his knowledge. He admitted him to the monastery in the most junior role, working in the kitchens and stables with lay members of the monastic community. It appears he had no doubt that Hui Neng would understand and completely accept the situation, such was the recognition that had passed between them during their brief meeting on that first day.
It was eight months before they met again, and even then it was only the briefest exchange of reassurances, of deep respect, and of acknowledgement that each understood the others mind.
Hui Neng works in the Monastery Kitchens
The image of Hui Neng working with the support staff in the yards, stables, kitchens and vegetable gardens of the monastery is a very beautiful and thought provoking one. We can imagine that for the most part he would feel very much at home in the culture of that community, content to observe and learn and to allow any need for recognition that he might have had, to simply be unmet – ultimately he certainly had no need for external recognition.
He must have been a source of some perplexity to his workmates, but I would like to think that he earned their acceptance and respect. I imagine that he was always clear and objective and thoughtful, but very simple and without intellectual ambition; always practical, efficient and effective, but totally without pride; always kind, empathetic and warmly present, but totally without affectation; always motivated; and always in the flow. We can also imagine him reflecting in private moments; wondering, presumably without anxiety, about what the outcome of this situation might be; perhaps developing a critical perspective about the way the monastery was organised, but always content to let his needs be unmet, and to respect the judgement and authority of Hung Jen.
The presence of Hui Neng in the monastery must have been troubling for Hung Jen. How could it be that this commoner from the backwoods has gained such complete clarity of understanding while his students who have been studying the great texts for many years have not? Why is it that the efforts of his monks were not bearing fruit? Why was it so difficult to pass on his realisation to these men who were trying so hard to learn? His students are such well-educated intelligent men. Several of them would have such a natural authority if they were to take over the Patriarchate. Why then could they not grasp the essence of the teachings? We can imagine Hung Jen redoubling his teaching efforts and trying to find new ways of helping his students to go beyond their book knowledge and their relative stillness of mind, and to achieve actual liberation.
The Patriarch’s Poetry Challenge
The next episode of the story is the famous one in which, we a told, Hung Jen gives a discourse to all his disciples in which he urges them passionately to engage in meditative inquiry so as to realise the ultimate nature of mind and free themselves from the endless cycle of rebirth. He then challenges each one of them to look into their own experience of the nature of mind, and to quickly write a short four line verse or ‘gatha’ expressing their own inner knowing of the ultimate truth. He makes it clear that he intends this to be a test of the degree of their realisation, and explains that the monk who is able to show that they really understand the ultimate nature of mind will receive the transmission of the lineage and will become the 6th Patriarch. We can imagine perhaps that Hung Jen, mindful of Hui Neng working in the kitchens and unable to think of a satisfactory way to resolve the situation, would dearly love to see evidence that one of his learned and literate disciples was also able to see the truth and express their realisation clearly.
Since the monastery already has a senior instructor and teacher called Shen Xiu, who is acknowledged by all as the senior-most monk after the Abbott, all the junior monks we are told, decide not to bother even trying to do the inquiry and write the verse. They rationalise that it is more respectful to simply wait to see what their instructor Shen Xiu comes up with. Clearly the process of psychological projection; the habitual assumptions; and the hierarchical thinking in the monastery is profoundly undermining the monks’ ability to take personal responsibility for their spiritual process.
Shen Xiu’s Conflict and Struggle
Shen Xiu is also burdened by his role in the hierarchy. The text describes in detail how the decision of the junior monks not to engage puts a lot of pressure on him, and throws him into painful internal conflict. Knowing that he is the only one who will be submitting a verse, and also knowing very well that although he is very learned, he has not yet realised the ultimate nature of mind, he becomes anxiously preoccupied with how his gatha will be received by the Patriarch and by the monks. It appears that when Shen Xiu tries to write a gatha, he writes and rewrites it many times, but is unhappy even with his best effort. We are told that after trying to find the courage to face the Abbot with it no less than thirteen times over the course of the next four days, he gives up and decides to write it on a section of wall inside the monastery that had recently been prepared for the painting of a mural and would soon be painted over. He writes his verse at midnight making sure that no one sees him.
The translations of the original Chinese characters into English are many and varied, but the following is probably fairly close to what Shen Xiu wrote:
Shen Xiu’s Gatha
The body is like the Bodhi Tree
The mind like a bright mirror on a stand
Time and again polish is diligently
To keep it uncontaminated by dust
It is easy to see why Shen Xiu has become the main teacher at the monastery under Hung Jen. He beautifully and poetically expresses the main preoccupations of a monk: the need for discipline and unrelenting effort to control and purify the mind by maintaining mental states that are calm and positive, and focused and undistracted. There is poetry in his expression. From a certain point of view, the body is indeed like the Bodhi Tree, the place of the Buddha’s enlightenment. And the mirror is a wonderful metaphor for the mind. We sense that he half remembers a teaching in which Hung Jen was pointing to the nature the mind using the metaphorical image of a mirror. He is trying to grasp the meaning of what he has heard, but cannot quite capture it.
Full Marks for Effort
We can imagine that Hung Jen, the abbot and Patriarch, who has be waiting for four days for Shen Xiu’s gatha, has a very clear intuitive sense of what Shen Xiu has been going through. When he discovers the gatha on the wall the next day he almost certainly knows immediately who the author is, and can see that it does not express an understanding of the ultimate nature of mind, but it seems that his response gives no indication of disappointment whatsoever. He cancels the plan for the mural painting, which was to have been of beautiful inspiring scenes from one of the great Mahayana sutras, and praises the verse very highly. He makes it known that it contains very important truths about living a good life and purifying karma. Far from expressing disappointment, he states that anyone practicing this teaching will be saved from the misery of being born in ‘the evil realms of existence’. (As I will be discussing later in this book, there are in Buddhist cosmology six possible realms, or places of rebirth, four of which are regarded as very unfortunate.) He invites all of his monks to give honour to the gatha by burning incense in front of it, by learning it, reciting it, and putting the principles it contains into practice.
That night Hung Jen secretly meets with Shen Xiu, and asks him if he is the author of the gatha. Shen Xiu somewhat nervously acknowledges that it is, and asks Hung Jen for his honest opinion of it. Hung Jen responds kindly. He explains to Shen Xiu that he has reached the door of enlightenment, but has not yet entered it, and then spends time guiding him in self-inquiry and trying to point him beyond thought to the objective mind, the field of awareness in which thought arises. He then urges Shen Xiu to look within once again and to try to come up with another gatha that expresses the core insight that they have talked about. Again Hung Jen promises Shen Xiu that the Patriarchate will be passed to him if he can show that he is ready, and once again Shen Xiu finds himself tormented, unable come up with anything better.
The Meeting of Abbot and Senior Monk
The image of this meeting between Hung Jen and Shen Xiu is in some ways extremely touching. Clearly Hung Jen has feelings of great love, respect, gratitude, and appreciation for Shen Xiu, his favourite and most devoted student. They have a deep bond of friendship, an affection that is mutual. Although they are on different spiritual levels, they are co-workers, they share a vision: a vision of a developing a Buddhist culture in China; and a vision of salvation, of helping the men and women of China to find the peace of realisation – the end of suffering. There is no doubt that Hung Jen would very much love to be able to pass the robe and bowl, the symbols of the Patriarchate, to Shen Xiu.
Reflecting on this meeting between enlightened master and unenlightened senior student, a student of the Buddhist tradition cannot help but think of the Buddha’s relationship with Ananda, his student and personal companion throughout his years of teaching. Like Shen Xiu, Ananda was a brilliant student with a kind heart, a truly remarkable memory, and a very keen sense of the cultural and historical importance of the teachings and of the tradition, but he was unable to gain enlightenment while the Buddha was alive. It was only after Gautama’s death that Ananda found the Buddha within.
Because members of the community have taken seriously Hung Jen’s invitation to learn and recite Shen Xiu’s gatha, Hui Neng gets to hear it being recited by a boy who is a lay member of the community and a member of the kitchen staff like himself. Hui Neng realises immediately that the author of the gatha is not enlightened and asks the boy who composed it. The boy explains the whole story of the Abbot’s challenge to the monks, and the gatha that was written on the wall, and the praise that Hung Jen had heaped on it, and agrees to take Hui Neng to see the wall where the gatha is written.
So we have the curious image of the illiterate Hui Neng standing before the four rows of Chinese characters that he cannot read, reciting to himself the words he has heard, and reflecting deeply upon them. He knows very well that they do not express the ultimate nature of mind, but he also knows that they have been highly praised by Hung Jen. I sense there may have been a very important process of integration and learning for him in this. He would have recognised and acknowledged that Hung Jen was praising the important relative truths in this gatha, truths that bring improvement to the human condition and prevent rebirth in the worst realms, even though the original challenge had been to express something of absolute truth, the knowledge of the ultimate nature of mind that brings complete liberation.
We cannot help but bring to mind Hui Neng’s first meeting with the Patriarch, when he declared that he wanted “Buddhahood and nothing else!”. I believe Hui Neng comes to an even greater understanding of, and respect for the mind of Hung Jen as he contemplates the gatha and Hung Jen’s response to it. In his affirmation of the gatha Hung Jen brings home to him that the Buddhist tradition is not concerned only with Buddhahood “and nothing else!” On the contrary it embraces the totality; everything is included; everything is valued; everything has meaning; and everything is loved.
The Inclusivity of the Bodhisattva’s Task
Even though the Bodhisattva is primarily concerned with liberation; with the absolute salvation of all beings; with going beyond all conditions, he is also inherently and passionately motivated to simply meet human needs and alleviate suffering on a relative level, on the level of conditioned existence. The Bodhisattva engages with all aspects of human life and culture without exception. His passion is to make life more wonderful in whatever way he can. Nothing relative is excluded, but the absolute liberation that springs from knowledge of ultimate nature of mind, from the one mind, from awareness itself, is his central concern, his highest purpose, and his greatest joy.
I imagine Hui Neng kneeling in honour and obeisance before the gatha on the wall, and feeling a great love not only for his master Hung Jen, but also perhaps for the senior teacher Shen Xiu. It would be easy to dismiss Shen Xiu as being preoccupied with the achievement of only relative goals: relative tranquility, relative wisdom, relative happiness, relative compassion and relative purification. But ultimately, perhaps this is not true, since it is the energy of the absolute arising in each heart that motivates these relative goals. As Hui Neng recites and reflects, I believe he comes to recognise clearly, that although it is sometimes helpful or necessary to acknowledge the two apparent levels of truth on the spiritual path, ultimately they are not separate, and both are valid. With this insight, he knows in his heart that all those who sincerely teach the Buddha Dharma are worthy of deep respect and gratitude – enlightened or not.
We can imagine the illiterate Hui Neng standing before the writing on the wall, continuing to contemplate and turning Shen Xiu’s gatha images over in his mind, and trying to figure out the characters. We can imagine him being highly motivated to learn to read. I imagine that Shen Xiu’s gatha is on the left side of the panel of wall that has been prepared for the mural, and that there is space next to it that is calling out to be written on with another gatha that would provide a counterpoint and a clarification to the first. We can imagine Hui Neng wishing he could write, wishing he could communicate his clarifying understanding, which he is convinced will help the monks in their practice. It is of great value for us to fantasise about what Hui Neng might have been thinking. Once again, let’s not distance ourselves from him. Rather let’s allow ourselves to join him in his reflection and his self-inquiry.
The body is the Bodhi Tree
We can perhaps imagine Hui Neng reflecting on the first line of Shen Xiu’s gatha:
‘Yes, the body is indeed like the Bodhi Tree, the place of the Buddha’s enlightenment. And the commitment to meditation practice, the commitment to allowing the body to be still like a tree is important. The stillness of the body and the stillness of the mind as we take moments of rest, moments for meditative inquiry, is very helpful indeed. It allows us to notice awareness itself, and to notice its qualities. Awareness is always still. Awareness is always still and benevolently present like the beautiful tree that provided the Buddha with shade on that final day. Awareness is still even when the body is moving. Awareness is imperturbable, unaffected by the movement of thought. It is always there, still and present, and all-embracing, even when we move and think and go about our business. If a person stops moving and sits still, and lets the mind become quiet for a moment, they will notice that the one mind of awareness is always there wherever they are, and whatever they are doing. Awareness is everywhere. There is no special place where enlightenment is more or less, stronger or weaker. Awareness is equal and even throughout infinite space and time. The one mind of Bodhi, the one mind of Enlightenment, needs no tree. It has no location whatsoever. There are no conditions for it. Bodhi does not even require the stillness of a good meditation posture that is solid and strong like a tree. Actually it’s the other way round. Resting in the ultimate stillness of awareness it what allows the body to become still and peaceful and relaxed. Resting as awareness allows the body and mind to become imperturbable and benevolently present like the Bodhi tree. The Body is the Bodhi tree is a beautiful metaphor, but it could be confusing. The one mind of awareness itself cannot be located. It has, and needs, no location. If I were to write a gatha, I am afraid I would have to say something like Bodhi is not a tree or better still:
Bodhi needs no tree.’
The mind a bright mirror on a stand
Once again let’s imagine Hui Neng reflecting on Shen Xiu’s gatha:
‘Yes, a bright mirror is an excellent metaphor for the mind. Clarity of mind is indeed like a bright mirror. And the stand is like the meditator sitting with a good straight meditation posture. The stand is also perhaps an image of uprightness and nobility of conduct. The discipline of acting ethically and with generosity can indeed lead to a clear calm mind if they are performed without pride and identification. However, the ultimate basis of a clear calm mind is the imperturbable clarity of awareness itself. And ethical action comes naturally to one who has learnt to rest in the one mind of awareness. Ethical and generous actions of body, speech and mind, are beautiful and bring happiness, because they bring us into alignment with our true nature, but only complete familiarity with our true nature will bring liberation.’
‘The mind is like a mirror because the images in a mirror do not stick to its bright surface. When the meditator contemplates the mind of awareness itself rather than just the fleeting contents of the mind, the thoughts that arise and pass away, he sees that awareness is indeed mirror-like and bright. Indeed the one mind of awareness is always luminous and shines with a kindly non-judgemental light on all thoughts whatsoever. Awareness just sees things as they are. It does not want to change the thoughts that arise. It is accepting.’
‘Spiritual transformation is a question of emphasis, a question of where we choose to place our attention. If I were teaching meditation I would advise the monks to give their attention to the mirror-like quality of awareness itself, rather than to it mental contents. This change of emphasis alone is enough to purify the mind, since awareness is purity itself. No thoughts can ever stain its mirror-like purity and brightness. The meditator does not need to judge his thoughts and control his mind. He only needs to become familiar with the mirror-like Awareness in which the thoughts arise. As he learns to rest as the one mind of awareness, he will see the conditioned nature of his thoughts. He will notice that they are only points of view, just thoughts conditioned by his experience, and his identification with them will fall away.’
‘When men and women emphasise the contents of the mind, and only glance in the mirror of the one mind of awareness, they glimpse its brightness and take that to be the source of a personal self that is completely separate. Then they take the thoughts that arise in the mind to be ‘my’ thoughts. Both the glanced reflection in the mirror of mind, and the thoughts that arise there, are each taken as confirmation of separate self-hood. When however, in meditative inquiry we look more carefully into this mirror of the mind we find no self. Both the one mind of awareness, and the thoughts that arise in it, are completely without self-nature.’
‘One who has gained familiarity with the one mind of awareness develops a reflective mirror-like intelligence. When judgements arise in him, he reflects on them. He does not speak them or act on them, but notices that they are just conditioned points of view, just the momentum and reactivity of his mind. When he is familiar with the one mind of awareness he becomes capable of true objectivity, and thinks in a completely new way that is not self-referencing.’
‘Shen Xiu has written ‘The mind is a bright mirror on a stand’. If I were to the write a gatha, I would want to write a counterpoint to that which emphasises the fact that the mirror-like mind of Awareness itself has no conditions whatsoever. If I could write I would like to say:
The bright mirror has no stand.’
Time and again polish is diligently
This is the third line of the Shen Xiu’s gatha. Once again let us imagine Hui Neng’s thoughts:
‘Shen Xiu is correct in his understanding that to create a way of life and a way of being that is in alignment with the highest good, it is necessary to be vigilant, to take action, to apply effort, to ascertain and cultivate what is positive at all times. But ultimately the opposite is also true. One who gains deep familiarity, through meditative inquiry, with the ultimate nature of mind, with the mirror-like purity of awareness itself, eventually learns to rest instinctively in that. Since the imperturbable mirror-like clarity of the one mind of awareness is our ultimate true nature, it inevitable becomes completely natural and effortless for us to rest in that peace, if we regularly choose to do so in meditation and in daily life.’
‘If I was writing a gatha in response to Hung Jen’s challenge to point to the ultimate nature of mind and to the path of complete liberation, I would want to emphasise this paradox. Although effort and diligence is often appropriate, the one mind of awareness itself needs no polishing to keep it shining brightly. It is stainless by nature: originally, essentially and primordially pure and clean. If I could write a line that is a statement about the nature of the bright mirror of awareness, I would say simply:
It is originally pure and clean’
To keep it uncontaminated by dust
This is the fourth and final line of Shen Xiu’s gatha. Let’s image what Hui Neng might have thought about it once again:
‘I feel compassion for Shen Xiu and his monks. It takes so much effort for them to maintain their practice and their commitment to the monastic life. Until we have learnt to rest in the clarity and purity of awareness itself, the mind always appears to be filled with conflicts and unwanted thoughts. These thoughts appear to be like worldly ‘dust’ that always accumulates on the surface of the monk’s mind despite his best efforts. It is natural that a monk would want remove this mental ‘dust’ with even more relentless effort to purify the mind of these unwanted contents, but ultimately peace is only possible by a change of emphasis and attention. There is a danger that the struggle to remove the dust of unwanted thoughts becomes habitual, and the ultimate source of peace of mind is forgotten.
If I was writing a gatha I would what to try to remind the monks that it is necessary and sufficient that they choose to become deeply familiar with the inherent stainless clarity of awareness itself. If they choose to give their attention to that, so that their attention is balanced between awareness itself and that which is arising in awareness and inseparable from it, their mind will naturally becomes clear. The one mind of awareness itself requires no cleaning. Because it is primordially pure, stainless, and empty of self-nature, it is always entirely unaffected by the contents of mind that arise within it. Awareness is imperturbable and indestructible. It can no more be affected by thoughts than a mirror can be affected by the reflected images that move across it. For the fourth line of my gatha, if I could write, I would say:
Where then could dust collect?‘
The Two Gathas
The text tells us that another man joins Hui Neng at the wall where Shen Xiu’s gatha is inscribed. It appears that he is a visitor to the monastery from some distance away. We are told that he is an official from Jiang Zhou province by the name of Zhang Ri Yong. Hui Neng would have recognised him by his dress as one who could read and write. It appears that the two men, though of very different social class, stuck up a rapport and talked together about the words and meanings of Shen Xiu’s gatha. First, Zhang Ri Yong read the gatha to Hui Neng and helped him understand the characters, and then Hui Neng managed to persuade him to write the gatha that he had composed on the wall next to that of Shen Xiu. So the two gathas written side by side must have expressed something close to the following in their meaning:
Shen Xiu’s GathaHui Neng’s Gatha
The body is the Bodhi Tree Bodhi needs no tree
The mind is a bright mirror on a stand The bright mirror has no stand
Time and again polish is diligently It is originally pure and clean
To keep it uncontaminated by dust Where then could dust collect?
So Hui Neng while adhering to Hung Jen’s request that he should not talk to other members of the community, has ultimately not been able to completely hide his realisation. His compassionate impulse to bring clarity where there was confusion, has brought the attention to Hui Neng that Hung Jen had been trying to avoid. The clarity of his insight is now evident in the writing on the wall, which immediately causes quite a stir in the monastery. As soon as Hung Jen sees the second gatha on the wall next to Shen Xiu’s, he recognises the wisdom in it and knows it to be composed by Hui Neng, but fearing a violent attack on Hui Neng motivated by jealousy and envy, he immediately attempts to erase it with his shoe, and is disparaging and dismissive about it. Intent on protecting Hui Neng, he makes it known that he thinks the second gatha to be the work of one who has also not yet realised the ultimate nature of mind
These two gathas viewed side by side in this way speak volumes not only about the Chan Buddhist tradition at that time and about the Buddhist tradition in general. They present an eternal philosophical question, a perennial starting point for inquiry for all spiritual students and for all spiritual communities. History has shown that the world view and emphasis represented by Shen Xiu’s gatha tends to come to dominate the philosophy and practice in almost all religions and spiritual traditions, whereas the Hui Neng’s gatha represents that insight which originally initiates or brings renewal to these traditions.
We are told that although he had publicly dismissed Hui Neng’s gatha, Hung Jen finds a way of connecting with Hui Neng, by coming to the kitchens where he is working. By communicating together in the language of the kitchen they manage, without anyone else knowing, to arrange a late night meeting.
A Secret Meeting – Late at Night
This late night meeting must have been extraordinary for both of them. Hui Neng describes it in some detail in his autobiographical talk. They may only have had one or two hours together and Hui Neng clearly still treasures the memory many years later. It is a moment in the story for us to treasure also. At the meeting Hung Jen expounds the Diamond Sutra and a particular line in the text makes a huge impact on Hui Neng.
“One should use one’s mind in such a way that it will be free from any attachment,”
This statement unfolds yet another dimension of the theme that has already been expressed in a very profound way in Hui Neng’s gatha. It is another way of talking about the mirror-like nature of awareness and of the beauty of honesty and objective truth; of thought that is completely fair and balanced and not biased by either conscious or unconscious self-reference. Interestingly it talks of objectivity as a way of ‘using’ the mind that becomes possible when we are free from egoic identification with thoughts, feelings and experiences; from any attachment to any particular way of seeing the world. Those that rest as the one mind of awareness, are able to ‘use’ their minds consciously and skillfully in the work of creation. Those that have no familiarity with the one mind of awareness, have no freedom from attachment; have no place of rest; have little or no capacity for objectivity; and are completely subject to the reactivity of their minds and the suffering that their thoughts create.
On hearing that line in the text Hui Neng says he:
“became thoroughly enlightened, and realized that all things in the universe are the One Mind itself.”
This is a very profound statement indeed. This is not just an expression of his understanding of the text. An even deeper insight has arisen. In the moment that Hui Neng identifies as his final and complete realisation he sees that all things in the universe are the one mind itself; that everything that ever happens is a manifestation of the one mind of awareness.
The Patriarchate is passed to Hui Neng
We can imagine the two men gazing at each other with bright eyes in the lamp light, each finding various words and metaphors for their experience, and each feeling the deep joy in being fully understood by the other. It must have been a meeting filled with a sense of destiny and creative purpose as well as joy. Hung Jen was already an old man and in failing health. He now knew beyond a shadow of doubt that he must pass on the Patriarchate to Hui Neng that very night, and then help him to flee to the south to escape jealousy, persecution and quite possibly murder. It seems that since their brief meeting when Hui Neng first arrived at the monastery Hung Jen had come to an understanding that Hui Neng would be able to take the Dharma to a whole new constituency. Being a native of the south he knew the dialect of that region.
While Hung Jen clearly understood that Hui Neng was going to become a very different teacher from himself, he would also have been full of advice. The text gives us only hints as to the content of their conversation.
William Parker 2018
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This is Post 24 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series.
In order to understand meditation fully, an understanding of the way our psychology manifests somatically or energetically in the field of the body is essential. We especially need to understand the way in which female and male spiritual character manifests somatically. These are things that are extremely poorly understood, given their great importance as key factors that govern the level of harmony and fulfilment that we experience in sexual relationships. They appear to be difficult to consciously acknowledge and talk about, even though we are all very keenly aware of them.
This is perhaps partly because these phenomena are so difficult to conceptualise. The great Carl Jung, who developed a very sophisticated understanding of the way archetypal, or transpersonal, psychic forces shape male and female psychological character, also understood that the archetypal psychology of sexual difference manifests somatically – in the subtle energies of the body. He theorised that there was an energetic patterning of the body, or somatic unconscious, that shapes our psychology in a similar way to the archetypes of the collective psychic unconscious. Whereas the archetypes of the collective unconscious show themselves in our myths, stories, dreams, and movies, the energies of somatic unconscious can be felt in the body as energetic dynamics and states.
Our ability to know ourselves, and to function with psychological freedom and integrity, is closely related to our capacity to fully acknowledge this bodily-felt dimension of the inner world. Our engagement with the somatic dimension takes us to core of the human mystery – and to the core of how human beings embody Consciousness, or fail to do so.
The Qualia of Embodiment
In connection with the yellow Southern Quadrant of the mandala and the brahmavihāra of muditā, or Appreciative Joy, it is helpful to acknowledge that the experience of ‘Embodiment’ that we have been addressing is a ‘qualia’. The qualia are the difficult-to-define subjectively experienced phenomena that occur in connection with Consciousness. As a way of finding alignment at the beginning of a meditation session, try just taking a few moments to notice your experience of ‘Embodiment’. You are likely to find that when you look in your experience for ‘Embodiment’, you will find yourself being pointed to the experience of Consciousness. You will have a similar experience when you look for the experience of ‘Being’, which names another key qualia. Continue reading
This is Post 19 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series.
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 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 calls 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 much better translation. While I used to be 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 essence as mahamuditā, or Great Appreciative Joy, is a cosmic principle – an attitude of Consciousness itself. Continue reading