#Qualia

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 3: The Body

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

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

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 1: Thinking and Wisdom

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

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 4: Mindfulness and Emptiness

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 5: Dharma and Truth

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 6: Consciousness and Qualia

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 7: The Heart Sutra

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 8: Consciousness and Qualia

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 9: Equanimity and Being

Bringing Awareness ‘Into the Body’

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

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

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

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

June 6, 2020

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

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

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

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 1: Thinking and Wisdom

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

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 3: The Body

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 4: Mindfulness and Emptiness

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 5: Dharma and Truth

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 6: Consciousness and Qualia

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 7: The Heart Sutra

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 8: Consciousness and Qualia

The Rūpa Skandha – Part 9: Equanimity and Being

Objectivity, Clarity, Equanimity and Being

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

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

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

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

Vajrasattva-Akshobhya and Buddhalocanā

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

May 21, 2020

The Ten Archetypal Buddhas of the Mandala – Part 4: Integration and Positive Emotion

This article is the fourth of fifteen articles inspired by 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 Dharmadātu 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; you can read the previous article in the series here; and brief summaries of all the articles can be found here.

In this article, I make reference to the five-fold ‘System of Practice’, that has been used, within the Triratna Buddhist Community, as a framework for thinking about the dimensions of meditation practice and the Dharma life more generally. This model originally identified Integration, Positive Emotion, Spiritual Death (i.e. Insight), and Spiritual Rebirth, as four key stages. To these four, a fifth component – Receptivity – was later added as a new third stage. While I am in complete agreement regarding the importance of receptivity, I do not agree with the addition of it as an additional stage. In my own experience Receptivity is integral to the foundational Integration stage – and therefore to all the subsequent stages. The placement of Receptivity third in the series of five stages, does however reflect the reality that meditators generally come to an appreciation of the importance of Receptivity after they have been engaged with the goals of Integration and Positive Emotion for some time – and it is usually this reframing of meditation through an emphasis on Receptivity, that leads to the subsequent stages of Spiritual Death (Insight) and Spiritual Rebirth (Bodhicitta).

I need to acknowledge, and indeed emphasise, that where I have suggested in these articles that Receptivity should be given greater primacy, and have proposed that five of the ten deities are particularly supportive of the initial ‘Integration’ phase, and that the other five can strongly support us during the subsequent ‘Positive Emotion’ stage, this is an observation from my own explorations, and certainly goes beyond the standard interpretation of Sangharakshita’s model. I do not however, believe my suggestions are in conflict with Sangharakshita’s emphasis. I prefer to think of my ideas as a respectful engagement with his; as building on the foundation of his work; as affirming the value of his orginal four-fold model; and as a tentative contribution to the process by which the Triratna meditation practice model is being forged in the furnace of experience.

In this article, I hope I can begin to tentatively explore how the kleshas and Wisdom energies, that I spoke about in the last article in this series (here), are located in the fields of the body, and on how we can begin to ‘hold the tension’ between those opposite groups of energies – as they appear as polarities within our bodily-felt experience in meditation practice. Each quadrant of the mandala points to an opposition between an egoic manifestation on one side, and a mysterious transcendent aspect on the other – which we can think of an aspect of our true nature as embodied Consciousness. We need to hold the tension between these opposites. By being careful not to deny the reality of either pole, while paying special attention to the ever-present somatic resonance of the transcendent reality, we begin to heal, and move towards our goal. Mandalas are complex multi-dimensional images of the many and various inherent oppositions within the psyche – which are the obstacles to our integration. Each quadrant of the mandala therefore describes a tension to be held – a polarity to be reconciled – and each axis of the mandala describes a tension to be held and reconciled also.

The Dharmadhātu Mandala as a Ten-Fold Meditation Cycle

I prefer to meditate on the ten archetypal Buddhas, not only as five apparent ‘couples’ as in the ‘Inspiration-Prayer’ – with one male-female pair representing each of the Five Wisdoms – or as five female Buddhas and five male Buddhas. Rather, I meditate first on what I have come to think of as the five ‘receptive’ deities (three female Buddhas and two male ones), and then on the five ‘expansive’ deities (three male Buddhas and two female ones). The two diagrams below, show these two groups of five deities – each with the ‘Dharmic Principles’ that I find useful for identifying the aspect of the Five Wisdoms that they personify, represent, or embody.

In the course of the articles in this series, I shall be explaining the words that I have chosen for the ‘Dharmic Principles’ and expanding upon them. There are two of these ‘Dharmic Principles’ for each Wisdom – one for each of the ten archetypal Buddhas in the mandala. The eight ‘Dharmic principles’ that are shown in the four quadrants of the two mandala are either brahmavihāras (Equanimity, Appreciative Joy, Loving Kindness, and Compassion), or are closely related Dharmic principles, which I call Qualia (Being, Embodiment, Uncaused Happiness, and Life Energy). While the Five Wisdoms are usually defined as the aspects of wisdom that arise as the emptiness of each of the skandhas is recognised, I, like many others, regard the brahmavihāras as an equally important way in to an understanding of them – and absolutely key to our bodily-felt experience of the Wisdoms in meditation. In previous articles on this website, I have already written quite extensively on each of the brahmavihāras and their related Qualia, but will be systematically examining each one of these Dharmic principles as we progress in this series of articles.

May 16, 2020

The Beneficial Life Energy of Needs

This is Post 39 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series.

The four-fold archetypal psychology of the mandala invites us to distinguish the intuitive and volitional function, which Carl Jung called Intuition, and which I have been calling Intuition-Volition, from the evaluative function of Feeling. This distinction is enormously important, but is in general much neglected in modern psychology. The Cognitive Behavioural psychology that has been predominant in the last few decades, has usually chosen to reduce the person to the interaction of three components: thinking, behaviour and physiology – with each of these three components often rather narrowly understood.

Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow

Even the great Carl Rogers, who caused a revolution in the world of psychology, when he abandoned Psychoanalysis and created his Person-Centred model for therapeutic counselling, failed to adequately distinguish between the evaluative and volitional dimensions of our emotional life.

September 10, 2018

Consciousness, Meditation and the Four Qualia

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

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

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

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

Embodiment, the Physical Body, and Appreciative Joy

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

August 30, 2018

The Mandala of the Four Brahmavihāras

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

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

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

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

Why are the brahmavihāras not better known?

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

August 22, 2018

The Somatic Anatomy of the Energy Bodies

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

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

A Nested Hierarchy of Subtle Bodies

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

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

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

August 8, 2018

The Mandala and the Stupa

This is Post 35 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series.

Taking the mandala as our guide, I have been presenting the journey of self-enquiry into the nature of mind, as a four-fold one, and as a circumambulation of the mandala – a clockwise series of enquiries into Thinking (east), Sensation (south), Feeling (west), and now Intuition-Volition (north). There has been a traditional logic in this sequence, but in meditation practice there are many orders of priority that can be used, as we systematically progress our integration – or simply respond intuitively and spontaneously to the needs of our integration process.

In this post I shall be exploring, in conjunction with the symbolism and psychological dynamics of the mandala, the psychological symbolism of the stupa – the traditional symbolic monument that is seen in various forms across the Buddhist world. Much like the mandala, the stupa is a five-fold symbolic representation of an ideal state of psychological and spiritual integration. It is a very useful pointer to the nature of mind, because it brings us back to the enormous importance of the energy anatomy of the subtle bodies.

The Stupa – a Monument to the Experience of the Liberation

Whereas the mandala can perhaps be thought of as a larger symbol, which represents both Consciousness itself and also the tensions, or polarities, that exist within the egoic mind, the stupa represents the somatic embodiment, or reflection, or resonance, of Consciousness in the energetic fields of the body, in the so-called ‘subtle bodies’, and highlights the hierarchical dimension of the relationship between them – at the same time bringing a hierarchical dimension to the way we approach the corresponding brahmavihāras, and the egoic cognitive-perceptual functions (which Buddhist tradition calls the skandhas, as mentioned previously here). While different cultures have elaborated their symbolism in different ways, ultimately the stupas of the east are monuments that celebrate the profound mystery of the energetic embodiment of Consciousness in this world – in the lives of individual human beings.

Consciousness exists everywhere. Indeed it is because of Consciousness that life exists, and because of Consciousness that we are capable of knowing and experiencing life. Paradoxically however, although we are all resting in the field of Consciousness, very few of us have ‘recognised’ Consciousness and fully embraced the non-dual reality that pervades all experiencing. But it is only by deeply acknowledging Consciousness, and learning to ‘turn towards’, or ‘rest back into’ Consciousness, that we allow Consciousness to become energetically embodied in us. Continue reading

August 2, 2018

Nurturing an Authentic Self

This is Post 9 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series.

Having reflected on the insubstantiality of the egoic parts, I need, in this meditation blog series, to balance that understanding by at least touching on some other helpful concepts in regard to the tricky and paradoxical question of what it is to have, or be, or become a ‘self’ – one that is perhaps more affirmative. The nature of the human self and the processes by which it develops, or fails to develop, have challenged Psychology since its inception, and challenged our philosophers and spiritual thinkers for very much longer. Donald Winnicott, an innovative British psychoanalyst and writer, who had a passionate interest in the subtle role that parents, and especially mothers, play in the evolution of a child’s sense of self, put it this way:

“Every man or woman who is sane, every man or woman who has the feeling of being a person in the world, and for whom the world means something, every happy person, is in infinite debt to a woman.”

Donald Winnicott, Psychoanalyst and Writer

The largely unrecognised value, of the complex and powerful way in which a mother provides a mirror for her child’s emerging self, and provides a ‘facilitating environment’ through the mother-child bond, was the subject of Winnicott’s life’s work. He was not alone among the psychoanalytic thinkers in this. Jung, as always in my view, went further, recognising that the mother is an archetypal figure, and that the personal mother constellates an archetypal power in her relationship with the child. Characteristically, Jung also recognised that the mother archetype has two sides – and includes a dark side that may stand in the way of spiritual maturity.

May 19, 2017

Objectivity – Meditation and Thinking

This is Post 5 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series.

Meditation grounded in self-enquiry, of the sort I have been speaking about, is enormously supportive to the thinking function of the mind. Creativity requires thought, and high-level creativity requires high-level thinking. Collaborative thinking especially requires the capacity to think clearly and the capacity to express our thoughts with accuracy and integrity – but all these things spring from the illusive mental quality that we call objectivity.

Objectivity is illusive because it is a function of our relationship to Consciousness. We can choose to embrace objectivity as a value, and can train ourselves to some extent in the discipline of objective thinking, but this requires a systematic study of thought, language and logic, in the context of a study of Philosophy; and ideally a broad study of Thought itself. Only the very best high schools teach thinking (especially in France, I believe), but most do not, so this training is usually only available in the context of higher education institutions – but most of these are increasingly focused on vocational training for industry and commerce. Any training in objectivity will in any case be limited however, unless it is developed with reference to Consciousness, since Consciousness is the only objective observer.

Consciousness is Non-Computational

#Consciousness #Meditation — This image will post to social media if you choose to share this post.

To better grasp the distinctive and extraordinary thinking capabilities of human beings, it is helpful to compare human thinking with that of the logical processing of a computer, and to recognise how profoundly different it is. A computer can never develop the attitude that we call objectivity however powerful it may be – and it certainly cannot develop Consciousness. It can process logically, and even ‘learn’ by accumulating vast amounts of data according to its human programmers intentions, but it is incapable of reflecting on what it is doing. Because a computer cannot consciously observe its own thought processes in the way a human being can, it can never develop the sort of objectivity, or the sort of depth of understanding, that is so characteristic of high-level human reasoning. Continue reading

April 25, 2017