This article is the sixth 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.
Following on from my last article (here), there is much more that we need to explore in regard to the Dharmadhātu Wisdom. This is the Wisdom which is associated with the recognition of Consciousness, and with the centre of the mandala, and may be regarded as representing the source of the other four Wisdoms. Metaphorically, we can think of the relationship between the white centre of the Buddhist mandalas and its associated Dharmadhātu Wisdom, and the four colours of the quadrants – the other four Wisdoms – in a somewhat similar way to the way we might think of a source of pure white sunlight being split into the colours of the rainbow.
The Dharmadhātu Wisdom is the Wisdom that Buddhist tradition personifies in the figure of the archetypal Buddha Vairocana, the ‘Illuminator’, or more accurately in his female Buddha partner, the mysterious and powerful figure of Akashadhatvishvari (please see my note at the end of this article on the two different spellings of this name). Strictly speaking the male Buddha Vairocana represents the compassionate activities of wisdom teaching that arise from the experience or the Dharmadhātu Wisdom, whereas the female buddha Akashadhatvishvari personifies the Dharmadhātu Wisdom itself. The Sanskrit word ākāsha has a ring of profound mystery about it. It is akin to the quintessence, or ether, in western alchemical thought – the subtle, intelligent substance that pervades all space, and from which the other four elements are created. Perhaps the best modern equivalent would be something like ‘Quantum Space’ or ‘the Quantum Field’. Vibrant with energy and information, ākāsha is the primordial space of Consciousness that is the basis of everything. A reasonable English translation therefore, of Akashadhatvishvari, would be something like ‘Sovereign Lady of Infinite Space’.
Consciousness: Presence and Connection; Light and Space
I have previously talked of the Buddha couple in the centre of the mandala as personifications of Presence and Connection (here), which are the principles at the centre of my ‘NVC mandala’ (the four components in Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication model – more on that here), but these archetypal Buddhas are multidimensional figures, and are much more than this – indeed all conceptualisations in regard to them are only ways of drawing a little closer to an indefinable mystery. My first response personally, when I reflect on this central ‘divine marriage’ image and its traditional names and associations, is to think of them as representing the metaphorical union of Light and Space in the experience of Consciousness.
The experience of Consciousness, or awareness of being aware, is difficult to describe. The words and images that various spiritual traditions have used to approach that experience are often misleading – being religious projections rather than attempts at objective description. Buddhist tradition, especially that of the Indian Mahayana, whose libraries and culture were unfortunately destroyed by Moslem invasions, is clearly distinguishable from other religions by both its commitment to objectivity in its intellectual analysis, and by the subtlety of the myths, images and metaphors by which it points to the unconditioned reality of Consciousness. Central among these metaphorical pointers were Light and Space.
It is as if Consciousness is an ever-present light within – a bright inner luminosity that never fails us, but is rarely acknowledged or examined. It is the diamond in our pocket that we do not know about; the beautiful gift that has been delivered to us, never to be actually received and unwrapped. It is not surprising perhaps, that in general, humanity fails to recognise Consciousness. While Consciousness is an objective reality, it is not an object like any other, and neither is it the subjective personal self that we often take it to be. The Buddha described it as ’empty’ – empty of self. As the Buddhist tradition established itself over the centuries, it increasingly acknowledged that this impersonal emptiness was also luminous and spacious – still difficult metaphors, but they bring us closer to the experience. And the word shunyata, Sanskrit for Emptiness, came to have these extremely positive associations of luminosity and spaciousness – connoting an infinitely abundant collective source of all truth, goodness, healing and positive transformation.
This is Post 40 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series.
Consciousness is a phenomenon of the interface, the boundary, and the discontinuity, between the knowable world of Classical Physics, and the unknowable world of Quantum Mechanics. This interface pervades the universe as an infinite pure space that is an eternal present moment, and is equal and everywhere the same. It is also, at the same time, single – a unity. Mathematically it is a single point – a one point field.
The Classical world of matter is, quite literally, a beautiful illusion. Space and time are just relative phenomena, and matter is also just an appearance – an appearance on the surface of a universe that is mostly unknowable energy and information. Thankfully, the ephemeral perception that is our universe, is pervaded by the absolute reality of Consciousness. It is this animating power that makes it knowable, and makes it so beautiful. Without Consciousness, there would be no life, no meaning, no possibility of evolution, and no human self-conscious experience, with all its richness and relational complexity.
Consciousness and the present moment are inseparable phenomena. When we look out through the dense, ‘milky’ band of stars that is our own galaxy and glimpse the galaxies beyond, we are seeing the universe as it was many millions of years ago. The light by which we perceive some of those distant stars left them long before our own planet was even formed, and has been traversing the vast expanse of space for billions of years. It is a little disturbing to perceive that everything in the Classical world appears fundamentally disconnected and separated by time and space. In the simple human experience of Consciousness however, and in the experience of the present moment, the whole vast expanse is completely connected and unified – as Quantum Physics has also now shown us.
While these sorts of reflections may at first appear somewhat abstract, I hope to be able to show that they also have extremely practical implications. For those of us that aspire to express our deepest human potential – in ourselves, our relationships and our communities – there is enormous value in familiarising ourselves experientially with the more fundamental, non-dual level of reality in which we all rest, because it is such a rich source of psychological insights and personal transformation.
While this exploration of the Present Moment, Connectedness, and Consciousness, is associated with the intrapersonal path of meditation, it is also deeply relevant to our interpersonal lives. We need a high degree of familiarity with Presence, Connection and Consciousness if we are to communicate effectively in our relationships and communities. If we fail to acknowledge, and acknowledge deeply, the present moment of Consciousness in which we are already connected, we will be frustrated in our efforts to relate empathetically and collaborate effectively.
Living ‘in’ and ‘as’ the Life Energy of Consciousness
Knowing that the Classical world is just an appearance of subject-object perception, and that the Quantum world is unknowable, gives great importance to the mysterious boundary phenomenon that is Consciousness. Consciousness is the only thing that exists absolutely for us – that is reliable and ultimately trustworthy in our experience. Consciousness, to borrow a phase from the apostle Paul, is that in which we “live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28), and resting as Consciousness, through the practice of meditation and mindfulness, is our surest path to authenticity, integrity, and to knowing whatever may actually be known. Continue reading
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 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.
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
This is Post 32 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series.
In this ‘Meditation Guidance’ series, I have frequently drawn on the wisdom that Carl Jung articulated in his mandala-form psychological model of the ‘Four Functions of Consciousness’, and on the corresponding mandala of the brahmavihāras – the ancient Indian ‘attitudes’ of Consciousness that were adopted so enthusiastically by the Buddha. Also, drawing on the Tibetan Buddhist form of the mandala, I have, in recent months been looking in detail at the polarities within each of the first three Quadrants of the mandala: first the opposition of the egoic Thinking function and Equanimity in the East; then the opposition of the egoic Sensation function and Appreciative Joy in the South; and most recently the opposition of the egoic Feeling function and Loving Kindness in the West.
In each of these polarities I have been highlighting the apparent spiritual choices that are always presented to us in life, between the ‘attitudes of Consciousness’ that we experience when we rest naturally as Consciousness, and the egoic expressions of the same archetypal principles, that we experience when we fall into identification with psychological parts. And by exploring the imagery of the Buddha’s Six Realms, we have seen that the extreme of egoic Thinking is expressed in the archetypal psychology of the Hell Realms, or Narakas (here); that the extreme of egoic Sensation is expressed in the archetypal psychology of the Human Realm (here); and that the extreme of egoic Feeling is expressed in the archetypal psychology of the Preta Realms (here).
The Northern Quadrant – Compassion versus the Egoic Will
I would like now to move on clockwise round this mandala, to the Northern Quadrant, where we shall be looking at the egoic function of Intuition / Volition and the corresponding Volitional aspect Consciousness, which expresses itself in the brahmavihāra of Compassion.
In the next few articles I will be addressing the core of the egoic will, that deep volitional aspect of the egoic mind, which the Buddha personified, in an extreme but very illuminating way, in the archetypal imagery of the Asura Realm – a realm of demonic, power-seeking anti-gods, or ‘Jealous Gods’. It is extremely valuable to have a familiarity with, and an acceptance of, these fear-based drives for control, so that we can learn to let them go, and thus reveal the universally present and universally benevolent spiritual energies that are hidden by them. Continue reading
This is Post 25 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series. Summaries of the other articles in this series can be found by clicking here.
While there is much more that could be said about the brahmavihāra of Sympathetic Joy and the Southern Quadrant of the mandala, we need now to move clockwise round the mandala to the Western Quadrant, to the function of Feeling (the samjñā skandha of Buddhist tradition), and to the brahmavihāra of Loving Kindness, or mettā (Pali), or maitrī (Sanskrit). Although in general I like to use Sanskrit, the classical language of Indian spiritual discourse, and the language of the magnificent but no longer existing tradition of Indian Mahayana Buddhism, I prefer, out of habit, to use the more familiar Pali word mettā, for Loving Kindness, rather than equivalent Sanskrit word maitrī (pronounced ‘my-tree’).
Even those who are unfamiliar with the four brahmavihāras as a mandala map of Consciousness, such as I have been presenting, may well have heard of mettā, which is the most well-known of the four. And some will perhaps be familiar with a form of the popular Buddhist meditation practice called the mettā bhāvanā, or ‘Cultivation of the Loving Kindness’. Because of this, I have already written one post about mettā (here) in my introduction to the brahmavihāras at the beginning of this ‘Meditation Guidance’ series.
In that previous post, I explained that mettā is most frequently presented in a way that does not clearly distinguish it from karuṇā (Compassion), muditā (Sympathetic Joy), and fails to acknowledge the important connection between mettā and upekṣā (Equanimity). Because I believe so strongly that a deeper understanding the whole mandala of the brahmavihāras constitutes such a powerful framework for self-enquiry and meditation, I would like now to return to the themes of that previous post.
Distinguishing Feeling from Sensation
In order to fully understand and distinguish the nature of mettā, we need first to understand that function of psychological cognition that we call Feeling, and in order to understand Feeling, it is extremely important for us to make a clear distinction between Feeling and Sensation – something that not all psychological models achieve. Indeed these two words are unfortunately often used interchangeably in English and other languages – and this causes much confusion. The distinction I make between the perceptual sensing function of Sensation and evaluative and discriminative function of Feeling follows both Carl Jung and the Buddhist tradition. I also draw on Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication model and various others who have also recognised and described this universal four-fold pattern, which I have some sometimes called the Mandala of Love, or more simply, ‘the mandala’.
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We also need to recognise the limitations of psychological models that do not include either Consciousness, or the possibility of a somatic, or energetic, dimension of experiencing. Such Newtonian-Cartesian psychological models are usually forced to see Feeling merely as a form of Sensation – as a pattern of neurological and hormonal excitation in the abdomen and chest of an entirely physical body that has no connection to the Quantum field.
This assumption that there is no functional interaction between the Quantum Mechanical level and the Classical level within the nervous system is just that – an assumption, and one that is contrary to our experience. The spiritual gift of a century of rigorous experimentation in Quantum Physics has been the understanding that all of the phenomena of the Classical world that we call matter (including the human body down to the molecular level) rest inseparably in a perplexing but undoubtedly unitary field of energy and Quantum information that completely interpenetrates all experience. While the mental habits of scientific materialism have been slow to erode, it is clear to all those in the field of Quantum Physics, who have given deep thought to the implications of this new science, that the participation of Quantum Mechanical mechanisms in the brain and nervous system is necessary for there to be any actual experiencing, or knowing, or Consciousness in any perceptual process. This is the only explanation we have for the data of human experience.
The quantitative psychological methods of non-phenomenological models have tended to simply exclude a deep investigation of the nature of Feeling, because it is dismissed as inherently too subjective – and because it is subject to the limited vocabulary of most people in the general population in regard to feeling. We rarely describe feelings specifically, and the extreme variability in the usage of the standard ‘feeling words’ – the commonly used categories and sub-categories used to describe feeling – unfortunately makes them unsuitable for use in most types of psychological research.
The Feeling Function – Our Emotional Guidance System
Phenomenological approaches like that of the psychotherapist-philosopher Carl Jung, or the philosopher-psychotherapist Eugene Gendlin, have however recognised that Feeling is an enormously rich territory for psychological exploration, and for personality change. In my view the contributions of both Jung and Gendlin have been incalculable – and their legacies has been insufficiently acknowledged. I shall be drawing on both these perspectives in my next few articles, as well as once again drawing on the mandala-wisdom of various traditions (especially Buddhism), and on the seven bodies / seven chakras somatic model that is well known to meditators and healers. As I explained in my previous post on mettā (here), when we experientially recognise the way in which Feeling is associated with the Emotional Body in that model, we are given a valuable way of grasping the energetic dimension of the somewhat intangible psychological function of Feeling.
Marshall Rosenberg and the global community that created the Nonviolent Communication (NVC) model have also given us a useful way into our process of enquiry into Feeling – by suggesting that positive feelings arise when Needs are met, and negative feelings arise when Needs are unmet. Putting aside, for now, any attempt to define a ‘Need’, and also putting aside the fact that Feeling appears to be very much subject to Thinking, and clearly also related to physiological processes in our nervous systems and endocrine systems, this does nevertheless gives us a very good starting point.
The Feeling function, which Indian tradition calls the samjñā skandha, is clearly a form of cognitive discernment, or evaluative discrimination, and functions as a sort of ‘guidance system’. Whereas Sensation may be regarded as a neutral way of knowing our reality though the act of sensing, Feeling can perhaps best be thought of as the function by which we subjectively evaluate our experience via the subtle movements, patterns, and processes of felt-knowing in the field of body. Feeling, like Thinking, is a discriminative, or judging function – a function by which we make decisions – but is clearly a non-logical and subjective mode of discernment. Feeling, it would seem, draws on our accumulation of life experience, via a difficult-to-define subjective knowing, to make decisions that require an evaluative mode of discrimination – not a logical one.
The East-West Axis of the Mandala – Thinking and Feeling
In several earlier posts (here, here, here, here, and here) I spoke about the Eastern Quadrant of the mandala, and talked about the way resting ‘as’ Consciousness allows us to step back out of identification with the beliefs and points of view, which are the Thinking aspect of the egoic patterns – allows us to draw back into Consciousness, and into a place of objectivity and Being. We also saw that this place of objectivity and Being was relational and creative – capable of rational creativity, solution-focused collaboration, and mental stability in the face of challenges.
As we now address the Western Quadrant and cognitive function of Feeling, I hope to show how resting as Consciousness can allow us, in a similar way, to step back out of identification with our emotions, moods, and subjective reactions, which are the Feeling aspects of the egoic patterns – can allow us to draw back into a place of rational subjective discernment or felt knowing.
As we saw with the Thinking function, the ability to rest as Consciousness changes everything. Just as Thinking only becomes capable of objectivity when it is truly a ‘function of Consciousness’ rather that a function of the egoic illusion, so Feeling only becomes capable of providing accurate evaluation, discernment, and guidance when, through resting as Consciousness, we have learnt to dis-identify from the vast accumulation of egoic conditioning that is patterned into both our somatic anatomy and our neuro-endocrine system.
The Feeling function is sometimes characterised as having an orientation to the past (whereas the Thinking function may be thought of as an orientation to the future). Only by allowing the Emotional Body to rest as Consciousness in the present moment, can we start to free Feeling from past conditioning – conditioning which usually entirely shapes our felt experience and our emotional lives into the future. In reality, all forms of conditioning are an orientation to the past. Without Consciousness, which gives us an orientation to the eternal present moment of felt experience, everything that we are as conditioned egoic beings marches relentlessly from the past into the future – always reacting from past conditioning, endlessly repeating old patterns of relationship, and always tending to bring the same old emotional tone in our new experiences.
Conscious Thinking and Feeling – Differentiation and Reconciliation
The East-West axis of the mandala reminds us that Consciousness allows us to differentiate Thinking (East) from Feeling (West) and to reconcile these two principles at a higher level. As we learn to rest as Consciousness we recognise that truly objective Thinking arises in the context of a shared experience of existence, or Being – so truly conscious Thinking is always relational, and always serves connection, communication, and creativity. A capacity for conscious non-reactive Thinking is as foundational for our relationships and collaborations as is our capacity to be consciously ‘loving’. Indeed the two are inseparable, and each without the other is incomplete, unbalanced, and hides the unconscious shadow of its opposite – and is therefore not achievable.
Similarly, Consciousness allows us to experience and communicate Feeling objectively, so that it profoundly supports connection with ourselves and connection with others. This objectivity allows us to experience Feeling as much more than a form of subjective emotional response. Instead it becomes a capacity for objective discrimination – a subtle mode of discernment and evaluation in the context of our communication, our relationships, and in areas of life where aesthetic and ethical judgement is required. Similarly in communication, the ability to accurately and objectively observe and describe our feelings opens up vast new self-empathetic and empathetic possibilities, which lead to a deepening of relationships and to psychological and social healing.
Consciousness – Our only Protection against Shadow Projection
The way in which the axes of the mandala give us a visual image of the way the functions of Consciousness (Feeling and Thinking – at west and east; and Intuition/Volition and Sensation – at north and south) are experienced as oppositions on the egoic level, but are reconciled and complementary on the level of Consciousness, is a key feature of the mandala wisdom, which is of enormous importance for the meditator – or for anyone who wishes to become more conscious, especially in their relationships.
This wise mandala-psychology, which I have been calling the Mandala of Love alerts us to the ever present danger of the unconscious opposites in ordinary egoic functioning. I have talked previously (here) about how egoic Thinking, instead of functioning as a capacity for relational objectivity, inevitably tends to express shadow Feeling qualities – frequently becoming emotional, judgemental and punishing, when Consciousness and the balancing quality of fully conscious Feeling are absent.
Similarly, until the ability to rest as Consciousness is established, egoic Feeling will, instead of functioning as objective discernment through felt knowing, can always tend to show the complementary opposite, or ‘shadow’ qualities of moodiness, compulsiveness, and depression – experiences and behaviours that relate directly to an inability to reflect and relate objectively and affirmatively to felt-experience. It is only with the help of these Thinking-related functions of reflection, objectivity, affirmation, thoughtful communication and relatedness, that Feeling can function in a fully differentiated way – as a function of Consciousness.
The Mandala Map of Consciousness – Our Shield against the Shadow
Without Consciousness, the polar oppositions between Thinking and Feeling (at East and West), or between Intuition/Volition and Sensation (at North and South) collapse into an unconscious egoic fusion, that is reflected in unconscious patterns of thinking, language and action. Only Consciousness can provide the spaciousness in which we can hold the tension between the opposites. Consciousness supports the necessary processes of differentiation and reconciliation, protecting us, and freeing us from our unconscious tendencies and from the inevitability of shadow projection – psychological dynamics which make us ineffective, which keep us stuck, and which cause us much harm by undermining our judgement and damaging our relationships.
Readers interested in this built-in egoic tendency towards internal fusion, division, and shadow projection, in the egoic patterns, may be interested in my previous post on this (here). An awareness of the psychodynamics of the personal and collective Shadow are essential for anyone who would wish to be become conscious or to function harmoniously and ethically in their relationships and in society. One of the greatest gifts of the mandala archetype that these Mandala of Love posts are exploring, is its ability to highlight the unconscious Shadow and bring it into consciousness – knowledge of the mandala dynamics is our shield against the Shadow.
William Parker 2017
These articles are best read in sequence. To go to the next article in the series just click the ‘Next’ button at the bottom of the page. For an overview of the whole sequence of articles, with short summaries of each one, click here.
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This is Post 23 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series. Summaries of the other articles in this series can be found by clicking here.
Self-inquiry, meditation practice, and the practice that the English-speaking Buddhist traditions call ‘Mindfulness’, all involve what can be described metaphorically as an inner drawing back, out of the egoic identification in which we find ourselves, into an identification with the field of Consciousness itself – and discovering the blessings that flow from that. We usually associate these practices with Indian and far eastern spirituality (and perhaps with a few Christian mystical traditions like the Quakers). It is important to understand however, that the same subtle spiritual knowledge was present at the beginning of Western Philosophy in the Platonic and Neoplatonic traditions that flourished before the Christian period, and then re-emerged in the Renaissance.
An Ancient Greek Vision of Spiritual Freedom
Socrates, the Classical Greek philosopher, who lived in Athens in the 5th Century BCE, was teaching on ethics and the ultimate nature of mind in the same century that the Buddha was addressing these themes in ancient India. If he did ever do any writing himself, none of Socrates’ writings have survived, so we only know of his ideas though the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and via the playwright Aristophanes.
There is much in Plato’s literary record of Socrates’ life and teachings, that is relevant to this series of posts on the brahmavihāras, but I would like to return to one of his teachings that I have touched on briefly before in this series (here) – the ‘Allegory of the Cave’ from Plato’s Republic. Set in the context of a wider discussion about the value of education and of spiritual knowledge, it appears to present a philosophical theory of human perception that is very similar to both the Buddha’s view, and that of Quantum Physics. Continue reading
This is Post 21 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series. Summaries of the other articles in this series can be found by clicking here.
As previously, when reflecting on the brahmavihāras, I feel a need to emphasise that muditā, which is often translated as Sympathetic Joy, but better translated as Appreciative Joy, is not merely a mental state, but an attitude of Consciousness, and a way of being that gives expression to a quality of the universal Consciousness as we relate to the practicalities and specifics of human life. While we need to acknowledge that it is a cosmic attitude, it is also an attitude that individual people will often embody in rich personal ways even if they are not choosing to adopt the practice of resting as Consciousness. Muditā involves being in this physical world in way that is informed by, and supported by, the healing, evolutionary, and compassionate energy of our transpersonal source – so if we express this consciously it is extremely powerful source of blessing and creativity.
Muditā can perhaps be better understood by contrasting it with its egoic counterpart, which is the ordinary egoic Sensation function, which Buddhist tradition speaks of in terms of the vedanā skandha. Through meditative self-inquiry we come to recognise that we habitually and unconsciously bring multiple assumptions to the experience of Sensation and the experience of being in a physical body – assumptions that we come to recognise as untrue. Foremost among these incorrect assumptions, is the way we take the physical body to be absolute evidence of our ultimate separateness. This sense of separateness, and the ways in which we live with it, or seek to overcome it, is fundamental to, and characteristic of, the experience of being human. Buddhist tradition speaks of this habitual perception of separateness and the associated preoccupation with ‘looking after number one’ in terms of the klesha of māna, which is usually translated as ‘pride’, and sometimes as ‘conceit’.
The Human Realm – Separateness healed by Appreciative Joy
Of the Buddha’s Six Realms, which I have talked about briefly in a previous post (here), the realm associated with the Southern Quadrant of the mandala, is the Human Realm. This Human Realm, in which we find ourselves, occupies an archetypal position in the mandala of egoic styles, and can be regarded as the egoic counterpart, and polar opposite, of Appreciative Joy. The Human Realm is regarded, in Buddhist tradition, as a very special and fortuitous place to be reborn, but it is also the realm associated of the egoic Sensation function, and has particular problems for us, and a particular style of egoic unconsciousness, which we need to explore and become familiar with. Continue reading
This is Article No. 2 in the ‘Buddhism’ series.
This is Post 40 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series.
This is Post 37 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series.
This is Post 36 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series.
This is Post 35 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series.
This is Post 32 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series.
This is Post 25 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series. Summaries of the other articles in this series can be found by clicking 
This is Post 23 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series. Summaries of the other articles in this series can be found by clicking 
This is Post 21 in the ‘Meditation Guidance’ series. Summaries of the other articles in this series can be found by clicking
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