Vairocana, The Sun Buddha

This talk was given at a retreat organised by the London Buddhist Centre, Sibford, December 2000 

We are not rational beings, at least, not just rational. We are also non-rational, imaginative, creative and even at times thoroughly irrational. In order to develop spiritually, to practice the spiritual life, we need to involve the imagination, the intuition, the whole non-rational, emotional aspect of ourselves as well as our reasoning, thinking faculties. It is “as well as” not “instead of”. This is because spiritual practice is a journey into the unknown. We cannot know higher states of consciousness until we experience them. We cannot know Wisdom until we become wise. Because there is is always an unknown element we need to have a strong intuition of the value of this exploration, we need to have an imaginative connection with our goal, which is strong enough to motivate us even when the journey is a struggle. We need to be emotionally involved, to strongly believe in what we are doing. As we embark on this spiritual odyssey, we need to be able to imaginatively connect with the value to ourselves and humanity that will come about through the death of egotism and the birth of Wisdom and Compassion.

The spiritual requires what Bhante Sangharakshita refers to as : “the stirring into life of an imaginal visionary faculty, which is the total reaction of the whole being when confronted by the Ideal, whether embodied in human form or in the teaching.” (Know your Mind, p.233) Our imaginations are engaged by images,whether poetic or pictorial. Images carry messages that rational concepts cannot cope with. Images carry many meanings, layers of meaning, dimensions of meaning, and this is what symbolism is. A symbol is a meaningful image, which conveys many dimensions and layers of meaning that can only really be accessed by imagination.

A mandala is a symbol. A mandala has been defined by Snellgrove as “a circle of symbolic forms....one symbol at the centre, and other symbols arranged at the various points of the compass, which represent manifested aspects of the same truth.” ( Buddhist Texts Through the Ages, ed. E. Conze, p. 246/248)

In looking at the Mandala of the Five Buddhas, we first meet Akshobya, the blue Buddha, representing the imperturbability of the Enlightened Mind, the wisdom that sees all things objectively just as they are. The message of Akshobya is that we should rely on experience and build confidence through experience. The earth-touching gesture (bhumisparsha mudra) reminds us to touch the earth of of our own experience. Then Ratnasambhava, the yellow Buddha is the Buddha of beauty and generosity. He is associated with richness and abundance. Ratnasambhava's open-handed gesture (varada mudra) encourages a wealth mentality and a generous out-going attitude. Amitabha, the red Buddha is the Buddha of Meditation. His symbolism emphasises the qualities of love and compassion and sees the unique value and qualities of every single living being. His gesture is one hand resting on the other in his lap evoking meditation (dhyana mudra). Amoghasiddhi, the green Buddha, gives the gift of fearlessness, the gift of courage and confidence which allows us to do whatever needs to be done. His right hand is raised, palm outwards, in the gesture of fearlessness (abhaya mudra).

Then we come to Vairocana at the centre of the Mandala. Vairocana is white in colour. He is seated in the full lotus position on a white moon mat, which is in the centre of a white lotus. His lotus throne is supported on the backs of four lions. His hands are in the mudra or gesture of turning the wheel (dharmacakrapravartana), the gesture of teaching, and his emblem is the Wheel of the Dharma, an eight-spoked wheel, something like the steering wheel of an old ship.

One thing to remember about a symbol is that it doesn't have one meaning. It's not like a road sign say, which means one thing and one thing only. One sign indicates roadworks, another indicates loose gravel, another warns of cows crossing the road and so on. A sign means one thing. A symbol has many meanings, as many meanings as there is imagination to engage with. A symbol is something to be explored, loved with, delved into, approached from many angles. A symbol is alive, like a person, not to be categorised and labelled and understood once and for all. When I talk about the symbolism of Vairocana and say that it represents such and such, you shouldn't take that as the last word on the matter. You need to allow the images to speak for themselves too. Let your mind, your imagination, engage with the images and see what meanings arise for you.

Having said that, lets look now at some of the symbolism of the figure of Vairocana. His name, as I said, means the Illuminator. So the first thing we encounter with Vairocana is light. Brilliant white light illuminating all of space, all universes. Blinding light. In Japan Vairocana is called the sun Buddha, associating him with the light of the sun. This is the light of Wisdom, the light of Reality, which dispels all spiritual ignorance. In the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which many of you will be familiar with, it is said that when we die we encounter this clear light of Reality, but we are unable to bear it, we turn away from it in fear and confusion. Another way of putting that is that most of us prefer our ignorance when faced with the stark reality of non-egotistic consciousness. We need to take a little bit of light at a time, a little bit of awareness at a time, until gradually the dark ignorance of egotism is dispelled by the dawning awareness of the inter-connectedness of all life, as a fact and as an experience rather than just an idea. The light of Vairocana is the light of transcendental wisdom, it is the light of Enlightenment, and we need to move towards it gradually.

Spiritual growth is a gradual growth in awareness. It is a process and the more we engage with that process the more we will be able to move towards the clear light of Reality when we encounter it, not just at the time of death but throughout life. We are constantly faced with Reality; the reality of loss and impermanence, the reality of mundane things being unsatisfactory and the reality that we are not fixed ego-entities but constantly changing processes of thought, perception, awareness and body. Everything in the universe and everything in us arises in dependence on conditions and ceases when those conditions cease. This is the Reality that we are being presented with every moment and this is the reality that we turn away from every moment. But if we listen to to the voice of the Buddha, if we hear the teaching with our hearts, we will be given the map and directions for the journey we must make.

When we first hear that teaching, when we first encounter the Dharma, it may seem too difficult, too unpalatable. It may seem that too much is being asked of us. The Buddha's teaching is sometimes characterised as a Lion's roar. When the lion roars in the jungle, everything falls silent, it's time to listen; there may be danger, there may be death. When the Buddha utters his Lion's Roar, everything falls silent. This teaching is fatal to mundane complacency, death to egotism, self-centredness and unawareness. But the Buddha demands nothing from us. His teaching is of the nature of an invitation (ehipassika) and invitations can be accepted or rejected. So, although the teaching is characterised as a Lion's Roar, it is not because it is intimidating or to be forced upon people. It is because the Buddha is seen as a leader among humanity, just as the lion is the king of the beasts.

The lions who support the lotus throne of Vairocana could be seen as representing the teaching of the Buddha, ust as the Wheel of Dharma and the gesture of turning the wheel represent the teaching. Teaching, communicating the Wisdom of the Buddha is obviously central to the symbolism of Vairocana. But we will come back to that later.

First, just a few more things about the symbolism of the lion. In these images of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas usually what is beneath the lotus represents mundane consciousness and what is above the lotus represents transcendental or Enlightened consciousness. The lotus itself represents the process leading from one to the other – the unfolding and blossoming of awareness. So the lions here are mundane energies transformed until they act as supports for the arising of transcendental Wisdom.

The lion is the king of the beasts, so this could be seen to represent the transformation of our animal nature and all the energy that goes into the pursuit of food and sex and serving the body. All that energy, time, effort is eventually put at the service of spiritual transformation. This is what the tradition of Going Forth is about in Buddhism. One goes forth from the complex life to the simple life, from the life that's concerned mainly with material things and the body to a life concerned with matters spiritual. Traditionally the monk or nun would practice celibacy, eating in moderation, having only the bare minimum of possessions and generally living a very simple life. We may not be able to do all that or at least not all at once but we can probably simplify our lives in some small ways and put a little less energy into worldly concerns. A little less shopping perhaps, a little less over-eating and so on. Not only would it be good for us spiritually to lead simpler lives, it would be good for the planet too. Currently the human race is slowly eating away at the branch it is sitting on, like a demented monkey. Such is the power of greed, such is our animal nature and that is the energy we need to harness to support our spiritual practice. There is an image in the Christian tradition of St Jerome in the desert. Sometimes he is depicted in the desert atoning for his sins, sometimes seated at his desk working on his new translation of the Bible. However he is portrayed, there is always a lion in the picture, and the lion is tame. Sometimes St. Jerome is resting his feet on the lion. I think this image is getting across the same basic idea of our animal nature, being tamed and put at the service of a higher spiritual task.

The lions associated with the figure of Vairocana can be seen to represent this process of simplifying our needs and freeing up energy for spiritual practice and they can also be seen to represent the fact that the Buddha has a kingly nature. Sometimes the Buddha is referred to as the Jina. Jina means victor. He is victorious over all the forces of ignorance and greed and hatred that are obscuring Reality. At the time of the Buddha's birth, legend has it, it was predicted that he would either become a great king or a Buddha. His father did his best to ensure that Siddhartha would gain worldly success but Siddhartha became totally disenchanted with the things of the world and went forth from home as a wandering mendicant to seek the truth. And of course from a spiritual point of view this is a far greater life, a far more significant and meaningful life than the life a king or any mere holder of power. The power of the truth is more lasting and more important than the power of any government or dictator.

Vairocana's hands make the gesture of “turning the wheel” or the gesture of teaching. The wheel being turned is the the wheel of the Truth, the wheel of Reality – the wheel of the dharma. This gesture and this image of a wheel of truth relates back to the first time the Buddha tried to communicate his Enlightenment experience to others. He went to visit five former companions and spent days and weeks in dialogue with them, trying to get across to them what he now understood from experience. Eventually one of them understood, his name was Kondanna, and it is said that at that moment the wheel of the Dharma, the wheel of Truth was set in motion. That was the beginning of Buddhism, we could say. Until someone understood, until the experience was communicated, there was no teaching, there was no path. But when Kondanna understood, then the possibility of others understanding and the possibility of others gaining Enlightenment and Realisation was manifest. Traditionally it is said that what the Buddha taught on that occasion and what Kondanna understood was the four Noble Truths and the Nobel Eightfold Path.

The Four Noble Truths are a particular example of what is known as dependent arising (pratitya samutpada). This law of dependent arising is probably the most basic and important teaching in Buddhism. It is so simple that it is possible to miss it but it has such profound implications that you can spend a lifetime (or two) realising its full import. How it is usually stated in the texts is as follows: “This being that becomes, from the arising of this that arises. This not being, that does not become, from the ceasing of this that ceases.” (Majjhima Nikaya, Sutta 79:7) That is the law of dependent arising and that is the essence of the Buddha's Wisdom conceptualised. Concepts can be quite dry and uninviting, which again shows why we need the whole language of symbolism and myth to speak to the heart. What this teaching is saying in effect, is that everything arises in dependence upon conditions, everything is the result of a vast interconnected, interdependent, web of conditions.

This has some very far-reaching implications for all spheres of life, biological, ethical,. psychological and spiritual. One of the startling implications of this law of dependent arising is that for any one thing not to exist, everything else would have to not exist, because all the conditions that gave rise to the existence of that one thing would have to not exist also. And when we start to investigate we find that everything is connected so that the non-existence of anything implies the non-existence of everything. An example will make this clearer.

I am here giving this talk because I am a member of the Triratna Buddhist Order. The Triratna Buddhist Order exists because Sangharakshita started it in 1965. Sangharakshita started the Triratna Buddhist Order because he was a Buddhist. He was a Buddhist as a result of an experience he had on reading the Diamond Sutra at the age of sixteen. He was able to read the Diamond Sutra because it had been translated from Sanskrit. That leads to the whole set of conditions that gave rise to the translator and his interest in Sanskrit. Sangharakshita was also able to read the Diamond Sutra because it existed in the first place. That leads to a whole set of conditions going back to the Buddha and beyond. He was also able to read the Diamond Sutra because he existed. That leads back to his parents and the whole set of conditions that brought them together and further back to their parents and their parents' parents and so on. He was also able to read the Diamond Sutra because of the invention of the printing press, because of the institutions of publishing houses and bookshops and there are millions of conditions that give rise to those things.

But Sangharakshita didn't just start the Triratna Buddhist Order alone. You can't have an Order of one. Other people had to be sufficiently interested and dedicated to make it happen. But the existence of the Triratna Buddhist Order is not sufficient condition for me to be here tonight. I had to come into contact with the Order. For that to happen there had to be a Buddhist Centre. The London Buddhist Centre came into existence in dependence upon the wholehearted efforts of a large number of people, plus the financial assistance of the Greater London Council. hat leads to a whole set of conditions involving British politics, Ken Livingstone etc etc. Then of course I had to be born etc. So you see for me to be standing here giving this talk is dependent on many inter-related and interdependent conditions. I've only just touched on some of them and those conditions are dependent on other conditions and so on and so on. Now if you want to make me non-existent, not in the sense of being dead, but in the sense of never having existed, then my non-existence would entail the non-existence of all those conditions I've mentioned and that would eventually lead you to the non-existence of the whole universe. The same applies to anyone of you, of course, or to anything whatsoever. Everything arises in dependence upon conditions and ceases when those conditions cease, and all those conditions are interconnected and interdependent. This is the cosmic vision of the Buddha and this is the basic Buddhist teaching. The Four Noble Truths is an application of this teaching to the problem of suffering. The term for suffering in Buddhism is Dukkha. Dukkha is unsatisfactoriness or discomfort generally. It includes physical suffering, emotional dissatisfaction, psychological discomfort and existential unsatisfactoriness.

The first of the Four Noble Truths simply states that there is unsatisfactoriness. For unenlightened beings there is always suffering. The second Noble Truth gives the cause or origin of unsatisfactoriness. The cause of suffering, it states, is greed, hatred and spiritual ignorance. And greed, hatred and spiritual ignorance are a result of experiencing ourselves as a fixed and separate self. In reality we are not fixed, we are a process. Our bodies, our thoughts, our feelings, our emotions, our perceptions, everything about us is always changing. There is no fixed self. And this process that we are is deeply and profoundly interconnected, intertwined and interdependent with all the other life processes around, which we, in our delusion, experience as separate ego-identities. So this is the basis for greed, hatred and spiritual ignorance and this is the cause of suffering (Dukkha).

The third Noble Truth is concerned with the cessation of suffering. Suffering ceases when the conditions which cause suffering cease; namely greed, hatred and spiritual ignorance. Put more positively, as we generate the opposites to these three, that is, as we become more generous and less selfish, as we become more kind and loving and less given to ill-will and hatred, as we become more aware and wise and less spiritually deluded, then our suffering lessens because we no longer look for satisfaction and security where satisfaction and security cannot be found. It is worth noting at this point that physical suffering, which is an inevitable consequence of having a body, does not stop because we become less selfish or more kind and so on, but our attitude to physical suffering can change totally so that we come to accept the realities of bodily decay and death with ever greater equanimity. The fourth Noble Truth tells us how to bring about the cessation of Dukkha, the end of unsatisfactoriness. The way to do it, according to the fourth Noble Truth, is to follow the spiritual path and the spiritual path is formulated as the Eightfold Path.

This brings us back to Vairocana. Vairocana's mudra, or gesture, is the “Turning of the Wheel” and his emblem is the Wheel of the Dharma, the Dharmachakra. A Dharmachakra is an eight-spoked wheel with the spokes extending beyond the circumference. The eight spokes represent the the Noble Eightfold Path and the wheel represents the setting in motion of the Buddha's Teaching. The Dharmachakra is often used as a symbol of Buddhism in the way that a cross symbolises Christianity or a crescent moon symbolises Islam. Sometimes Vairocana is depicted holding a Dharmachakra delicately in his hands.

The gesture of teaching and the Dharmachakra are central to the symbolism of Vairocana. They represent the importance, the central importance even, of communication. It is as if to say that because of the nature of Reality, because of the interpenetrating, interconnected nature of consciousness, an experience is not an experience until it is communicated. Enlightenment is not really Enlightenment until it is communicated. Inherent in the experience is the need to communicate it. This is the Compassion aspect of Enlightenment. Wisdom in not Wisdom without Compassion and Compassion is not Compassion without Wisdom. The Enlightenment experience is the perfection of Wisdom and Compassion which are in effect one experience.

Of course communication takes many forms and includes many elements. Communication can be verbal, or by example, or through symbolism, myth, story, parable, through images, sounds, even fragrances. Whatever form communication takes it is only communication when there is a receptive audience. Somebody has to be listening, looking, receptive to what's being communicated, otherwise there is no communication. Receptivity implies accepting that we don't know something. It means accepting that others may know more than we do. There is, as it were, a hierarchy of spiritual development, a hierarchy of wisdom and compassion and some people will be more spiritually developed than we are, some people will be less spiritually developed than we are. You cannot tell simply from what someone says whether they are spiritually developed or not. You need to observe them, see whether they are actually kind and generous and aware in their actions, in their speech. You need to get to know someone before you can make any guess at their spiritual development. Even then it is difficult, because if someone is much more developed than you are, you just don't have the experience to make a judgment. You have to go on intuition, as well as experience and reasoning. These three, intuition, reason and experience, are traditionally the three elements of Sraddha or faith in Buddhism.

For the Buddha to be able to communicate, for anybody to be able to communicate and especially for teaching to take place, there needs to be receptivity. We need to be receptive. We need to listen and not just listen with our ears, but listen with our hearts. In other words, if a communication is to take place, if teaching is to take place, then our attitude is all important. If we have a cynical attitude, we will learn nothing. If we have an arrogant attitude, we will learn nothing. If we have a questioning attitude, we will learn. If we are engaged and interested, we learn. 

Again, maybe a little story will illustrate this point more clearly. This is from the Zen tradition and some of you may have heard it before. It concerns a certain learned professor, who presumably knew all about Zen, who goes to visit a Zen Master. He has some question he wants answered. When he is shown into the room to see the Zen Master, the Zen Master very politely offers him tea, which he very politely accepts with a bow. This is Japan after all. So the Zen Master, as host, pours the tea, very mindfully he picks up the teapot and very mindfully he pours. All is silent as it should be when a Zen Master pours tea and he slowly pours the tea into the cup and the cup fills up and he continues to pour and the cup gets even more full and he continues to pour and the cup overflows and the professor doesn't know what to do. But the tea is running across the table, so eventually he shouts “my cup is full, there is no room for any more.” The Zen Master stops pouring and looks at the professor for a while and then he delivers his teaching. He says, “Yes, your cup is full. There is no room for any more, you had better come back when your cup is less full.” What he was saying is that he couldn't teach the professor anything because the professor was not receptive enough. All that is by way of stressing the importance of receptivity, because without it there can be no teaching, no communication. And that is part of the significance of Vairocana's mudra or gesture of teaching and part of the significance of the Dharmachakra, the Wheel of the Dharma.

The message of the Dharmachakra is the Path to Enlightenment, it is the Noble Eightfold Path. The eight stages of the Noble Eightfold Path are Perfect Vision, Perfect Emotion, Perfect Action, Perfect Speech, Perfect Livelihood, Perfect Effort, Perfect Mindfulness and Perfect Meditation. I don't have time now to go into them. That would require another talk or eight talks. I'll refer you to the book “Vision and Transformation” by Sangharakshita, which is very readable, very practical and gives a detailed account of the Noble Eightfold Path. For now I will just say that the first stage, Perfect Vision, represents the initial intuition that there is more to life than the material or psychological, that there is a spiritual dimension to life and that the meaning of life lies in that spiritual dimension. Perfect Vision represents our first glimpse of a Reality beyond mundane life. It is the spark that lights the fuse and leaves us burning with a desire for the truth and for meaning. It is what fuels our journey on the spiritual path. Many people have this experience of a heightened perception of another Reality at some point in their lives. It may come about as a result of bereavement, solitude, reading,, the arts nature, psychedelic drugs. The other seven stages of the Noble Eightfold Path represent the working out in our daily lives of the implications of that intuition or glimpse of something. They represent the total transformation of the individual, body, speech and mind, emotion and intellect. The Noble Eightfold Path is the fourth of the Noble Truths and the Four Noble Truths are traditionally accepted to be the very first teaching of Gautama the Buddha.

We have arrived at the centre of the Mandala of the Five Buddhas, we have also arrived at the beginning of Buddhism, the source of Buddhism. From this source, from the first teaching of the Buddha there has grown a vast and beautiful forest of teachings, and one of the most beautiful of all the trees in that forest is this mandala of the five Buddhas, which contains within it all the teachings of the Buddhism, presented in a way that can touch the heart, as well as the head. Vairocana sits at the centre of this mandala teaching the Dharma, teaching the law of dependent arising, teaching the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path and this teaching is an invitation to us and like any invitation we can refuse or accept, we can send our apologies or turn up, preferably with an empty cup!

Now there is one more aspect of the symbolism of Vairocana I would like to touch upon before I finish. Vairocana is white in colour. This represents purity. It represents ethical purity. Ethics in Buddhism in not a matter of doing what you're told and being punished if you don't. There are no commandments in Buddhism. There isn't even good and bad as we usually understand them. In Buddhism, ethics is a matter of intelligence. Buddhism teaches that there are certain kinds of behaviour, certain ways of speaking and certain attitudes which lead to suffering and there are other ways of behaving, speaking and thinking which have benign consequences. The basic principle is that actions have consequences. These actions, whether of body, speech or mind, which have good consequences, which lead to well-being and happiness, those actions are called skilful, the term is kusala. And those actions of body, speech and mind which have difficult consequences, which cause distress and unhappiness, these actions are called unskilful, the term is akusala. Rather than good and bad, we have skilful and unskilful. Skilful actions are those which come from a mind that is skilful. They arise from mental states of loving kindness, generosity and wisdom. Unskilful actions are born of a mind that harbours ill-will or hatred, greed and ignorance. The state of mind is all important in Buddhism. That is why we have the practice of meditation. This teaching of actions having consequences, skilful actions having beneficial consequences, and unskilful actions having unfortunate consequences, is known as the law of Karma. The kind of actions or behaviour that are beneficial are set out in the five precepts. These precepts are basic principles and to some degree, we have to work out their implications for ourselves and especially apply them to particular situations and circumstances. There are no easy answers in Buddhist ethics. What we really have to do is transform ourselves into the sort of person who is quite naturally ethical; the sort of person who is free from hatred, ill-will, greed and spiritual ignorance. That is what it means to purify ourselves and that is what the colour of Vairocana implies.

When I mention Karma I feel I ought to mention rebirth for the sake of completion. But I'm not going to go into rebirth just now, except to say that one does not have to believe in literal rebirth to be a practising Buddhist. It is a logical consequence of Buddhist teaching but you don't need to be logical to practice. However, since we are looking at symbolism, we could also look at rebirth symbolically. We can see that since change is the nature of existence, since everything is changing all the time, then decay, death and rebirth are happening all the time and we can apply this to our own mental states and moods. They come into being and they pass away and they return. If we bring awareness to this process, we can affect the direction of change. We can affect what is to be reborn in our minds. If we don't bring awareness to our patterns of thought and emotion we continue to go round and round on the same beaten track, an endless round of the same moods and thoughts being reborn over and over. So a spiritual death is a transformation, it is a letting go of old negative habits of thought, of speech and behaviour and a spiritual rebirth is the result of that transformation.

I hope I have given you some idea of the significance of the symbolism of Vairocana. There is much more that could be said. Symbolism by its nature cannot be just explained, which is why symbolism and myth is better able to convey something of the the vastness of Enlightened consciousness. Perhaps I'll just finish by saying that when it comes to spiritual practice, leading a spiritual life and trying to transform ourselves, it is not enough to be purely rational, reason is not enough. We need to use our intuition and imagination and not allow ourselves to be trapped by literalism. Literalism is perhaps the greatest enemy of spiritual understanding. The mind is vast and multifaceted. It cannot be encompassed by concepts and ideas but only by soaring flights of the imagination. To give you some idea how the ancient Buddhists of India allowed their imaginations free rein, I'll finish by reading you a little bit from an ancient Mahayana text, the Surangama Sutra.

“Thereupon the Buddha, sitting upon his throne in the midst of the Tathagatas and highest Bodhisattva- Mahasattvas from all the Buddha-lands, manifested his Transcendent Glory surpassing them all. From his hands and feet and body radiated supernal beams of light that rested upon the crowns of each Tathagata, Bodhisattva-Mahasattva, in all the ten quarters of all the universes, in number more numerous than the finest particles of dust. Moreover, from the hands and feet and bodies of all the Tathagatas, Bodhisattva-Mahasattvas and Princes of the Dharma, in all the ten quarters of the universes, went forth rays of glorious brightness that converged upon the crown of the Lord Buddha and upon the crowns of all the Tathagatas, Bodhisattva-Mahasattvas and Arhats present in the assembly. At the same time all the trees of the Jeta Park, and all the waves lapping on the shores of its lakes, were singing the music of the Dharma, and all the intersecting rays of brightness were like a net of splendour set with jewels and over-arching them all. Such a marvellous sight had never been imagined and held them all in silence and awe. Unwittingly they passed into the blissful peace of the Diamond Samadhi and upon them all there fell like a gentle rain the soft petals of many different coloured lotus blossoms – blue and crimson, yellow and white – all blending together and being reflected into the open space of heaven in all the tints of the spectrum. Moreover, all the differentiations of mountains and seas and rivers and forests of the Saha World blended into one another and faded away leaving only the flower-adorned unity of the Primal Cosmos, not dead and inert but alive with rhythmic life and light, vibrant with transcendental sounds of songs and rhymes, melodiously rising and falling and merging and then fading away into silence.” (A Buddhist Bible, 1994, D. Goddard,p.249)

Dana as Skilful Means

This talk was given in 2000

Skilful means is skilful means of communicating the Dharma, communicating the Truth. Skilful means are the best possible means, the means that are most effective. Skilful means could also be interpreted as the most effective or best means of discovering the Truth. Dana means giving, generosity. So we are concerned with generosity as a means of discovering the Truth, generosity as means of experiencing the Truth even, and also generosity as a means of communicating the Truth or Dharma.

Skilful means is a question of motivation. Eventually generosity is motivated by Wisdom and Compassion that is when it is truly skilful means. However in the earlier stages of spiritual life we will have many different motivations. We may, for instance, be motivated to be generous out of a need for approval. We may feel, consciously or unconsciously, that if we are generous then people will like us, we will be approved of. This is obviously not a pure motivation, but we shouldn't be too hasty to condemn it, because it has the seeds of wisdom in it. It is true that if we are generous, we will create a more pleasant immediate world for ourselves to live in and that we are more likely to have friends. The trouble is that if our giving is too much a matter of wanting to be loved, it may not be generosity at all and in that case it could have the opposite effect. People may try to avoid someone who demands to be loved, demands friends, demands to be liked and uses their own acts of giving as a kind of bargaining counter, to induce guilt. Someone who says things like “How can you be so unkind to me after all I've given you?”, “I feel betrayed”. This kind of attitude makes people run a mile. I think it is okay to give, to be generous in the hope that people will like us and treat us well as a result but it is counterproductive to demand to be loved or demand friendship. Love can be given but love cannot be taken. If we give we can be sure that it will have beneficial consequences, so we don't really need to demand anything in return. Demanding that people like us only sets up another set of consequences that are less beneficial.

Another possible motivation for being generous is that we take it on as a practice, a sort of training or discipline to help us to transcend selfishness. In this instance we are motivated by a desire to change and we are following the advice of tradition and of those more experienced to bring about positive change in ourselves. Our generosity resulting from this kind of motivation might feel uncomfortable, a bit stilted and awkward. And we might not be wise in our giving, but since it is a practice, a training, it doesn't matter that we get it wrong from time to time. The main thing is to do it, to be generous and by being generous to learn about ourselves and transform ourselves. This is a good motivation for generosity and again it has in it the seeds of Wisdom. It is wise to follow in the footsteps of the wise.

Or we may be motivated to be generous by feelings of guilt. This is an emotion that is sometimes played upon by the advertising agencies for some of the bigger charities. Although I believe it is good to give whatever the motive, in this case I would say that the whole benefit of giving is seriously undermined, In the first place there will be little spiritual benefit unless the guilt is overcome and secondly it is questionable whether the sort of people who use such emotional manipulation are good custodians of donations, since if they are willing to be devious in acquiring funds, they may also be devious and manipulative in their distribution. To allow ourselves to be manipulated is to encourage those who are manipulative. However in the case of large agencies it is to be hoped that there are sufficient checks and balances in place to make sure that the eventual recipients do benefit, at least materially. But I think we need to be very wary of guilt as a motivation and try to move beyond it to some more positive motivation. On the other hand we shouldn't use the fact that we may feel a bit guilty to prevent us from giving at all. What we need to do is carry on giving but work on overcoming the guilt. Guilt of this type is a species of self-hatred and self-hatred can breed all sorts of other hatreds and resentments that from a larger perspective will tend to create the very problems, the problems of war and conflict, that our generosity is trying to alleviate.

Another possible motivation is that we may simply be motivated by seeing a need. We see that someone needs something, or needs attention or affection and we just quite naturally give. It just seems the right thing to do, the natural thing to do. This is probably the result of positive conditioning and a natural empathy with others and is a very beautiful state of consciousness. If we are like this, naturally generous, we can build on it and stretch ourselves beyond being generous in response to a need to being generous without any such stimulus, so that generosity becomes what we are rather than just what we do.

And then our generosity may be motivated by a desire to bring meaning into people's lives and a desire to help people see and experience their interconnectedness with others. This is the motivation of skilful means. This is not a calculating or manipulative motivation. Rather it grows out of a happy spontaneous generosity that is then channelled by a growing wisdom. That wisdom or awareness can see beyond the surface of life to what is really needed for the well-being of humankind. What is really needed is for more and more people to embody the truth of human connectedness.

There are many different motivations for being generous, some of which I've mentioned. They range from a negative guilt, through approval seeking, wanting to change, responding to needs, to a spontaneous integrated generosity that is eventually channelled by awareness and wisdom into creating spiritual community (Sangha), so that people can have the conditions in which to experience a deeper meaning or higher truth in their lives.

For most of us most of the time our motivations are mixed. We experience a whole cocktail of motivations simultaneously and if we were to spend our time worrying about getting it right we might not act at all. I think we need to trust that if we are meditating and trying to be more ethical then gradually our motivations will clarify and purify. We don't need to dissect our motivations every time we are generous or kind. That could be undermining and inhibiting of our positive actions and what we need is encouragement. We need to encourage our generosity and kindness and encourage generosity and kindness in others. We need to praise and rejoice in generosity wherever we see it, so that we encourage that flow of positivity. If we do that then our motivations will gradually be purified through the positive beneficial consequences of our actions. Actions proceed from the mind and are affected by our mental states, but actions also have an effect on our minds and can encourage the growth of positive mental states. This is why generosity is encouraged as a practice regardless of motivation. The act of giving gives a generous shape or a generous flavour to our mind and that begins to mould a new consciousness that is more expansive and more naturally generous. Generosity is a skilful means of giving a transcendent flavour to our consciousness. Generosity transcends egotism.

There are many different ways to give and they all lead us to the truth and enable is to lead others to the truth too. I'll just briefly go through some of the traditional ways to give. We can, for instance, give our experience of spiritual practice. We can share the benefits of our practice with others. This doesn't necessarily mean teaching meditation to others. That would not be appropriate until you were well established in practice and able to follow through any questions that arose. In the early stages of our spiritual life giving of our experience may mean simply helping out in such a way as to enable more experienced people to teach and spend time with people.

Another form of giving is giving confidence. You give confidence to others by being confident. Confidence is undermined by fear of failure and by a bad conscience. The only way to deal with fear is to act in the face of it and by acting we gain confidence. If we make an effort to develop loving kindness and to practice the precepts we will have a clear conscience and therefore be able to be confident that no one can reproach us. We give confidence by not allowing ourselves to be held back by fears, by being ethical and by encouraging others. Then there is giving of education and culture. This is sharing our knowledge, talents and enthusiasm with others.

Then there is what is traditionally known as giving life and limb. This means being willing to die for the sake of Truth. Under present circumstances in this country we are unlikely to be called upon to sacrifice our lives for the Dharma. That is not always the case everywhere in the world. For instance in Afghanistan the Taliban government has destroyed some 2000-year-old Buddhist statues and I imagine they wouldn't be too friendly to Buddhists either. But I think for us this giving of life and limb simply means being willing to be inconvenienced. Being willing to engage wholeheartedly, not just mentally, but also physically and do what needs to be done to create and maintain the conditions that enable ourselves and others to have a spiritual practice. This could mean simply helping out around the Buddhist Centre, doing a bit of cleaning or painting or it might mean cooking for a festival day or helping someone who is ill by doing their shopping, and so on. This willingness to be inconvenienced is something that goes against the grain of our comfort culture and something we need to consciously work at.

Then there is the giving of time and energy and the giving of material things and money. I want to go into these at some length because this is where many of us will be able to practice generosity most and also where many of us will experience the greatest resistance to being generous: time, energy, money, possessions. All these are connected with each other; time, energy, money, material things. We often sell our time and energy in order to acquire money with which we can buy goods. The things we have in our room or flat or house represent a certain amount of time and energy. They cost time and energy.

Time is very precious. “Our little life is rounded with a sleep” as Shakespeare's Prospero says. Our life is quite little or short from an historical or cosmic perspective. If we are fortunate we can expect to live about seventy five or eighty years. Of these the first twenty or so are spent growing up and the last five or ten are likely to be less active. So we may have about forty five or fifty active years and of course if we sleep for about eight hours a day that is a third of our lives that we spend asleep, leaving us with thirty to thirty five years of active adult life, which is not that much. So time is precious. Any major purchase we make such as buying a house costs us several years of our life. Our goods, our material possessions cost us a certain amount of time of which we do not have an unlimited supply. During that time we use energy, physical, emotional and mental energy. We sell our time and energy for money which we then convert into goods and services.

Because time and energy are so precious it becomes necessary to use them well. We need to be as creative or as intelligent as possible with our time and energy. When we come to see and understand the importance and necessity of the spiritual dimension of life we will naturally want to give more of our time and energy to our spiritual aspirations. And we may eventually want to give most of our time and energy to the spiritual dimension of life for our own sake and for the sake of others. We may even want to give our time and energy to creating the conditions for spiritual practice for future generations. We may come to feel that here is nothing more worthwhile to spend our time and energy on. As that happens we will be more and more generous with our time and energy; seeing each day as an opportunity for encouraging spiritual growth in ourselves and others. This might still mean selling our time and energy to acquire money, but the money would be substantially used in the service of the Dharma.

Generosity as skilful means is generosity that enables us to progress spiritually, enables us to encourage others to progress spiritually and brings about harmony and goodwill between all those who are trying to practice the Dharma. And that is what we will start to use our time and energy for as generosity becomes a more spontaneous quality of who we are.

Often we can expect to experience resistance in ourselves to giving time and energy. Because of the way society is ordered and the current ethos of selling one's life in order to consume, we may tend to make a sharp division between work and leisure, time that doesn't belong to us and time that belongs to us. And of course we can then be very possessive or precious about “my time”, “time for myself”, and through habit and convention we may often proceed to waste it by doing nothing or going shopping. A good use of “my time” or the time and energy that we are not selling is to give it wholeheartedly to what is most meaningful to us. Engagement and wholeheartedness also strangely enough increases our time. Time is a function of consciousness. Time is created by consciousness and a consciousness that is more aware and engaged creates more time. Emotional resistance uses up a lot of energy and leaves us feeling impoverished.

We need to be aware of any tendency to try to hoard our time and energy. It is self-defeating and emotionally impoverishing. We may think that we are being kind to ourselves. We may rationalise our emotional resistance to giving time and energy as not being hard on ourselves. But if we go along with our emotional resistances and poverty mind we will be condemning ourselves to dullness of mind and lack of vitality. Hoarding of time and energy is wasteful, it is better to give our time and energy to that which is meaningful.

I'd like to move on to say a few things about money and possessions. I find money fascinating. What it is, how it moves around, it's potential for good and evil, its associations with happiness and security; it's a very interesting thing, money. And as a topic it is is still somewhat taboo, which makes it even more fascinating. It is not quite socially acceptable to ask someone how much money they earn, how much savings they have, what they spend their money on or what they expect to inherit, and yet these things are so interesting. It is also fascinating to consider attitudes to money and conditioning around money. This is an area where many of us are quite unconscious.

It is very interesting to ask ourselves about our early conditioning around money. What is your earliest memory of money? What was your parents attitude to money? How much has your life been influenced by your early conditioning around money? Are you someone who saves money or never saves, someone who borrows or never borrows. What does this tell you about yourself? Do you part with money easily or are you very reluctant to part with money? Do you assume that your own way of handling money is the best? Do you find the topic of money exciting or depressing, or irritating or scary? If so why? There are so many questions we can ask ourselves about our attitudes to money and there is so much to learn about ourselves by looking into this area of our lives. I would recommend this as an exercise to anyone wanting to develop self-knowledge. I'm not even suggesting that you should change your attitude to money just that you become aware of it.

Money is conventionally defined as a medium of exchange. It replaced barter as a more flexible way to do business. And money is very flexible. It can become almost anything. We tend to think of money as a substance, as something material, because we associate it with notes and coins, but of course money is not notes and coins. That is just a way of representing money or indicating money. Money itself is something else. Most money is represented by numbers on paper or numbers on computer files. And these numbers are constantly changing, moving, flowing. It is best not to think of money as something concrete, it is best to think of it as something fluid. Money is a flow of energy. Money is pure potential. Money is a medium by which consciousness acts in the world. Because we are egotistic creatures and therefore spend much time and effort defending and consolidating our ego identity, we tend to channel money to this purpose too. Therefore we tend to give money the qualities of security and stability and substance. This is just an extension of the delusion that gives stability and substance to our own ego identity. But just as we are in reality a constantly changing process mentally, emotionally and physically, so too is everything else in the Universe including money.

In this regard it is interesting to consider the idea of savings, saving money. Is it possible to save money? It certainly seems to be possible. But how can you save something that is essentially a process, a flow of energy. Traditionally you put your notes and coins in a metal box and put that in a safe place. Of course this is not really saving money because in time it loses value and you could end up with so much relatively worthless paper and metal. What most people do is give their money to a bank, probably with the vague notion that the bank looks after it for them. What a bank does with any money deposited with it is that it promptly gives it to someone else or, more precisely, it sells your money to someone else. When you save money what you are doing is selling it to the bank for a certain period of time and the bank promptly sells it on to someone else, at a profit of course. But what is it that you sell to the banks and what does the bank sell on to someone else? This is a question worth pondering.

Well if your money is really the result of an expenditure of time and energy then it is time and energy that is deposited with the bank and it is time and energy that the bank sells. It could be said that it is more creative to and imaginative to borrow money than to save money. The bank buys or rents money from people who are not able to do anything creative or imaginative with it and sells or rents money out to people who can use it creatively and imaginatively. Of course when you put your money in a bank, this money which represents hours and days and years of your life energy, when you put it in the bank, you have no idea where it goes next or what use it's put to. It could be constructive or destructive, it could be positive or harmful, you just don't know. This is why we often recommend Triodos bank to people because Triodos Bank is a bank run by followers of the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner, (Anthroposophy). It operates a policy of transparency, so you can know exactly who your money is being lent to. And the projects they lend to are all life enhancing in one way or another. To use their own words, they lend to projects which “create social and environmental value”.

Because money is fluid and flows on incessantly it is not quite as simple as I've been saying. It is not just you, your bank and whoever your bank lends to. The money didn't begin with you and it doesn't end with the borrower. It is just an invisible cord that connects you to all these people whose hands it passes through. As with everything else, the money we come into contact with is part of a vast chain or cycle of events and we only have the opportunity to send it on its way as positively as possible. As Glen Saunders, a manager at Triodos bank, says “There is no such thing as clean money. Money passes from hand to hand and you can never be quite sure where it has been, nor in its longer life where it will go. It's very “social” in this way, linking you with people you might wish to avoid. We think you can never ask for clean money, only that when it comes into your hands, you transform it by what you do with it.”

(Triodos News Spring 2001 p3)

This is the crucial ethical question in relation to money; what you do with it. And the first thing to consider with regard to what we do with money is are we aware of what we do with our money. Do we know what we spend our money on or do we just have a vague notion about it. As an exercise in developing awareness it is worth writing down what we spend our money on and noting how much goes where. Then we will be in the position to ask ourselves whether that is what we want to spend our money on. Again to quote Glen Saunders “Much ethical investment is defined by a list of things to avoid. But it's much more interesting to look at what is embraced and supported. Thus, for Triodos Bank, our “ethical” is about finding people taking initiative who need capital in order to add social, environmental and cultural value to society.” (ibid)

It seems to me that this is a very good ethical approach. Not concentrating on what to avoid, although of course there are many things to avoid, but concentrating our energy and money on what adds value to humanity; what enhances life and encourages awareness and compassion. This is the ethical dimension to spending money. Channelling the time and energy represented by money as positively as we can. To do this we need to make some effort to be aware of what our money is likely to become when it leaves our custody. What will our money cause to happen. What will it bring into being. If you buy a bar of chocolate or a packet of coffee or a jar of honey you are becoming part of a particular chain or cycle of events. Do you know what sort of chain of events that is? Is it something you want to encourage or support? When you buy clothing or toiletries or a car you are involving yourself in a whole chain of activity. Is it something you want to encourage and support? When you buy a book or pay for a retreat you are involving yourself in a particular chain of events. Is it something you want your time and energy invested in? This is the sort of question we need to ask ourselves often if we are to be ethical in our use of money which represents the resources of time and energy. We also need to ask ourselves what it is that we do want to encourage and support. What are our priorities? What do we believe will enhance life? We cannot be skilful in our use of resources unless we are more aware of what direction we want to move in and what direction we need to encourage the rest of society to move in.

In terms of skilful means, what is being encouraged and supported is communication and harmony between people based on spiritual values. The values of non-violence, generosity, contentment, truthfulness and awareness. To promote, encourage and support these values is skilful means. It is a means of creating and unifying the Sangha or spiritual community. The best possible use of money is to channel it in a direction which encourages and supports these spiritual values. These spiritual values are the foundation for a more sane, ecologically aware and compassionate world. And it is just sensible to give our time and energy,whether in the form of money or otherwise, to creating a sane, ecologically aware and compassionate world. This is what Dana as skilful means is about . And if we want to enter into this sort of chain of activity, this stream of beneficial activity, then we need to take a radical look at our lives and especially at our attitude to money and our use of money. By doing this we will begin to transform ourselves and we will also start to help transform the world.

I said earlier that we tend to see money as something stable, secure and substantial and because of our basic self-view we seek security and stability through money. If we practice Dana as skilful means we are trusting to communication and human connections and friendship for our security and stability. Dana as skilful means is the practice of generosity to bring about harmony and connection and friendship between people. This connection and harmony based on common spiritual values and aspirations is what makes human life meaningful and what makes the prospect of death bearable. When I think of death I envisage my friends rejoicing and celebrating my life. Wealth is produced as a result of the human need for security and as we evolve beyond the material into the spiritual dimension we come to see and understand that real security and real wealth lies in friendship, harmony, trust and interconnection and this is what leads us to practice Dana as skilful means.

The Perfection of Wisdom

This is the sixth in a series of six talks on Wisdom given at the London Buddhist Centre in 2000

“Call forth as much as you can of love, of respect and of faith!

Remove the obstructing defilements and clear away all your taints!

Listen to the Perfect Wisdom of the gentle Buddhas,

Taught for the weal of the world, for heroic spirits intended!”

(The Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines,trans. E. Conze, p.9)

This is how the teaching of the Ratnagunasamchayagatha begins. The Ratnagunasamchayagatha is one of about thirty five Perfection of Wisdom texts. This verse is important because it tells us how we should approach the whole topic of Perfect Wisdom, in fact, how we should approach the Dharma.

It asks us to cultivate receptivity and to purify ourselves. This applies when we are engaging in study, reading, discussion or listening to talks. “Call forth as much as you can of love, of respect and of faith!” The love, respect and faith are already there, you just need to contact them and bring them to bear in the situation. You already love the Dharma, you already respect its profundity, and you already have faith in its effectiveness. That is why you are practising, that is why you are reading this. You need to contact “as much as you can” of that love, respect and faith. This is what constitutes your receptivity. When you are receptive you can gain much more than when you are in a state of doubt or cynicism. So, the first thing is to be as receptive as possible. Open your heart to the Dharma. What you are really calling forth is positive emotion. You don’t need to be a scholar, you don’t need to have a master’s degree, you don’t need to be highly intelligent, you don’t even need to be literate. But you do need to have sufficient positive emotion to listen to the Dharma. Your heart needs to be open enough to allow the Dharma to enter. For this to happen, you need to purify yourself of unskilful mental states. If you are in a state of ill will or anger or neurotic craving, you need to at least be aware of it and if possible put it to one side while engaging with the Dharma teaching. Even better is to prepare yourself before study or listening to a talk or reading a text by meditating and endeavouring to transform any negative emotions.

When you are prepared, then you can “listen to the Perfect Wisdom of the gentle Buddhas”. You can really listen, that is not just with your ears but also with your heart. This is the advice of the “gentle Buddhas”, the Compassionate Buddhas who want to help you to overcome all suffering. They teach the Dharma, “for the weal of the world”. And finally, the verse says this Perfect Wisdom is “for heroic spirits intended”.

The Dharma changes people, it affects every aspect of your life, no corner is left untouched. This can be a frightening prospect, it can make us feel insecure. Is there not something we can hold on to? Something that can stay unchanged? No, there isn’t. And that’s why we need courage to really listen to and engage with the Dharma. We have to be prepared for anything to happen. We have to be prepared to make unpalatable discoveries about ourselves, we have to be prepared to have our most cherished views and opinions challenged and shattered, we have to be prepared to live by values that the world may ridicule, we have to be prepared to upset people by not living our lives as they want us to, we have to be prepared for radical change in every area of our lives, we have to be prepared for the ego destroying explosion of Perfect Wisdom. This is why the Dharma is “for heroic spirits intended”.

What is the Perfection of Wisdom? Well, on one level it is a whole body of literature comprising, as I said, about thirty five texts. Perhaps the most well known Prajnaparamita texts are the Heart Sutra and the Diamond Sutra. There is also the Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines, which is rendered into verse as the Ratnagunasamcayagatha from which I quoted at the beginning. There are other texts ranging from the Perfection of Wisdom in One Hundred Thousand Lines to the Perfection of Wisdom in one letter. This Prajnaparamita or Perfection of Wisdom literature has all been translated into English due to the efforts of one man, the great scholar Dr. Edward Conze.

The main characteristic of the Prajnaparamita literature is that is totally non-rational. It consists of paradox after paradox and is most frustrating to the rational mind. And this is its intention. It is an all-out attack on literalism. It sets out to destroy all conceptualisation and to thwart the rational mind at every turn. The rational mind will get angry with the Perfection of Wisdom or dismiss it as rubbish. This is another reason why we need to “call forth as much as we can of love, of respect and of faith”. The Diamond Sutra was the first ever printed book, printed in China. It seems fitting that the first text put into print should be the highest teaching known to mankind. It was on hearing the Diamond Sutra being recited in the market place that Hui Neng gained Enlightenment. Hui Neng became the sixth patriarch of the Zen or Chan tradition. He was an illiterate young man at the time but the Diamond Sutra awakened him to the nature of Reality. And it was the Diamond Sutra and the Sutra of Hui Neng which Sangharakshita read at the age of sixteen. And he too experienced an awakening. He says,

“…..when I read the Diamond Sutra I knew that I was a Buddhist. Though this book epitomizes teaching of such rarefied sublimity that even Arahants are said to become confused and afraid when they hear it for the first time, I at once joyfully embraced it with an unqualified acceptance and assent. To me the Diamond Sutra was not new. I had known it and believed it and realized it ages before and the reading of the Sutra as it were awoke me to the existence of something I had forgotten.”

(Sangharakshita, Complete Works, vol.20, p.85)

So, we in the Triratna Buddhist Order and Community can be very grateful to the Perfection of Wisdom and especially to the Diamond Sutra. Our whole Order and Movement is a part of the unfolding of that realisation Sangharakshita had at the age of sixteen. We are spiritual children of the Perfection of Wisdom.

The Heart Sutra contains the essence of the Prajnaparamita teachings. That is why it’s called the ‘Heart’ Sutra, it is the heart of the Prajnaparamita. The Heart Sutra is a teaching on Shunyata, it expresses an Insight into Shunyata. That is in fact what the whole Prajnaparamita literature is about. It is all about Shunyata. Sangharakshita, in his commentary on the Heart Sutra, has said that the Sutra consists essentially of six statements. So we will look at these briefly. The Heart Sutra is the dialogue between the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara and Sariputra. Avalokitesvara is, of course, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, so we might wonder why he turns up here to deliver the heart of the Perfection of Wisdom teachings. And that is an opportunity for us to reflect yet again on the essential unity of Wisdom and Compassion. Sariputra was one of the chief disciples of the historical Buddha. He was noted for his wisdom. In the later sutras, the Mahayana sutras, Sariputra is often made to represent the degeneration and rigidity of scholastic Buddhism. So here he represents a lesser kind of wisdom, intellectual wisdom or literalistic wisdom and Avalokitesvara represents the Wisdom of the Enlightened mind, the Wisdom of direct experience of Reality. In this conversation, Sariputra, the lesser wisdom, does not say anything. In the face of the Wisdom of the Awakened mind, all lower wisdom is rendered mute. In the Heart Sutra, Avalokitesvara makes six statements.

The first statement is that the five skandhas are empty. The five skandhas are the basic constituents of all existence, whether things or people, and this statement is saying that there is nothing else behind or beyond them, no soul or self. Everything is included in the five skandhas, material form, feelings, perceptions, volitions and consciousness. There is nothing else in the universe apart from these, nothing independent of them and hey are empty of any ‘self’ or ‘soul’. The second statement is that all Dharmas are empty. This needs some explanation. The Abhidharma tradition of Buddhism, which is the more intellectual, analytic tradition, compiled a huge and complex classification of all existence, breaking everything down into ever smaller units and eventually they arrived at what they thought of as the basic units of existence, the irreducible elements, that couldn’t be broken down any further. These units or elements they called dharmas. So when Avalokitesvara says all dharmas are empty, he is dismissing this whole vast compilation, as a delusion; a very subtle delusion but a delusion nevertheless. Basically, he is saying it is not possible to give a systematic philosophic or scientific account of Reality. Reality is beyond and above any ideas about Reality. In our poetic version of the Heart Sutra, this statement is rendered as “All things are by nature void”.

The third statement of Avalokitesvara is that in Shunyata no dharmas exist. This reiterates what has already been said in a slightly different form. It is saying that Reality is devoid of concepts and ideas. Reality is something other than anything we say or think about it. The fourth statement in the Sutra takes various categories of Buddhist thought, various lists and so on and says there is nothing ultimately valid about them. This is again similar to the last two statements. It is saying that all ideas, even Buddhist ideas are not Reality. They are not ends in themselves. The Dharma is a raft to cross to the other shore or a finger pointing at the moon. What the other shore is or what the moon is, is another matter and cannot be squeezed into any categories or lists. The fifth statement says that one becomes a Buddha by relying on Perfect Wisdom, in other words, by having a direct experience of ultimate Reality. The sixth and last statement makes this same point even more strongly by saying that all Buddhas, past, present and future gain Enlightenment through the development of Perfect Wisdom. And the Sutra ends with the Perfection of Wisdom mantra –gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha. This mantra is related to the four levels of Shunyata. The mantra is translated by Dr. Conze as meaning, “Gone, Gone, Gone beyond, Gone altogether beyond, O what an awakening, all hail”.

Let us look at the four levels of Shunyata. The first ‘gate’ refers to the first level of Shunyata, which is called samskrta sunyata. Samskrta means ‘compounded’ or ‘confected’ or simply ‘put together’. Samskrta sunyata means the emptiness of the compounded. Compounded existence is unenlightened existence, also known as Samsara. This level of sunyata is saying that unenlightened existence is empty of the characteristics of Enlightened existence. The characteristics of Enlightened existence are happiness, permanence and ultimate Reality. Compounded or unenlightened existence is empty of these. It is unsatisfactory, impermanent and insubstantial. This level of sunyata says that Samsara is empty of Nirvana and we cannot find in unenlightened existence what only Enlightenment can give us. The second level of sunyata is called asamskrta sunyata. This is the emptiness of the Uncompounded. This is the emptiness of Enlightened existence or of Nirvana. Basically, this is the same as the previous point except from the other side so to speak. It is saying that Nirvana is empty of Samsara, Enlightened existence is empty of the characteristics of unenlightened existence. There is no suffering, no impermanence and no unreality in Enlightened existence.

The third level of sunyata is maha sunyata or ‘great emptiness’. This is the emptiness of any distinction between unenlightened existence and Enlightened existence. It is saying there is just one Reality, not two realities. This means that all dualities between Enlightened and unenlightened, Samsara and Nirvana are provisional and pragmatic but not ultimate.

The fourth level of sunyata is sunyata sunyata, the emptiness of emptiness. This is saying that emptiness itself is only a concept. Sunyata is a concept, a word that is pointing to something, is hinting at something, but it is not the experience itself. The experience cannot be described, it is beyond the reach of language. All that is left is silence, perhaps even a ‘thunderous silence’ like that of Vimalakirti in the Vimalakirti Nirdesa. As Sangharakshita puts it in What is the Dharma, “One may be as eloquent and insightful as one likes, but shunyata will always remain ultimately a mystery, even the greatest of all mysteries, so far as the Buddha’s teaching is concerned. It cannot be explained or even described”. After all the words we have silence. After all the talk of Shunyata, shunyata disappears like a bubble.

The Perfection of Wisdom literature is all about sunyata and it is full of paradox. Prajnaparamita cannot be packaged up in words and concepts and perhaps that’s why Prajnaparamita developed into a goddess, a Bodhisattva in female form.

But before we can go on to talk about the Bodhisattva Prajnaparamita, let us just draw a few lessons from the different levels of sunyata. The first two levels of sunyata make a clear distinction between Samsara and Nirvana, unenlightened existence and Enlightened existence. And this is very necessary. We need to make this distinction, we need to think in this way for practical reasons. If unenlightened existence is here and Enlightenment is over there, then we have to get from one to the other. And to get from one to the other we need to take certain steps, we need to do certain things. We need to progress from here to there, from Samsara to Nirvana. This is quite pragmatic and quite necessary, at least until such time as we have more direct insight into Reality. The danger with this is that we may become overly goal orientated and begin to think of Nirvana as something to get to without actually changing ourselves. The pursuit of Nirvana or spiritual bliss could become a substitute for real spiritual practice. Real spiritual practice involves greater and greater awareness of ourselves and the rest of existence. We need to become deeply aware of our motivations, even our motivation for spiritual practice. We need to become deeply aware of the subtleties and nuances of our responses to other people and our responses to events. We need to become deeply aware of the effect we have on the world and the effect the world has on us. We need to constantly probe deeper and develop more and more awareness. In doing this we are actually approaching nearer to Reality but we are not chasing after Reality as if it were something completely external to our life. This is what the third level of sunyata is telling us. Nirvana is to be found in Samsara. Unenlightened existence and Enlightened existence inhabit the same Reality. As the Song of Meditation says, “apart from water, no ice, outside living beings, no Buddhas.”

The fourth level of sunyata is warning us against the dangers of literalism. The tendency of our rational minds is to grasp concepts and fix them. And the Perfection of Wisdom literature is, as it were, on a crusade against literalism. So we arrive at the emptiness of emptiness and silence.

But when the words run out an image arises. It is the image of a mature woman, golden yellow in colour, wearing a tiara with jewels of five colours. She is seated in full lotus posture on a white moon mat, in the centre of a blue lotus. Her hands are in the mudra of teaching. She holds the stem of a lotus in each hand and the lotuses open into blossoms, one at each shoulder. Resting on each lotus is a volume of the Perfection of Wisdom. This is the Bodhisattva Prajnaparamita. There are other forms of Prajnaparamita. Sometimes she is white and sometimes she has four or six or even eleven arms. She may also have a vajra, a sword, a mala and a begging bowl. The mantra associated with Prajnaparamita, as described above is different from the mantra at the end of the Heart Sutra, although that mantra is also sometimes associated with the visualised figure. This mantra is ‘om ah dhih hum svaha’ and it cannot be translated into any conceptual form. It is simply a sound symbol of the Perfection of Wisdom.

This is what Vessantara says about meditation on the Bodhisattva Prajnaparamita, whom he refers to as a goddess.

“Regularly performing a sadhana of Prajnaparamita produces an ever deepening involvement with the Wisdom goddess. To start with the goddess becomes a focus for devotion. For men her practice can often absorb the romantic and other feelings that might be evoked by meeting a beautiful, mature woman. For women she is often a figure with which to identify, the most positive of all role models. Thus for both sexes energy can easily be engaged by the meditation, and hence poured into the contemplation of Wisdom.

If this process continues, the practice enters the realm of the archetypal. In Jungian terms, a man may project the highest aspect of his anima, whilst a woman may encounter the Magna Mater. She becomes for the meditator the archetypal Wisdom goddess – found in many traditions. For the Gnostics she was Sophia, for the Greeks Athena. She is found in the Tarot as the High Priestess, wearing a headdress of the crescent moon, and holding a scroll – corresponding to the book of Prajnaparamita.

Prajnaparamita is the Wisdom goddess of India – once described as staggeringly beautiful to the point of being scorching. Her meditation can become a way of experiencing the archetypal beauty of the refined levels of one’s mind. Finally, with faithful practice, she can become far more than that. She can become the experience of transcendental wisdom itself – the transcendence of the world of subject and object.” (Vessantara, Meeting the Buddhas, p 227)

Before we finish I want to repeat two points which have come up many times. Firstly, Perfect Wisdom or Enlightenment is not a rational experience. It is not a matter of gaining knowledge or getting our ideas right. It is something else altogether. It is a direct face-to-face experience with Prajnaparamita and awareness is the key to unlock the mysteries of this experience.

Secondly, Wisdom and Compassion are not different. When Perfect Wisdom acts the activity is Compassionate. When Perfect Wisdom speaks the words are Compassionate. It cannot be otherwise

However, to come back to the level of day to day practice, I think there are two things we can usefully do in order to develop Wisdom and Compassion. The first thing is not to identify with our moods. Our moods are passing things and to develop Insight into the self as a process of change we need to let go of identifying with moods and not take our ups and downs too seriously – not take our centrality in the universe too seriously. In this way we can gradually develop wisdom. The second thing we can do is to practise generosity. This is the most basic spiritual practice and it is the beginnings of Compassion. We need to practise generosity in the small things in order to cultivate the mind of compassion, which is concerned with the spiritual welfare of all.

We have now come to the end of this exploration of Wisdom. We began by looking at Wrong View, Right View and Perfect Vision. Then we went on to explore different ways of attaining Insight. We looked at the stages of the Eightfold Path and the three levels of Wisdom. We took in different perspectives on Realisation, including Stream Entry, Turning about in the Deepest Seat of Consciousness, the Arising of the Bodhicitta and Real Going For Refuge. Then we widened our horizons to take in a view of the four Viparyasas or topsy-turvy views, the three marks of unenlightened existence, the three liberations and the Bodhisattvas known as the family Protectors. We explored the five wisdoms associated with the Mandala of the five Buddhas and now we have just been looking at the Perfection of Wisdom, the Heart Sutra, the four levels of Shunyata and the Bodhisattva goddess Prajnaparamita. We have covered a lot of ground and some of it very quickly indeed. I hope we have gained something from the journey, if only a desire to revisit some of the sights.

The Five Wisdoms

This is the fifth in a series of six talks on Wisdom given at the London Buddhist Centre in 2000

The Buddha can be experienced or perceived in different ways depending on our level of consciousness. The Buddha may be experienced as an historical human figure, subject to the same laws of time, space and conditionality as we are. This is when we operate mainly on the level of the senses. If we are able to enter into higher states of consciousness, states of meditative absorption, we will experience the Buddha more vividly as a spiritual being, resplendent with his Transcendental qualities. This is more like visionary experience. And, if we have a direct realisation of Reality, we become the Buddha and our experience is one of there being no distinction. This is a direct, unmediated experience of the Buddha.

The Buddha that we perceive from the lower, sense-based level of consciousness is known as the Nirmanakaya, the ‘created body’ or ‘body of transformation’. The Buddha that is perceived from the level of meditative absorption is known as the Sambhogakaya, the ‘glorious body’ or ‘body of mutual delight’. And the Buddha that is experienced directly with the eye of Transcendental Wisdom is known as the Dharmakaya, the ‘body of Truth’. This is the Trikaya or three bodies doctrine of Buddhism. In this talk we are particularly concerned with the Buddha as seen with the inner eye of meditative concentration.

A very early example of this in the Buddhist scriptures is the case of Pingiya. Pingiya was a disciple of the Buddha who was too old and infirm to go to visit the Buddha but he told the other monks that he was never apart from the Buddha. He said, “I see him with my mind as if with my eye … I pass the night revering him. Pingiya’s level of awareness was such that he didn’t need to see the Buddha in the flesh so to speak, he could see Him with his heart and mind.

And ever since the death of the Buddha, meditators down the centuries have seen the Buddha with this inner eye. They have seen the ‘glorious body’, the Sambhogakaya. And not everyone has seen exactly the same form. The devotion and temperament and visionary capacities of different meditators have meant that a proliferation of forms of the ‘glorious body’ has been experienced. These come down to us through the tradition as the great assembly of archetypal Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. The Mandala of the five Jinas is part of this great assembly, a very important and central part, which helps us to see the whole assembly more clearly. Each of the five Buddhas is the head of a family of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. This gives a pattern to this great proliferation of visionary forms. And this pattern is the pattern of the human psyche on its deepest level. The Mandala of the five Buddhas is a Mandala of our mind, when our mind is free from delusion. This is the great archetypal pattern and by contemplating the five Buddhas, meditating and reflecting on them, we can come to gain a deeper knowledge of ourselves and of the workings of consciousness.

Each Buddha represents or emphasises an aspect of Enlightened awareness. Each has a rich symbolism involving colour, sound, gesture, emblems and animals. Each Buddha is accompanied by a female consort, who symbolises the Wisdom or Prajna of that particular Buddha. And each has an attendant family of of Bodhisattvas. This whole Mandala is a profusion of fascinating, beautiful, rich symbolism which can draw us up to a higher level of consciousness when we engage with it. A mandala has been defined by Snellgrove as: “a circle of symbolic forms … one symbol at the centre, which represents absolute truth itself and other symbols arranged at the various points of the compass, which represent manifested aspects of this same truth". ( Buddhist Texts Through the Ages, ed. E. Conze, p. 246/248) At the centre of the Mandala of the five Jinas is Vairocana, the white Buddha and arranged around him at the points of the compass are Akshobya in the East, Ratnasambhava in the South, Amitabha in the West and Amoghasiddhi in the North. The Mandala is traditionally entered from the East, which is depicted at the bottom in a two-dimensional representation.

The first Buddha we encounter then is Akshobya, the Buddha of the Eastern quarter. The Wisdom of Akshobya is known as the Mirror-like Wisdom. A mirror reflects everything just as it is. Pleasant objects don’t stick to the mirror nor are unpleasant objects repulsed by it. A mirror is completely objective, it reflects what is there. The Enlightened mind is like this too in that it does not respond with clinging or aversion to anything. The Enlightened mind is aware of the insubstantial, impermanent nature of all things and, therefore, responds with complete equanimity and imperturbability to everything. Akshobya’s name means ‘the Imperturbable’. The Enlightened mind is objective in that it relates to what is really there without adding any ideas or concepts. We tend to have so many ideas, preconceptions, assumptions and emotional biases that we rarely relate to the objective situation. We are more likely to be relating to a creation of our own deluded minds. So this Mirror-like Wisdom of Akshobya reminds us of the importance of objectivity. We need to try to be objective about ourselves, about other people and about events. Often these days we are so affected by the norms in the world about us that we have a very one sided view of ourselves, a distorted view. For instance, many people think of themselves as a problem. I was recently reading something by the American psychotherapist and mystic, Suzanne Segal, which illustrated this from her experience. She writes, “…. the negative is usually taken to be the truth. After all, the negative is so compelling and seems so deep. The positive is regarded as superficial and temporary, but, ah, the negative! When it arises, we believe we’re really in the presence of truth.

Connecting with others in our Western therapeutic culture is often based on a sharing of problems. When someone refuses to reveal what is most difficult in their lives, they are said to be ‘withholding or ‘cut-off’ or ‘untrustworthy’. When their problems are known, however, they are thought to be revealing the truth about themselves.

This overvaluing of the negative is rampant in our culture. Just about every person who sits across from me in my office and speaks to me about their lives believes that what is negative about them is most true. They are convinced that they carry something rotten at their core, that they are bad deep down, and that they will always return to the negative, which is the real bottom line.” (Suzanne Segal,Collision With the Infinite, p. 153)

Objectivity sees things clearly, sees thoughts as thoughts, feelings as feelings and so on, without any need for interpretations, assumptions or labelling.

Akshobya’s mudra or gesture is known as the bhumisparsa mudra or earth-touching gesture. This hearkens back to an incident in the symbolic account of the Buddha’s life when, on the verge of Enlightenment, he is tempted and taunted by Mara. Mara represents all the forces of the psyche that resist Reality. Mara is first of all aggressive trying to arouse fear in the Buddha. When this is unsuccessful, Mara tries to tempt the Buddha into sensual pleasure. When that fails, he tries to engender doubt in the Buddha. He says, “who are you to sit here on the Vajrasana, the throne of the Enlightened ones, what right have you to sit here?” In effect he’s saying, “who do you think you are?” The Buddha’s response is to touch the earth and call forth the Earth Goddess, Vasundhara, as a witness that he has been a Bodhisattva for lifetimes and it is, therefore, fitting that he should be there. In the more prosaic accounts of the Buddha’s Enlightenment, it simply says that he remembered all his previous lifetimes. The significance of this in terms of Akshobya is that it is another aspect of being objective. There is no boasting or false modesty, just recognition of the situation as it is.

We can learn from this and, especially where we experience doubts about the benefits of Dharma practice or lack of confidence in ourselves, we can touch the earth of our own experience and endeavour to be objective about what is actually happening and what has actually happened. We can recall how we have changed, we can reflect on our abilities and qualities and put the Mara of doubt to flight with an objective appraisal of the real state of affairs.

The emblem of Akshobya is the vajra and he is the head of the Vajra family of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. The vajra is the diamond thunderbolt of a mind that is not bewildered by subjective biases and clouded by delusion. The vajra goes straight to the heart of things, straight to the objective truth, you could say. The Wisdom of Akshobya, the Mirror-like Wisdom is the objective, unbiased, imperturbable Wisdom and, as we contemplate Akshobya, we can feel the longing for this Wisdom to arise in our own hearts. And, as we practice ethics and meditation inspired by Akshobya’s symbolism, we can become clearer and more objective and begin to experience the calm of equanimity.

Moving around the Mandala in a clockwise direction we come next to Ratnasambhava, the Buddha of the South. Ratnasambhava’s Wisdom is the Wisdom of Equality or Sameness (Samatajnana). This is the Wisdom that sees the same Reality in all beings and has the same attitude to all, the same love and Compassion for all. This serves to remind us that Wisdom and Compassion are not really to be distinguished at this level. The Wisdom of Equality rains down Compassion equally on all beings, just as in the White Lotus Sutra the Dharma is seen as raining down on all equally. The Wisdom of Equality does not relate to people on the basis of any limited identity. It does not relate to people on the basis of nationality, ethnic background, skin colour, sexual preference, gender, size, shape, looks, likes or dislikes. The Wisdom of Equality relates on the basis of common humanity and even more primarily, on the basis of the common Reality of all – the common impermanence and insubstantiality and the common potential for spiritual Insight.

The Mudra or gesture of Ratnasambhava is the varada or giving mudra of the open hand. Ratnasambhava gives unstintingly because the Enlightened mind is abundant and rich, overflowing with a wealth of creativity. The emblem is a jewel, symbol of richness. Ratnasambhava symbolises the Three Jewels which are an inexhaustible treasure of spiritual riches. Ratnasambhava is associated with the human realm and with the transformation of pride into the Wisdom of Sameness. Pride or making comparisons is the big failing of the human realm and the Wisdom which sees the common Reality and common humanity of all overcomes this tendency. Also, the activity of giving replaces the tendency to make comparisons with a more genuine awareness of others and their needs.

Ratnasambhava is yellow in colour. This is a very bright, alive colour that expresses something of the exuberance and energy that is released by the Wisdom of Equality. Ratnasambhava sees the whole universe as one great dance of joy that we are invited to join. All we have to lose is our limitations, our fears and our egotistic madness. We are invited to be expansive, outgoing, giving, joyful, alive, and vibrant with no holding back.

If we come under the influence of Ratnasambhava we will be encouraged to let go of all tightness, whether mentally, emotionally, verbally or even financially and we will be urged to give and give and give.

When the Wisdom of Equality starts to have an effect on us, we are moved away from any tendency to have a poverty mentality and we begin to experience the wealth mentality, which has no fears and is able to give, without even having any sense of giving. Giving becomes so natural, so ordinary, that it is no more thought of as something special than breathing or eating. According to Vessantara, the Wisdom of Sameness “is a strong, positive identification with all life”. From this perspective, to live is to give.

Moving on around the Mandala, we come to Amitabha, the Buddha of the West. Amitabha’s Wisdom is the All-Distinguishing Wisdom. This Wisdom means that the Enlightened mind sees the uniqueness of things, sees the differences. This balances the Wisdom of Sameness. The Enlightened mind is aware of the sameness and differences of beings simultaneously. To refer again to the parable of the rain cloud from the White Lotus Sutra, the rain of the Dharma falls equally on all beings, but all grow according to their own nature. Temperament or personality changes but is unique at the same time. Even Enlightened ones retain their personality differences. A well known example in the Pali Canon is the good friends Sariputra and Maudgalyayana. You are all no doubt familiar with the story of the yaksha who hit Sariputra over the head while he was meditating. Maudgalyayana was looking on and couldn’t believe that Sariputra could just carry on meditating after such a blow. Later he asked Sariputra if he felt anything and Sariputra complained of a slight headache. He, in his turn, was astonished that Maudgalyayana could actually see a yaksha. He couldn’t even see a mud-sprite himself. So, these two Awakened ones were very different, each unique in his qualities and abilities. In the chapter two we looked at the three types of individual, the faith-follower, the dharma-follower and the Body Witness and this classification also gives us an intimation of how individuals develop according to their own unique temperament. Another example of very different Enlightened masters from the Tibetan tradition are Milarepa, who could be said to be a faith follower, and Tsong Khupa, who was more like a Dharma follower. So, this All-Distinguishing Wisdom reminds us of our uniqueness and the uniqueness of all beings.

We could say that to have a real appreciation of our uniqueness is self-metta. This is different from feeling special in an egotistic way, which is probably just an over-compensation for a sense of hollowness or inferiority. A real appreciation of our uniqueness is more objective, like the earth-touching of Akshobya. Many people feel unloved or unlovable and this can lead to a sort of insatiable craving out of desperation to find some security and satisfaction. This is the state of the beings in the realm of hungry ghosts (pretas). These are depicted in the Wheel of Life as having large bellies and small mouths so that they are never fully nourished, never satisfied. Amitabha is associated with this realm. The Compassion of Amitabha, which is conjoined with the All-Distinguishing Wisdom, loves all beings for themselves, for their uniqueness. This can serve to help them appreciate their uniqueness more and so get a sense of being lovable and loved.

Amitabha is red, which is the colour of love and compassion. His mudra is the Dhyana or meditation mudra. Meditation helps us to become more and more aware so that we can see ourselves and others more clearly, so that we can begin to grasp our uniqueness and the uniqueness of others and simultaneously see the common Reality and potential for Insight that is the common human heritage. When we come under the influence of Amitabha, our hearts open in love and compassion and we affectionately appreciate the details and subtleties of difference that are everywhere in life and especially in all the individuals we meet.

Moving on now, we come to Amoghasiddhi, the Buddha of the North. His name means “unobstructed success” and his Wisdom is the All-Performing Wisdom. This is the aspect of the Enlightened mind which acts spontaneously for the benefit of all beings. Every means are used to help beings to progress spiritually. The All-Performing Wisdom represents a fearless outpouring of Compassionate activity, whenever and wherever a need is seen. It is a total and immediate response to the present situation with all the tremendous energy at the disposal of a fully integrated and Awake mind.

Amoghasiddhi’s emblem is the double vajra representing the transcendence of all opposites, all polarities, and total psychic integration. His gesture is the Abhaya mudra, the gesture of fearlessness. The spiritual life demands courage, there are many obstacles to face and we are bound to encounter disappointment, doubt and discomfort. We can’t afford to allow ourselves to be weak and frightened. We have to develop fearlessness, the ability to take risks. One way to do this is to be honest about our weaknesses and resolve to work on them. If we only develop our strengths we will be one sided and we will be fearful about betraying our weaknesses. We cannot always see ourselves clearly, we may see our strengths as weaknesses and our weaknesses as strengths. That’s why we need other people, especially those a little more experienced on the Path, to point out to us what we should be working on. The initial step on the path of fearlessness could be to invite criticism from our good friends and resolve to work to develop our total being, we become integrated and strong. We become confident and courageous. We are then able to mobilise our energy and act for the benefit of others. We become successful at communicating the Dharma to others and because of our strength of character and fearlessness, they sit up and take notice. Amoghasiddhi is concerned with the realm of the Titans, the realm of fierce competitiveness, filled with powerful, aggressive beings. But the All-Performing Wisdom is more powerful still. It cannot be defeated and even the Titans have to take notice, however grudgingly.

When we contemplate the mysterious dark green figure of Amoghasiddhi, with his double vajra and powerful gesture of fearlessness, we can be inspired to take courage and face our fears. Fear is debilitating and a real hindrance to spiritual progress. And, as far as I know from my own experience, the only way to overcome fear is to face it. When we come out on the other side of fear we will experience a great release of energy and the joy of relief and freedom. This is what the figure of the Dakini, the naked female sky-dancer of Tantric Buddhism, represents. The energy released when we overcome fear is more energy for the practice and communication of the Dharma and it is another step on the way to the unobstructed success of the All-Performing Wisdom. The All-Performing Wisdom of Amoghasiddhi, with its emphasis on activity for the benefit of all, tells us yet again that Wisdom is Compassion, Compassion is Wisdom.

Now we come to the Centre of the Mandala and the figure of Vairocana. Vairocana’s Wisdom is called the Dhamadhatu Wisdom. It is the Wisdom of the sphere or realm of Reality. This is the ultimate Wisdom of which all others are aspects. This is the Enlightened mind in its full blaze of glory, like the sun. Vairocana means ‘illuminator’, the one who lights up or illuminates everything. In Japan, Vairocana is known as the Sun Buddha, he is the spiritual sun or illuminator of the universe. The Enlightened mind experiences the universe as fully pervaded by Reality. There is a direct experience of Reality and the cosmos being the same. The cosmos is Reality, Reality is the cosmos.

Vairocana’s mudra is the Dharmachakra pravartana mudra, the mudra of the turning of the wheel of the Dharma, or the teaching mudra. Buddhism began when the Buddha successfully communicated his experience of Enlightenment to others. This is known as the turning of the Wheel of the Dharma. The Wheel of the Dharma was set in motion and has been rolling on ever since. This mudra represents something that is central to the Dharma – it can be communicated. But more than that, it must be communicated. Inherent in the experience of Awakening is the urge to communicate the Truth to others. Compassion is the activity of the Enlightened mind. The animals associated with Vairocana are lions and these also symbolise the proclaiming of the Truth. The Buddha’s teaching is often referred to as the Singhanada, the lion’s roar.

So the Wisdom of Vairocana, the Dhamadhatu Wisdom, reminds us that everything is teaching the Dharma, Reality is all around us and within us. The sound of the Dharma is everywhere. The Truth is in everything. It also reminds us that communication or sharing is innate to the experience of Insight. From this we can gather that sharing what we have learned or understood is something we can practice from early on in our spiritual journey. In our initial enthusiasm about the Dharma we may want to tell everyone the good news whether they want to hear it or not. This is not really appropriate. But it is appropriate to share our understanding with those who genuinely are interested and point them in the direction of those with greater understanding. I say those who are genuinely interested because there are also those who are only interested in a very superficial way, who may want to undermine your idealism with cynicism. We need to be willing to share and communicate what we have learnt but, at the same time, we need to be intelligent about when, where and to whom we communicate such a precious gift. This sharing or communication is what Vairocana is inspiring us to do. As Vessantara puts it, “The gift Vairocana gives us is the responsibility of sharing what we have learnt with others. The final message of the Mandala is that no experience has been complete until it has been communicated”. (Vessantara, Meeting the Buddhas, p 126)

We have come to the end of the Mandala of the five Jinas and looked at the five Wisdoms. We have learnt that each Buddha and each wisdom has many messages for us and, in particular, we have highlighted the practices of objectivity, generosity, appreciating uniqueness, facing fear and sharing our experience.

The more objective we can be, the more we will experience equanimity, as we are not pulled this way and that by our subjective reaction. Generosity helps us to transcend self-centredness and, in particular, is an antidote to pride or the tendency to make comparisons with others. Appreciating our uniqueness and the uniqueness of others gives rise to Metta and helps to counteract any feelings of being unlovable or unloved and the neurotic cravings those feelings give rise to. Facing our fears frees up our energy so that we can act for the benefit of ourselves and others. And sharing our experience of the Dharma makes us more conscious of that experience and can be an inspiration to others.

There is much more to the Mandala of the five Buddhas than I have mentioned here, it is an inexhaustible treasure of Dharma teaching and is worth re-visiting again and again. There is one more aspect I would like to mention. Each of the five Buddhas has a female consort. This is a Buddha in female form, although when we speak of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas we musn’t take gender too literally, it is just one more skilful means used by the Enlightened Ones to try to pierce through the clouds of our ignorance. The female Buddhas are Locana, consort of Akshobya, Mamaki, consort of Ratnasambhava, Pandaravasini, consort of Amitabha, Tara, consort of Amoghasiddhi, and Akashadhateshvari, consort of Vairocana. These male and female figures are depicted in sexual union. Strangely for us perhaps this has nothing to do with sex, there is no erotic content to these images. This is sexual symbolism. In the Tantra this is profound and sacred symbolism, expressing the highest Truth. These images, known as Yab-Yum, are symbolic of the unity or oneness of Wisdom and Compassion. The female Buddha represents the Wisdom aspect and the male Buddha represents the Compassion aspect, which is the active aspect of Enlightenment. The sexual embrace symbolises the fact that there is no distinction between Wisdom and Compassion, they are just two ways of speaking about, or two ways of seeing, what is in fact a total experience. So, the final message of the five Wisdoms is that Wisdom is Compassion. We will end on that paradoxical note, which will perhaps prepare us somewhat for the great paradox of the Prajnaparamita, the Perfection of Wisdom which is the subject of the next talk.