This talk was given at the London Buddhist Centre, June 1998
Amoghasiddhi is perhaps the most mysterious of the Archetypal Buddhas. Almost everything about Amoghasiddhi demonstrates a seeming contradiction or paradox. His symbolism includes lots of opposites, opposing forces, and these opposites, these opposing forces, are united in Amoghasiddhi.
Amoghasiddhi is associated with midnight. He is visualised in a deep blue sky, a velvety blue in colour, the colour of the night sky in the Tropics. His imagery includes a couple of strange features. First of all his lotus throne is supported by two mythical figures, known as Shang-Shang birds which are half human half bird. In their hands they hold cymbals which they clash together. Amoghasiddhi is green in colour and his left hand rests in his lap holding a double vajra, a very potent symbol , which I will return to. His right hand is held up, palm outwards in the Abhaya mudra: the gesture of fearlessness. In this talk I'm going to focus mainly on two aspects of Amoghasiddhi, the aspect associated with the Abhaya mudra, the gesture of fearlessness and the aspect associated with the double vajra.
Bhante Sangharakshita has said that all fear is at bottom a fear of death. We could see this in two ways: as relating to physical death and also as relating to spiritual death, death of the ego. There is of course a connection between the two, because the fact of our physical decay and death reminds us that we are not totally in control of our lives and it is loss of control that we often fear when we need to let go into a bigger spiritual Reality. We experience ourselves as being substantial beings, in a particular time and place, occupying a certain amount of space, possessing certain things which are ours and with intelligence, feelings, appetites, all of which we satisfy as best we can. We are here and we are alive and we have a name and personality and identity. And yet, death awaits us. There are many ways to respond to this dilemma. We may turn away and reassure ourselves that we are here and alive or we may run and hide or stand and stare in a state of confusion. Whether we reassure ourselves or hide or become bewildered, our response in its nakedness is one of fear, horror even, perhaps even indignation or rage. What have I done to deserve this? Or What has my friend or parent done to deserve this? It's not fair. Anger is frustrated craving and what we crave is life. We want to hang on to life. We don't want to grow old or to die, or to suffer in any way. We don't want to see our friends sickening or dying or suffering. We want to be alive and to be happy.
We reassure ourselves that we are alive and we pursue happiness through our relationships with other people and via our possessions, whether material or intellectual. We hide from death and decay by distancing ourselves with television, cinema, shopping, fashion, falling in love, making plans and so on. Or in extreme cases by falling into addiction. A state of bewilderment or confusion is a step further on than self-reassurance or running away because at least here we are facing the facts: we are decaying, we will die, it horrifies us and we are thoroughly confused by it. Bryan Magee writes: “I used to look at people going about their normal lives with everyday cheerfulness and think: “How can they? And how can they suppose that any of what they are doing matters? They're like passengers on the Titanic, except that these people know already that they're headed for total and irremediable shipwreck. In a short time every one of them will be dead, either a heap of grey ash in an urn or a corpse rotting underground with worms wriggling in and out of its eye sockets. And that situation will be every bit as real then as their situation now is now; and it will last for very much longer. Why aren't they overwhelmed with horror at it? Why don't they seem even to mind?”. In my London club – which unlike most of the others was something like a family – I would look at middle-aged and elderly members and think: “How can they sit there enjoying their lunch, telling jokes, laughing, their eyes sparkling with pleasure? In a short time now they will be dead, all of the, and what's more they know it now. They're almost face to face with total oblivion. Don't they care?”. I was baffled by the fact that almost all human beings knew what was in store for them yet lived as if it were not so – or as if it were something that they were perfectly happy about. Above all, I was baffled by the fact that the middle aged, who were so close to death, tended to be even more cheerful than the young. In some of my moods they seemed to me like a lot of lunatics chuckling dementedly while the asylum burnt down and turned them to ash.” (Confessions of a Philosopher, p.266)
This sort of state has potential for wisdom in it. However most of us, most of the time have not got that far. We are still trying to reassure ourselves that we will live forever and we think we just need to make a few adjustments here and there and life will be pretty perfect and we can sit back, put our feet up and relax. But life keeps knocking us back: our plans don't work out, someone close to us dies, we lose our job, our partner runs off with someone else, and the bank raises its interest rates. Or we are afraid of these things happening. We are afraid that we will be alone and impoverished. Many people have a sort of secret horror that they will grow old alone and poverty stricken, wandering the streets uncared for, and since it does happen to some people it's not a totally unrealistic horror.
In response to these fears we put a lot of time and energy into finding and holding onto a lover, a family or friends to ensure that we won't be alone and we put time and energy into getting a good job, accumulating some money and property, enough to ensure that we won't be in want, we won't be impoverished. We experience fear or at least it lurks somewhere in the cellars of our mind and we find various ways of coping, none of which actually work.
And so perhaps we turn to Buddhism. And Buddhism tells us we are afraid because we are egotistic and our egotism is a state of gross delusion. Does that help us to cope with our fears? No. But fortunately Buddhism is above all practical and so we are given practices which we are told that if we follow them assiduously we will see through the delusion and experience a great sense of liberation and happiness. In a sense we won't really be beyond our fear of death and all fears until we gain Insight into the nature of Reality. But to borrow a phrase from Yeats, Insight “comes dropping slow like the morning dew.” In other words, Insight into Reality and freedom from the fetters of our deluded egotism is not necessarily going to be a big bang experience. It is more likely to be an accumulation of little insights that slowly drop into our psyche and gradually transform us. We have to pursue two parallel approaches to our fears: one, we need to undertake practices which help us cope with our fears, and two, we need also to, as it were, face the facts of life and through study, reflection and meditation gradually clarify our existential vision and prepare the ground for an intuitive and imaginative turning about in the depths of our being. What we need to help us cope with our fear is something to trust in. We try to put our trust in lovers and money and computers but somehow it doesn't quite work.
What can we trust in? Well there are different levels of trust. There are some things you can put some trust in but not total trust and there are some things you can trust totally. According to Buddhism you can have complete trust in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Arya Sangha. The Buddha represents the Enlightened mind or Reality. You can trust Reality. The Dharma is also Reality, it is the way things are. As well as that, the Dharma is the methods or path by which we come to see Reality. The Arya Sangha is all those who have gained Insight into the nature of Reality. So we can have complete trust in the Buddha, the ideal of Enlightenment, the Dharma, the Path, and the Arya Sangha, those who have attained Insight into Reality. But perhaps we need something more immediate and tangible to trust in, something that can take the place of money and property and so on. The Tantric tradition has addressed itself to this question and come up with some answers which are partially helpful to us.
In the Vajrayana tradition you put your trust in the Guru. Outside of that tradition it is virtually impossible to replicate the system of guru as Buddha without falling into all sorts of of confusion or worse. What we, in the Triratna Buddhist Community, have is the Kalyana Mitra, Spiritual Friend; someone a bit more experienced on the path. We place our full trust in the Buddha and we place some degree of trust in our Kalyana Mitra. We trust them in matters pertaining to the spiritual path. But we retain our own judgment and autonomy. The Kalyana Mitra, spiritual friend is simply someone more experienced on the spiritual path than we are, someone we respond to with faith. We judge from their behaviour, their speech and from our intuition that they are indeed more spiritually experienced and capable of giving us some guidance, not necessarily advice on how to live our lives, but some guidance on the spiritual path, in the realm of ethics, meditation and so on.
In terms of the Dharma refuge we simply put our trust in the practices; the precepts, generosity, the Metta Bhavana, the Mindfulness of Breathing. These are tried and tested practices. And we can put our trust in the concepts of dependent arising (pratitya samutpada) and karma as reflections of the way things are.
As regards the Sangha, we put our trust in friendship with others who share our aspirations and try to relate on the basis of that shared aspiration. Obviously we can't rely on our friends totally, they have human weaknesses and failings, but we can rely on each other to the extent that we re genuinely practising ethics and meditation. Our Kalyana Mitras, spiritual friends can be relied on to some degree. The practice and concepts of the Dharma can be relied on and our friends in the Sangha can be relied on to some extent. These all help us to cope with our fears. They are something to be getting on with until such time as Insight comes dropping slowly to penetrate to the depths of our being. As we pursue this approach of finding more reliable ways to cope with our existential and resultant fears, we also need to pursue the path of Insight through study, reflection and meditation.
By studying the concepts and symbols of the Dharma over and over again we learn to make connections that we hadn't seen before, we penetrate deeper into the meaning and this paves the way for us to gain an intuitive glimpse of Reality. When we become quite familiar with concepts such as dependent arising, the five precepts or the five skandhas or the three laksanas, (marks of conditioned existence) we will be able to turn them over in our minds, especially when on retreat and this sort of reflection or contemplation will gradually yield rewards. Even a simple concept like the phrase we sometimes use in the Metta Bhavana “May I make progress” can be the basis for reflection, or “All things are impermanent”. These reflections take us to the limits of our ability to intellectualise and then when we have reached the top of that particular pole, to use an image from Zen, we are in a position to make a wild leap into the unknown. Before that, for many times, we will simply slither back down to earth, feeling more confused than ever. It is not for nothing that it is said that Padmasambhava, who took Buddhism to Tibet, said “Let these three expressions: I do not have, I do not know, I do not understand, be repeated over and over again. That is the heart of my advice”. (The Life and Liberation of Padmasambhava, Part II, Canto 93, p.635) He was warning that our intellect will be battered to bits against the Walls of Reality, until we let go of grasping at intellectual answers and float free into the blue sky of Wisdom. If we pursue these parallel paths of finding more stable and safer things in which to trust and studying, reflecting and meditation on the truths of the Dharma, then we will be dealing creatively with our fears. We will also be gradually learning the message of Amoghasiddhi's Abhaya Mudra, the gesture of fearlessness. The message of this mudra is not that we must be fearless, but rather that there is nothing to fear. There is nothing whatsoever to be afraid of. Everything we fear is a phantom of our own mind. It is because we hold on to a particular view of ourselves and of the world that we are afraid. When we wake up from the dream of our wrong views, our delusions, we will be fearless because there will be nothing to fear. As the Heart Sutra says, “The Bodhisattva holding to nothing whatever is freed of delusive hindrance and rid of the fear bred by it.”. It is what we are holding onto that causes us to fear. When we finally let go there is nothing to fear.
However in the meantime we need to have a practice of fearlessness. Taking risks is the essence of the practice of fearlessness and courage. There is no easy way to deal with fear, it has to be faced. We can face it gradually, taking small steps at a time, small risks. What we are usually risking is humiliation or failure, loss of face. One of my biggest fears was always the fear of having to speak in front of other people. When I first came along to the London Buddhist Centre at the age of twenty eight, I was very shy, painfully shy. I found it very difficult to speak in any group even a small group of six or seven people. When I was about to be ordained I doubted whether I was really up to it because I thought Order Members had to give talks, teach meditation etc., and I just couldn't really see myself being able to do that. But, as you can see, something has changed and even though being up in front of a crowd of people is not necessarily my favourite activity, it doesn't bother me any more. It has been a gradual process of just doing it and feeling the discomfort and nervousness and fear of humiliation and sweating palms and shaking legs and having to go to the toilet five times before speaking etc. But ,as I say, I've cracked it and I don't even get nervous now. I'm just telling you that, because it might be encouraging. You may have your own fear. Some people for instance have no problem with speaking in groups but are frightened of having to be alone. There are all sorts of things we fear.
Traditionally the yogis went into the cremation ground at night to face their fears, ghosts, wild animals and the dead. We each have our own equivalent of a cremation ground. The cremation ground is the crucial situation that we find difficult to face; a particular communication, speaking up, going abroad, not being able to speak the language, what others think. We often 'prepare a face to meet the faces that we meet'. The practice of fearlessness is a practice of gradually taking risks, facing our crucial situation, entering our cremation ground. According to the Tantra when you come out the other side of your fear what you meet is the Dakini, the Sky Dancer, a naked female figure ,brilliant red in colour, dancing through the sky with complete abandon. This is a symbol of the tremendous freedom and energy that arises from facing fears and taking risks. So that's what we can look forward to, when we face fears. We can look forward to a great sense of freedom and a release of energy. We begin to live our lives more and more fully.
Now I'd like to go on to look at the symbolism of the double vajra. A vajra is a symbolic thunderbolt used in Tantric rituals and depicted in thangkhas or images of various Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, most notably Vajrasattva, Akshobya, Vajrapani, Amoghasiddhi and Padmasambhava. Very simply described, a vajra consists of a central sphere with five spokes emerging from it on each side. There is a lotus emerging from the centre on each side as well and the heads of some mythical beasts called Makara, like crocodiles. Each of these elements: the central sphere, the two sets of five spokes, the lotuses and the mythical beasts, has its own symbolism and the whole vajra is a very rich symbol. I'm not going to go into that now. Today I am concerned with the double vajra and I want to concentrate on the symbolism of the two sets of five spokes and say more things about the double vajra.
One set of five spokes represents the Five Buddhas and the Five Wisdoms. The five Wisdoms are the Mirror-like Wisdom of Akshobya, the Wisdom of Equality associated with Ratnasambhava, the Discriminating Wisdom of Amitabha, the All-Performing Wisdom of Amoghasiddhi, and the Absolute or Dharmadhatu Wisdom of Vairocana. The second set of five spokes represents various things but I want to concentrate on the five poisons. These are infatuation or spiritual ignorance, aversion, conceit, craving and jealousy or envy.
The vajra contains all these elements, the poisons and the wisdoms. It embraces opposites, it is a union of opposites and the double vajra re-emphasises this union of opposites. When you achieve a union of opposites, transformation takes place which gives rise to great energy and the double vajra is a symbol of tremendous energy. It is the spiritual equivalent of nuclear power. The energy of the double vajra is unstoppable, invincible, it is the energy of Enlightenment, the energy that arises when the forces of the psyche are transformed into the Wisdom of Reality.
On one side of the vajra we have negative energies; greed, hatred, ignorance, pride and jealousy and on the other side we have the positive energies of Transcendental Wisdom. But there is only one vajra and it contains both. There is only one energy which can be channelled in different ways. Our psyche, our mind is a vajra, a double vajra even and contains contradictions, opposites, conflicts. We are in conflict with ourselves and as we pursue the spiritual path the conflict intensifies. There is the conflict, the tension between our spiritual aspirations and our craving for distraction. There is the conflict between our ideals and the mundane reality of our lives. There is the conflict between our desire for immediate pleasure and the need for discipline. There is the conflict between our need for guidance and our fear of authority, and so on. Our lives are full of conflict and contradictions. Internally we experience conflict and tension in terms of opposing tendencies and desires and externally we experience the conflict of encountering other minds and other selves beyond our control or understanding.
This conflict and contradiction can seem a chaos and can be very painful as we try desperately to impose order on the unruly forces of our own mind and try to control the world around us. The mistake we make often, is that we try to banish or defeat or obliterate one side of the conflict in our minds. This just causes even greater problems. We cannot become good by banishing the bad. We cannot expand our consciousness and attain higher states by banishing some elements from consciousness. We have to learn to be big enough to contain contradictions. One difference between Buddhism and traditional Christianity is that nobody is eternally damned in Buddhism. The devil symbolises all that is wicked and bad and is traditionally consigned to everlasting damnation, beyond redemption. It's a long time since I learned my Christian doctrine so the devil may have been rehabilitated by now. In Buddhism this is an impossible notion, for if the devil is not redeemable, then we are not, because all that is wicked is ours, as well as all that is good.
My own experience was that when I began meditating I was not aware of any conflict in me. It all seemed quite simple and straightforward. I wanted to progress spiritually, I wanted to become more aware, more happy, more compassionate and so on and meditation would help me do that, so no conflict. But of course when you meditate you become more aware, you become aware of the nastier aspects of yourself, your selfishness and pettiness and so on. I gradually became aware of aspects of myself that did not want to progress spiritually, did not want to meditate etc, in fact didn't want to be bothered and were screaming, leave me alone. And the conflict got more and more intense, this conflict between my idealism and faith and determination to live a spiritual life and my wanting an easy life that didn't involve any change or difficulty and was completely indulgent. When I'd been meditating for about two years I almost exploded with this conflict as aspects of my psyche that I'd been repressing burst into awareness. I felt very emotionally unstable for several months and went into depression. I hope this doesn't put you off meditation. However, I never lost trust in the practices and theory of Buddhism, I don't really know why. Gradually the conflict in me not only intensified but clarified and during the course of a solitary retreat I came to be able to contain both of these strong tendencies within my view of myself. I was no longer trying to get rid of an aspect of myself. It just seemed to resolve on a deeper level and something else came into being that was larger and softer. I began to have images of lakes in meditation. I became bigger somehow, more expansive. That is what we are aiming at with meditation. We need to become big rather than good. To be big is to contain contradictions. As the American poet, Walt Whitman, said:
“Do I contradict myself?
Very well then ….... I contradict myself
I am large ....... I contain multitudes”
(Song of Myself)
We need to embrace all of us, warts and all, so to speak. We are not good. We are not bad, we are good and bad. That is why we need to transform ourselves and that is why we can transform ourselves. Because if we think we are all good there is no need to change and if we think we are all bad we can't change. But either one of these lopsided states is a state of alienated awareness. And as Bhante Sangharakshita says: “It is better to establish real, living contact with our negative emotions (which means acknowledging them and experiencing them but not indulging them) than to remain in an alienated state and not experience our emotions at all. (A Stream of Stars, p.45)
In the vajra the poisons are recognised and through the power of awareness are transformed into the Wisdoms. Hatred is transformed into the Mirror-like wisdom of Akshobya. Hatred already has in it a sort of sharp objectivity which through the practice of forbearance or patience is transformed into the more benign objectivity and clarity of the Mirror-like Wisdom. Pride is transformed into the Wisdom of Equality, Ratnasambhava's Wisdom. The hallmark of pride is making comparisons with others and through the practice of an attitude of generosity towards everyone, pride or making comparisons is transformed into the ability to relate to others on the basis of their spiritual potential, and the attitude of generosity eventually can become the Wisdom of Equality. Craving or greed is transformed into the discriminating Wisdom of Amitabha. Greed is concerned with preferences, (I like this, I don't like that) and through the practice of deep meditation, the tendency of our mind to make distinctions can be transformed into the an ability to see the unique qualities of individuals and situations, which eventually can become the Discriminating Wisdom. The poison of jealousy or envy is transformed into the All-Accomplishing Wisdom of Amoghasiddhi. Through the practice of fearlessness, courageously taking risks, we can achieve success in whatever we attempt and this brings a confidence that dissolves envy and can eventually become the All-Accomplishing Wisdom. The poison of spiritual ignorance is transformed into the Dharmadhatu or Absolute Wisdom of Vairocana. Through reflection on the essential teachings of the Buddha, seemingly even simple teachings such as 'actions have consequences', our minds become open to the Reality of existence and become gradually saturated with Truth. Spiritual ignorance is slowly dissolved leaving space for the arising of Insight and eventually the attainment of Enlightenment and Absolute Wsidom.
In this way through the practices of patience, generosity, meditation, fearlessness (taking risks) and contemplation the five poisons are transformed into the five Wisdoms and the double vajra is a symbol of the tremendous energy released by this transformation. The single vajra is the emblem of Akshobya and is an indication of energy required for the practice of forbearance (ksanti), the energy required just to be. The double vajra could be seen to symbolise the energy needed in order to be and to do simultaneously. To be centred and calm and at the same time active and effective. The key to this is the practice of awareness or mindfulness which raised to its highest level is the state of Nirvana or Enlightenment.
The centre of the vajra, the sphere, represents the state of complete Enlightenment. The poisons pass through the central sphere on the way to becoming the Wisdoms. What this means is that awareness is the fundamental Buddhist practice which needs to permeate all other practices and a state of bare awareness is a state of freedom. A state of liberation from all the turbulent and unskilful tendencies of the mundane mind. Awareness leads to self-knowledge. We need to know ourselves in order to transform ourselves. Our awareness needs to be permeated by goodwill, which is why we do the Metta Bhavana, as well as the Mindfulness of Breathing.
We need to become aware of our defilements. Aware of the poisons in our minds, aware of our hatred, greed, ignorance, pride and jealousy and we need to maintain an attitude of goodwill towards ourselves at the same time. There is no place for condemnation in Buddhism. No place for condemnation of ourselves or others. There is a place for making judgements and constructive criticisms which are in the context of goodwill or Metta. Bhante Sangharakshita mentions this. He says: “Criticism is not condemnation. I never condemn anyone, since I believe that human beings are capable of change. Criticism if taken in the right spirit helps us to grow.” (A Stream of Stars, p.98) This highlights something else about criticism. It needs to be taken in the right spirit as well as given in the right spirit. The right spirit is a spirit of goodwill. With regard to ourselves we need to be big enough to acknowledge our capacity for evil, for hatred, greed etc., and acknowledge our actual unskilfulness while at the same time maintaining an attitude of goodwill and kindness towards ourselves. With regard to other people and situations, we need to be able to acknowledge the gap between the ideal and the actual while maintaining an attitude of goodwill.
Some people complain about the absence of the ideal, as if other people or circumstances or situation ought to be perfect. But this is not an intelligent way to proceed. We need to work at changing ourselves and the world around us precisely because the actual is not the ideal. Complaining that things are not ideal is like a child complaining that its parents are not perfect. The child doesn't realise that nobody's parents are perfect. (To be fair to children, many adults also complain that their parents were not perfect!). Bhante has something to say about this: “It is sometimes necessary to criticize the weaknesses of others, but people often seem to find it difficult to do so without doing it in a 'hard' sort of way that excludes compassion. Perhaps, in some cases, people criticize others as a way of paying homage to the ideal without actually having to practise that ideal.” (A Stream of Stars, p100)
We need to practise, and by doing that become emotionally big enough to include contradictions and big enough to forgive ourselves and others for failing. If we are big enough to forgive failure in ourselves and others, then there is less fear of failure. The double vajra is a symbol which unites all opposites and encompasses all of Reality. The double vajra is a symbol of the mind of the spiritually aware individual. The individual who is aware and honest and open enough to contain contradictions; aspiration and craving, love and ill-will, faith and doubts. The individual who through awareness and an attitude of goodwill constantly works to transform the poisons of ignorance, greed, hatred, jealousy, pride, and in so doing releases more and more energy for further spiritual practice.
The double vajra could also be seen as a symbol of the Sangha, the spiritual community, the harmony of mutual helpfulness. The Sangha at its best unites all opposites, transcends division and difference and develops co-operation and trust, creating a realm in which we can let go of fear and take risks: risks in communication, risks in self-revelation, risks in generosity, risks in apology and forgiveness. All of this also releases tremendous energy for the good. The double vajra is a symbol of the energy released by the integrating effect of spiritual practice and it is also a reminder to us of the need for constant effort and application if we want to make spiritual progress.
The energy produced by the acknowledgement and transformation of the mental poisons is assured of success because the union of opposites involves encompassing the whole of Reality. In Reality there are no opposites to be united, there are just varying degrees of ignorance obscuring the clarity of how things really are. When we reach closer to an insight into the nature of existence, not obscured by hatred, greed, ignorance, envy or pride, we will have less to fear, because then we will experience less separation from life round us. We and other life are not opposites, we are one, an interconnected whole. As we start to see things from this larger perspective that transcends opposites, there is less and less to fear, until eventually we will understand the message of Amoghasiddhi – there is nothing to fear.
