Transformation & Completeness

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>From _Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism_ by Lama Anagarika Govinda

 

Part Two: 'Mani': the Path of Unification and of Inner Equality

 

9

TRANSFORMATION AND THE

REALIZATION OF COMPLETENESS

 

The experience of infinity which is expressed in the sacred syllable OM,

and which forms the basis and starting-point of the the Great Vehicle, is

thus deepened and counterbalanced by the

experience of the inner unity and solidarity of all life and consciousness.

This unity, which is not brought about by an arbitrary identification of

one's own consciousness with that of other living beings (i.e., not from

the outside), but which results from the profound knowledge that the

conception of 'self' and 'not-self', 'I' and 'not-I', 'own' and 'other',

rests on the illusion of our surface consciousness, and that the knowledge

and the experience of the equality (samata) of beings consists in the

realization of that ultimate completeness which is latent in every being.

The Buddhist, therefore, does not endeavour to 'dissolve his being in

the infinite', to fuse his finite consciousness with the consciousness of

the all, or to unite his soul with the all-soul; his aim is to become

_conscious_ of his ever-existing, indivisible and undivided completeness.

To this completeness nothing can be added, and from it nothing can be taken

away. It may only be experienced or recognized in a more or less perfect

way. The differences in the development of beings are due to the greater or

lesser degree of this knowledge or experience. The Perfectly Enlightened

Ones are those who have been awakened to the perfect consciousness of

completeness. Therefore all the Buddhas possess the same qualities, though

they may give more prominence to the one or the other quality of their

nature according to the requirements of time and circumstances.

_Mani_ has been interpreted poetically as the 'dew-drop in the lotus',

and Edwin Amold's 'Light of Asia' ends with the words: 'The dew-drop slips

into the shining sea.' If this beautiful simile is reversed, it would

probably come nearer to the Buddhist conception of ultimate realization: it

is not the drop that slips into the sea, but the sea that slips into the

drop! The universe becomes conscious in the individual (but not vice

versa), and it is in this process that completeness is achieved, in regard

to which we neither can speak any more of 'individual' nor of 'universe'.

Here, in a certain way, we may say that we go beyond the OM, the highest

aim of Vedic endeavour, based on the notion that there does not exist a

point of contact between the finite and the infinite. The one has to be

left for the sake of the other, just as the arrow has to leave the bow in

order to become one with the transcendental aim, after having penetrated

the abysmal space which yawns between the 'here' and the 'there'.

The Yogacarins, however, who tried to put into practice the teachings

of the Vijnanavada - and among them especially the Masters of the Mystic

Path, the Siddhas - endeavoured to build a bridge between the 'here' and

the 'there', thus not only spanning the abyss, but investing our earthly

life with the aura of the supreme goal towards which this life was directed

and thereby making it into an inspired tool of liberation.

'Selfhood' and 'universe' are only the 'inside' and 'outside' of the

same illusion. The realization of completeness, however, has all the

characteristics of universality, without presuming an external cosmos, and

has likewise all the characteristics of individual experience without

presuming an ego-entity. The idea of the realization of completeness

escapes the dualistic concepts of unity and plurality, of 'I' and 'not-I',

or whatever we may call the pairs of opposites, as long as we move on the

plane of our empirical consciousness. It is an idea which is applicable to

all planes of experience and existence, from the material to the highest

spiritual, from the empirically given to the metaphysically sensed. The way

of completeness is not one of suppression and annihilation, but the way of

development and sublimation of all our faculties: a way which avoids

premature judgement and which examines the fruits.

A modern Master of the Mystic Path in the West has put this idea

into immortal words: 'Transiency hurls itself everywhere into a deep state

of being. And therefore all forms of this our world are not only to be used

in a time-bound (time-limited) sense, but should be included in those

phenomena of superior significance in which we participate (or of which we

are a part). However, it is not in the Christian sense, but in the purely

earthly, profoundly earthly, joyfully earthly consciousness, that we should

introduce, what we have seen and touched here, into the widest

circumference. Not into a "beyond" whose shadow darkens the earth, but into

the whole, into the universe. Nature, the things of our daily contact and

use, all these are preliminaries and transiencies: however, they are, as

long as we are here, our possessions, our friendships, participants of our

pain and pleasure, in the same way as they were the trusted friends of our

ancestors. Therefore we should not only refrain from vilifying and

depreciating all that belongs to this our world, but on the contrary, on

account of its very preliminary nature which it shares with us, these

phenomena and things should be understood and transformed by us in the

innermost sense. - Transformed? - Yes, because it is our task to impress

upon ourselves this preliminary, transient earth in so deep, so painful, so

passionate a manner, that its essential nature is "invisibly" resurrected

within us. _Within_ us alone can this intimate and constant transformation

of the visible into the invisible take place....' (R. M. Rilke: _Letters

from Muzot_, p. 37I f.)

Completeness can only be established within ourselves through a

thorough transformation of our personality or, as expressed in Buddhist

terminology, through a transformation of the skandhas, i.e., through a

change or reversal (Paravrtti) of the very foundations (asraya) of our

existence into a state of universality by dematerializing the hard crust of

our individual selfhood. This comes about through the awakening of our

faculties of enlightenment, the inner urge towards light and freedom,

latent in every living being. Just as in a plant the urge towards sun and

air compels the germ to break through the darkness of the earth, so the

germ of Enlightenment (bodhi-citta) breaks through the twofold veil: the

obscuration caused by passion (klesavarana) and by the illusion of an

objective world (jneyavarana).

The path of Enlightenment is the path towards completeness, and the

fact that we can tread this path - as the Buddha and innumerable of his

followers have demonstrated through their example - proves that potentially

every being possesses the faculty of converting the transient elements of

his empirical personality into the organs of a higher reality, in which

'neither earth nor water, neither fire nor air can find a foothold'. It is

the path of the great transformation, which has been described in the

mystic alchemy of the Siddhas as the transmutation of base metals, i.e.,

substances exposed to decay and dissolution, into the pure uncorruptible

gold of the prima materia, into the imperishable jewel (mani) of the

adamantine mind.

How does this transformation come about? It is manas, as we saw, which

holds the balance between the limited and the unlimited, between becoming

and dissolving, between the finite and the infinite. And for this reason it

is manas from which the transformation of the human personality

(asraya-paravrtti) proceeds by changing from the role of

self-consciousness, the principium individuationis and cause of all

differentiation, into the principle of the essential oneness of life, the

cause of the experience of the inner equality (samata) of all living

beings.

Thus it happens that manas in the moment of the inner reversal or

'conversion', becomes the jewel, the consciousness of Enlightenment

(bodhi-citta), the Philosopher's Stone, whose touch converts all the

elements of consciousness into means or tools of Enlightenment (bodhyanga).

Then selfish volition and sensual desire (kama-chanda; a synonym for trsna,

the thirst for life) turn into the will for liberation, the striving after

realization (dharma-chanda); similarly individual consciousness

(vijnana-skandha) turns into the knowledge of the universal law and

ultimate reality (dharma-dhatu-jnana)1 represented by the Dhyani-Buddha2

Vairocana,'The Radiating One', and symbolized by his emblem, the Wheel of

the Law (dharma-cakra).

-----

1 Tib.: chos-kyi-dbyins-kyi ye-ses.

2 'The term Dhyani-Buddha was coined by Western scholars in order to

distinguish the spiritual or symbolical figures of Buddhas and

Bodhisattvas, visualized in meditation (dhyana) from the historical Buddha

and his predecessors or successors on earth. In Tibet the historical Buddha

is always referred to as sakyamuni (bcom-ldan-hdas sakya-thub-pa).

-----

Then our vision will be turned back from the world of sense-objects to

the source, the Store Consciousness (alaya-vijnana), in which the

primordial forms, the archetypes, the seeds or germs (bija) of all things

are stored. Then the waves on the surface of this ocean-like universal

consciousness, which contains the treasures of all that has been and can be

experienced, will be smoothed and converted into a shining mirror, 'in

which the images of all forms (rupa)' are reflected undistorted, in

pristine purity. The 'sensuous', appearing as 'material' form

(rupa-skandha), thus becomes the exponent of the transcendental, of that

which goes beyond the senses. It becomes the starting-point of the

experience of sunyata, the formless which is the basis of all form: just as

a sound may lead to the awareness of stillness, while fading into silence.

Therefore it is said in the Maha-Prajnaparamita-Hrdaya :

'Form (rupa) is emptiness (sunyata), and emptiness is not different

from form, nor is form different from emptiness: indeed, emptiness is

form.'

The manifold forms of existence, of becoming and dissolving, of

spiritual inhalation and exhalation, become here symbols of a reality which

goes beyond all form, but which at the same time becomes conscious through

form: just as hieroglyphic pictures reveal to the knowing one a meaning

which goes beyond that of the concrete objects depicted in them.

Thus, according to the Vijnapti-matra-siddhi-sastra1 the alaya-

consciousness is transformed into the consciousness connected with the

Knowledge of the Great Mirror (mahadarsa-jnana-samprayukta-citta-varga),

which in Tibetan is called the Mirror-like Wisdom (me-lon lta-buhi ye-ses)

and is represented in the Dhyani-Buddha Aksobhya, who is the embodiment of

the immutability of this wisdom. With him are associated the element water

(the alaya-consciousness as ocean in a state of tranquillity with

mirror-like surface), rupa-skandha, and as emblem the vajra.

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1 Cr. Jiryo Masuda: _Der individualistische Idealismus der

Yogcara-Schule_, Heidelberg, 1926; and Louis de La Vallee Poussin:

Vijnaptimatrasiddhi, Paris, 1928.

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Feeling (vedana), which is self-centred, as long as manas plays the

role of self-consciousness and produccs the illusion of the separateness

and difference of beings, now turns into the feeling for others, into the

inner participation and identification with all that lives: into the

consciousness connected with the Knowledge of Equality

(samata-jnana-samprayukta-citta-varga), the Equalizing Wisdom of the

essential identity of all beings,2 embodied in the figure of the

Dhyani-Buddha Ratnasambhava, who is represented in the gesture of giving

(dana-mudra) and with the emblem of the jewel (ratna=mani). For nowhere is

the inner unity of all beings felt more deeply than in the emotions of love

(maitri) and sympathy, in the sharing of others' sorrows and joys

(karuna-mudita), out of which grows the urge to give, not only one's

possessions but oneself.

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2 Tib.: mnam-pa-nid-kyi ye-ses.

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The empirical thought-consciousness (mano-vijnana), the

discriminating, judging intellect, turns into the intuitive consciousness

of inner vision, in which 'the special and general characteristics of all

things (dharmas) becomes clearly visible, spontaneously (lit.: "without

hindrance": asanga)', and in which 'the unfoldment of various spiritual

faculties takes place'. It is called 'the consciousness connected with

Retrospective Knowledge' (pratyaveksana-jnana-sam-prayukta-citta-varga) or

as the Distinguishing Wisdom.1 Through this wisdom the functions of

samjna-skandha, the group of discriminating processes, which we sum up

under the general term of perception, are turned inwards and become

transformed and intensified into intuitive vision (dhyana), in which the

individual characteristics of all phenomena and their general and universal

relations become apparent.

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2 Tib.: so-sor-rtogs-pahi ye-ses.

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The embodiment of this Distinguishing Wisdom of inner vision is the

Dhyani-Buddha Amitabha, who is represented in the gesture of meditation

(dhyana-mudra) and whose emblem is the fully opened lotus-blossom (padma).

The remaining five classes of consciousness, which can be summed up

into one category namely, as sense-consciousness, become the means or tools

of the Bodhisattva life, a life dedicated to the realization of

Enlightenment, in which actions and motives are no more egocentric, and

therefore selfless in the truest sense (which, in a way, is more than

'altruistic', a term based on the distinction of 'self' and 'other', and

quite different in motive from the idea of Christian charity or modern

social service). They are not binding or karma-creating, but liberating for

the doer as well as for those who are influenced by his actions.

The functions which are characterized by the group of mental

formations (samskara-skandha) are thus transformed into 'the consciousness

connected with the Knowledge of the Accomplishment of that which ought to

be done' (krtyanusthana-jnana-samprayukta-citta-varga). 'This kind of

consciousness manifests itself for the benefit of all living beings in the

ten regions (of the universe) in the three kinds of transformed actions and

accomplishes the deeds that ought to be done according to the vow.' (

Vijnaptimatra-siddhi-sastra.)

The vow, which is mentioned here, is the Bodhisattva vow to work for

the benefit of all beings; in other words, not only to be concerned with

one's own salvation but with that of all beings, by realizing Perfect

Enlightenment (samyak-sambodhi). The three kinds of transformed actions are

those of body, speech, and mind. Here 'body' is the universal body

(dharma-kaya) that includes all beings, 'speech' the word of power, the

sacred word (mantra), and 'mind' the universal consciousness, the

consciousness of Enlightenment. They act or manifest themselves everywhere

'in the ten directions' of space, namely, in the four cardinal and the four

intermediate directions, the zenith and the nadir - symbolized by the

double-vajra (visva-vajra), the emblem of the Dhyani-Buddha Amoghasiddhi,

the embodiment of the 'All-accomplishing Wisdom'.1

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1 Tib.: bya-ba-grub-pahi te-ses, lit. 'work-accomplishing wisdom'.

------

The unfoldment of these transcendental wisdoms in the transformed

consciousness of spiritual vision, is the subject of the next main part,

which deals with PADMA, the third symbol of the Great Mantra.

 

Part Three. Padma: The Path of Creative Vision

 

I

THE LOTUS AS SYMBOL OF

SPIRITUAL UNFOLDMENT

 

The lotus is the symbol of spiritual unfoldment, of the holy, the pure.

The Buddha-legend reports that when the newly born infant Siddhartha,

who later became the Buddha, touched the ground and made his first seven

steps, seven lotus-blossoms grew up from the earth. Thus each step of the

Bodhisattva is an act of spiritual unfoldment. Meditating Buddhas are

represented as sitting on lotus-flowers, and the unfoldment of spiritual

vision in meditation (dhyana) is symbolized by fully-opened lotus-blossoms,

whose centre and whose petals carry the images, attributes or mantras of

various Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, according to their relative position and

mutual relationship.

In the same way the centres of consciousness in the human body (which

we shall discuss later on) are represented as lotus-flowers, whose colours

correspond to their individual character, while the number of their petals

corresponds to their functions.

The original meaning of this symbolism may be seen from the following

simile: Just as the lotus grows up from the darkness of the mud to the

surface of the water, opening its blossom only after it has raised itself

beyond the surface, and remaining unsullied from both earth and water,

which nourished it - in the same way the mind, born in the human body,

unfolds its true qualities ('petals') after it has raised itself beyond the

turbid floods of passions and ignorance, and transforms the dark powers of

the depths into the radiantly pure nectar of Enlightenment-consciousness

(bodhi-citta), the incomparable jewel (mani) in the lotus-blossom (padma).

Thus the saint grows beyond this world and surpasses it. Though his roots

are in the dark depths of this world, his head is raised into the fullness

of light. He is the living synthesis of the deepest and the highest, of

darkness and light, the material and the immaterial, the limitations of

individuality and the boundlessness of universality, the formed and the

formless, Samsara and Nirvana. Nagarjuna, therefore, said of the perfectly

Enlightened One: 'Neither being nor not-being can be attributed to the

Enlightened One. The Holy One is beyond all opposites.

If the urge towards light were not dormant in the germ that is hidden

deep down in the darkness of the earth, the lotus would not turn towards

the light. If the urge towards a higher consciousness and knowledge were

not dormant even in a state of deepest ignorance, nay, even in a state of

complete unconsciousness, Enlightened Ones could never arise from the

darkness of samsara.

The germ of Enlightenment is ever present in the world, and just as

(according to all Schools of Buddhism) Buddhas arose in past world-cycles,

so Enlightened Ones arise in our present world-cycle and will arise in

future world-cycles, whenever there are adequate conditions for organic and

conscious life.

The historical Buddha is therefore looked upon as a link in the

infinite chain of Enlightened Ones and not as a solitary and exceptional

phenomenon. The historical features of Buddha Gautama (Sakyamuni),

therefore, recede behind the general characteristics of Buddhahood, in

which is manifested the eternal or ever-present reality of the potential

Enlightenment-consciousness of the human mind, in fact, of all conscious

life - which includes in its deepest aspect every single individual.

Superficial observers try to point out the paradox that the Buddha, who

wanted to free humanity from the dependence on gods or from the belief in

an arbitrary God-Creator, became deified himself in later forms of

Buddhism. They do not understand that the Buddha, who is worshipped, is not

the historical personality of the man Siddhartha Gautama, but the

embodiment of the divine qualities, which are latent in every human being

and which became apparent in Gautama as in innumerable Buddhas before him.

Let us not misunderstand the term 'divine'. Even the Buddha of the Pali

texts did not refrain from calling the practice of the highest spiritual

qualities (like love, compassion, sympathetic joy, equanimity) in

meditation a 'dwelling in God' (brahmavihara), or in a 'divine state'.

It is, therefore, not the man Gautama, who was raised to the status of

a god, but the 'divine' which was recognized as a possibility of human

realization. Thereby the divine did not become less in value, but more;

because from a mere abstraction it became a living reality, from something

that was only believed, it became something that could be experienced. It

was thus not a descending to a lower level, but an ascending, a rising from

a plane of lesser to a plane of greater reality.

Therefore the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are not merely

'personifications' of abstract principles - like those gods who are

personified forces of nature or of psychic qualities which primitive man

can conceive only in an anthropomorphic garb - but they are the prototypes

of those states of highest knowledge, wisdom, and harmony which have been

realized in humanity and will ever have to be realized again and again.

Irrespective of whether these Buddhas are conceived as successively

appearing in time - as historically concrete beings (as in Pali-tradition)

- or as timeless images or archetypes of the human mind, which are

visualized in meditation and therefore called Dhyani-Buddhas: they are not

allegories of transcendental perfections or of unattainable ideals, but

visible symbols and experiences of spiritual completeness in human form.

For wisdom can only become reality for us, if it is realized in life, if it

becomes part of human existence.

The teachers of the 'Great Vehicle', especially of the Tantric

Vajrayana, were never tired of emphasizing this, because they recognized

the danger of dwelling in mere abstractions. This danger was all the more

real in a highly developed philosophy like that of the Sunyavadins, with

which the intricate depth-psychology of the Yogacarins and Vijnanavadins

was combined.