Modern Interpretations of the Khandhas: Saññā

Continuing my series exploring the Pāli khandhas in the early Buddhist texts as they are interpreted in two books published in 2000: Tilmann Vetter's The Khandha Passages in the Vinayapiṭaka and the Four Main Nikāyas and Sue Hamilton's Early Buddhism: A New Approach. In addition to these main sources I have also started consulting Rupert Gethin's article: “The Five Khandhas: Their Treatment In The Nikāyas And Early Abhidhamma” (1986).

So far I have covered rūpa and vedanā. My verdict on each was that both authors' accounts of these terms are problematic. This is partly because of the inordinate weight put, quite uncritically, on the Khajjanīya Sutta (SN 22.79). Because there is a dearth of explanation of the khandhas in Pāli, this one sutta that appears to explain them is given privilege. The definitions in the Khajjanīya Sutta turn out to be untrustworthy, but this has not stopped them being given pride of place by modern commentators. However, explanations of the khandhas do not reflect the general usage in Pāli. If anything, a picture that was vague to begin with becomes more deeply obscure.

I suspect that some of us cannot shake the tendency to think of ancient Indian Buddhists as akin to the Greek philosophers. I think we imagine sitting around trying to reason about the world or just discussing it and coming up with grand narratives explaining life, the universe, and everything. We do have accounts of group discussions so they probably did happen, but Indian religieux also pursued a religious lifestyle and this included the religious exercises peculiar to India that we now refer to with the misnomer meditation. A lot of what we read about in Pāli suttas is an idealised account of this lifestyle: men and women leaving behind all social responsibilities and domestic life to pursue the deathless.

It's a mistake to think of the khandhas as the result of metaphysical speculation. The idea that early Buddhists were even interested in existence is on the wrong track. It's clear that Buddhism (and Indian religion in general) is underpinned by altered states of consciousness experienced in meditation, especially by the complete cessation of sense experience while remaining conscious. If Buddhists were speculating about anything, it was about the significance of cessation, the absence of sense experience, and as a corollary, the nature of sense experience. There is no talk of "reality" in early Buddhism (at least in Pāli) so far as I can see. There is a lot of talk about experience.

Rupert Gethin points out that in these sources: upādānakkhandhā = dukkha = loka = satta = ajjhattika-āyatana = sakkāya

"All these expressions apparently represent different ways of characterising the given data of experience or conditioned existence, and are also seen as drawing attention to the structure and the sustaining forces behind it all" (1986: 42).

The caveat is that there is no term that means "conditioned existence". We can say, categorically, that saṅkhāta is compounded with only one word in the Pāli suttas, saṅkhāta-dhamma: there are conditioned dhammas (saṅkhāta-dhammā) but no Pāḷi term that means conditioned existence. Moreover, dhammas are the object of the manas or mind-sense. As I have argued elsewhere, conditioned dhammas refer to sensory experience and the singular unconditioned dhamma (asaṅkhāta-dhamma) is the state of absence of sense experience in which all the conditions for experience are absent (suñña), i.e. nibbāna. This is the broader context in which we have to think about khandhas. In other words we should be in the overlapping domains of phenomenology and epistemology: accounts of the phenomena and knowledge about phenomena, as opposed to accounts of noumena or existence. And this goes double for terms that clearly refer to some mental capacity or function, such as the next khandha, saññā.

By "conditioned existence" Gethin might have meant saṃsāra the rounds of rebirth. But in early Buddhism this is governed by a different, incompatible process, i.e. karma. Dependent arising asserts that there can be no delayed consequences (something Nāgārajuna picks up on centuries later) and karma is all about delayed consequences. Of course, some tried to explain karma in terms of dependent arising, but providing the necessary continuity for karma was always a problem because it always contravened the limits imposed by dependent arising.

In any case, let us now consider saññā.

Saññā

In defining saññā, Vetter continues to draw on the problematic Khajjanīya Sutta (SN 22.79) by asserting that "saññā is derived from sañjānāti" (24). It might be better to say that, in this rather odd and unrepresentative sutta, the word saññā is explained by the verb sañjānāti and that the two words are derived from the same affix-verbal root combination: saṃ√jñā. The verb sañjānāti typically refers to the act of recognition and putting a name to something. The Khajjanīya Sutta elaborates on this theme of recognition by naming four colours. And in the light of psychology this invokes the more involved idea of perception (rather than naming) or in Hamilton's case apperception, i.e. "perception in the cognitive rather than in (just) the visual sense" (76). Gethin, too, references the colours as part of the definition.

Note that the colours named are the four "basic" colour terms in Pāḷi: nīla "dark/black", pītaka "yellow", lohita "red/brown", and odata "light/white". And this deserves a digression. Here "basic" is a jargon term with a very specific, if somewhat contested, meaning, the definition of which takes up a whole chapter in C. P. Biggam's The Semantics of Colour: A Historical Approach (2012). Since Biggam identifies nineteen potential headings under which to discuss the concept of basicness we could easily get bogged down. I will give a simple definition and suggest readers consult Biggam for a more comprehensive discussion of this fascinating idea. For our purposes:

A basic colour term is an adjective that is solely used to describe colours, it is at the top level of the taxonomy of colour terms (there is no broader category other than "colour" into which the basic term fits), it is not a recent loan word, it is not a compound word and does not rely on affixes to convey meaning, and in a language-using community basic terms are understood and used by everyone for the same purpose.

With respect to the basic colours in Pāli, note that nīla does not mean "blue" until considerably later, here it means "dark" and this takes in black, blue, green, brown, grey, etc. Thus, while a blue object would be labelled nīla, not all nīla-coloured objects would be blue. The Sanskrit of this period also has just four basic colour terms, as does Homeric Greek. See also my essay Seeing Blue (6 Mar 2015). Colour terms evolve in predictable ways, so that if a language has four basic colour terms one of the expected lines of development is to first split off red from light-coloured and then to distinguish red and yellow. And we confidently predict that the next colour to be added will be blue or green. And so on. So the colours named in the sutta are not arbitrary or random. We have eleven basic colour terms in English: black, white, red, yellow, green, blue, brown, purple, grey, pink, orange. I suspect that, like some other languages, English begins to distinguish blue from cyan at a basic level.

Vetter assumes that he has a reliable definition and then leaps to the conclusion that the definition derived from the Khajjanīya Sutta "seems to presuppose some knowledge of a description of a kasina." (24). This is based on the appearance of the four basic colour terms (sans any insights into colour terminology) and of the verb sañjānāti,which occurs over 100 times in the suttas, often in the sense of "he recognises X as X" (cf. Mūlapariyāya Sutta MN I.1). Vetter leaps ahead, yet again, to suggest that this means "he imagines X as X". And I frankly do not follow the reasoning for this second leap. Nor do I follow his reasoning when he leaves behind the context of the khandhas and discusses saññā in a completely different context without making any distinction. We already know that the meanings of these words are sensitive to context. Vetter's citations of the Suttanipāta (25) are for example in the context of a person abandoning views. E.g. 793: "He becomes dissociated from all dhammas that are seen, heard, or thought (mutaṃ)." (which also seems like a description of the absence of sense experience, doesn't it?). If we are discussing the khandhas then we ought to stick to texts that deal with the khandhas, unless the case is being made that the use with respect to the khandhas is just the ordinary usage. Vetter does not make this case.

Saññā is yet another term that changes its meaning depending on context and over time. Like words such as manas, citta, and viññāna, saññā can just be a general word for mind or mental activity. Vetter suggests that Johansson has it right when he summarises the relevant mental activities as "ideation" (25) and Gethin supports Alex Wayman's suggestion that it means "idea" (1986: 36). Again, this seems to be based on the word in a different context. Moreover, even Gethin is too reliant on the Khajjanīya Sutta and on the modern psychological interpretation of the significance of the colour terms when it comes to saññā. When one says of an object that it is blue, one is not having an idea, one is putting a name to a quality. Perhaps this does involve conceptualisation, but that conceptualisation is transparent to the person and would not have been obvious to early Buddhists. I see no evidence that the authors of the Pāli text generally had any insight into this abstract way of thinking about perception. We have to remember the the terms developed in Iron Age India long before sophisticated psychology and theories of consciousness emerged. All the authors I'm considering in this essay seem to be projecting modern ideas backwards and making an anachronism out of saññā (another example of the anachronistic fallacy).

A deeper sense of incoherence emerges when we see an alternative set of three khandhas in the Mahāvedalla Sutta (MN 43) where they are also matched to verbs from the same root: viññāṇa/vijānāti, vedanā/vedeti, and saññā/sanjānāti. The sutta tells us that viññāna cognises (vijānāti) pleasant, painful, and neutral; Vedanā experiences (vedeti) pleasant, painful, and neutral, while saññā recognises (sañjānāti) dark, yellow, red, and white (Note the first three colours are given in the form nīlaka, pītaka, lohitaka, where -ka can be adjectival with a possessive sense or diminutive). Here, the three factors are in a different order than we are used to meeting them. The text tells us, however, that they are conjoined and inseparable (ime dhammā saṃsaṭṭhā, no visaṃsaṭṭhā. MN I 293) and this is because "What one feels, that one recognises; and what one recognises, that one cognises." (yaṃ vedeti taṃ sañjānāti, yaṃ sañjānāti taṃ vijānāti). And this is the order we meet in the khandha passages.

But this is strange, because what one feels is sukha/dukkha/asukhamadukkha, what one recognises is colour, and one what cognises is again sukha/dukkha/asukhamadukkha. Two of these form a related set and one is completely unrelated, unless the colours are somehow a code for combinations of sukha/dukkha. If saññā really is the recognition of colours then the khandhas are incoherent at this point. This is reinforced when we think of saṅkhāra as karmic actions (obviously, I'm jumping the gun here a little), because karmic actions involve grasping the pleasant (sukha) and shunning the unpleasant (dukkha). The khandhas appear to narrowly miss out on having sukha/dukkha as a unifying idea: the appearance, feeling of, recognition, reaction to, and discrimination based on, the pleasantness and unpleasantness of sensory experience.

Hamilton, as noted, translates saññā as "apperception" and associates with the action of "identifying" (76). "What one is doing in this process, according to the texts, is making manifold and naming what one is experiencing." (76). Unfortunately, with the terminology of "making manifold" Hamilton is at her least clear and her usual practice of referring to which texts she is referring breaks down. Hamilton appears to insist on a metaphysical interpretation of dependent arising against her own stated view that dependent arising describes experience (which is an epistemic or phenomenological interpretation). She appears to believe that dependent arising entails an undifferentiated world in which nothing is distinguished, and that identifying individual objects in this undifferentiated mass is "making manifold", Hamilton's translation of papañca. Papañca is in fact another tricky and under-defined concept that I have studied in some depth in two essays from 2012: Translating Papañca and Understanding Prapañca.

What Hamilton does not say is that the texts that use the word papañca are confused. There are four distinct ways of talking about papañca:

• papañca as the sum total of the perceptual process: e.g. in M 18, S 35.94 A 3.294, Sn 4.11, Sn 3.6
• papañca as metaphysical speculation: e.g. in A 4.173
• papañca in relation to 'I am': e.g. in S 35.248, Sn 4.14
• papañca = kilesas e.g. S 35.248, SA 2.381 (commenting on S 35.94). UdA (commenting on Ud 7.7)

Moreover, when it comes to the process, the term refers to three distinct sequences of terms that appear to describe a process and they all disagree on the order in which the process happens. That is:

• Sn 4.11: papañca = saññā → nāma & rūpa → phassa → sāta & asāta → canda → piya → macchara etc.
• M 18: rūpa + cakkhu + cakkhu-viññāna → phassa → vedanā/vedeti → sañjānāti → vitakka → papañca.
• D 21: papañcasaññāsaṅkhā → vitakka → chanda → piyāppiya → issā-macchariya → verā etc.

No one can say definitively that papañca is one thing or the other. There is no overarching definition that fits every mention of it and Hamilton has simply chosen the definition which best fits her theory. As much as I find her theory useful, I don't find this aspect of it at all convincing. As I said in 2012: "What my study seems to say is that the ambiguity of papañca allows it to be co-opted to suit the agenda of the commentator.". Back then I was still puzzled by the lack of coherence in a Buddhist doctrine. Since then I have realised that incoherence is the norm.

Given Hamilton's emphasis on experience and the lurch into metaphysics at this point (undifferentiated reality vs objectified experience) her work here becomes practically useless. I retain enough naivete to find this quite disappointing.

Conclusions

I think colours associated with saññā in the context of the khandhas are a red herring. The colour words trigger particular associations in a modern reader that seem unrelated to how people in Iron Age India conceived of their world. We can be sure that they did not think in terms of psychology. We know that they didn't think of the mind at all like we do, as I show in my essay The 'Mind as Container' Metaphor.

There is a distinction between inventing a way of reading texts (a hermeneutic) that makes sense on our terms and seeking to understand how the authors understood the texts. The former ignores the meaning of the text qua text and opts for something that fits modern preconceptions. This is the approach of all the modern Buddhists that I know. Stepping outside this modernist insider approach to really read the texts and to unearth the mode of thought of the authors is difficult and perhaps ultimately impossible. However, the textual scholar is bound to try to do this and to highlight how they go about it.

Sanskrit dictionaries tell us that saṃjñā means "agreement, mutual understanding; consciousness, understanding; sign, token, signal; name, appellation"; while the verb means "to agree, to be of the same opinion; to appoint, assign, to acknowledge, to recognise; to claim, take possession". So the etymology offers a rich semantic field from which to choose, but "ideation" and "idea" don't really come up. At the outside edge of this we could imagine "perception" but really only if we employ psychology anachronistically. Of course, we have to avoid the etymological fallacy and keep in mind that the use may be unrelated to the etymology. Still, the usage still has to make some kind of sense.

We seem to come back to recognition as the principle idea associated with the word and the most likely application in this context also. The problem is that this is the conclusion of none of my informants. This feels a little awkward. The influence of the Khajjanīya Sutta on modern discussions of the khandhas continues to be problematic. Why was it not read critically by scholars? It seems that in the absence of a precise and coherent explanation this text was adopted as the next best thing. But it cannot carry this weight.

~~oOo~~

Bibliography

Biggam, C. P. 2012. The Semantics of Colour: A Historical Approach. Cambridge University Press.

Gethin, Rupert. 1986. “The Five Khandhas: Their Treatment In The Nikāyas And Early Abhidhamma.” Journal Of Indian Philosophy 14(1): 35-53.

Hamilton, Sue. 1996. Identity and experience: the constitution of the human being according to early Buddhism. London: Luzac Oriental.

Hamilton, Sue. 2000. Early Buddhism: A New Approach. London: Routledge.

Vetter, Tilmann. 2000. The Khandha Passages in the Vinayapiṭaka and the Four Main Nikāyas. Wien Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.

The Green Rite

Some time ago I was in the British Museum where they have a number of stone carvings from the stupa at Amaravati. The carvings are old and worn but you can still see the exquisite skill with which they were created and get a sense of the wonder that the stupa must have been. What an extraordinary focus for feelings of devotion that stupa must have been. The friend I was with, and I, could occasionally make out details from stories which the carving depicted. At one point as I walked along I saw a very worn carving but which stood out very clearly as being a story from the Pali Canon about the Buddha. It showed the Buddha, barely visible through the wear, standing in front of an elephant that was clearly kneeling before him in supplication.

In the story the Buddha’s cousin Devadatta, who wishes to succeed the Buddha as leader of the monks, arranges for a large bull elephant in rut to be let loose in the market place as the Buddha is walking through it. The elephant is enraged and charges about causing havoc and everyone runs for their lives. However the Buddha stands his ground. The elephant sees the Buddha, a slight figure, standing there and charges towards him. The Buddha simply stands his ground and as the elephants gets closer he lifts his hand and holds it palm outwards. Radiating loving kindness towards the elephants he is totally unafraid of death, or being hurt. As the elephant approaches it is overcome by the outpouring of love and fearlessness in his direction , he slows, and then comes to a standstill. And then he bends down and places his head on the ground at the feet of the Buddha.

This is the archetype of the Green Rite, the Rite of Fearlessness. The Green rite is associated with the Buddha Amoghasiddhi whose names means infallible success. His mudra is the mudra of fearlessness. Notice that the hand is not extended like a policeman stopping traffic. The hand is held palm outwards at the heart - it is not a command, or a demand. It is an offering.

The Green Rite is not one of the original Tantric Rites. For instance the Mahāvairocana Abhisambodhi Uttara Tantra has pacifying (white), enriching (yellow), subduing (red), and fierce (black) rites. The Four Rites correspond to an old Vedic classification the varṇas. They correspond to the four basic castes as outlined in the Puriṣa Sūkta of the Rig Veda for instance: Brahmin, Kṣatriya, Vaisya, and Śudra. However when Ratnasambhava and Amoghasiddhi joined Amitābha and Akṣobhya on the mandala two more rites were added - for instance the Tara Tantra has six.

In the Rogue Elephant story the Buddha pacifies the Elephant by radiating maitri or love - which could be seen as an example of the Red Rite. This demonstrates the way the Dharma transcends any particular teaching. However underlying the Love of the Buddha is his transcendental Insight - his knowledge and vision of how things are. It is from this direct knowledge that his fearlessness arises, and that makes all his actions successful. The Buddha knows that he has nothing to lose, that even death itself does not terrify him the way it does the rest of us. He sees everything as it is and therefore does not cling to any experience, nor push any away. Any action undertaken from this point of view is bound to succeed, because success is judged in terms of results, and acting from insight guarantees a positive result.

For ordinary mortals the Buddha left guidelines for acting until direct insight guides our actions. These are the various ethical or moral teachings. These vary from the "ordinary common sense" approach which is typified in the early verses of the Metta Sutta, to the the long lists of precepts in the Bhikṣu Pratimokṣa, and find a sublime expression in the Ten Skilful actions (dasa-kusala-karma) which form the Ten Precepts of the Shingon School and the Western Buddhist Order. Once again there are cross-overs with the other rites, but the special quality of the Green Rite is that it is active. Whereas in the White Rite for instance we may say that it focuses on purity and refraining from evil actions; in the Green Rite we must actively express love and kindness. If Gratitude and Generosity are the key aspects of the Yellow Rite, then we may say that acts of kindness and selfless love are the marks of the Green Rite.

Meeting fear is a key part of the spiritual life. As we practice we are very likely to find fear arising. The Green Rite tells us the way to deal with fear. It is to dwell in love, to radiate love, and to act out of love. Acting from love guarantees success, because in Buddhist terms success is acting with love.

The Blue Rite

The Blue Rite is also called The rite of subduing or overcoming. Sometimes it is known as the Black Rite or the Rite of Destruction, but that is in another context from the one that I am considering. This is the magical rite performed by Akṣobhya the blue Buddha of the eastern quarter, and which is related to the story of the defeat of Mara. What is being subdued are the poisons, in this context the demons, of greed, hatred and doubt as they occur within us. When we experience very strong hatred or greed then that does have a demonic feel to it. Under their influence we lose the ability to choose our actions, we may well behave in ways that we are later ashamed of.

I want to be very clear here that I do not advocate applying this, or any other, rite to other people! Unless we have a very clear understanding of, and love for, the other person; a high level of trust; and a lot of skill and experience it is not advisable to start practising any of the rites on others. In any case our own inner demons, our own greed, hatred, and doubt, give us plenty of material to work with.

One can immediately say that there might be a general approach to subduing all demons, based on the response of the Buddha to Mara, which is simply not to respond to them. If we do not respond to greed it has no power over us; if we do not act on hatred it cannot hurt us; if we are confident in our practice then doubt has no purchase on our minds. So this is the first level of defence against demons - not reacting. The story of the defeat of Mara shows how powerful not reacting can be.

Padmasambhava was a great subduer of demons. He would fight them with magic, often neutralising their magic with his own, but then he would always give them an initiation, a secret name, and a treasure to guard. In other words these demonic, or perhaps more accurately chthonic forces within us, which can threaten to overwhelm us and defeat us, are energies that can be harnessed and put to good use in other ways. The same demon that causes us to hate, can function as a protector. In a psychological sense our demons are often just adaptations to extreme situations. For instance if we grow up with a lot of violence, then we will adapt to protect ourselves from that violence, and may even become violent ourselves. The energy that protects me from violence, may have violence at it’s root. This is not a justification for violent behaviour however. It is important not to lose sight of the transformation which demons undergo at the hands of Padmasambhava - when subdued and named they become Dharma protectors, and guarders of our treasures.

Padmasambhava had a very potent weapon in his battles against the demons. He had what in Tibetan is known as a purbha – a demon dagger. The demon dagger is used to pin down demons. It has a blade or point which emerges from the mouth of a mythical beast which is a mix of a crocodile and a fish: called a makara. Above the makara is usually the head of a Buddha which has multiple faces. And finally either the head of a horse, or a the end of a vajra. The Buddha head reminds us of the purpose of the purbha – it is not a weapon designed to hurt people, but to help release us from the grip of a demonic energy. With the purbha you pin down the demon so that you can have a conversation with it. Padmasambhava took this opportunity to give the demons a secret name and a treasure to guard. This is a useful procedure with demons, and contrasts sharply with the image of the Archangel Michael, or later St George, killing the dragon - I'll come back to this in the next paragraph. So one thing we might do when we wish to work with the Blue Rite is to make ourselves a demon dagger. We can build in symbols of power and strength which resonate for us. This may help us to get into communication with our demons, to see that they really want to protect us, and to help us find better ways of going about it.

Another way of thinking about this came to me the other day. I was reminded of the scene early in the story of Peter Pan. His shadow had come loose and is causing trouble. He meets Wendy who helps him to catch his shadow and she sews it back on for him. Jung talked about those aspects of our psyche which we do not accept as being our 'shadow'. The qualities which are not accepted need not be bad. For many years I was unwilling to take on the artistic side of my self and would not give it attention. If we take this kind of view of things then we treat the expressions of greed, hatred and doubt as coming from the psychic shadow. In the Jungian view they are unacknowledged bits of ourselves which have taken on a kind of autonomy. A demon dagger helps us to pin them down, so that we can reclaim them, sew them back on. If the demon is really just an unassimilated part of our own psyche, then we don’t want to kill it, we want, like Padmasambhava, to convert this rebellious energy into some more useful form.

The main idea, then, is that the Blue Rite, is the rite of overcoming and subduing hindrances to spiritual progress; the conversion of demonic forces into Dharma protectors. It is a way of working with inner demons which block our Awakening.

The Yellow Rite

Yellow is the colour of the sun, of gold, and of fields of grain in the autumn just prior to harvest. Hence it is associated with richness, abundance, and fecundity. The sun is probably the most important thing in India and features in the mythologies of all the various sub-cultures. It is also a potent symbol. For the last five years I've lived in Cambridge England. When you are 52 degrees north of the equator the sun is never directly overhead. But in India the sun is high in the sky even in winter. The sun is the key to everything. Just enough and the plants grow and ripen, but too much and plants, animals and people start to die. The sun has many names in India - Sūrya, Vairocana, Prabhakara, Āditya, Mitra, Savitri, etc. Gold is a precious substance where ever it is found. Gold does not tarnish. It is both ductile and malleable and can be made into any shape, or beaten so thin that light passes through it, picking up a greenish tinge on the way. The Aryan people were golden skinned, and Buddhists insisted that the Buddha was the colour of gold.

So it should come as no surprise that the Yellow, or Golden Rite is the Rite of Abundance and Increase. This rite can be used to gain wealth, to be materially rich, but spiritually speaking the greatest wealth is not material, it is knowledge and vision of how things really are. However there is often a middle ground in the use of this rite. In the Tara Tantra it says by this rite, one will be endowed with necessary goods, long life, beautiful appearance, and strength. In the form of the Tara mantra addressed to White Tara one requests that Tara grant you long life, merit and wisdom. But why these qualities? It is said that these things - long life, beauty, strength, merit, wisdom etc. - all help the Bodhisattva to spread the message of the Buddha and to sustain them in their repeated sojourns in saṃsara. One requests the material things that will best support one's spiritual progress in other words!

I'll talk about two applications of the Yellow Rite: gratitude and generosity. With my usual disclaimer about my rather idiosyncratic approach to this kind of magic.

Gratitude is a very positive mental state. By cultivating a sense of gratitude for what we already have we do begin to experience a sense of abundance. Often our dissatisfaction with what we have, whether it be a sexual partner, a car, or whatever, is because we have ceased to pay attention to the fact that we have it. Because the grass is always greener on the other side, we stop looking at the grass on this side. Gratitude brings us back into relationship with our immediate surroundings, our personal possessions and helps up to appreciate how lucky we are. In other words gratitude helps us reconnect with the fundamental interconnectedness of the cosmos. This is the essence of tantric magic according to Ariel Glucklich who studied modern day tantric magi in Varanasi.*

Even if things could always be better, anyone well-off enough to read these words on the internet probably has plenty to be grateful for. Gratitude is a way of creating awareness of abundance, the abundance that we already have, and which can help to counteract the feeling that we don't have enough, or even that we aren't good enough. From a state of abundance, we are always ready to give, which leads us onto generosity.

Generosity is giving from a sense of abundance, and it creates abundance for others. I've written quite a bit about generosity in my take on the six perfections for instance, or in the story of my generous friend Kapil. I see one of the primary aspects of generosity as making us aware of other people. But the Yellow Rite it is also a way to create a sense of abundance in everyone around us. If we all gave until we "swooned with joy" then what abundance there would be! Generosity is also about letting go of attachments, and this again creates a sense of abundance in us.

You can see that I am not advocating the Yellow Rite as a way of getting what you want, although this aspect of the rite is present in the texts. The Buddha was quite clear that amassing a fortune, acquiring lovers and families, storing up food, or gold, or favours, etc would not provide any lasting satisfaction. At the very least we are all going to die. A mountain of gold will not change this fact. A dozen beautiful lovers will not prevent us getting old. And most of us will get sick at some point despite having a hundred DVD's in our collection. Actually it is possible to be happy and have very few possessions. Remember back in the 1980's when Ronald Reagan was pursuing the arms race with Soviet Russia and it was announced that there were enough nuclear weapons on both sides to destroy all life on the planet 100 times over? I remember thinking how insane that situation was. I remember thinking what's the point? Sometimes having more of something is completely pointless.

In my blog post about the yellow Buddha Ratnasambhava I pointed out that he represents both our highest ideals - the jewel of Awakening - and our most fundamental value - generosity. The Yellow Rite is concerned with activating the latter in pursuit of the former.


* Ariel Glucklich (1997) The End of Magic. Oxford University Press Inc, USA.

The White Rite

The colour white has a very interesting range of associations. In Herman Melville's book Moby Dick the white whale became the focus for all the rage and hatred of Captain Ahab. Melville devoted a chapter of Moby Dick to exploring the negative symbolism of white: the white of pus and maggots and putrefaction for example. However we more often associate white with purity and cleanness in a ritual sense. Virgin brides are married in white. Fresh snow is also sometimes referred to as virginal. The Pope wears white. Being the opposite of black, it symbolises good, light, positivity, and space. From India we have the wonderful image of the while lotus rising unstained up from the mud. White light may be split into the colours of the rainbow by a prism, or a rain drop; but the same process in reverse combines the colours of the rainbow back into pure white light: an important observation for our understanding of the White Rite. The White Rite is the rite of purification - or more traditionally the rite of pacification. This rite is used to pacify impulses arising from greed, hatred and delusion, hence the association with purity. In the more mundane sense the white rite is also to pacify demonic forces in the world around us.

In terms of the mandala the white figure sits at the centre. There are a number of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas who appear in white forms, the most important being Vairocana, Avalokiteshvara and White Tara. The white figure at the centre of the mandala possesses and integrates all of the qualities of the other figures - Love, Fearlessness, Wisdom, Abundance; and yet adds some new subtle quality that is difficult to quantify. Vairocana - the Illuminator - is an ancient Indian figure who predates Buddhism by many centuries. He is the sun, of course, in its most benign aspect. Spiritually he illuminates the darkness of ignorance. Holds the dharmacakra, which identifies him with the Dharma - it is not that he possesses or teaches the Dharma: no, he is the Dharma.

The wisdom of Vairocana is known as the Wisdom of the Dharmadhatu (dharmadhātujñāna). Dharmadhatu is synonymous with śūnyatā, tathatā, and the dharmakāya: i.e. it stands for the Reality Principle. These Buddhist technical terms are rather abstract and abstruse, and do not really convey much. Indeed it is sometimes said that one cannot say anything definite about the dharmakāya. Which leaves us with a puzzle: if this wisdom is so abstract as to be inconceivable, then of what practical value is it to us. In terms of the Tantric Rites, how might we bring this quality into our practice? I have explored a number of ways to do this. As I mentioned in my essay on the Red Rite, I do not follow the tradition closely because it is not easy to see how the old magical rites would work in a modern context.

Purity in Buddhism is equated with purity of intention, since it is intention which underlies actions (karma), and it is the results of actions that prevents us being truly free. So one aspect of the Wisdom of the Dharmadhatu is moral purity - in Buddhist terms keeping the precepts. In terms of the ten precepts followed by members of the Western Buddhist Order (and in Shingon) this means: kindness, generosity, contentment, truthful kindly harmonious helpful speech, and tranquillity (non-greed), love, and wisdom. Each time we exercise our moral judgement, each time we decline the act that we know will lead to suffering, we are exercising the White Rite. Of course if we do find ourselves acting unskilfully we can confess it to some appropriate person. This too is an example of the White Rite - the experience, and acknowledgement of remorse can be a powerfully transformative practice. This of course has nothing to do with guilt or atonement. Remorse is simply turning the moral spotlight on our own actions. Neither has it to do with sitting in judgement on others.

Something that Kūkai writes about in connection with the dharmakāya gives us another clue to the White Rite. He says that all forms are the body of the Dharmakāya Buddha, all sounds are his voice preaching the Dharma, and all mental activity is his Awakened mind. This sounds a little theistic at first, but Kūkai was not suggesting that Vairocana is a creator god, but pointing towards something more subtle. All things are marked by impermanence, insubstantiality and unsatisfactoriness. So everything can be said to be of the same nature. If we anthropomorphise the metaphor then we may say that everything is a manifestation of Vairocana, who is reality itself, who is the very impermanence of all things. Putting this into practice we can try to see the Buddha everywhere, hear the Dharma everywhere, and cultivate a sense of identification with every living being. To give a more concrete and contemporary example: we know that human impact in the environment is causing problems. So each time we consciously, for example, minimise our own impact by recycling, or reusing, or using low energy light bulbs - then we are acknowledging the truth of interconnectedness and exercising the White Right. This is interesting because it suggests that the colour of the Buddhist environmental movement might be white rather than green which has quite different traditional associations.

We know that Tantra adopted the old Vedic magical principle of bandhus or associations between levels of reality. So in each quarter of the mandala there is a Buddha who has a colour, and various other associations. At the other end of the scale there is a kleśa - a defilement - associated with each Buddha. In the case of Vairocana the defilement is ignorance. This kind of ignorance is sometimes known as viparyasa or topsy-turvy views. We see the impermanent as permanent for instance or the painful as pleasant. The White Rite is concerned with dispelling this kind of ignorance. We can only doing this by paying attention. After my first brush with the Dharma I wrote this in my journal, although I no longer recall the source, that an aspect of suffering is "a desperate will to live unrelated to serious or systematic attempt to understand what life actually involves". Practising Buddhism is precisely the opposite - it is an attempt to live on the basis of a serious and systematic attempt to understand what life involves. And this again is the function of the White Rite.

As with the Red Rite I'm suggesting here that the magical tantric rites can operate in an everyday way. In this case every time we acknowledge and act in accordance with the way things are - when we choose to act skilfully, when we see ourselves as interconnected, or when we try to see more directly how things really are - that is the White Rite in action. This is Buddhism as the path of purification.

The Red Rite

RED demands our attention. The associations we have with it are powerful: blood, menstruation, sex, arousal, danger, life. The attention grabbing aspect of red means that it is employed in all kinds of warning signs and symbols. So powerful is this effect that it is difficult to see different shades of red together without feeling that they clash with each other.

In the mandala of the Five Buddhas the Buddha Amitābha is red and sits in the western quarter. He is associated with the element fire, and his wisdom is the discriminating wisdom - it sees things in their individuality, sees the detail of the world, and regards individual beings. And he is also associated with the tantric rite of fascination, the Red Rite. The 'tantric rites' are a set of magical practices of which there are several different sets. The one I know includes - purification, abundance, fascination, subduing, accomplishing; which are in turn associated with white, yellow, red, blue/black, and green; and with Vairocana, Ratnasambhava, Amitābha, Akṣobhya, and Amoghasiddhi - the Buddhas of the mandala.

These magic rites are not incidental to tantric Buddhism. Many people will try to say that they are added on, or secondary, but they feature frequently and prominently in tantric texts, and they are used in practice (according to Stephen Beyer who wrote the Cult of Tara). So how are we to understand the presence of what Snellgrove calls "vulgar magic" in Buddhism. In the Pali canon it is quite clear that the early Buddhists were very much against this kind of magic. There are several passages where the Buddha decries the practice of magic - especially that associated with the Atharvaveda. There is a clear distinction from the siddhis, the super-normal or psychic powers such as clear-audience, which are the results of profound meditation. These are relegated into second place compare to the great siddhi of Awakening, but the practice of magical spells is considered to be wicked. We must hold this along side the fact that in the Pali Canon there are magical texts, parittas, which when chanted are said to protect, for instance, from snake bite, or from attack by yakkhas and other demons. Angulimala performs a magical spell known as a "truth-act" or saccakiriya and relieves the suffering of a woman in labour in his eponymous sutta. Similarly the Mahayana sutras frequently assert that merely chanting the sutra is enough to protect the devotee from all kinds of harm. So we can't really pretend that magic is foreign to Buddhism, we just don't quite know where or how it fits.

Another feature of tantric magic which may be difficult to understand is the presence of what can only be called Hindu elements. For instance in the Tara Tantra, which is the ultimate source of the many Tara practices in Tibet, there is a lot of use of cow shit. This practice can only have come relatively late as the cow was not sacred in the Buddha's time, nor was it in the Vedas. So whence comes this foreign matter in our 'pure' Buddhism? As I've mentioned before the Indian practice was not so much to destroy heretics and competing faiths, but to assimilate them - this happened multiple times across all of the religions, and helps to account for a constant preoccupation in Buddhist scripture with distinguishing Buddhism from other faiths.

The Buddhist magical system has it's roots in the ancient Vedic religion. It is what anthropologists call "sympathetic magic", and works on the principle that the universe is divided into planes of being. The idea is that there are connections or correspondences (bandhu) between the various planes (loka or bhūmi), and it is possible to influence or control what is happening on the other planes by making changes in one of the other planes. In the Vedic practices one made ritual actions which were intended to control the gods, or to make changes in the physical world. This has many similarities to European style magic. Even in early Buddhism there is a clear association between the jhanas (Sanskrit dhyāna) and the devalokas, or god realms.

The Vedic religion gets a bad press from Buddhists, but there are aspects of it which are quite beautiful, and also shed light on Buddhist practice. The deva Agni was god of fire, the sun, the heat of digestion, of ritual, and of inspiration. As such he is a kind of counter-part to Amitābha. His name is cognate with the English word "ignite" and it was his role to transform the offerings made during rituals, and to transport them to the gods. But he was also bound to convey the blessing of the god back to the one who made the sacrifice - it was always a two way deal. Agni, then, operated in the liminal space between realms. He was, like the Greek Hermes and the angels of Abrahamic religions, a messenger between worlds or planes of existence. This explains his role in inspiration where we draw on our own depths, or perhaps make contact with the divine. As fire he transformed the physical offering into the ætheric substance which could be presented to the gods. The rite of fascination also operates in a liminal space - the space between individuals. It seeks to reduce that space, or to remove it all together, to draw beings together, so in a sense this is not just Amitābha magic, it is Agni magic!

The vulgar application of the Red Rite is as love magic. One uses the rite to obtain the love of the one desired. But coercing love does seem unethical - to say the least. So we come back to the issue of what is vulgar magic doing in Buddhism? My take on this, which is not necessarily traditional, is that the love magic is actually exoteric. The esoteric magic works within. I can't say whether magic works in the exoteric sense, I can say without any hesitation that the inner magic does work! I want to show how esoteric tantric magic might work by using two examples which are not particularly tantric:

In the seven factors of enlightenment the second factor is dhamma-vicaya - investigation of phenomena. In this scheme one becomes mindful, and then with mindfulness one investigates phenomena, and on the basis of that arises first energy, then rapture, tranquillity, samādhi and equanimity - and with the equanimity born of samādhi one is close to Awakening. What is required here, then, is interest. In order to spend time investigating the nature of phenomena, one must be interested, one must become fascinated with the minutiae of things. This is an application of the discriminating wisdom, and the act of doing it is a performance of the rite of fascination. In the kind of meditation where there is an object, we try to become so fascinated by the object that we cease to experience any distinction between our experience of ourselves and the object - and this closing of the gap is also the red rite.

My second example refers to a particular meditation practice: mettā bhavanā, the development of loving kindness. In the mettā bhavanā we seek to experience a sense of loving kindness for, and a solidarity with all beings. It is often taught as a beginners practice, but is actually profound in it's implications and has this esoteric significance that one is trying to at least attenuate, if not remove altogether, the sense of separate selfhood and self interest. What is happening in this meditation is that we are trying to will the well-being of others, without preference. And to do this we begin with ourselves, then focus on a friend, a neutral person, an enemy and then all of these together, and then all beings. Because we start with the particular and move towards the universal this is once again an application of the discriminating wisdom. We must experience this loving kindness in response to individual beings before we can attempt to universalise it, because love, kindness, well wishing are not abstract, but occur in relation to actual people. And the effect is to close the gap between ourselves and others - the red rite again!

By practising the Red Rite in meditation, we make changes in ourselves, and this in turn does actually result in changes in the objective phenomenal world. When we combine the practice of absorption with the investigation of phenomena, we do begin to see the impermanence and insubstantiality of the world - we do, in quite a straight forward way, begin to see things as they really are. And through the mettā bhavanā we can experience a narrowing of the gap - a person who we have found repulsive may seem neutral, or a dispute may be resolved because we are no longer actively hostile. This is the magic of Buddhist practice. It's not mumbo jumbo, it's not an illusion - things change when you take up practising Buddhism, and anyone can see for themselves.

Something I have left out is the space between the practitioner and their goal - this is another space in which the Red Rite can operate, eliminating the differences, for instance, between the yogin and their yiddam through constant repetition of the mantra. Perhaps I'll go into this in another essay.

I want to finish by restating something I've mentioned before about technology. The internet and the whole cellphone thing... they are about creating a sense of connection between human beings. Marshall Mcluhan said "the medium is the message". His idea was that the form of media tell us more about ourselves and our age than the contents of the media. When I look at the enormous energy (both figuratively and literally) going into our creation of communications networks what I see is a huge desire to commune. So, practice the red rite, the rite of fascination with life, with people, with things, and transform your experience of the world by narrowing the gap between 'you' and 'them'!