On the boat back home. My original intention was to use the ferry crossing France ahead of my retreat to draft a post. But such was the choppy sea, that plan soon drained away! However, there was also a lack of intrinsic motivation to write. At first, I watched my mind try to work out “why”…and then I remembered to simply keep that vague felt sense company: I just felt full and flat. It was useful to surrender to that process, as it clarified that this trip was as much about rest as it was about becoming familiar with my new practice: that being the sadhana of Vajrayogini, an empowerment I received 12 months ago.
I believe there was another process at play: one I know well as an enneagram Six, that of ‘doubt’. My hesitation to blog included a question as to the purpose of my writing about this trip. Since taking up the paths of therapy and buddhism at about the same time, I have wrestled with the question “to join or not to join” their respective wisdoms. Whilst I imagine the sharing of my journey as a Vajrayana student of Buddhism might be of value to some, it might put off an equal number of people! The aspiration for my writing is fundamentally to expose a process of how Helen is always becoming using both technologies and methodologies. As I write about in the opening pages of my first book, there are many therapies, many forms of Buddhism – what I can write to is only my knowing of a particular version of them (humanistic psychotherapy and kagyu Tibetan); how the two have intersected in me. I hope this inspires others to make their own weave.
As I have shared, this spring has been testing on a few fronts. The illness of my Dad, the re-locating to a new town and home. In more recent weeks there has been the build of the academic year to its culmination, and the decision to re-enter therapy that inevitably stirs up re-collection and re-membering. Quite a lot of heat under the cauldron for process to bubble! Traveling south at this time was planned as a quiet time and space for re-acquainting myself with the teachings I received at the transmission in Halifax last year; in reality it became a rite of passage, one in which I was officially entering the mandala of Vajrayogini and contracting with her to play with the five wisdom energies.
Lama Tsultrim Allione explains in her text Rising Wisdom, “the circle with its four directions and unifying center has been a cosmic allegory from time immemorial”. The Buddhist mandala, as Carl Jung also noted, allows a “journey through the five families, from the space of buddha family, to the watery clarity of vajra family, to the enriching presence of ratna family, and on to the heat and creativity of padma family, all finding expression in enlightened activity in the karma family”. As points on a compass, these families sit around the centre, the east, the south, the south, the west, and the north respectively. Ahead of my travel to Normandy I had been thinking of how these geographical orientations were manifesting in my new life; and with this trip, “south” and “ratna” were part of my contemplation. And yet, it was the Padma family with its energy concerned with connection (whether that be love or lust) that played on my mind…why wouldn’t it given I was in the first throes of therapy with a focus on object relations! Furthermore, the yidam of Vajrayogini is associated with desire, so I knew she was charged with stirring up passion as a way to access the “ineffable power of the wild and wise, the instinctive and sexual, the fierce power of the divine feminine” (again, words of Lama Allione).
In truth, Vajrayogini has the remit to escort us throughout the mandala. Residing in the middle (she is the mother of all buddhas, so is associated with the space of the buddha family), the invitation is to join her, resting in space and to see all appearance as the (dis)play of mind. The sadhana of Vajrayogini is a liturgical text over 100 pages long*. Given the Vajrayana teachings are secret, I would be breaking my Samaya vow to reveal the details of the practice. What I can share is the “mission” involves learning various mantra, mudra, visualisations, and ritual (involving bell, dorje and drum). When I attended the abhisheka last year I was only able to stay for the transmission itself, and so these days in Normandy allowed me to watch the video teachings and acquaint myself with it all. If I were doing this in a group settling I would have wanted to be sitting with an L plate on my back, a sign to ask for forgiveness if I were to pick up the dorje incorrectly, ring the bell at the wrong time, or get over enthusiastic with my damaru beating! Thankfully, my only witness was Vajrayogini and les vaches outside my rural dwelling. I was also holding in mind the words of a dear sangha friend, “Helen, I think you will like this practice…as it asks for a fascination with mind and an invite for mastery”. Yes, I can buy into that…it helps quell my inherent karma energy (speed) and calm my enneatype Six concerns (being wrong).
I come back to my intention to communicate how this ancient tradition co-exists with the more modern art of psychotherapy. Co-exist is an appropriate word; although the Buddhist teachings talk of co-emergence, so let’s start there. Back to Lama Allione, who explains that the mandala principle works with the Buddhist understanding of “the basic split”; often called the fall in Christian texts. She refers to the six word teaching of “one ground, two paths, two results”. The ground is the ground of our being, the source of infinite possibility and the intrinsic intelligence of the universe. You might well have heard of “buddhanature”, and for the humanistic therapist the confidence in our clients’ inherent wholeness is not a dissimilar concept. The focus of the Buddhist path however is how from this ground of being, in any moment we enter onto one of two paths.
“At this point the individual awareness either recognises that pure rainbow-hued luminosity manifesting as appearances as inseparable from itself, or it sees that luminosity manifesting as a separate world of appearances” explains Lama Allione. Imagine a buddha like our sky dancer Vajrayogini. She stands in the mandala, minding her own business, to the metaphorical west she feels the fire of padma energy. If she were to confuse this energy, in her passion she would reach out to the object of her desire; in her wisdom, she instead sees this as a display of mind, like the red hue in a rainbow. Rather than lust (after an object), the wisdom of discernment radiates a non-referential love, free of grasping, full of compassion. In the dharma teachings, the path of confusion leads to the result of samsara, and the path of wisdom, to nirvana. Note how both come from the same ground. In fact, samsara and nirvana co-exist, or co-emerge.
In my attempt to ward off seasickness on the ferry, I switched from writing to listening. The podcast I reached for was an interview with psychotherapist Ken Bradford. Bradford was a student of humanistic psychotherapy hero, Jim Bugental; he is also a practitioner of Dzogchen. He highlighted we all have a sense and recollection of our connection to the ground or source. I liked his description of how ordinarily, this knowing leads us to either seek happiness (we might say this is the path of confusion, as we seek our okayness in ‘things’ that are separate to “us”) or for some, to seek liberation. In the years of my therapeutic practice, very rarely does a client come to work with me to seek awakenment; people come to therapy because something isn’t working in their life – and that failure to be happy is felt as personal. If therapy is the treatment of choice to find happiness (or ordinary misery according to Freud), the Buddhist path offers liberation from suffering**
I didn’t know all this when I started out on the Buddhist path. Like many, I started meditating to get away from a deep unhappiness and stress. Along the path I have realised the aim is not to quell the display, but rather to see the play of mind as just that, a display as transparent as a rainbow; to use words of Andrew Holceck (another podcast interviewee listened to on la Manche) meditation is less a sedative and more a laxative…certainly by the time we reach the Vajrayana and the yidam practices of tantra. In my last post, I shared the metaphor of the mind as garden. The processes of therapy and meditation are weeding and clearing the soil; a cyclical system in which experiences come to the surface, can be understood and held in compassion – by the meditator, in the therapeutic relationship. The Vajrayana goes one step further. Stepping into the mandala, we find confidence to see all appearances as transparent in nature.
Before embarking on my retreat in Normandy, I met up with my meditation mentor. We discussed the principle of the divine feminine, and how Vajrayogini might become a midwife to psyche. She supports the practitioner in both being and becoming, to “hold” and “play”, to recognise the interplay of emptiness and appearance. This is the meaning of dakini, sky dancer. This is not passive however. I came to know in the sadhana that Vajrayogini has another moniker, that of “the great vajra trickster”! I have to say, as soon as I engaged in my study and “L plated” practice this week, my dream life has already ignited. I imagine she has been tilling the soil of psyche’s garden behind my back!
Opportunities for intense study and practice such as these are precious. To step off the treadmill (and I confess, get on en velo) these past days have acted not just as a rest, but as a re-set. Re-setting my compass with the four directions, and aligning my intentions. In a commentary on the Vajrayogini practice, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche reminds all sadhakas that the only motivation is bodhicitta. I have long felt fortunate that my livelihood quite naturally aligns with bodhisattva activity; but with a more thorough grounding in the soil of vajrayana, I am coming to appreciate how important it is to work with my mind: not just for the benefit of my clients, the trainees and supervises I work with, but for all sentient beings in my personal mandala and beyond.
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*The practitioner can opt for a shorter, daily practice but this is still 40 pages and takes 2 hours to perform.
**Suffering, not pain…as pain is a given of existence that involves the human form