Wisdom Wheels: Cat Nirvana and Dog-Zen

At this point, readers are likely to be scratching their heads over the influx of texts with heavy wisdom polarity markup. Despite appearances, there's something fundamentally simple at the roots of wisdom. We can reflect on wisdom as abstract patterns, and we can observe it in practice across every spectrum of life and reality.

Until the Integral Human Life-cycle presentation is ready to boot, here's a primer to the basic polarities of life in the lives of our four-pawed furry friends. Cats and dogs have their eightfold paths in life as well!

≡ Nirvana in Balance: Solar Cat & Lunar Cat ≡

One is a Sun with a Moon in his heart and eyes, the other is a Moon with a Sun in her heart and eyes. Lunar Cat is here at day, Solar Cat comes here at night. Lunar Cat likes sweet better, Solar Cat likes salty better. Cats know the ways and means of approaching primal Balance and total Nirvana quite naturally. And what curious companions these two have become on the great purring journey in the wheel of life!

≡ Cat Nirvana Wisdom Wheel ≡

Here's how their basic cosmology and eight-fold operations map up. This is an application for a correlative and integral pair.

[∞0] Zero-One Singularity = Total Cat Nirvana
[±] Balance = Tao of Love: Sun Meets Moon
[+] Dynamis = Male Solar Cat
[-] Neutralis = Female Lunar Cat

[++] Big Picture = Solar Cat -> Roams Outdoors
[+-] Causality = Solar Cat -> Runs to Lunar Cat
[-+] Foresight = Lunar Cat -> Anticipates the Solar Cat
[--] Introspection = Lunar Cat -> Lounges at Home

[+++] Heaven = Power Cat -> Creating & Wondering
[++-] Lake = Wise Cat -> Contemplating & Scheming
[+-+] Fire = Eater-Hunter Cat -> Grasping & Consuming
[+--] Thunder = Romance Cat -> Excited & Playful
[-++] Wind = Wandering Cat -> Detached & Expansive
[-+-] Stream = Natural Cat -> Healthy & Flowing
[--+] Mountain = Commanding Cat -> Protects & Demands
[---] Earth = Home Cat -> Sleepy & Satisfied

Cats and dogs have few problems with balance, good time, and general relax in life. We humans on the other hand constantly struggle to find even a scent of balance lurking somewhere down the road. Confusion is our great evolutionary feat, imbalance the fruit of our mighty intellects. Cat-Nirvana and Dog-Zen guide us back to the essentials of life.

≡ Esoteric Dog-Zen Wisdom Wheel ≡

Our dog is really into food. Few know that he is actually an adherent of the esoteric Dog-Zen school of primal wisdom, knower of the great secret of balance and perennial peace of mind. Humans may study this art of peace and ecstasy to the tune of Bob Marley's "Hungry Mob is an Angry Mob" for attaining a more balanced vibrational level of life.

[∞0] Zero-One Singularity = Perennial Peace
[±] Balance = Eating-Belly-Full
[+] Dynamis = Drive of Hunger
[-] Neutralis = Fabric of Food

[++] Big Picture = Overall Aware
[+-] Causality = Searching
[+-] Foresight = Expecting
[--] Introspection = Sleeping

[+++] Heaven = Raving Ecstacy
[++-] Lake = Silently Wondering
[+-+] Fire = Eagerly Eating
[+--] Thunder = Barking at Strange People
[-++] Wind = Running Around the Fields
[-+-] Stream = Following Nicely
[--+] Mountain = Protecting the Revire
[---] Earth = Evacuating

The [+++] Heaven = Ecstacy is particularly evident in the seconds between seeing food en route and the manna falling from heaven to the bowl -- he generally jumps and spins around 3x times!!! I have never seen a Christian receive Eucharist or a Hindu receive Prasada (sacred food) with the level of enthusiasm he experiences twice a day over the same old dry pebbles. We stand to learn much from each and every sentient being!

The other polarity, [---] Earth = Evacuating, appears to be equally sacred to him. The spot for evacuation is carefully chosen -- after all, they are the after-effects of [±] Primal Balance and [+++] Raving Ecstasy. Any food is truly manna from heaven and the embodied essence of good life for him. Talk about enlightenment in the food-made sheath (annamaya-kosha) and the oral-anal field!

Whatever you have, use that wisely towards balance and peace. This is the simple but profound point in all of these models, whether traditional or experimental. The center of the wheel is peaceful; and only at the center can you make some sense of the colliding experiences that revolve around you. If you have your wheels oiled well and the polarities balance each other out, it's a smoother and more enjoyable ride for everyone involved.

Essentially, [++] All ![±] You ![-] Need is |[-] Peace and |[+] Love in [±] Balance!

Broadband Existential Body and Experience

Exposure to the potentials of Multiple Dimensions of Existence provides you with a wide array of diverse experiences of your existence. Our particular experience of existence is the sum total of everything we are and the ultimate framework and point of reference for all our cognition and action. Cogito ergo sum — a fair starting point for a basic reality check.

Below is an illustration of the key layers of existence I have grown to feel and conceive of as the foundation of my existence and experience of reality, following diverse more and less successful attempts to cross and warp the boundaries of space and time by employing any and all meditation and cultivation methodologies I've come across and found as relevant and applicable enough for me to seriously pursue.

Illustration of a Broadband Existential Body   ·   Click to Enlarge

Fields and Patterns: The Human Existential Totality

This is a generic gloss on the aspects of a broadband existential body or a more holistic experience of diverse material and spiritual realities, enumerating some of the central planes and factors of possible experience, potential, cognition, and holistic human evolution.

Light Plateaus Above, Middle and Below: Non-dual field of absolute cognition and interconnected existence. This is the dimension of ultimate peace and resolution, transcending by its nature the range of diversified cognition, eluding the attempts of the human mind to contextualize it as one or the other.

Middle Plateau: The united cognitive plateau is experienced as the ultimate abode of consciousness and being in the cavern of the existential heart. This ultimate self or non-self is non-different from and intrinsically connected to the collective plateau of non-dual cognition.

Plateau Above and Below: We are connected with the plane of universal cognition through the principles heaven (above) and earth (below), or the fundamental polarities of positive and negative. Their balance creates the harmonic flow and rotation (Tao/Rta/Wyrd) of our existence.

Four Major Lotus Fields: The cognitive crown field above the head (depicted as a pattern lotus) is the ultimate platform of consciousness, the seat of cognitive and existential ascension, and the matrix that translates universal patterns into an individual experience of reality. The heart field is our ultimate ground of existential being, the source of our expansive expression and response to the world, the location of the singularity of being and the center of existential gravity. The navel field is our base of specified existence, a fort of defense and inner power that supports and nourishes us. The sole field is our link to the earth polarity and its power, connecting the universal circuit with the above and the below.

Pattern Body: The ultimate existential body of patterns and principles (dharmas or formulae), the field that gives form and continuity to all individual phenomena, and the dimension of ultimate harmonization and existential logos.

Pattern Field: The super-pattern blueprint underlying all structures of reality, the universal patterns and principles of existence that govern the interdependent flux of phenomena across all planes of material and immaterial existence.

These are the basic factors and planes of a syndicated experience of reality with the "fundamentals" of diverse traditions of cognitive and energetic expansion and refinement integrated. There are no doubt a great many variants to this model, reflected through individual experience and insight, perspectives equally valid and legitimate for the individuals at the heart of their perceived existence.

Whatever the details in each individual's subjective sphere may be, I believe it's fair to say that extending one's sphere of existential cognition and experience yields a rich repository of new human potentials. The exact dynamics of these basic planes and fields of existence deserve to be studied in further detail in upcoming articles.

The Rainbow Body of Padmasambhava / Guru Rinpoche

Buddhist Model of Trikaya and Body-mind, Mind-stream and Heart-mind

The Buddhist system of Trikaya explores the totality of the being of a Buddha or a Tathāgata — an awakened and enlightened fully experiencing entity — in three divisions of bodies and three overlapping layers of existential dynamics.

These layers also embody the totality of the potentials of each sentient being, providing us with a working general frame of reference for the psychophysical and ultimate dimensions of human experience. Many individual aspects of the Trikaya totality have already been introduced in more generic terms under broadband existential body.

Nirmaṇakāya: This is the physical or corporeal body made of matter, the vehicle of consciousness in the human world, and the plane of material existence. The physical form of a Buddha is the ultimate Nirmanakaya.

Sambhogakāya: Known as "body of enjoyment", "deity dimension" or "astral body", this is the body or plane containing the totality of our energetic experience, culminations, and powers. Sambhogakaya is the energetic operative means for realizing the ultimate field of the Dharmakaya.

Dharmakāya: Containing the ultimate nature and essence of the uncreated enlightened mind, this body or plane is free from conceptual projection, infinitely spaceous and naturally radiant, transcending duality and cognizable patterns, woven with infinite correlations as the ultimate sheat of existence.

Dharmakaya is characterized by great purity, great realization and great mental expanse. Thence the saying, "He who sees the Dharma sees the Buddha" and vice versa — dharma being the "constituent factors of the experienced world" and their natural flux and combinatorics in our collective experience of reality. Dharmakaya is the ultimate bridge into the nondual plane.

These three bodies operate on three overlapping planes of existence, namely the body-mind (nāmarūpa: "name and form"), the interconnecting mind-stream (citta-saṃtāna), and ultimately the heart-mind (bodhicitta).

Complete harmonization of the three kaya planes and their operative dynamics leads to the holistic realization and manifestation of a Rainbow Body, also expressed and experienced as "deity dimension" of the sambhogakaya, a synthesized and fulfilled energetic body.

When the physical and energetic bodies implode and become absorbed into the dharmakaya, and as the residual patterns of the dharmakaya resolve into themselves, diversified consciousness collapses and is naturally absorbed into the underlying and ultimate non-dual plane, now emerging as the entirety of extant reality.

This existential totality is experienced through the mind-stream flowing and oscillating like a caleidoscope across the diverse planes of cognizable existence, touching their respective potentials while animating and operating the plane of matter and forms.

The totality of the experience is contained within dharmakaya and experienced directly through the heart-mind (bodhicitta) as an enlightenment-body cognizing and transcending universal patterns. These teachings are prominent in the Tibetan Vajrayana tradition (Diamond Vehicle, Esoteric/Tantric Buddhism).

There are numerous other traditions with similar detailed models and methodologies that deserve to be studied in further detail. Upcoming articles will feature Taoist Mysticism and Neidan Internal Alchemy, Consciousness and Vedantic Layers of Being, Kriya Yoga of Mahavatar Babaji, Hatha Yoga and Levels of Kundalini, and many more oriental and occidental systems of internal and holistic transformation yet to be analyzed and assimilated.