Boat of Three and Eight Maidens in Emptiness

The mystic poems of the Charyapada are a collection of esoteric verse by the Mahasiddhas of tantric Buddhism, dating to 8th-12th century eastern India. This series of poetry from the masters of yore is laden with insight on the interplay of the microcosm, the macrocosm, and the great void beyond. Poems of the genre are grasped and tasted in a heart of primal symbolic awareness; read not the surface tale, taste the flow underneath!

With the heart of the mystery in the mid-stream that reveals the nature of the opposites, the tantric tradition employs rich imagery of the male-female interplay to reveal the principles of the sun, the moon, and the central pillar of fire as energetic and ontological beacons in the ocean of existence. Here's a fresh translation of the 13th poem by Kanhapada, a beautiful gloss on the enlightened human situation.

It's not the eight maidens in this painting; yet the ocean and the means are the same.

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ti-śaraṇa nābī ki'a aṭha-kumārī | ni'a deha karuṇā-śūṇame herī || 1

tarittā bhava-jaladhi jima kari mā'a suinā | majha beṇī taraṅgama muni'ā || 2

pañca tathāgata ki'a keḏuāla | bāha'a kā'a kāhni la mā'ājāla || 3

gandha parasa rasa ja̮isoɱ ta̮isoɱ | niṁda bihune suinā ja̮iso || 4

ci'a-kaṇṇahāra śūṇata-māṅge | calila kāhna mahā-suha-sāṅge || 5

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"In a three-refuge boat I captured eight maidens;

In my body, I behold compassion and emptiness.

Crossing the ocean of being as a phantom dream;

The mid-stream led me to understand the waves...

Deploying the five Tathagatas as the oars;

Kanha rows the outer form in a wire-net of magic.

Smelling, touching, tasting, as they are;

Like a dream without sleeping!

Awareness as helmsman in the blessed void;

Kanha sojourns in union's highest bliss..."

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In Siddha Kanhapada's song, a three-refuge boat is the vehicle for the journey. We have three perennial refuges (in general and Buddhist terms): [-] Negative (Dharma: Unifying Awareness), [±] Middle (Sangha: Mirror Awareness) and [+] Positive (Buddha: Specifying Awareness). Compassion (Karuna) and Wisdom (Prajna), or Compassion (Karuna) and Emptiness (Sunya), create the two flanks of [±] transparent yoga-balance. Three refuges give shelter to eight phenomenal maidens: [---] Earth, [--+] Mountain, [-+-] Stream, [-++] Wind, [+--] Thunder, [+-+] Fire, [++-] Lake and [+++] Heaven — the fundamental building blocks of the luminous eightfold path of human resolution.

The bipolar waves of the phantom dream are only witnessed in the ☯ Middle-Golden-Stream. Five Tathagatas ("thus-gone-ones") are the oars for the five pure lights, the five faculties, the four cardinals with a center — the sacred pentad of primal awareness. Here are the five Dhyani-Buddhas: 1) Buddha Mahāvairocana ["super-luminous-sphere"]: Tathatā-jñāna, "Awareness of Suchness", 2) Buddha Akṣobhya ["non-disturbable"]: Ādarśa-jñāna, "Mirrorlike Awareness"; 3) Buddha Amitāyus ["immeasurable-lifecycle"]: Pratyavekṣaṇa-jñāna, "Investigative Awareness"; 4) Buddha Ratnasambhava ["jewel-potential"]: Samatā-jñāna, "Unifying Awareness"; and 5) Buddha Amoghasiddhi ["successful-accomplishment"]: Kṛty-anuṣṭhāna-jñāna = "Accomplishing Awareness".

The ocean of existence is likened to a wire-net of phantasmagoria. The objects of the senses and the sense-faculties are exactly what they are. When left in their own nature without craving or projection, the shackles of bondage unravel, severing the steel-ropes of the material anchor with the sword of transcombinatory awareness. For the remainder of the journey, now in a state of transparent seedlessness, the phenomenal world transforms into a waking dream that holds no sway over the conscious dreamer. In effect, the world is beheld from behind a primal mirror; touched, but not touched; smelled, but not smelled; and tasted, but not tasted.

Luminosity of primal awareness is the helmsman of the boat of the body in the blessed void; and the object-streams shape the countless waves of the ocean. A journey to the highest bliss of union is fulfilled when above and below are joined in the middle without friction, reconciling and uniting the inner with the outer, reaching the pinnacle of conscious equilibrium, and ultimately, unbinding the thread of patternation altogether. That is the fullness of the bliss of union in the blessed void.

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You can download a translation of Charyapada at the SySpir Central ArcHive in PDF format (98 KB) — archived from an expired website. Translator unknown. It's a fair rendering, albeit missing a good deal of nuance; as can only be expected in working through an archaic mixture of Bangla, Oriya and Assamese! Art base: "Jesus walks on water" by Ivan Aivazovsky (1888).

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.