Between Ikon and Eidos: Image and Hermeneutics in Meditation (Part 6 - Amitabha Buddha)

So we're looking, and discussing the effect of ideas on the possibilities of sensing with soul, the impact there -- the place, really, of ideas and concepts in soulmaking, meditation, and unfolding, wanting to unfold, open up, and discuss several practice possibilities as we go. I want to begin to look, just a little bit, at a few ideas and images and practice possibilities from the Mahāyāna tradition, or the Vajrayāna traditions, as well, in Buddhism.

But just to say, just as a general point: as well as elaborating on and hopefully suggesting and making available by opening up and looking at these different practices -- practices and ideas and images -- as we discuss them, as well as the ones that we dwell on a little bit, as I'm talking (and this applies to the past talks as well), depending on how you listen, there are actually many possibilities, many practice possibilities implicit or available to be drawn out from ideas that I may just briefly mention, or just touch on, or just as an aside, or mention something. So just from the last part of this talk, for example, I quoted the Eastern Orthodox teacher Maximus the Confessor. He wrote or said:

God the divine Logos wishes to effect the mystery of His incarnation always and in all things.^[1]

The divine wishes to effect, the divine wishes to manifest, to bring into being the mystery, to make apparent the mystery of his incarnation always and in all things.

Actually, 'to effect' means 'to make.' Not just 'to make appear,' but to actually 'make.' So back to that Hegelian notion, or similarities to the Hegelian notion of God needing something to manifest, and needing, perhaps, our participation. The point I want to make right now, the main point in regards to this is, one could take that sentence from Maximus the Confessor, and if there's any hearing it -- so listening with a receptive ear and heart and soul, if there's anything that resonates in that phrase, and one's like, "I don't even know what he means!", but something just touches. I can sense it touch. I can listen with a more poetic hearing, perhaps reflect a little bit, let it land in the soul, and the soul can hold it for a while in its womb, and it can just stay there, maybe just for a little while. And out of that, that ideal, the ideas that are encapsulated in that one sentence from Maximus the Confessor, for example, may, with a little reflection, with a little poetic hearing, actually generate, then, the possibilities of all kinds of shifts in ways of looking that we can then actually practise and experience and implement, and see what happens.

And that might happen very spontaneously, organically, without much effort on our part. Or it might be that, as I said, we have to reflect a little bit, let it gestate in the soul-womb, so to speak. But one has to listen poetically for this to be able to translate, to be implemented so that it delivers or opens up for us some possibility or other, or maybe many possibilities, from that one sentence, of sensing with soul. So there is the possibility here, very rich, in terms of different possibilities that we can hear. We're open to hearing in a certain way, and they become for us, they offer or suggest possibilities, or the soul converts it, in a way, to possibilities of sensing with soul.

Again, we can combine ideas so that we hear that sentence from Maximus -- the divine wishes to effect, to manifest the mystery of his incarnation always and in all things -- and we may combine that with other ideas that we have digested, or are beginning to digest in the larger logos of what we're talking about. So for instance, as I mentioned, perhaps it needs our participation. This effecting, or manifesting, or making, bringing into being of this mystery of the incarnation always and in all things, perhaps it involves our participation. So we're emphasizing this participation. Participation of what? Of my mind, of my poetic hearing, of my listening, of my heart, of my sensing. Perhaps I hear that, and in order to liberate the potential there for sensing with soul, I actually have to combine it with some understanding of emptiness that I have: perhaps the divine is empty, or the incarnation is empty, or whatever. So there can be a very creative combining of ideas to generate this kind of potentially infinite range of possibilities for sensing with soul. [6:37]

But we have to hear poetically. Words can be stretched from their kind of narrow, rigid meanings. So something like 'incarnation,' depending on your background, you might hear that in such a sort of literalist manner. Maybe that works for some people, but we can really expand on a lot of the words in that sentence, as an example. If we allow ourselves to enter into poetic sensibilities, or as I said, used the phrase on a talk (I think it was the Path of the Imaginal), the 'midrashic condition,' meaning the condition of this open, pliable soul-listening and soul-reading and soul-fertility that's open to multiple, possibly infinite, interpretations -- the midrashic condition of one possible sentence.^[2] So as I'm talking, or as I have [talked], you can go back. And perhaps this has already happened to you: you're listening, and one phrase, or one sentence, jumps out. Or even go back and listen for those odds and ends that are interspersed in what we're talking about, and perhaps pause with one. What is it to enter into that logos, that idea that's expressed in some idea that's just briefly talked about? What is it for that logos, that seed, to enter into the womb of your soul? [8:20]

Takes a certain listening, takes perhaps a little pausing, takes a little, as I said, 'turning the soil' in the soul, the soil of the soul, and a little bit of working and receptivity. Or as another example, you know, I mentioned, perhaps we can say there are different ways, ideas we can have about perception, different ways, conceptions we can have about perception, and that we can conceive of it as a gift and a grace from soul, from the divine, from a divine. And we can conceive of it instead as work or as opportunity.^[3] And again, here are three conceptions, for example. Not at all that that's an exhaustive list, but here are three conceptions, three ideas. And what would it be, again, to let them enter the womb of the soul as seeds? These ideas, these logoi, these conceptions are seeds. And they're sort of mulled over, or turned, planted in the soil, and that soil is turned. And then they can generate ways of looking or suggest ways of looking and sensings with soul.

Or some etymology or other I might just throw out: "Oh, by the way, in Latin, that means that. Or in Greek, this means this. Or Sanskrit," or whatever it is. You know, partly the reason I'm doing that -- in fact, the only reason I'm doing that is really to suggest things poetically, to open up possibilities by these seeds of logoi, these seeds of ideas. So one can, as you're listening, if you want, or if you're listening a second or third or however many times, you can pause, extract something, and linger with it.

Okay. That's just a sort of note, a general point. But what I'd like to do is, as I said, look at some Mahāyāna ideas, images, practices, and Vajrayāna ideas, images, and practices. And if I start with the Buddha Amitābha, who's the Buddha of the Western Paradise, or the Western Pure Land. In Mahāyāna, in all the -- globally, this is a very popular Buddha. There's a lot of orientation towards this Buddha and his Buddha-field, his Pure Land, in all kinds of ways, in different Buddhist cultures still today. Some people will pray. It's quite common. There's a prayer to Amitābha, a prayer to be reborn in the next life, or in some future life, in his Pure Land. And there are devotional practices and all that. So I'm interested in how we might open up that idea, that image, and what that might suggest to us for possibilities of practice, linked in with this sensing with soul.

Let's start with some etymology here. Amitābha: mita means, in Sanskrit, 'to measure.' A-, before, means it's a negation, so 'unmeasured,' or 'measureless,' or 'boundless,' or 'infinite.' So 'infinite,' infinite what? Infinite ābha, which is from the verb ā-bhā, bhāti, which means 'to shine' or 'blaze towards,' 'to irradiate,' 'to illumine,' or 'to appear' or 'become visible or apparent.' So usually the translation we get for Amitābha is 'Limitless Light' -- Amita-Ābha, 'Limitless Light,' or something like that. Or 'Limitless Radiance,' or something like that.

But it can also mean, because ā-bhā is 'to appear,' 'to become visible or apparent,' it might also mean 'Limitless Appearance.' It can also mean (ā-bhā, that verb) 'to look like,' 'to resemble.' So you can hear a little bit -- ābhā as a noun also can mean 'splendour,' or 'light,' or 'flash,' or 'colour,' or 'appearance,' or 'beauty,' or 'a reflected image,' or 'a likeness,' or 'a resemblance.' Again, the usual translation of Amitābha is 'Limitless Light': the Buddha of, the Buddha named 'Limitless Light.' That's very lovely, and that can open up its own direction, absolutely. But it tends to suggest, for instance, a kind of infinite oneness, some kind of infinite oneness, etc., which is wonderful, and we've been through all that.

But if we take a slightly different route with the etymology, a different possibility by the etymology there, then we might get something like 'Infinite Appearance,' or 'Limitless Appearance,' or 'Limitless Resemblance or Appearances or Images.' So the Buddha of Infinite Appearances -- what does that sound like to you? Does not that suggest the Buddha of the world of soulmaking, of sensing with soul, of the infinite possibility that's generated in the eros-psyche-logos dynamic, and that potential open-endedness there, and the generation of, sensing more dimensions, more aspects, generating, creating, discovering more images? Amitābha in the Pure Land, in this Land. He goes with his cosmos, if you like, his Land, the Pure Land of Amitābha, the Land of the mundus imaginalis. [14:51]

So we can potentially open up a slightly different meaning for Amitābha, and that Buddha, and that Pure Land. Amitābha is also used interchangeably, almost like so he has another name, so to speak: Amitāyus, which translates -- Amita is the same: 'limitless,' 'measureless,' or 'boundless,' or 'infinite.' And then āyu is the word for 'life.' But āyu can also mean a 'living being' or 'a person.' So again, it's like, it could be 'Limitless Persons,' something like that, or 'Limitless Living Forms' or something, which, again, might suggest -- it's a little less strong, but it might suggest something of this infinite possibility of images to be created/discovered.

So there's a possibility there. What does it mean, then, to meditate on Amitābha? What does it mean to pray to Amitābha, and to pray to be reborn in that Pure Land? Before I get to that, maybe you can already guess a possibility there, or your soul suggests possibilities. But these primordial Buddhas, in the Mahāyāna, they're called 'consorts.' Generally it's portrayed as a male and female counterpart. But they're actually, they're not really separate. So the female consort or counterpart is said to be the prajñā of the Buddha. And the prajñā, actually (some of you will know this), paññā in Pali, is the word for 'wisdom.' So this female -- it's really the female aspect -- it's the same essence as the Buddha. And it's called the prajñā of the Buddha, of that Buddha. And so Amitābha's prajñā, Amitābha's female consort, and they're depicted in yab-yum, in erotic, sexual embrace, in sexual intercourse. It's one Buddha depicted as two in a Pure Land. You could say self/other/world is right there: some erotic union, and a world that it generates, a Pure Land that it generates.

Amitābha's prajñā, Amitābha's consort, other half, so to speak, is same in essence, and is Paṇḍara -- Paṇḍāravāsinī, actually, which means, literally, 'White-Robed,' 'One who is White-Robed.' So she wears a white robe, but she's actually red in colour, as is Amitābha. And in being red, she is the embodiment of the fire element, and also the embodiment of passion or lust. This Buddha's consort is the embodiment of passion and lust, and the fire element. She's also called Rāgaratī*,* which literally means, *rāga-ratī, '*passion' and 'lust.' She holds a lotus in her hands.

Now, some Vajrayāna texts say, when the passion and lust that are defilements is transmuted, it becomes the wisdom of 'discriminating awareness.' We could actually keep -- and some Vajrayāna traditions as well -- keep both: keep the passion and the lust, but transmute it through the erotic-imaginal, so that it's not reified, it's not concretized, etc. It becomes imaginal. It becomes full of dimension, full of beauty, full of divinity, shot through with the imaginal Middle Way, neither real nor not real, etc. We can keep the passion or the lust transmuted that way, through its imaginal transmutation, transfiguration -- transubstantiation may be a better word. And we can have the gifts that it gives, which is the wisdom of discriminating awareness, or 'distinguishing wisdom,' sometimes it's called.

So Amitābha goes with the aggregate of perception, and that perception, in its (let's say) enlightened form, its primordially enlightened form, is the gateway, or is transubstantiated in its primordially enlightened form to intuitive vision. What does that mean, 'intuitive vision'? It might mean, or we could interpret it as meaning, we could take that one direction of the etymology, etc., the 'intuitive vision' may be imaginal perception; the transformation of the aggregate of perception into imaginal perception, into intuitive vision. Imaginal perception. And the 'distinguishing wisdom' there, 'to distinguish' means means 'to keep separate,' 'to keep things separate.' So again, here, it's not a kind of wisdom that dissolves everything into oneness. It's an intuitive vision, an imaginal perception that retains discriminating awareness, distinguishing wisdom. There are all kinds of other possibilities that we could have tracked through the etymology that open up different directions. I just want to open up this one now, because of the obvious connection it has with the work that we've been talking about with sensing with soul. But 'distinguishing' means perception does not melt into less fabrication, a state of less fabrication, some oneness or other. That's fine for some other Buddha. This Buddha Amitābha, opening up the distinguishing wisdom and the imaginal perception, the intuitive perception, this 'Limitless Appearances' of his name.

Again, here, remember the corollary that we established: eros needs twoness. It doesn't collapse into oneness. Even when it knows oneness, it doesn't end there or collapse there. It needs twoness, and it also creates and discovers twonesses. So the world of imaginal perception, the world of sensing with soul, for the most part, needs twonesses. So this transubstantiation of the perception into distinguishing wisdom goes with the eros that is one of the appropriate affects or kinds of desire in the mundus imaginalis, in the Pure Land of Limitless Appearances.

Let me throw something in here that I think I've actually touched on in another retreat. I can't remember which one.^[4] But when we talk about these Vajrayāna deities, or primordial Buddhas, or bodhisattvas, or yidams, when we talk about tantric deity yoga, or even in repeating a mantra that's connected with a tantric deity like Amitābha or whoever, we can delineate, and I think it's really important to delineate various, if you like, stances, relationships, attitudes, poises which we could conceive, which we could inhabit at any time. And we could conceive of them hierarchically (but we also don't have to).

(1) But we could say, hierarchically, one is, let's say, a mantra, or a prayer, or something -- it's an invocation that is a kind of supplication, and an opening to the other, to this deity, and a surrendering to what is bigger than me, bigger than you, and more powerful. There's the humility there, and a heartfelt opening. But it's me and the deity, and with the beauty of the humility, the supplication, the opening, the surrender, etc.

(2) A second level, if you like, is more of a kind of harmonizing of the consciousness and the psyche and the soul, and the whole being, and the energy body, harmonizing with the qualities of that deity that is invoked by the mantra, or focused on in the meditation, etc. So the mantra or the prayer, if it's a visualization or whatever, if it's just a sense, invoking these qualities, and involving those qualities -- for example, Avalokiteśvara's compassion, or Christ's mercy, or Yamāntaka's fearless power to destroy what needs to be destroyed. In meditating upon them, in reciting the mantra, in prayer, in just soul-resonance with them, there's a kind of harmonizing of our being with the qualities, if you like, of the deity's being. And that cultivates something in our being.

(3) And a third level we might talk about is a kind of union with, or fusion with, a becoming. One's self becomes the deity. The energy body becomes the body of the deity. There's a kind of fusing or unity, so that we actually experience our body as divine, and we sense the world, then -- if one opens one's eyes, or even listens, or whatever -- we sense the world and others with the senses of that deity, through their eyes, through their ears, with their vision, with their kind of knowing, their kind of sensing, and their feeling for things, their erotic relationship with things, their love relationship with things, their compassion or mettā relationship with beings and the world. And in that way, there's a kind of cosmopoesis. There's a transforming, transubstantiation (better word) of the cosmos in doing so. There's a kind of fullness there in that union. It's more than we just say, "Imagine you're the deity." We actually enter into the deity's experience of body, of matter, of world, etc.

So we could conceive of them hierarchically, those three levels, a sort of definite division: (1) in the first one, between self and deity, but there's an attitude of supplication, surrender, humility; (2) a kind of harmonizing, if you like, energetically and psychically, as a second level; (3) and a third level, a kind of union with, or becoming, and the transubstantiation of the world that's involved there. [27:05] But I would like to retain the openness to all three. So yes, you could say the third one is more kind of complete, or advanced, if you even want to use that word. But actually there's beauty in that first one, of the twoness, of the separateness. And why not actually -- just as the Buddha taught eight jhānas, but actually didn't then just say, "Once you've learnt all eight, then just practise the eighth." He kept all eight open. They're all valuable, even though you could talk about a kind of hierarchy there. So I would really like to keep all of those open when we talk about these kinds of practices, and these kinds of soulmaking practices.

But when we come back to Amitābha specifically, and as I mentioned, it's a traditional -- very common in the Mahāyāna world, the prayer to be reborn in the Western Paradise, in Amitābha's Pure Land. But now, when we kind of opened up the etymology and the idea of what Amitābha could be by looking at those different connections, there are all kinds of possibilities that open up, but we could conceive, this prayer to be reborn in Amitābha's Pure Land could also be conceived as a focusing and a harnessing of the aspiration and intention to enter, now, into the mundus imaginalis. So one's praying, one's really opening in humility, and intention, and orientation, and eros, and devotion. One's asking, and orienting, and intending to enter now into the mundus imaginalis, into the world that's sensed with soul, which means to perceive imaginally, to sense this world or another world as sacred, beautiful, multidimensional and profound, meaningful, divine, empty (meaning 'neither real nor not real'). So that could be a sense of another world that's not this world. It could be this world, perceived now, sensed now with soul, perceived imaginally now, sensed now with soul. We've been through that.

But in praying for that, to enter into Amitābha's Pure Land here and now -- not in a future life; here and now -- in praying for that, in the act of prayer, in the stance, in the poise, in the attitude of prayer, one is acknowledging the necessity of grace, of humility, and that the soul and the divine are greater than my ego, my will, my skill-mastery. We've said all this before in relation to the imaginal. So that prayer, or the attitude of prayer, the gesture of prayer, the soul-movement of prayer, has all this: idea of grace, attitude of humility, attitude of soul and divinity being much bigger than self, not completely available to my technical mastery and my will. Also bigger than my current experience and conception of them. All of this we've touched on before. So that receptivity is there in the prayer as well, ideas of grace, humility, receptivity, all of that. Some of you may have been aware that people pray to be reborn in Amitābha's Pure Land, etc., but we can open up other possibilities for what that means in practice, for our practice, I think, in very, very beautiful, very potentially fertile ways.

While we're on the subject of tantric deities or primordial Buddhas, and meditating or praying with them, I want to say something. It may be a reminder. It may not. But it's an important one, I feel. So oftentimes, the way this is taught, or at least, what many people pick up from the teachings about meditating on Vajrayāna deities or primordial Buddhas or bodhisattvas, is a kind of emphasis and necessity of capturing, at one time, in the meditation, all the details of the image that is prescribed or described: "Amitābha needs to be this colour, and he's wearing this, and he's holding this in his hand, and he's holding this in his other hand, and then his feet are this, etc., and he's got his hair like this, or he's got so many arms, and there's this in one hand, and this in another hand, etc." There's a lot of detail in some of these icons, and sometimes a practitioner gets the idea that "I've somehow got to develop the skill of holding all that together in the meditation," which, alone, becomes a kind of feat of visualization and memory.

But I want to say that in practising this, as with all things, we need to make it work for us at any time. And 'make it work' means 'make it soulful,' that you can feel the energy body opening, harmonizing, coming into alignment. You can feel the soul-resonances. You can feel those qualities, the aspects of the imaginal, start to ignite, start to open up. That's what it means to work, for a meditation to work. What it takes for a meditation to work, any meditation at any time, varies. It's not just a kind of checklist. It's not just a formula that works the same every time. So again, we need to be sensitive and responsive. What actually gives me a sense of soulfulness and soul-fecundity right now, and that this practice is actually opening something up for me? It might be -- in fact, it often is the case -- that it's not necessary to include all the prescribed or described details of this deity, or of this icon, or of this maṇḍala, or whatever, at one time in a meditation, or even at all in one meditation session. It's much more important, I think, to support the possibilities of experiencing resonating, as I said, soulmaking in the energy body, in the emotions -- for example, devotion to some degree, or some kind of shade or colour. And sometimes that's very subtle. [34:41]

Again, we're not looking necessarily for fireworks. Sometimes devotion, for example, eros as another example, is very subtle. Doesn't mean that things are not working. So we need to be attuned, alert, receptive to, open to a range of subtlety and intensity for the sense of what's working. It's more important to support the possibility of experiencing soulmaking resonances, energy body, emotional openings and connections, meaningfulness, and all that. So that might mean really slowing down. If you're familiar with, or you've been taught, perhaps elsewhere, these kinds of visualizations, meditations in Vajrayāna practices -- maybe you've been taught this, and maybe not, but I'll say it, just in case you haven't: it can be worth really slowing down, and just dwell with or dwell on maybe one aspect or two aspects or facets of this deity, or of this maṇḍala or whatever. Perhaps even the relationship between those two aspects. That's really, really helpful, and necessary to kind of build that up. It's not necessarily even the case that the more aspects you get at one time, the 'better' it is, or whatever. [36:15]

So it could be one. It could be a couple of the aspects. For example, Amitābha is often in a maṇḍala opposite the Buddha Akṣobhya. I'll talk about that in a minute. Akṣobhya literally means 'indestructible' or 'immutable,' or something like that. And so what one can do -- perhaps when you get a little bit used to each one on its own -- is you can put them, you can meditate on their relationship or interplay, if you like, and what are the resonances and effects of meditating on that relationship. Say, if we interpret Amitābha as the Buddha who opens the world of limitless appearances, the mundus imaginalis, etc., as we've been using that kind of concept: what does that mean to put that opposite or in relationship or balanced by Akṣobhya, the Buddha of the Immutable? What's immutable? The Unfabricated, perhaps, is immutable, being beyond time. Or emptiness is immutable, unchangeable. What is it to put that world of imaginal perception opposite or balanced by, or in relationship, or in dialogue with or interplay with, the wisdom that knows the immutable, the wisdom that knows the Unfabricated, or the wisdom that knows the thorough, deep, radical emptiness?

So one can, if you like, yes, include those two aspects, and meditate on their balance or connection or whatever. But if you're opening it to two, it should feel doable, going back to what I said before. In other words, again, it feels soulful, fertile for the soul, for the heart, etc., in all the ways we can recognize that -- in the moment, alive, resonant, workable, approachable. So it might be, as I said, you work first with one aspect, and then build it up in time. But it's not necessarily that the more you do, the better, or anything like that. As always, what actually works right now? Right now, what is helpful? That's always a question in meditation.

Or, just as another example, you could meditate on the erotic embrace, the sexual intercourse, the yab-yum of Amitābha and Paṇḍara, the goddess of passionate lust and this Buddha of the imaginal realms, Buddha of limitless images. There are all kinds of possibilities here, and especially if you've been introduced to these practices and maṇḍalas and stuff like that.

One of the reasons for doing this kind of thing is sometimes to bring more balance. As I mentioned, for example, Akṣobhya, this Buddha of the Immutable, something like the diamond, the vajra, is also immutable. It's 'indestructible,' is another word. It is opposite Amitābha, so it's kind of balancing it in the maṇḍala. Maṇḍalas are often quite balanced structures. They're often kind of a cross with something in the middle, so it's very, yes, geometrically balanced. So what is it to balance, as I said, the emptiness with the imaginal -- the knowing of the emptiness with the perceiving of the imaginal, the knowing of the emptiness with the sensing with soul? You place these things in counterpoint, in relationship, in balance. [40:51]

Or perhaps one does the same thing with the emptiness and the deity of passion and lust, Rāgaratī. And what does that mean, emptiness and the erotic icon? And I should also add, you know, all this is very amenable, flexible to finding ways that work for you right now. So it might be that you feel, "Well, I've done a little bit of emptiness, but you know, I hear some things you say, or another teacher says, and I think I'm not there yet, at that level." It doesn't matter. Take the realization of emptiness that's kind of infusing Akṣobhya, in this example, the Buddha of the Immutable, the Indestructible -- whatever realization of emptiness makes sense to you. So it might be something like the Unfabricated. It might be more something like a big awareness, and that's what you've opened to so far, in a way that makes a difference for you, and you're kind of equating emptiness and vast awareness. You might have heard me say, "Well, that's not really the final deal there." No problem. Just be flexible. Take that level of understanding that you have digested and absorbed, and that's what's embodied, if you like, by Akṣobhya, in that example, to balance the imaginal, the mundus imaginalis, the sensing with soul.

Or it could be a really deep understanding of emptiness -- the dharmakāya as the non-dual Buddha's gnosis, which includes appearances. Some of you have heard me talk about that. And sometimes it might be that we're just vaguely sort of -- it's just a Buddha who understands emptiness, this Akṣobhya, and we're aware that "I don't quite understand emptiness, but this guy does." And it's a kind of vague concept or image, really, of this Buddha that embodies and is, if you like, the consciousness that thoroughly knows all emptiness. And it can be, sometimes, in doing that, that even we don't quite know what it means, and our conception's a little bit vague there, but somehow, magically, or by some kind of magic invocation, we actually experience a deeper understanding of emptiness than we knew we had, or that we were conscious of, or had realized consciously, until now. You think, "What's going on there?"

If you stay around the Dharma long enough, and as a teacher, I know there are all kinds of instances of this, where people experience something not in a linear way, that's kind of way beyond where they think they are. And I touched on this when I was talking about maps and trajectories in the talk on awakening. So in this instance, let's say we're just talking about meditating on Akṣobhya, balancing or opposite or in kind of soul-dialogue with Amitābha, the Buddha of the imaginal perception, the deity of the imaginal perception. And we just, "Emptiness -- I don't even know what that means," and it works some kind of magic. What is that? Your intuitive wisdom already knows something? Is it the power of images? Is it the collective unconscious of Jung? Is it the power of poetry? I'm just mentioning that as a possibility. Again, in this whole realm of the place of ideas in sensing with soul, sometimes the idea's vague, and the conception is vague, and sometimes we get, it delivers something beyond where we are. Or we can plug in something that we already know, and that's really, really great -- doesn't have to be the final deal or whatever. [45:08]

The Zen master Hakuin wrote a "Song of Zen." It's a very beautiful, splendid text, not very long. And the last three lines read something like:

Nirvana is right here, before our eyes;

this very place is the Lotus Land;

this very body, the Buddha.^[5]

Nirvāṇa's right here, before our eyes. This very place is the Pure Land. This very body, the Buddha. The text up to that point, in Hakuin's "Song of Zen," it's called, the text up to that point is a lot about emptiness. And as I said, it's not very long, so it just alludes to it. But emptiness is one of the ways that make possible that kind of way of looking that he's talking about: "This very land is the Pure Land, is the Lotus Land. This very body, the Buddha." So sometimes when we talk about the Pure Land, as I mentioned with the Pure Land of Amitābha, the Pure Land of Limitless Appearance, and the eros implicit in that, with his consort Rāgaratī, sometimes we have a sense of a kind of world beyond this one, as an imaginal perception, or events or whatever happening in that world. But there's also the possibility, as I alluded to, of that Pure Land being here, this world transubstantiated. And that's what Hakuin is alluding to in those last three lines there. And one of the things that makes that possible is a thorough knowledge of emptiness, thorough understanding of emptiness, makes possible ways of looking that see the way that he is describing, see the here and now in that way, becomes something akin to the mundus imaginalis: this world, sensed with soul.

But also, if we think, what gives rise to this perception, this possibility, or this range of possibilities of ways of looking, of seeing/sensing the world that way? And there's also the possibility that devotion gives rise to it, or devotion has its place, or sanctifying -- a relationship with this world that takes care to sanctify the things of this world, and the relationships of this world, through prayer, through blessing, through ritual, through whatever it is. And generally speaking, through sensing with soul, this kind of sensing is opened, that Hakuin is alluding to, this Pure Land of the Buddha. So we mentioned (I think it was when I was talking briefly about that passage of God speaking, calling Abraham) lech-lecha. I talked about that, and we talked about how we can hear or read what's in certain texts (for instance, the Old Testament or the New Testament, whatever), and we can hear them timelessly, eternally, understand them as giving an eternal and timeless teaching about soul, about spirit, etc., about divinity, about humanity, and not so much as a literal text about the history of a certain people or nation or whatever, and the problems that come out of interpreting scripture that way, in such a literalized, concretized, and then acted-out way.

There was a Jewish mystic, a Kabbalist in the (I guess) twelfth century called Abraham Abulafia, and very influential. Somewhat controversial, very influential. So we're talking about the idea of the transmutation or transubstantiation of the perception of the world, so that it becomes the Pure Land or the Buddha. And he interprets a passage in the Old Testament, a passage from Deuteronomy, which I'll read after I've said a few words conveying some of what he said about it. It's a passage where God talks about the Holy Land. And God says to the people, he said:

Keep my commandments so that you will long endure on the land that God swore to your fathers that he would give them and their offspring, a land flowing with milk and honey.^[6]

And Abulafia says this actually refers to the supernal land, which is exalted over all exalted lands. So he's saying this refers to the 'supernal,' [which] means the 'higher,' or 'the land on high,' the 'Holy Land,' not as a geographical, earthly place; that the supernal land is an imaginal perception. It's potentially this land where I am now, sensed with soul. So Abulafia makes the point, there's a whole other level here that needs attention, that needs opening up, than the concrete, material level.

And he points out that, in the passage that he's referring to, which I'll read later, there's the word 'today.' And when it says 'today' in the Old Testament, he says 'today' means 'eternally.' 'Today' means 'now,' which means 'timelessly,' which means 'always.' So this whole thing is to be interpreted out of time. This is not a historical report of some event in history, or certainly not only that.

So another passage that Abulafia quotes is from the Old Testament:

And you who cleave to the Lord your God are all alive today.^[7]

You who are in intimate relationship with God are all alive today. And again, the 'today,' it gives the sense of eternality, of timelessness. "And you who cleave to the Lord your God are all alive today." And then he says,

From here we gather that one who does not cleave to God does not live in eternity.^[8]

That doesn't mean "live forever in heaven"; it means "live with the sense of the eternal, have that timeless perception, when you're out of relationship with the divine."

'Today' is always present. For this reason the verse adds the word 'today'. So, too, in all instances where the Torah refers to the constancy of something it uses the word 'today' or 'heaven and earth' or 'sun and moon' or another of the constant forms of the world.

So again, he's pointing to a whole other way of reading and listening and interpreting scripture -- in this case, the Old Testament. Let me read that whole passage. And if you listen to it this way, again, not as a literal history with all kinds of nationalistic implications, and not just as metaphor; we're talking about something larger than what we commonly mean [by] 'metaphor.' If you hear it, you will realize, if you hear it and have experienced cosmopoesis or sensing with soul, and the kinds of things we're talking about in different ways, you can hear it with the ear of that experience, those experiences, and that knowledge, and how that's touched your soul, and you hear, it's possible to hear this as much more than metaphor, as saying, "If you keep the commandments, then you'll feel good and things will seem nice."

Can we hear it in a different way, in line with, at the level of what we're talking about? So God says, in this passage from Deuteronomy, God says:

So keep or observe all the commandments, all the mitzvot [that means all the rules of the law that sanctify every element of existence, different blessings or prescribed behaviour or attitudes, or whatever -- keep all that, observe all that, all those practices, basically, that help to sanctify the elements of your existence.] Observe all those that I'm giving you today ... so that you may live long in the land that God swore to your fathers that he would give them and their offspring, a land flowing with milk and honey.

Can you hear this poetically? Can you hear it speaking of this? What happens when we sanctify this world, and/or the things of this world? The world, the land opens up, the

land flowing with milk and honey ... not like the land of Egypt from which you have come [the land of bondage, of slavery, of limitation, of burden and imposition, heaviness, but] a land of mountains and valleys that drinks rain from heaven, a land your God cares for.^[9]

Can you hear all this in the terms, or translated into the terms that we've been talking about?

A land your God cares for: the eyes of your God are continually on it, from the beginning of the year to its end. So if you faithfully obey the commandments [these rites and rituals and laws and practices of sanctification], if you faithfully obey the commandments I am giving you today, to love your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, then I will send rain on your land in its season, both autumn and spring rains, so that you may gather in your grains, new wine, and oil. I will provide grass in the fields for your cattle, and you will eat and be satisfied.

Can you hear that with the richness of the depth and dimensionality that we've been talking about in these teachings? It's certainly way more than literalistic, concretized, and then, therefore, nationalistic, and much more than what we typically call 'metaphor.' [57:52] Can you hear it that way, and hear the sense of the world opening up that way, and that beauty, and that dimensionality, and that holiness, in this text, in the poetry of the text, the richness of it?

So this kind of thing is common in different traditions. Henry Corbin quotes from the fifth Imam of the Shi'ites, of the Islamic Shi'ites. This Imam lived in the first and second centuries after Muhammad, and he said or wrote, this fifth Imam:

The Sacred Book, the Qur'ān, is alive, it will never die; its verses will be fulfilled among the people of the future, as they have been fulfilled among those of the past.^[10]

And Corbin's point about this is: the Qur'an, the Old Testament, the New Testament, they're not to be interpreted historically. Certainly not only historically; let's say that. So that, usually, people come and they trap, they

[make] the significance of the Sacred Book [Corbin says] captive to the date of its material composition, [stifling] any potential for a significance that goes beyond that "past."

And what he wants to open up is that, rather than these kind of historical interpretations, there is the idea of

the presence of [what he calls] spiritual universes that symbolize with each other, by means of a comparable architecture, and in relation to which what we call history is ... a "history" that is a mimēsis [a mimicking, an echoing, a mirroring].

So what's he saying here? He's saying that this world that everyone takes for granted, the conventional perception of a historical, material world and written history, has parallel universes. We've touched on this before in previous retreats, of sort of levels of worlds that echo, as I said, mirror, in some ways kind of interpenetrate this world, so that this moment right now, and this event right now, whatever it is, is both echoed by and also echoes a similar event, if you like, in a world at another level. They "symbolize with each other, by means of a comparable architecture ... a mimesis," as Corbin says.

So this is a matter of perception. It's a matter of sensing with soul, as we said. We come back to Mahāyāna teachings, and there's this notion -- actually, in all the yānas of Buddhism, there's a notion called dharmadhātu. Some of you may have come across this word, dharmadhātu. And it is a word that's kind of, I think, inherently ambiguous, but we can identify quite a number of interpretations. You could kind of divide the interpretations loosely among the different yānas -- the Hīnayāna, the Mahāyāna, and the Vajrayāna. So that, taking the word dhātu, which itself has a number of different meanings -- it can mean āyatana. And āyatana means something like 'sphere' or 'dimension' or 'world,' 'region.' So the 'Dharma-dimension,' or something like that.

In the first turning of the wheel, if you like, what the dharmadhātu might refer to, when it's used, might refer to the Unfabricated. If you remember, "That āyatana, that dimension should be known, monks, where there is no sight, smell, sound, taste, touch, and thought, and mental imagery."^[11] Remember that quote? The Buddha's pointing to that Unfabricated, that dimension, that āyatana, that dhātu needs to be known, must be known, should be known. So in the Theravādan teaching, it might have that level of meaning or interpretation, this dharmadhātu.

In the Mahāyāna teachings, the word is used more often, I think, than in the Theravādan. And again, it has a range of meaning, but it seems to take on more of the meaning that dharmadhātu is the emptiness of inherent existence, or is the emptiness of the inherent existence of things, of dharmas. And that's the meaning in the Mahāyāna, or one of the most common meanings in the Mahāyāna. It's not, then, totally transcendent of appearances and perceptions, as the interpretation of dharmadhātu as Unfabricated, where there's no perception, no appearance. Here we retain appearances, but it's the appearances that are empty. The dharmadhātu is the world of emptiness and appearance fused together.

In the Vajrayāna, in the third turning of the wheel, it seems, or one of the meanings that it can sometimes mean by dharmadhātu, is the Buddha-realms, is the Pure Lands. And so it might be something somewhat akin to the mundus imaginalis, the world of divine appearances, or the saṃbhogakāya, if you know the bodies of the Buddha. [1:04:01]

D. T. Suzuki, the Zen teacher, Zen master, describes the dharmadhātu in his commentary on the Gaṇḍavyūha Sūtra:

The Buddha of the Gandavyuha lives in a spirit world which has its own rules. [He says there's no time-continuity there in that world.] The Buddha in the Gandavyuha thus knows no time-continuity; the past and the future are both rolled up in this present moment of illumination.... As with time, so with space. Space in the Gandavyuha is not an extension divided by mountains and forests. [You] have here [rather] an infinite mutual fusion or penetration of all things, each with its own individuality, yet with something universal in it.

To illustrate this state of existence, the Gandavyuha makes everything transparent and luminous, for luminosity is the only possible earthly representation that conveys the idea of universal interpenetration.... There are rivers, flowers, trees [etc.] in the land of purity [hard to describe]. The clouds themselves are luminous bodies inconceivable and inexpressible in number, hanging all over the Jetavana [which is Jeta's Grove] of the Gandavyuha.... This universe of luminosity, this scene of interpenetration, is known as the Dharmadhatu*,* in contrast to the Lokadhatu [this usual world]. The Dharmadhatu is a real existence and not separated from [the conventional world,] the Lokadhatu*,* but it is not the same as the latter when we do not come up to the spiritual level where the Bodhisattvas are living.^[12]

So the point is, when we "come up to the spiritual level where the Bodhisattvas are living" -- you could say, when we practise emptiness, when that opens the doorway to sensing with soul, or when we just sense with soul, even if our emptiness meditation is not fully realized, then this world is perceived as the same as the dharmadhātu. Dharmadhātu is right here, but it's become, it's perceived, it's transubstantiated, the dharmadhātu in the interpretation given to it in the third turning, in the Vajrayāna. So it's the state of the soul that allows this kind of perception. [1:07:38]

Henry Corbin writes, again:

Inasmuch as the place of a spiritual being is his internal state, the garden or paradise [and now we have a different metaphor of the Garden of Eden or the Paradise as this dharmadhātu, as this Holy Land] is, therefore, the celestial man himself [is, therefore, the soul himself], his internal state. The trees of that garden are all his possible perceptions of love and intelligence, of the Good and the True.^[13]

So the availability of sensing ourselves in that Paradise, in the Holy Land, in the Garden of Eden, comes from the state of the soul. As William Blake says,

As a man is, so he sees [in the moment, I would add].^[14]

But again, then, the question is, what enables us to open up these perceptions, this sensing with soul, this sensing of the Pure Land, the Lotus Land, the Garden of Eden, the Paradise, the Holy Land? [1:09:20]

I'll go back to Abraham Abulafia again. He has a, I think, wonderful passage, which is going to take a little bit of explaining.^[15] So he's interpreting a passage from scripture. And there is the word, in Hebrew*,* ve-ha-kosef, and that word means 'the one who yearns for,' 'the one who yearns.' And now I have to explain something called gematria, okay? So gematria is a Hebrew word, and it means the manipulation of the possible numerical values of letters. So Hebrew is a language where the 22 letters of the alphabet also are given numerical equivalents. So if we had it in English, we'd say A is 1, B is 2, C is 3, D is 4, etc., E is 5, like that, and then you get hundreds, etc. What you have then is a sacred text becomes interpretable in so many different ways by virtue of the meditation on its individual letters and the words. And some of that is through the numerical equivalents.

You can, for instance, add up the numerical equivalents -- so if we had, like I just went A, B, C, D, E; if I took 'BAD,' B-A-D, what would that be? It would be 2 (B) + A (1) + D (4), which is 7. Two plus one plus four is seven. And then maybe I had another word -- I can't think -- E, F, G. This is going to be too difficult! [laughs] But you could find another word, let's say, that makes up seven, and there will be some kind of connection, or equivalence, or interchangeability, or use of interpretation of those two words in relationship to each other. And then there are all kinds of other numerical manipulations that you can do. So the whole thing becomes really a quite creative interpretive endeavour, which I'll give an example in a moment.

Now, we could hear that and just say, "Well, that's just nonsense, and it's silly, and it's kind of crazy." But what if we're actually using that to -- we enter into an ideation, a concept, a logos, where that's available to us, that the ideas that that spawns, and the connection it makes of ideas, again, become ways of looking for the sake of soulmaking, for the sake of the sense of holiness, for the sake of opening up different understandings of divinity, of existence, etc.?

So let me give this example from Abulafia. He's talking about this word, ve-ha-kosef, 'the one who yearns.' So when you take away the letters, reconstruct those letters, sort of parse it, what you can get is three different, smaller words, and they each add up to 26, and 65, and 86. And 26 is numerically the same as the word for Yahweh (YHVH), or God, which also adds up to 26. 65 is numerically the same as the word Adonai ('DNY), which is another word for God. And 86 is the same numerical equivalent as Elohim ('LHYM), which is the third main word for the divine in the Old Testament. So somehow in this word that means, literally, 'the one who yearns,' you get the three names of God. Is it pointing to something, a clue for practice, that in the very yearning is the opening of the gates, and even at three levels, three levels of the divine, if you like? The one who yearns has the key to the doors in the yearning. In the movement of devotion is the opening of the perception. When you add up the numerical equivalents of these three names of God -- 26, 65, and 86, for Yahweh, Adonai, Elohim -- you get 177. 177 is equivalent to 'three meals,' Shalosh Se'udot (ShLSh S'VDVTh) in Hebrew. Shalosh means 'three,' Se'udot, 'three meals,' which actually is 1,176. So that's not 177, but 1,176 -- 1 plus 176 is 177.

So again, this is going to sound completely crazy. Even ascribing or making connections through language, through the number equivalents of a language, can sound completely bonkers, and then these kind of twists of the numerology here. But the point is, it can open up meditations. What's a 'meal'? Some kind of nourishment, some kind of thing that we receive, or that we prepare, that we digest, somehow connected to three levels of God. The point is, if we hear it just, again, abstractly, or some clever number thing, and then these two seemingly unrelated concepts are put together, it's going to just sound bizarre, and not make any impact. But again, going back to what I said right at the beginning of this talk, if we linger, if we let this work poetically, if we put those two concepts or images in relationship to each other in our meditation, just as we did with Amitābha and Akṣobhya, then what happens? Then there's some kind of alchemy or fertility, or connection or opening, that can happen in the soul. [1:16:18]

So, slightly more complicated transformation, but 1,176 can be construed as 1 and 176, which is 177, back to the three names of God. Or it can go further. This 177 can be Shalosh Ma'alot (ShLSh M'LVTh): 'three levels, three qualities.' Shalosh, again, means 'three,' *Ma'alot, '*levels.' So three meals, whatever 'meals' means. What can that mean poetically, 'meals,' to you? Three levels of the divine, all connected with or opened by the one who yearns. And then this can also be equated numerically to the word Belimah, and Belimah means 'silence.' And how does it connect? Because Belimah, the strict numerical equivalence is 87, if we do the letters there. But 87 is, you could say, 8 plus 7 is 15. And 15 is made up from 1 plus 1 plus 7 plus 6, as we took those individual numbers earlier.

And one more: the Garden of Eden, Gan 'Eden, comes to 177 as well, when you add that up. So one of his students, I think, R. Baruch Togarmi, says:

The incantation of the language is the secret of the Garden of Eden.^[16]

There's one last one, in fact: yomam va-laylah (YVMM VLYLH)*, '*day and night.' What might that mean poetically to us, 'day and night'? So you've got this connection: one who yearns, three words for God, three levels of God, three meals, the three worlds through different levels, silence, mystical silence, Garden of Eden, and day and night. A Kabbalist practising in that tradition would juggle, manipulate, play with the holy letters of the scripture, taking things apart, putting them together, connecting words with other words, and then meditate on that connection, that idea connection that was opened, or the image connection that was opened there.

I'm quoting now:

The three names, whose secrets [or whose numerical values] are 26, 86 and 65 [the three names for divinity in the Old Testament], are the secret of the stages of the [spiritual] ladder, and are called by the general name of 'Gan 'Eden' [the Garden of Eden] for by means of their grasp one enters the Garden of Eden while alive.^[17]

Does this make sense? It's going to sound completely bonkers if you don't hear it with that poetic sensibility, with that openness to the soul-possibilities, with that letting these kind of things, the seeds of these kind of ideas, be planted in the soil. As I said, we can hear it that way, or we can hear it as, what one is doing is using ideas creatively, or letting ideas, letting the soul suggest ideas that can be converted to ways of looking. The one who yearns somehow connects with the Garden of Eden, opens the Garden of Eden.

We'll go back to that point that I mentioned the other day: hermeneutics, interpretation. This is what this involves: interpreting some scripture through these kind of arcane numerical reconfigurations, and then meditating on the ideas that that kind of suggests. And I said the other day, interpretation in this sense, the interpretation of texts, of holy texts, or the interpretation of existence, needs to matter. Otherwise it will just be silly. It will just sound silly. But when it matters, when the soul is on fire with it, when the soul cares, and there's passion in it, something comes alive, and possibilities open, doors open, gates open.

But also in this particular gematria, you hear -- 'one who yearns,' 'the one who yearns' -- it's not just an intellectual exercise. By that very word, 'the one who yearns,' the meaning of it, the heart is involved, the yearning. So the very gematria doesn't lose track of the heart. The heart needs to yearn. It needs to be open. It needs to have that attitude of humility that we talked about. Yearning has that eros and that devotion in it. If you remember, we were talking about the different kinds of desire, and discriminating, discerning between them, and devotional yearning has a sense of dimensionality of what it yearns for, the object that it yearns for, the other that it yearns for. There's a sense of the dimensionality, the unfathomability, and the soft and elastic edges of that object. So all this is implied in that word, 'the one who yearns,' and the fact that it matters. It matters to the soul. So it includes the heart and soul, and it matters to the heart and the soul. And that allows a fertilization. It's like water on these clumps of soil that are numbers and ancient words in a strange language, or whatever. The heart, the moisture, the waters of the heart are like pouring water on the soil, and then we turn the soil. One turns the soil by means of these manipulations, or letting these ideas come into contact with each other, and all manner of imaginal perception opens, all manner of sensing with soul, all manner of soul-openings.

So many possibilities there. What is it that Hakuin said again? "Nirvana is right here before our eyes. This very place is the Pure Land, the Lotus Land. This very body, the Buddha."