Category: Artifact

Chakras

A chakra ( Sanskrit, romanized: cakra, lit. ’wheel, circle’; Pali: cakka) is one of the various focal points used in a variety of ancient meditation practices, collectively denominated as Tantra, part of the inner traditions of Hinduism (Vedic Traditions) and Buddhism.

Etymology

Lexically, chakra is the Indic reflex of an ancestral Indo-European form *kʷékʷlos, whence also “wheel” and “cycle” (Ancient Greek: κύκλος, romanized: kýklos) It has both literal and metaphorical uses, as in the “wheel of time” or “wheel of dharma”, pervasive in the earliest Vedic texts.

In Buddhism, especially in Theravada, the Pali noun cakka connotes “wheel”. Within the Buddhist scriptures referred to as the Tripitaka, Shakyamuni Buddha variously refers the “dhammacakka”, or “wheel of dharma”, connoting that this dharma, universal in its advocacy, should bear the marks characteristic of any temporal dispensation. Shakyamuni Buddha spoke of freedom from cycles in and of themselves, whether karmic, reincarnative, liberative, cognitive or emotional.

Overview

The Chakras are part of esoteric ideas and concepts about physiology and psychic centers that emerged across Indian traditions. The belief held that human life simultaneously exists in two parallel dimensions, one “physical body” (sthula sarira) and other “psychological, emotional, mind, non-physical” it is called the “subtle body” (sukshma sarira). This subtle body is energy, while the physical body is mass. The psyche or mind plane corresponds to and interacts with the body plane, and the belief holds that the body and the mind mutually affect each other. The subtle body consists of nadi (energy channels) connected by nodes of psychic energy called chakra.

Hindu Tantra

Esoteric traditions in Hinduism mention numerous numbers and arrangements of chakras, of which a classical system of six-plus-one, the last being the Sahasrara, is most prevalent

Hindu Tantra associates six Yoginis with six places in the subtle body, corresponding to the six chakras of the six-plus-one system.

Association of six yoginis with chakra locations in the Rudrayamala Tantra:

Place in subtle body	Yogini
1. Muladhara	Dakini
2. Svadhisthana	Rakini
3. Manipura	Lakini
4. Anahata	Kakini
5. Vishuddhi	Shakini
6. Ajna	Hakini

Buddhist Tantra 

The esoteric traditions in Buddhism generally teach four chakras. In some early Buddhist sources, these chakras are identified as: manipura (navel), anahata (heart), vishuddha (throat) and ushnisha kamala (crown).  In one development within the Nyingma lineage of the Mantrayana of Tibetan Buddhism a popular conceptualization of chakras in increasing subtlety and increasing order is as follows: Nirmanakaya (gross self), Sambhogakaya (subtle self), Dharmakaya (causal self), and Mahasukhakaya (non-dual self).

A system of five chakras is common among the Mother class of Tantras and these five chakras along with their correspondences are:

• Basal chakra (Element: Earth, Buddha: Amoghasiddhi, Bija (S. ‘seed’) mantra: LAM)
• Abdominal chakra (Element: Water, Buddha: Ratnasambhava, Bija mantra: VAM)
• Heart chakra (Element: Fire, Buddha: Akshobhya, Bija mantra: RAM)
• Throat chakra (Element: Wind, Buddha: Amitabha, Bija mantra: YAM)
• Crown chakra (Element: Space, Buddha: Vairochana, Bija mantra: KHAM)

Chakras play a key role in Tibetan Buddhism, and are considered to be the pivotal providence of Tantric thinking.  The highest practices in Tibetan Buddhism point to the ability to bring the subtle pranas of an entity into alignment with the central channel, and to thus penetrate the realization of the ultimate unity, namely, the “organic harmony” of one’s individual consciousness of Wisdom with the co-attainment of All-embracing Love, thus synthesizing a direct cognition of absolute Buddhahood.

Manipura (focus of Inner Fire practice)

Located above the navel,  Manipura translates from Sanskrit as “city of jewels” alternatively translated as “resplendent gem” or “lustrous gem”.

Manipura is associated with fire and the power of transformation.

The energies of Prana Vayu and Apana Vayu (inward and outward flowing energy) meet at the point in a balanced system.

Manipura is represented with a downward-pointing red triangle, signifying the tattva of fire, within a bright yellow circle, with 10 dark-blue or black petals like heavily laden rain clouds.

Seed Mantra

The seed mantra is the syllable ‘रं’ (ram). Within the bindu, or dot, above this mantra resides the deity रुद्र Rudra. He is red or white, with three eyes, of ancient aspect with a silver beard, and is smeared with white ashes. Rudra makes the gestures of granting boons and dispelling fear and is seated either on a tiger skin or a bull.

Rudra’s Shakti is the goddess लाकिनी Lakini. She has a black or dark-blue vermilion color; has three faces, each with three eyes; and is four-armed. Lakini holds a thunderbolt, the arrow shot from the bow of काम Kama, and fire. She makes the gestures of granting boons and dispelling fear. Lakini is seated on a red lotus.

Petals 

The ten petals of Manipura are dark-blue or black, like heavily laden rain clouds, with the syllables डं, ढं, णं, तं, थं, दं, धं, नं, पं and फं (ḍaṁ, ḍhaṁ, ṇaṁ, taṁ, thaṁ, daṁ, dhaṁ, naṁ, paṁ, and phaṁ) upon them in a dark-blue color. These petals correspond to the vrittis (S. “streams of consciousness”) of spiritual ignorance, thirst, jealousy, treachery, shame, fear, disgust, delusion, foolishness and sadness.

The petals represent the ten Prānas (currents and energy vibrations) that are regulated by the Manipūra Chakra. The five Prāna Vayus are: Prāna, Apāna, Udāna, Samāna And Vyāna. The five Upa Prānas are: Nāga, Kūrma, Devadatta, Krikala and Dhananjaya.

In the Vajrayana

In Vajrayana traditions, the chakra is triangular, red and has 64 petals or channels that extend upwards. This chakra is important as the seat of the ‘red drop’. The short syllable ‘Ah’ is located inside the ‘red drop’.

Meditation on ‘Ah’ is the key component of the practice of tummo, or inner heat. In tummo, a practitioner’s ‘subtle winds’ are made to enter the central channel, and rise up to its top. This is sometimes compared to ‘Raising the kundalini’ in Hindu terminology, melting the subtle white drop in the crown, and causing an experience of great bliss. ‘Raising the kundalini’ is considered the first and most important of the six yogas of Naropa.

source: wikipedia.org (excerpts from entries: Chakras, Mainpura)

PSYCHOLOGICAL COMMENTARY ON “THE TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD”
(excerpts from)
By C.G. Jung

Herein bolded and indented: quotes by Jung from “The Tibetan Book of the Dead“, or “The After-Death Experience on the ‘Bardo’ Plane”, according to Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup’s English rendering, edited by W. Y. Evans-Wentz.

I do not think I could better discharge my debt of thanks to the two previous translators of the Bardo Thödol, the late Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup and Dr. Evans-Wentz, than by attempting, with the aid of a psychological commentary, to make the magnificent world of ideas and the problems contained in this treatise a little more intelligible to the Western mind. I am sure that all who read this book with open eyes, and who allow it to impress itself upon them without prejudice, will reap a rich reward… the Bardo Thödol has been my constant companion, and to it I owe not only many stimulating ideas and discoveries, but also many fundamental insights. 

The Bardo Thödol offers one an intelligible philosophy addressed to human beings. Its philosophy contains the quintessence of Buddhist psychological criticism; and, as such, one can truly say that it is of an unexampled sublimity. 

“Recognizing the voidness of thine own intellect to be Buddhahood and knowing it at the same time to be thine own consciousness, thou shalt abide in the state of the divine mind of the Buddha.”

Such an assertion is, I fear, as unwelcome to [the] Western philosophy as it is to [its] theology. The Bardo Thödol is in the highest degree psychological in its outlook; but, [within the Western traditions], philosophy and theology are still in the medieval, pre-psychological stage where only the assertions are listened to, explained, defended, criticized and disputed, while the authority that makes them has, by general consent, been deposed as outside the scope of discussion.

“Thine own consciousness, shining, void, and inseparable from the Great Body of Radiance, hath no birth, nor death, and is the Immutable Light-Buddha Amitäbha.”

The soul is assuredly not small, but the radiant Godhead itself. The West finds this statement either very dangerous, if not downright blasphemous, or else accepts it unthinkingly and then suffers from a theosophical inflation.…if we can master ourselves far enough to refrain from our chief error of always wanting to do something with things and put them to practical use, we may perhaps succeed in learning an important lesson from these teachings, or at least in appreciating the greatness of the Bardo Thödol, which vouchsafes to the [dying] the ultimate and highest truth, that even the gods are the radiance and reflection of our own souls. 

It is highly sensible of the Bardo Thödol to make clear to the [dying] the primacy of the psyche, for that is the one thing which life does not make clear to us. We are so hemmed in by things which jostle and oppress that we never get a chance, in the midst of all these “given” things, to wonder by whom they are “given.” It is from this world of “given” things that the [dying] liberates themself; and the purpose of the instruction is to help them towards this liberation. We, if we put ourselves in the place [of the dying], we shall derive no lesser reward from it, since we learn from the very first paragraphs that the “giver” of all “given” things dwells within us. This is a truth which in the face of all evidence, in the greatest things as in the smallest, is never known, although it is often so very necessary, indeed vital, for us to know it. 

The Bardo Thödol is, an initiation process whose purpose it is to restore to the soul the divinity it lost at birth.  

There are, and always have been, those who cannot help but see that the world and its experiences are in the nature of a symbol, and that it really reflects something that lies hidden in the subject themself, in their own transubjective [psychic] reality. It is from this profound intuition, according to lamaist doctrine¹, that the Chönyid state derives its true meaning, which is why the Chönyid Bardo is entitled “The Bardo of the Experiencing of Reality.”

The supreme vision comes not at the end of the Bardo, but right at the beginning, at the moment of death; what happens afterward is an ever-deepening descent into illusion and obscuration, down to the ultimate degradation of new physical birth. The spiritual climax is reached at the moment when life ends. Human life, therefore, is the vehicle of the highest perfection it is possible to attain; it alone generates the karma that makes it possible for the [dying] to abide in the perpetual light of the Voidness without clinging to any object, and thus to rest on the hub of the wheel of rebirth, freed from all illusion of genesis and decay. Life in the Bardo brings no eternal rewards or punishments, but merely a descent into a new life which shall bear the individual nearer to his final goal. But this eschatological goal is what he himself brings to birth as the last and highest fruit of the labours and aspirations of earthly existence. This view is not only lofty, it is heroic.

It is an undeniable fact that the whole book is created out of the archetypal contents of the unconscious. 

The world of gods and spirits is truly “nothing but” the collective unconscious inside [one]. To turn this sentence round so that it reads “The collective unconscious is the world of gods and spirits outside me,” no intellectual acrobatics are needed, but a whole human lifetime, perhaps even many lifetimes of increasing completeness. Notice that I do not say “of increasing perfection,” because those who are “perfect” make another kind of discovery altogether.

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