This diagram is likely to have had an influence on Sangharakshita's thinking about meditation. It comes from a work by C.M.Chen, otherwise known as Yogi Chen, who was one of Sangharakshita's main teachers during his years in Kalimpong. Chen was a scholar, meditator and hermit, though his hermitage was in the local bazaar (picture here). His extensive dialogues with Sangharakshita about meditation were written down by Khantipalo Bhikkhu in 'Buddhist Meditation' which was printed for free distribution and is of course now available on the internet.

Perhaps the most obvious parallels between Sangharakshita's 'system' of meditation and Yogi Chen's diagram is at its heart, with the five 'Hinayana' meditations. Chen of course thought in terms of a system of yanas, and the diagram shows at its heart the Hinayana and then in the circles emanating out from there the Mahayana, presumably that characterised by Emptiness and Nagarjuna's teachings, then the influence of Yogachara or the Yogayana, then the Tantric phase, called here Anuttarayoga yana, and finally, encompassing everything, Ch'an, which for Yogi Chen stood right outside the picture. This recalls for me the position of 'Just Sitting' in Sangharakshita's system. At the 'Hinayana' heart of Chen's diagram are the five practices Sangharakshita recommends for Order members, which correlate with the Five Poisons: Anapanasati, Mettabhavana (brahmavihara), Meditation on Death and Impermanence, Meditation on the Six Elements, and Meditation on Conditionality or Pratityasamutpada.

First, a short recapitulation of yesterday's material so we can really consider this perspective. Maybe it's most helpful to see what I'm talking about as an Order member's practice, or even a committed experienced practitioner's practice, whether they are ordained or not. Though there is something special about ordination, which is that the bond with the Buddha has been ritually sealed. So let's call it an Order member's practice, this mandala of practice with the Buddha at the centre. This sadhana. A couple of times yesterday we touched on it's also being the system of meditation, and yes, that's what this is, it is like being right inside the system of meditation, it is like the system of meditation being arranged as a mandala with the Buddha, associated with the stage of spiritual rebirth, enthroned at the centre of the mandala, his influence spreading from that place at the centre into the other quadrants of our practice towards awakening. Bodhi.

Perhaps it's useful to see this visually, so in the east, the starting place, with an easterly wind, getting up in the chilly dawn, you might get anapanasati, the cool fresh breath that begins waking you up. You get focused, touch base, get your act together, become an individual. If you stay in that quarter a long time, you become very tranquil, imperturbable, like a perfectly still lake that reflects the surrounding mountains in its surface, you approach the mirror like wisdom of Aksobhya whose element is water, and the distinctive quality of water is its cohesion, the fact that it holds together, it integrates. We think of water's quality as flow, but air flows, flow is the distinctive quality of the wind element. Water is really about its sticking together, its holding together like a drop of dew or a great unified body of water that is sensitive everywhere within itself, yet is one, it's unified, it's integrated. That's why it is the symbol for the quarter of our practice mandala concerned with Integration.
Then in the south, it's like a sunny south facing garden where growth and maturation can proceed happily, and there you explore the brahmaviharas, develop your capacity for empathy and compassion, you start to radiate warmth and love yourself, you become a sun. And in that process of love, there is some insight coming in all that, some breaking through self and other. In that quarter of the mandala there's included quite a bit of dharma reflection as well as the love. There's a maturation of our understanding of the dharma through study, through our listening and reflecting on the core insights of the dharma, on impermanence, on insubstantiality. It's the initial phase of insight practice, the phase of reflection. This matures alongside the development of warmth, empathy and compassion, and eventually both of these qualities merge in Ratnasambhava's wisdom of equality, even mindedness, equanimity.
We spend a lot of time in these parts of our practice mandala. But occasionally we do turn to the west, and come to the awe inspiring place of nightfall, we see our sweet little sun right at the horizon and then it dips down into darkness and totally disappears, and the sky becomes sublime, it is glorious but at the same time it's extremely unsettling; so that is where the vipashyana aspect comes in, that's where you look at the elements that make up your entire world and see more and more, that you do not own them as you assumed, you have never done so, reality is quite other than you expected, the wisdom of discrimination starts to really kick in and insist that it really is so, there is no escape and then there is the little death, the total collapse of our confidence in the mundane world. It is a difficult transition. There is resistance. The sun goes down and for a while everything is very strange indeed.
So that's the quarter of the mandala associated with spiritual death. In terms of our spiritual practice it is linked to the vipashyana meditations, like the six element practice and the reflections on impermanence and conditionality. But this is a stage on from reflection in the sense of ruminating and pondering, this is more like the practice of direct seeing, where you really look at the impermanence and the insubstantial nature of everything. Not just think about it, but look right at it in your experience, look repeatedly and persistently, with faith in the Buddha's insight into reality. Faith that what he realised really does go beyond conditioned existence, that is beyond your idea of what your existence is about, your idea of life that is conditioned by the usual worldly preoccupations, such as the illusory notion that I permanently exist. You are clear that all that needs to go, but you need a lot of faith because you are going towards where you radically don't know and radically don't understand. Hence the emphasis with Amitabha on faith. But as I say, the sun goes down and for a while everything is very strange.

Then later, perhaps much later, in the middle of that dark night, there is a mysterious glow and you realise that you can connect with the Buddha in a personal way and receive his adhisthana, and this mysterious glow comes right into your body, into your life. There is no more fear, there is nothing we cannot achieve, we become confident in the reality of the awakened mind. This is the quarter of the mandala connected with spiritual rebirth. It is the area of our practice that comes as a result of some kind of insight. All of us have experienced various kinds of insight into the nature of reality or we would never have got here. Probably quite a few of these happened before we even knew about Buddhism. They were almost certainly the motivating force that got us looking for the Dharma, and recognising it when we saw it, and then recognising that this is the most important thing in our lives. This is the post insight quality. It is what changes our lives right at the core. It is what we value most of all, and what, in our heart of hearts, we live by. That very deep heart quality is what connects us, personally, to the Buddha, to the awakened mind, however that appears to us, however we connect with it. You have to look at what is at the core of your being and align yourself with that. It might take some time, it might take special conditions, but it is there and it is hot, it is passionate in a spiritual way - I could just as well say it is super cool and tranquil - it is like the midnight sky, dark, mysterious, deep and vast. In the deep, unexplored north, it overarches our practice mandala, our sadhana. It is where we find a form of Buddha and meditate on it.

But oh dear, we have created this mandala and there is nothing at the centre! I thought the Buddha was supposed to be at the centre and it turns out that the Buddha is in the North. You might be thinking, that's obviously where Kamalashila is going to put the historical Buddha. And you could put him there. This is one of those tricky mandalas where different influences get puts at the centre and then you see how all the bits in the rest of the mandala shift and change colour. A bit like those old fashioned kaleidoscopes where you look down the tube and there is a beautiful symmetrical pattern, but then you give the tube a little twist and it all changes round.

Anyway, let's keep the historical Buddha somewhere else, I think he probably fits best with the reflection and study, the area where we get our basic dharma views straight. That was in the sunny south. Though there's no doubt that he'll often be popping up in other places as well. No, in the centre there has to be something of central importance, something that really is crucial to the whole thing. Well the only practice that we haven't mentioned is that joker in the pack, the Just Sitting practice. It seems odd at first to put it there, right at the heart of it. Mr. Chen, in one of his diagrams of the system of meditation, puts it round the outside of the mandala, like a protective wall of vajras. That works as well, but I like it in the middle because really, the Just Sitting practice embodies the whole practice of mindfulness. Mindfulness and awareness is the central thing, the crucial point of practice. Is our practice an idea, or is it an experience? It's nothing if it isnt lived, if it isn't alive, if it isn't right here and now. So that is the mandala of our sadhana, looked at in the round. I think that is enough talk about sadhana as a whole, and how it fits in, for now. Right now we need something that will point us into our practice on the cushion, that will give us confidence in each of the main areas of our practice, as we enter more into the retreat space, so can relax in the retreat space. So the talks I do next will focus on the more particular aspects of sadhana practice rather than the big, birds eye, picture.

The word sadhana can mean a text with a practice devoted to a particular yidam figure. That's how we usually understand it. Sadhana can, however, also refer to your whole practice, the totality of your practice. This is how I, Kamalashila, understand the meaning of sadhana - as the total dharma practice - and that is the perspective I'll be coming from on this retreat. Of course this perspective can also include other perspectives, such as the idea that sadhana simply means your visualisation or imagination of the Buddha. But I tend to think that you can't ever really disconnect any part of the overall practice, everything completely depends on everything else.

For example as OMs, what is this sadhana, what do we add up to make the totality of our practice? It starts with the Going for refuge. That sense that we want to commit to the teaching of the Buddha because its value has become very clear to us. Something that we need to renew and refresh from time to time as we undergo all the changes the practice puts us through. Then there's the moral practice, ethics, something very testing that brings us up continually with our shortcomings. Shortcomings in our kindness, in our generosity, our contentment, our truthfulness, our gentleness, our integrity, etc. This is where we are all imperfect, where we are all addicted, where we all tend to think we can't change, where others despair over us and can't find ways to tell us what we need to change, they've told us so many times already and we just don't get it.

Luckily ethics and behaviour isnt our only hope for change. There is also meditation. Meditation can get deeper under the surface. There's a lot to meditation. We have meditation for integration, for positive emotion, for reflection, for direct seeing into reality. All these are there in our practice.

And in between meditation and behaviour, blending the two, joining the two, comes mindfulness. Mindfulness is a system in its own right, with many levels and different depths of practice but it is basically the act of awareness, being aware, noticing, experiencing things as they happen. Truthful awareness, receptive awareness, close awareness. Just as we do in the just sitting practice. Mindfulness is the core practice, the practice the Buddha called 'the only way', that brings the whole dharma together in our life. It is what deepens meditation, what extends the integrity of our ethical behaviour to cover every thought and unseen action.

Mindfulness is what integrates us, brings positive emotion to bear, makes our reflections persistent and eventually it brings us to that point of spiritual death, the great collapse. Meditation reinforces all of this through reflection, through the direct seeing of emptiness, right through into the stage of completion, the spiritual rebirth in which at last you are able, like a lotus, simply to open to the sun rays of the Buddhas' influence and rise right up out of the pond of being, fully and perfectly awakened.

This is the totality of our practice. So when we do the basic meditations, we are aware that these other dimensions aren't far away. When we engage in this total practice, we are doing sadhana. Sadhana is normally connected with the figures of the Buddhas and bodhisattvas because they are central to the whole thing. Right at the heart of it, with the going for refuge, is the example and all the teachings of the Buddha. And right out at the furthest edge of our aspiration, our distant goal, is the insight, the wisdom transformation that is will be the state of Buddhahood. So throughout all our practice, throughout our sadhana, the image of Buddha, of Enlightenment, is there as a constant reference point. Our sadhana is a mandala with the Buddha at the centre. Buddha can appear to us in various forms - peaceful, aroused, red green or black, female or male. But Buddha is Buddha and part of the mandala of practices we do is making sure, through study, reflection and Sangha, that it really is Buddha that we have at the centre of our personal practice mandala. So that's where the historical Buddha comes into the picture, there's a record of his teachings we can check our practice against.

We could easily draw how this mandala works for us. At the centre is the Buddha or Bodhisattva who most appeals as our inner teacher and guide. They could be surrounded by other figures, some of whom sometimes perhaps exchange places with the one at the centre. And then around them, within the different quadrants of our life, are arranged our practices. At its entry and exit points, at its morning, noon, nightfall and midnight, at its every compass point. Whatever we read and study, our meditation, our behaviour, self discipline, relaxation, communication, sangha, etc. All this is woven together, and all is kept alive and meaningful through the influence of the Buddhas at the centre.

That's why we meditate on the Buddha, in whatever form. So in the next few days as we go deeply into the various aspects of our practice, the shamatha, and the reflection, bear in mind always how they relate to that central figure of the Buddha. And when we do the Buddha meditations and reflections, bear in mind always their relationship to the total mandala that we are continually bringing on towards the great awakening of Buddhahood.