The above is a mandala dedicated to Amida Buddha, invoking Amida Buddha for protection and invoking Dai Ko Myo for protection. There is a mixture of bija mantras and Tanran Reiki symbols. There is the soul retrieval (El-leh-yah) symbol to gather back the lost pieces of life force that others may be taken from us. There is the vacuum (Zee-Gah-Nah) symbol to remove implants others may have put inside us. There are two Cho Ku Rei symbols, both clockwise and counterclockwise, to anchor the invocation into our life. There are two Dai Ko Myo symbols to invoke sacred space as luminous energy. There are two Doh-Yah-Noh symbols to invoke a guardian energy until we learn how to protect ourselves.
There three large symbols are "Om", "Ah", and "Hreeh" respectively (from top downwards). This is shorthand for "Om Namo Amida Buddha Hreeh" (which is present twice in the mandala in full form followed by its abbreviation) which invokes Amida Buddha, the Buddha of Love and Light, as well as the Buddha of Health and Infinite Life. It also invokes Pandaravasini (Queen of Fire) in her seed syllable form (Hreeh). She is the activation dakini who brings Tariki (Divine Grace, the Other Power) into our mind, heart, and body.
The three rings are Hreeh, Ah, and Om respectively (outside to inwards). The Hreeh ring burns away anything that tries to enter us that is not born of loving intention. The Ah ring transmutes any energy that passes through the ring of fire and sends back blessing, loving, appreciating, and grateful energy to the sender. It is the Tonglen level of altruistically exchanging karma for the benefit of all sentient beings and the "turn the other cheek, bless those who curse you" level of Jesus. If an energy passes through these two levels, then there is the Om mirror level where the negative energy is sent back to the owner who must endure the karma boomerang lesson that is involved. The implication is that such a negative energy would have to have a lot of intentional force and sustained attitude behind it in order to not be burned up in the first layer or transmuted in the second layer. This means that it is a "karma lock" or "earned karma" that a person has unwittingly worked hard to receive, enough though it will most likely be a painful lesson. Because some of the energy is burned away and transmuted, the karma is softened some and a grace energy goes back to the owner to surround the lesson in as much grace as possible.
The internal symbols clean up any implanted karmas that managed to enter our lives before we invoked protection and gather back any parts of our life force that are outside the ring of protection that might be vulnerable.
There are three practices implied in this mandala. One is that visualization of the Hreeh fire and the Om liquid light mixing in the Ah silvery blue Heart radiance. This is the Amida Buddha version of the Tumo Yoga practice. Two is the chanting to Amida Buddha to keep the first practice activated inside us. Three is chanting Om to create a vortex of protected sacred space and then breathe in "Ah" on the inhale and breathe out "Hreeh" on the exhale so that the energy of Amida Buddha and Pandaravasini penetrate every cell in our body.
Footnote1: There is an Amida Tumo meditation behind this practice that would take some time to explain. Although Amida Buddha is normally pictured in a male red body, Amida Buddha is not a historical buddha, but is an archetypal buddha or dhyani buddha. In the five buddha mandala, Amida Buddha is portrayed with the consort Pandaravasini in a yabyum position. Amida Buddha is really BOTH Amitayus Buddha and the Dakini Pandara in the yabyum position. On the Dharmakaya level, Amida Buddha is the principle of tariki or divine grace, which manifests within pure perception, and which represents the skanda of sensation at its highest level (energy itself). In the mandala, a principle and its element (fire) are always united. When Amida Buddha manifests within the Shambhogakaya level (dreamtime), it appears as Amitayus and Pandara. When Amida Buddha manifests in the Nirmanakaya realm (physical time), it has appeared as Dharmakara (the first historical being to embody this principle), as Padmasambhava (Amitayus) and Mandarava (Pandara), and any being who embodies graceful compassion.
ReplyDeleteFootnote2: Amitayus manifests as "Om" and Pandara manifests as "Hreeh". They mix in the Heart Chakra and becoming the nourishing life force that regenerates our system. Amitayus is the buddha that governs "health and long life," while Amitabah governs rebirth into the Pure Land (Sukhavati) after death. Tanran Reiki, after the level four attunement, is about ending aging and death, and regenerating the physical body ("youthing") so that we can live forever on planet Earth. Eventually, this immortal physical body transforms into a light body. Earth may undergo a parallel change and seem to disappear from the usual frequency of physicality at some point in the future. Because of this focus, Amitayus is emphasized more than the Amitabah aspect in Tanran Reiki. I usually like to do the Amitayus empowerment along with the Tanran Reiki Long Life Empowerment (level four attunement) because they synergize well with each other. Eventually, I would like share the other two members of the "Trinity of Long Life" in Tibetan Buddhism, the White Tara Alchemy Empowerment and the Unishavijaya Karma Burning Empowerment. The latter empowerment governs the removal of karmas that cause fatal accidents and pull us to negative rebirth states. Both of them are powerful enlightened Dakinis. They are specialists in specific transformations which are helpful to us. The Dakini Pandara (another aspect of Amida Buddha) governs the actualization of Tariki (Divine Grace) as energy we can feel working inside us. Without this activation, the Tariki remains merely a conceptual belief which does not have the power to transform our lives. Tibetan Buddhists of the medium level of practice will visualize Amitayus and Pandara in yabyum and have the bindu mixing happen through this visualization. Reiki, working with symbols, tends to prefer the visualization of "Om", "Ah", and "Hreeh" and do the same thing. Sometimes the Hreeh seed syllable (bija mantra) is merely felt as "female essence" (with the "Om" manifesting the "male essence") and other times they are felt as Pandara and Amitayus. It is a deeper transformation to invoke the dieties and this increases the potency of this practice. It is also possible to visualize Vajrasattva and Vajra Yogini in Yab Yum with the Aksobya Buddha mandala.
ReplyDeleteFootnote3: I want to apologize here for not being completely consistent in all the gender designations and symbolic interactions represented in the above mandala and its links to other practices. I am hoping to evolve a more precise set of designations over time. There is a language issue with English not having a neutral personal pronoun that is neither "he" nor "she". I have usually have found ways to side step this issue, but not always. Even when this is sidestepped, sometimes in visualizations we end up choosing to visualize a male or female buddha body. Both the dakini bodies and the bodhisattva bodies are androgenous, having the 32 marks of enlightenment, 16 for ideal male and 16 for ideal female. My sense is that this is partly due to a perfect hormone balance between estrogen and testosterone. There is a paradox that when a male completely integrates the female into his being and the female completely integrates the male into her being that they are more male or female respectively. There is another kind of male and female energy that is achieved by repression of the opposite gender and which is unhealthy and unbalanced. This is called in Taoism as "excess yang" and "excess yin". They can appear very male or very female, even in a way seductive to the opposite gender, but relationships tend to be conflictual, since there is an inner war between the inner male and inner female going on inside these types that manifests in the outer social relationships. We tend to attract a partner that has resonance with our inner opposite gender aspect. In one passage of the Bardo Thodol, it talks about our gender selection being based on these two energies and how they manifest in which parent we love and which parent we hate while seeing various "rebirth vortexes" (places where a couple is making love). There is a like attracting like to the combined energy of a "nirmanakaya yabyum". This is partly why sexual union is called "karma mudra".
ReplyDeleteThank you for that image. It's so blissful ❤ ॐ x
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