You have no power over me

Ah, long time no Blog.  I had intended. . . but as they say, the road to Croydon is paved with good intentions (or was that Hell, I forget?).  Perhaps the Goblin King's magic has caused me to forget - like Sarah in the Labyrinth.  To be honest, I hadn't imagined that Jim Henson would be the first thing that came into my mind when I was sitting down to muse about the power of ritual and symbol in spiritual practice.  Perhaps it is because my father was interviewed on television last week, celebrating the achievements of Bowie - a local Beckenham boy (our family hometown).  Some symbols are not forever it seems - and whilst Bowie himself remains idolised, his Labyrinthine haircut is perhaps best forgotten.  There is a glorious eighties cheesiness about the Labyrinth movie that - whilst charming - hasn't really transcended the decades.  Like Sarah in the Labyrinth, I look at David Bowie's haircut and although I love his music, I think - truly - 'You have no power over me.'  Still, it reminded me...

I think it is important to talk about symbols *in general* before turning to symbolism in a Buddhist context later in this Blog - particularly in the specific context of namkha.  I have met people who tell me they feel symbols have no meaning.  And I would agree.  They have no inherent meaning - no absolute true meaning that transcends our use or perception of the symbol - no intrinsic value that is separate to the value that we place in the symbol.  It does not follow that they are utterly without meaning however.  They carry the transient meaning which we invest in them, which enables them to act as an interface between the image we see before us, and the experience, emotion or idea that the symbol represents.  That meaning might last millenia, like the swastika, and again like the swastika a given symbol might have multiple meanings in different contexts.  Unfortunately symbolism in a spiritual context has attracted a fair amount of attention from those who have an eternalistic viewpoint, and the modern rational scientific approach to the world finds it easy to refute such views as hogwash.  This is understandable, but doesn't mean that all symbol is without value - rather that an eternalistic view of symbol is untenable.  Indeed science itself finds symbol invaluable - and to the non-scientist the symbolism of thermodynamics can seem no less of an occult art than that of the masons, or the writing of Eliphas Levi.  So, symbol may not have inherent meaning, but it has value nonetheless.

Even without an inherent meaning, it is evident that some symbols have a powerful emotional or intellectual affect on us, that drives our behaviour at a very basic level.  If I were to parade down a public street wearing a full length white robe, and white high conical hat that masked my face, in the company of many others similarly shrouded, bearing a wooden cross, you might think me a member of a very particular sect, with strong views on race and religion. . . but if we were in Semanta Spain rather than the southern USA you might be surprised to find something somewhat different to what you had first conceived.  There are plenty of other examples like this, such as the look of surprise when some people new to Indian religion see their first swastika outside of the context of grainy WWII film footage.  A white man with a swastika symbol, even dressed in Buddhist robes, can cause people to do a double take.

My own personal experience of the power of symbol in a Buddhist context starts back before Shé-zér & I were together.  I was living and working in London, and was at a waterfront bar with a couple of old school friends.  Two young ladies at a nearby table kept glancing and smiling in our direction - unknown to my two friends who had their backs turned.  I was just about to suggest that we invite the ladies to our table and buy them a drink when suddenly a disapproving look came across the face of one of them.  She tugged the sleeve of her companion, and tapped her ring finger.  It was bare. . . but mine was not, since one of the vows of wearing associated with ngak'phang ordination include the wearing of golden rings on both ring fingers.  I was single, but how were they to know I was not some miscreant behaving badly out of sight of an absent wife.  They abandoned their empty glasses, and left the bar. . .

If you still doubt the power of image and symbol, then it is worth considering that clearly other people do recognise symbolic influence.  As I started with one music icon, perhaps I should close with another.  John Lennon  is clearly held to be such an iconic figure in British culture - even though he has been dead so long - that the olympics closing ceremony dedicated a whole section to him and a 'from beyond the grave' performance of his classic piece, Imagine.  And at the end of that piece we the audience come face to face with a symbol that communicates everything about Lennon - the symbol of his face - the symbol of those classic Lennon specs, and we are left simply to imagine. . .

Wossitallabowtthen?

Before I kick this Blog is earnest, I thought I'd post a little something on wossitabllabowtthen? 

The reason for creating this Blog is twofold. 

Firstly it is a working document - a sketch book - as my wife Lama Shé-zér & I prepare our book 'Sky Weaving' on the subject of the Namkha Practice of the Aro gTér Tradition.  We hope that some of the readership will ask questions here, and help shape our thoughts and the direction of the book overall.  For this book in particular we think this is important because in explaining Sky Weaving we have to touch on the visualisation practices of the Inner Tantras, along with the View of the Five Elements.  All this explanation has to happen as well as covering the simple and also symbolic mechanics of Sky Weaving itself.  This Blog will give us a chance to play with the depth and breadth of detail we'll need to make the book itself as effective as possible.

Secondly, early on the in preparation of the book it became apparent that we were coming into contact with a lot of material that wouldn't be wholly appropriate for the book.  This material was interesting, despite in some cases being a little peripheral or simply so academic in style as to be unhelpful to many practitioners.  That said we felt much of it might be of interest to readers.  As a result we thought we could make some of this material available for the readership of the book via a different means.  An example of this is the academic and pseudo-academic material that is already out there on the web or in print form that covers Sky Weaving.  We've touched on some of this material already in the Blog series.  Were we to include it in the book itself, it would increase the breadth of the work, and in all likelyhood made the work drier and somewhat tangential.

It's worth noting here the reasons for creating the book at all.  Firstly, it is because it was suggested by our Root Teachers Ngak'chang Rinpoche and Khandro Déchen.  At time of writing there is no generally available text on Sky Weaving in the public eye (the book by Namkha'i Norbu Rinpoche is reserved for his personal students only).  There is no particular reason for this - the core practice is not normally a 'reserved' one - so it is a shame to have no titles on this subject at all when there are hundreds of titles on things like tantric ngondro.  We're also writing the book because it is a practice that we really enjoy, and enables us to write about some aspects of Buddhism (and religion in general) which we feel are oft misunderstood - namely symbolism, and ritual.  The book itself - whilst we hardly expect to top the Amazon best seller list - will provide a secondary benefit because all proceeds from its sale will go towards the Drala Jong Retreat Centre appeal - which we blog about here.

So, having covered a little of wotitsallabowtthen we'll dive into symbolism in the next in this Blog series.

In the mean time, do feel free to ask questions, challenge or discuss anything on this Blog.  And, certainly feel free to go over to the Drala Jong Blogsite both to read, and to donate money to this cause which was inspired by Kyabjé Kunzang Dorje Rinpoche and Jomo Samphel Déchen.

The Cult of Tara (Resources - part 4)

The final book that readers might find interesting by way of some background academic material on namkha is the Cult of Tara - Magic and Ritual in Tibet by Stephan Beyer. Unlike the other texts to which I've referred, I have found links to e-book downloads of this text. I'm not including links here because the initial sites I saw that carried those download options didn't look entirely reputable.  Readers can make their own minds up about that option (the book is still in print).

I say that this is the final book I recommend to provide an academic background to namkha practice, but I should acknowledge there are other options. Using one of these texts and tracing back the references will find you a host of material of course.  I also thought I should note the other entries on the Wikipedia page on namkha as they are most obviously in the public domain. Of these, I've not had a chance to read:

- Peter Gold's Navajo and Tibetan Sacred Wisdom: The Circle of The Spirit which is a comparative anthropological study of the two cultures.
- Claudia Muller-Ebelling & Christian Rasch's Shamanism and Tantra in the Himalayas explores the practices of Nepalese Shamen and how pre-Buddhist traditions informed Vajrayana.
- Nebesky-Wojkowitz' Tibetan Religious Dances

I have read the Life and Liberation of Padmasambhava and Ellen Pearlman's Sacred Dance, but both carry scant reference to namkha which are not worth mentioning here.

Having noted other publically referenced sources, I shall return to Beyer. Beyer's work focusses solely on practices surrounding Tara (sGrol ma).  It has a similar bent to Nebesky-Wojkowitz' work, in terms of being something of a catalogue of mantra and symbolic activity. It contains a section which walks through one particular Tara namkha practice from start to end, and in so doing Beyer provides some incrementally useful background information about Vajarayana in general and namkha in particular.

Namkha is clearly a practice that is associated with a range of different awareness beings (yidams / meditational deities) and protectors and can be employed for a range of different effects. Different lineages clearly use different yidams in association with their own namkha traditions.

Beyer mentions that Tara, as a peaceful yidam, is associated with the first two more peaceful of the four Buddha Karmas - in Beyer's terms these are pacifying and increasing (although in the Aro gTér Tradition they are magnetising and enriching).  Nebesky-Wojkowitz' work mentions namkha in connection with a range of both peaceful and wrathful yidams, making accessible the wrathful Buddha Karmas of pacifying and destroying.

Beyer is the first of the writers referenced here who recognises four general modes of practice, sometimes employed in isolation across the range of Tara practices, sometimes all present - as in the Tara namkha.  This is valuable as the other writers have tended not to look beyond or through the elaborate external symbolism of the practice of namkha, and thus have failed to fully understand the practice.

These modes include self  arising - a soteriological practice where the practitioner dissolves their experience of self into emptiness, and then self-arises as the yidam; generation - where the yidam is visualised as external, used to effectuate practice, and thirdly the yidam is used to empower objects - such as the namkha itself, or the bumpa (water vase) during a tantric empowerment - used to apply the effects of practice.

The next blog will explore symbolism and the practice of self-arising.  There we shall start to square the circle of the highly ritualised, symbolic even magical world of mahayoga (which Nebesky-Wojkowitz did not see beyond) and the far less symbolic and in some ways mundane world of Dzogchen. Once this circle is squared, we'll then go on to address the namkha practice of the Aro gTér.

Oracles and Demons of Tibet (Resources part 3)

Oracles and Demons of Tibet by Rene De Nebesky-Wojkowitz contains comprehensive depictions of a range of namkhas, the yidams and protectors with which they are associated, and their various applications. It has a full chapter dedicated to 'Thread-crosses and thread-cross ceremonies' as well as a range of other references. This single source has the greatest breadth of material describing the practice that is easily available. It's strength as a work is also somewhat of a weakness, because it reads like a catalogue of textual imagery and iconography - so much so that fellow Tibetologists have often jested that the author's ultimate crime was to take interesting material and turn it into a boring academic work. (His supposed 'criminality' was that he had revealed the secrets of Dharma Protectors - he died tragically young, shortly after finishing this work, and a Tutankhamun-like curse was said to follow this 'terrible act'). In fact the writing is fairly dull - but does provide a flavour of the variety of namkha that can be created.

Be it a catalogue, it worth noting it is a well referenced caalogue and thus if anyone wishes to obtain a springboard for academic investigation into the primary and secondary sources about a range of Mahayoga practices this is a great starting point (although a working knowledge of Tibetan, German and French would be useful).

In terms of this Blog, Oracles & Demons flags a number of items that are noteworthy:

- the thread-cross constructs (mDos, in Nebesky-Wojkowitz' terms) are generally highly complex. The term mDos applies to the full structure, which can often include a base, whereas nam mKha' describes the individual thread-crosses around this central structure. Because in the Aro gTér Mahayoga is approached from the basis of Dzogchen View, the symbolic activity in Aro gTér Mahayoga is in relative terms minimalist. In the basic form of Ogyen Rig-nga namkha practice a single namkha is created - hence the slightly different focus on terminology.

Complexity is possible however. Lama Rig'dzin Dorje has overseen the creation of the most complex Aro gTér namkha although a comparison with the Tara namkha (see an earlier post) shows even this is relatively simple in design

- the term thread-cross seems to have been adopted from use in other anthropological studies around the world, where similar symbolic practices are found (including in South Africa, Peru, Australia, Sweden, and throughout the Himalayas including Naga tribe, Siberian Shamanic and Bön practice). Perhaps for this reason the academics never thought to investigate why the term nam mKha' was used for the crosses themselves. I will define namkha later in this series

- Oracles & Demons is the first work to distinguish between the outer, physical practice, and an inner, visualised practice, as well as alluding to the interaction between them. Again, we'll look at this later in the series

- finally, Oracles & Demons describes clearly that to release the potency of a completed namkha, it is necessary to destroy it, either through breaking it or burning it. This effectuates the practice, and in the Aro gTér this effectuation is achieved most commonly through a fire ceremony - jin sreg (sbying sreg)

Symbolism is no small Beer (Resources part 2)

Namkha can get just a little more complex than those practised in the Aro gTér Tradition as you can see from this particular version, ascribed to the practice of Tara. This is to be expected, because it is a practice from the Mahayoga section of the Buddhist Inner Tantras, and Mahayoga is highly symbolically sophisticated. On the Aro gTér Apprentice Retreat which ended yesterday, Ngak'chang Rinpoche taught about the principle and function of Mahayoga and the broad scope of the nine yanas. Within this teaching he noted that each of the Buddhist yanas other than Dzogchen tends to have a mode reflective of one of the four philosophical extremes. In the case of Mahayoga, this is Eternalism. That is not to say Mahayoga is Eternalistic, but it can be taken, or mistaken as such. This is noteworthy for what is to follow in this Blog series.

Mahayoga - especially when practised from within it's own framework creates and works with symbolic complexity. With that complexity come symbolic rules. For example there is the symbolic rule that the two skull bowls used during tsog must never be switched. In tsog one bowl contains alcohol (symbolic of the five nectars) and one contains meat (symbolic of the five meats). Within some Mahayoga systems it is taught that should the wrong item be placed in the wrong bowl, and then consumed, instant death will occur. To the post-modern, scientific, rationalist mindset of the West, this notion seems like poppy cock. Such hocus-pocus is a nonsense to us sophisticated folk in the developed world. Symbolism holds no sway, no power over us; it is hollow and utterly without substance, isn't it?

If you understand the principle and function of symbolism within the broad scope of Buddhist Vajrayana, you will already have an answer to this question. If that is the case then I can do little more than recommend to you Robert Beer's excellent work on Tibetan Symbols and Motifs (or, if you are looking to save a few pennies the abbreviated Handbook version, which is also a solid piece of work).

Beer's work contains within it some comments on namkha (which as with Tucci he translates figuratively as 'thread cross') as well as some line drawings from Buddhist iconography. Beer's writing adds a slightly different dimension to Tucci, in that he refers to the wrathful application of the practice in providing a snare to catch malignant spirits, or a prison to constrain them. He also refers to the destruction of the namkha - a vital aspect of the Aro gTér method of practising sky weaving.

If you remain suspicious of ritual and symbol - well, you are not alone - but perhaps you might pause to consider symbolism in a secular context.

Namkha is authenticated in a Fire Ceremony (again, more later). Relaxed about fire? Really relaxed? How about burning the American Flag in the White House - does that have meaning for you?

If it has no meaning for you, I assure you it has tremendous meaning for many - for an entire Nation in fact. Some (Penn and Teller amongst them) feel that they should be able to commit this symbolic act. Some feel to the contrary that this act should in fact be prohited by American law. In fact some feel so passionately that they will be unhappy to even see this 'magical illusion' referred to here. Even as someone disconnected from that direct emotion (I'm a Brit, you see) in writing this I am conscious that some people's passions may be inflamed by mentioning flag burning in this manner. So - a symbol that does not directly influence my own life, still has power, and simply by referring to the symbolic act, that power is tapped into, accessed, infused into a situation. And this is just one example. As we'll see through the Blog series, there are myriad others.