Reflections in a Mirror

From 56

In conventional, common sense thinking, we regard this body as “our home;” that is, as the place in which the individual or self—the person we refer to as “I,” resides. We say or think, “This is my body. I have a head, chest, back, arms, legs, hands, and feet,” and so forth. But suppose we were to “venture mentally” inside our body to see where this “self” is located? We would see the internal tissue, bones, and blood, and the organs such as the stomach, brain, heart, and lungs. But looking carefully and with an open mind, we may find that it is not possible to consider any of these components as being our “self” or “I.” Although we usually assume that there is “someone inside us who lives in our body,” or that we are “the sum total of all our parts,” if we look carefully, mentally dissecting the inside of the body down to the level of cells, and even further to the level of molecules, atoms, and sub-atomic particles, in no location will we ever ultimately find this self or “I”; that is, the person we refer to by our name. So in a sense, we are composed internally of all this “stuff,” but ultimately, there is also a sense in which all people are basically alike in the condition of having “no-self” who inhabits or “lives in” the body.

From Page 22

At the level of the Hinayana, it is regarded as advisable to completely renounce, or abandon, the emotions as something completely undesirable. At the level of the Mahayana Buddhist practice, it is recommended to apply the appropriate “antidote,” meditating, for example, on love as the antidote to anger or aversion.

At the level of the approach of Vajrayana, or Tantric Buddhism, the practitioner regards the five emotions (attachment, aversion, ignorance, pride, and jealousy) in the form of symbolic Tantric archetype-deities, which embody the transformed aspect of these emotions. These are known in Vajrayana Buddhism (the Buddhism of Tibet, which also contains the other two levels of Hinayana and Mahayana), as the five pristine “wisdoms,” or the five pristine awarenesses.

If we recognize the empty nature of desire, or attachment, rather than grasping after a so-called truly-existing object we have singled out as something we desire and long to have, we understand or recognize the empty nature of this apparitional-like object, which has been singled out from the field of our awareness. This emotion of attachment is transformed into the pristine awareness, or wisdom (yeshe) known as the “wisdom of discrimination,” represented by the symbolic archetype-deity, called Buddha Amitabha, depicted with a red body, the color of passion or desire. When Amitabha is depicted in union with a female consort, the nature of this consort is related to the corresponding element of fire.