It's almost utterly parallel to Tibet and Japan and its utilization. Why? Now, the whole point to it all is to arouse dormant energy or transform energy from one utilization to another. Another way of putting it is liberation, freedom from the shackles of the ignorance and the bondage of preoccupation with things that keep you where you were and condemn you to stay there always, unless there is a radical redirection. Now, for example, these thangkas, this one is a bit mystifying in some ways.

[01:10]

It looks offhand as though it's Amida Buddha, Amitabha, Medicine Buddha, with his bowl of medicine. I wonder if it's like the stuff that some of our hill folk friends made in North Carolina. Boy, that was good medicine sometimes. At any rate, you will note the predominance of the breasts, and here, and here. It's always nice to have three heads, you know? Three heads are better than one if you have to solve a problem. But you notice the androgynous character of the image, the yin-yang fusion. Now, I'd like to do a little bit of a chart, chart time.

[02:21]

One of the things on which I've been so fascinated and tempted to write and never did was on the nature of the elements. The ancient Chinese, Japanese, Tibetans, Nepalese, Hindus, Greeks, Mayans, all had the same four basic elements to reality, and most of them had the fifth super-element, the ether, the void beyond perception. Now, element, in fact, in the pre-Socratics, you'll see that there'll be one guy who'll say that all is air, one who'll say all is water, one who'll say all is fire. No one says all is earth, even though that's the one that would probably make the most sense.

[03:26]

Okay, now, here we have the ether, and the sense perception, I'll call it SP, not ESP, the sense perception and the sense organ involved in ether is sound and the air, and the ear, ear, ear, Rudolf, ear, okay? The ether relates to sound, but in the sense of the sound that at its ultimate goes beyond the audible. Now the color that corresponds to this is white, and the bodily location, I won't say

[04:31]

B, I hope you caught that, or B-L, let me think of B-L-T, the bodily location, B-Lock, the bodily location is the head. And the direction is the center, and the mount of the deity or reality, mount represented, would be the dragon. And I can go on to the bija, or the appropriate ritual sound, which in this case would be the OM, and so on. So here we have the supreme element, white, which, not using them in opposite terms, negative

[05:41]

versus positive, is a positive aspect. Then we have air, and related to air, the SP, sense perception, is touch, and we feel touch where? The skin, okay? And the color is blue, which we'll soon see is a negative dimension. The body location is the heart, and we sometimes, blue and broken heart. Mind, mind, transmission, good zen at work, sensational, this is really sensational.

[09:58]

Okay, and the work, which is a ritual line, it is, it is in the bija, it's work, work, and then we'll move on to water, water smells, water is the SP, and the special scent, rasa, and the organ, which is the tongue, the whole basis, by the way, and I've written several

[11:06]

articles on this word, the whole basis of Hindu aesthetic theory is taste, you must get the total sensation of all that goes into an activity in order to be part of it, and to be involved, if you're watching a play, the stage set, the work behind the scenes, the audience reaction, other than yours, all of this, in addition to what goes on on the stage, you must taste, smell, then you have really aesthetically experienced it, total life, total life involvement, and all senses are involved in the rasa experience, but the

[12:09]

taste, the country in which food swells rapidly, in which there has always been a great population, food and taste is so important, and a class society is so important, and especially when food swells rapidly in a conserved supply, you find gourmet cuisine, gourmet cuisine zooms as class differentiations become greater, for example, great cookery in Europe, after the war, they wouldn't think of cookery until the Medici in Bologna, and when the Medici princess of Bologna married Louis XIII, the Italian chef of Bologna, and that's one of his most

[13:17]

famous dishes, a subversion of Italian, but anyway, the taste is so important, in the sense that when there's curry in that culture, it doesn't have a sense, and so this is the term of the day, the taste is the responsibility of every aspect of it, because you and it are microcosm, macrocosm of a relationship, one to one. Then the mouth is the rectum, the mouth is the penis, now then we have ears,

[15:22]

ears, and the third, mouth, and nose, but I'm not going to go into what I have to say, so, the point is three, the direction, that's the button that's going to keep you going, and the direction of the mouth, and the mouth is the garuda, the garuda is a mythological bird, which is like a flying peacock combination, and when you take a close look at our green hara, you will see on either side of the mouth, at about eye level,

[16:32]

on either side is a garuda bird, and then the incarnations of all the buddhas, to the crown of the cup, which indicates that it goes all the way up to here, in a symbolic union, but the mouth of the green hara is a buddha bird. Now, okay, well you might say, well now, why is it that you took a concept in which the red is not wet? You speak to me. Okay, the red is not wet, and yellow is not south, and blue is not east, and so on,

[17:38]

unless you turn it on the side. Why? Because this is a prajnaparamita, or divine wisdom, tantra, that refers to the manifestation of paramita right here. And so, there we have the transcendental going to the right of this transcendent, but then we're off track for that reason. Now, you visualize through the sacred wisdom, and identify yourself with the sacred wisdom, and in doing so, you can, as if you would wish, visualize a red hara,

[18:45]

a mida here being androgynous is also a red hara, and go through this to wherever it leads you. This is a visualizational projection, the very point of which is the absence of a personification in the center, so that through its use, you project whatever are your areas of need, or hope, or whatever it may be, and experience them, and go without, and go beyond them with an awareness that, wherever they may be, they are transitory in the timelessness of meditation,

[19:52]

which has no beginning, no end, in the timelessness of reality, which has no beginning and no end. And so, you go into, through your own vision, and beyond it, then through sunyata, the truthfulness, emptying the void, and thereby, go through and through, and have another channel, psychologically stated, for the diversion of libido from one aim to others, or from specific aims to pre-existing.

[20:54]

Now, one of the things which I'd like to do is to also suggest to others, for visualization, especially projection, visualization of your own, is extremely complicated, so don't miss a single detail of what I'm about to tell you. It's tremendously complicated. You have to see all through the city of San Francisco, through a shiny sun canopy, and a very hard sign, which is on the grass pad, over the sun, the field, the sun, the shiny canopy. It's very, very hard to locate, so, you've got to set out early in the morning, and just know how to look at it, and know it.

[21:57]

And by the end of the day, you'll notice that on the page, there's a sun sign. There it is. Is that what I'm supposed to have? No. Now, find an empty spot in the wall. That may take a lot of looking through. And what do you think is an empty spot? Hmm? Hmm. Some words out of my mouth. And there, the circle, representing the void, if you know the Zen term up to infinity, which is just as you mentioned, it's going to everywhere in time. It starts with the empty circle, and ends with the empty circle.

[22:58]

There you have it. And you look at that sun sign, and, wow, it looks back at you! And you project into it, and close your eyes, and still see it. And project a focal point, a bindu, a seed spot, into your psyche, and round that out, and look down. And then there's a sun, running, and look in your eyes, and see the sun. From there you will have some consciousness

[24:05]

that literally can go in any direction, in any way that you want. And I call that, by a very technical, you know, Sanskrit phrase, or Sanskrit saying in English, the best equivalent of this would be shiny sunset meditation. So, this visualization will do what you can do, what nobody can do for you, which is to taste and experience an unknown view, that even in time, unknown to yourself, and channel it and focus it with a central point that will diffuse

[25:08]

an up-and-down of meditation, and that will really channel those realizations of spiritual energy. Now, here, you are here now, just like I am. Here is a good place, here is a good time, here is the moon, here is the sun, yin-yang, and, not opposition, but polar aspects of reality, all of which need to come together to be transcended. But you will notice that in some characteristics,

[26:13]

in portraiture, scrolls especially, the polarities are always there, and again, never as opponents, but as united elements, to be transcended. And here is the green, and here is the blue, and here is the yellow path. And so, all sorts of realities are depicted here. So you see, you can even utilize one icon for any and all purposes, as you choose. You can go to and through the moon,

[27:18]

or the sun, or the green drain, or the blue halo, or especially the eye, or any of the chakra points. And in this case, one would especially pay attention to the bindu, the third eye, which leads up to the higher consciousness, or the thousand-petaled lotus. And in fact, we could spend so much time, this is the first time I've seen this, you know, this one, but we can count the petals on the rim. We can count the petals on the periphery. Each one of them

[28:20]

will have a different meaning, represent a different vocalization, or mantra, and depict various levels of reality, consciousness, anything, everything. And so, the meanings to anything, everything, are just so fantastic. But here you see the pathway that you enter. And if you want to, you can enter the Tanka through its pathway and stay in the waters, to home, the deep, the blue unknown, or anywhere.

[29:23]

And it is what you do that liberates. How do you identify with different colors? You identify them, first of all, by their colors. And if there is no color? If there is not color, you look for the animal depiction, the mouth. And if there isn't a color in the figure, you essentially would, that's particularly discernible, if, for example, this was a neutral skin tone, you'd immediately think it was a green color. Now, it doesn't have an animal depiction, it doesn't have a mouth. There's no dragon looking in the background. Well, I guess that it must be dragon lunch hour

[30:26]

as of the time that this was painted. Now the dragon is eating dragon oats. So the dragon has a tail behind him. No. No. Right. White Tara has the lotus. And the iconography of every representation of Tara is incredible. The cult of Tara by Byer, the book that the library should have. And, I mean, this gives, it's so complicated. People will think that Western religions are theological and complicated and Eastern religions are simple. Don't know a thing about

[31:28]

Buddhist logic, and sometimes illogic, and the Tibetan scriptures, and the earlier Buddhist scriptures from the 9th century, Nalanda, and so on. Incredibly complicated. Complication upon complication. Now why did I put a marker here? Oh, and by the way, in each Tara, for example, I mentioned the petals and the vocalizations. These, in the devotional use, are accompanied by mudras, by hand gestures. Here's a white Tara depicted in the book that's very much like Our Lady over there. I'm looking for a chart of gestures.

[32:33]

There are about eight of them. Why doesn't one pop up? Come on, chart. Come on, chart. Come on, chart. Well, there are a couple of pages in here that show many different gestures, but this is typical of one particular gesture that accompanies the use of the mandala symbols. And if you can do that and get your fingers and hand in that position to say the one evocation, and then another one to say another, and all the rest, wow. Oh, hey, hey. I think we... Yeah. Yeah. See, this is the six gestures that generate the substitutes for not saying a whole long text.

[33:36]

You do these six gestures and it does the job for you and it's very economical. You know, it takes the Tibetans to write complicated theology on how to save time. They have gestures that substitute for text, prayer wheels that at each turn say a thousand prayers, all sorts of labor-saving devices, and you have to spend your lifetime reading all the complicated stuff on how to use them. So there's no end, there is no limit to the complexity of each gesture, each item, each, as I say, number of petals and the representations of the accompanying object for each of the taras, but what they are are the representations as well for each of the corresponding buddhas

[34:40]

or bodhisattvas of which they are feminine counterparts. Now that sounds simple and you'd think I could put down five names. Different texts, different traditions have different combinations and so you cannot do it. It's in fact easier to equate the different colored taras with Hindu deities that were the origins of the Buddhist ones than with particular Buddhist deities because the complications are so extraordinary. For example, the yellow tara can be shown as a feminine version of Siddhipata with a skull in the hand and kind of a leer and a spear.

[35:41]

And a rope with a little skull like Shiva. And it's an easier correspondence to Hinduism than to Buddhism. But now the positive and the negative. Right off bat, you'll note that the two positive taras are moderate. Green is at the center of the spectrum of colors. It is at the center of the rainbow. And it is at the center of reality. Okay. It represents the earth, the ground,

[36:44]

the grass, plants. At times the water can be green even though it's usually blue. But its centrality as a color, its moderation, its middle stance is one of the attributes that makes green the color of moderation. And white, as the harmony of all colors, and they were aware of that too from just the observation of light in antiquity, is likewise moderate. And so the most affirmative dimensions of tara or of any spiritual reality in terms of color correspondences, and these apply to all sorts of other traditions.

[37:48]

And for example, if you read something as way out as Aleister Crowley's 777, the great occult magician of the early 20th century, you will find in his tables of correspondences Egyptian pantheon, Canaanitic, Greek, Roman, Hindu, Chinese, Japanese, Shinto, all sorts of correspondences that show the universality of these symbols. Now, white. White. Purity. It absorbs all the colors. It contains all the realities. And so white is the highest representation. Now, tara in all aspects

[38:52]

represents the divine wisdom prajnaparamita, the divine wisdom to the other shore, literally. But but the most obvious and most sublime is the white. But as legitimate and as real is the blue, the yellow, the red, the green. As real as our most exalted thought or feeling is our most earthly one. It is as real and as natural to us to feel thirsty

[39:53]

as to be inspired by a work of music or of art or of whatever. It's all a part of reality. And so the path to the divine wisdom to the other shore is where one is at. And that, in a nutshell, is why there are so many different representations. Because along with these five colors are literally hundreds upon hundreds of other forms. For example... Gold is not a color. Gold is not a color. No. No. Gold is Gold is a symbol

[40:54]

of power or a symbol of the sun. But more often than not, in Tibetan art, it's a symbol of the Vajra power, the thunderbolt power. And by the way, the thunderbolt, Vajra power, one-to-one relationship to the serpent power of Kundalini or the awakening of altered states of consciousness that some avant-garde yukti-yakin person will call it or whatever. Okay, the blue Tara, the air, the heart, the east, the east, the right hand. If you know the Christian creeds, for example, in the Nicene Creed, Christ sits at the right hand

[41:58]

of the Father. The east is primacy in the world. It is the direction of primacy. It is the direction of power. The west is the direction of renunciation of power. The western shore in all of Buddhist literature, the western paradise, the realm of Amida Buddha, is the western paradise, the exact opposite. In going beyond the world, you go to the west, to the other shore. And to get to the other shore requires a burning, a burning

[42:58]

of the usually most vengeful aspect of Tara, the red Tara, who is often shown as Kali, as very negative and destructive, and represents the destruction that must take place to get to the other shore, because we're in a burning house. As you know from the early sayings of Buddha, the house is on fire. The yellow, the yellow, the navel, represents the dormant, slumbering, passive forces. Sloth, indolence, are the mental attributes

[44:00]

of the navel. And so the navel is related to the element of fire, because it requires fire to overcome the sloth, the slumbering feature of the navel regions of our reality, which are yellow bilious. And of course the blue, the blue, well, in most of the world you know the hot water from the cold, which is red, which is blue. Universally blue is the color of the cold, the forbidding, the chilling. And so what better organ

[45:03]

for it to be appropriate for, for arousal than the heart? And so the heart is the counterpart to the color blue. And the awakening of the power that must take place is the eradication of moral chill, moral indifference. And the force of indifference is represented by that tarot. So again, why meditate with, pray to, worship what you will, a seemingly negative component? Because it's real. And in reenacting the drama of the living through process, one goes beyond, one transcends. Now,

[46:04]

while we're on the word transcend, what's the time? I believe to be the essence of what the tantric tradition is driving at in its utilization and representation of the feminine component. But likewise of all the other components that are over-affirmed, over-denied, and all the rest, and all of which must be encountered and utilized as part of the process of burning out that requires the two components of knowledge and wisdom or intuition, and going into and through both of them to the higher state of pure

[47:06]

freedom beyond language, beyond expressed feelings. And in doing so, I have indicated something that I believe is utterly compatible with the Zen tradition, with the main traditions of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism. And I say this from a point of view that would never ever say that all the religions of the world strive at the same thing, because they don't. All the basic religions of the world contradict each other, have different and opposed premises, and there is no such thing as a harmony or unity of all the world's religions. There is only a harmony

[48:08]

if you abandon very strong aspects of each and every one of them, basic components of each and every one of them. But from a prima facie point of view, they stand for different things and have different and contradictory goals. So I'm not speaking from a narrow unity of views or something like that point of view, which would say that everybody who smiles at you has natural goodness, and everything that he says is at one with the nice things that everybody else says, and it's all so nice and so good. Well, it's just not the case. But I do believe that within major traditions it is possible to hold basic core and go far afield,

[49:10]

maintaining the vital element, cauterizing that which is overly conditioned by time, tradition, outmoded mythological ways of thinking and all the rest, and move ahead. So it's from that perspective that I have presented the data and I am sure that as you've listened, you've taken into account who has done the presentation and his own perspective. I hope that if anything has come of your two sessions with me on this subject, it isn't

[50:11]

so much that any particular data were communicated, but certain modalities of responding to yourself, which means the world around you and you, both, and suggestive techniques that are far from new, far from innovative, but might suggestive will have had some value and can be utilized in your own way. Well, before we say adieu, does anyone have a thought to share? Adieu, adieu, kind friends, adieu, adieu. Thank you. Thank you. And we'll see some of you, I hope,

[51:14]

on Tuesday night. Yes, when we move to Greece. Greece, I'm sure. Oh. Oh. What a surprise.

[51:47]

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