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Spectrum of Ecstasy - 16 Ch.11 Five-fold Display

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Spectrum of Ecstasy — Ch.11 Five-fold Display

The Q&A commentary chapter (40 pp, book pp. 195–234) — the longest chapter added for the 2003 revision of Rainbow of Liberated Energy (1997) as Spectrum of Ecstasy. Structured as questioner-driven exchanges between Ngak’chang Rinpoche and Khandro Déchen, this chapter retrospectively clarifies, consolidates, and extends the Ch.6–10 element-chapter material. Part Three begins here (after Part Two’s five element-chapters).

Key Points

  • Consolidating framework: the pure elements are “always equal in their essential pure state” — indivisible, completely interdependent, “equally present”; the elements are “not divisible”, and are only talked about as separate for pedagogical purposes. At the inner-Tantric register, the pure elements exist “in their self-perfected state within the space of the central channel” (footnote 3 — the inner-yogic body that Spectrum of Ecstasy does not set out to explore).
  • Balance is not a Tantra/Dzogchen concept — “Neither Tantra nor Dzogchen concern themselves with balance. Unenlightenment isn’t spoken of as a state that’s ‘out of balance’. Balance, actually, is a tricky concept because it involves a sense of attachment to form. ‘Balanced’ and ‘unbalanced’ are simply reflections of form and emptiness.”
  • Sparkling-through and distortions are both the enlightened state — “the distortions and the sparkling through are both the enlightened state. The sparkling through is simply the sporadic and unpredictable series of open-ended opportunities that occur for a tantrika.” Non-dual read of the distortion-sparkle polarity.
  • “Beyond yes and no” — four-corner logic negation: “It is not ‘yes’ or ‘no’. It is not ‘both yes and no’. Nor is it ‘neither yes nor no’.” KD’s compressed statement of the non-dual view beyond Aristotelian binary.
  • Gradual is also non-gradual — “gradual doesn’t really exist. Gradual is just a long run-up to non-gradual.” See Nongradual Approach.
  • The “safety of the known” diagnostic: “is it just because we think of dualistic distortion as known that we think of it as safe?” — KD: “Yes.” The operational structure of refusing to remain with sparkling-through. Realised experience as “the known” → different centre of gravity in life.

Secondary Colours of the Spectrum

Ch.11’s distinctive taxonomic extension to the five-element framework: element-interaction compounds as secondary colours.

  • Shyness = earth + air — “a pattern in which personal territory can’t be put to the test in any way, for fear that it will be proved insubstantial” — the air-neurotic-modulation of earth-pride; “a form of unmanifested pride”; “backwards pride”; “hidden territory, or unexposed territory, can be experienced as secure.”
  • Guilt = earth + air (parallel formation) — identified as an earth-air interaction.
  • Hypersensitivity vs shyness — “very much related to the earth element, but it’s very different from being shy. Hypersensitives are usually not backward in coming forward about how hurt they are by what someone is supposed to have done to them. They can be very dominant — they can control a whole room full of people just by walking in and looking like everyone has betrayed them.”
  • Fixating on a relationship as territory — “being hypersensitive to its ups and downs” — earth-element variant.

Element Personalities at the Khandro-Level

KD’s free-associative extension of the earth-khandro’s equanimity-register: “spacious affluence… or spacious grandiosity… magnanimous mellifluous magnificence.” NR: “It’s important to be able to stretch these definitions right out to the boundaries of language.” The play-with-language is itself part of the teaching-register.

Clarity-Synonym Expansion

The water-element mirror-wisdom/clarity register glossed through 17 English near-synonyms (NR’s list):

“Clarity could have a lot of other words associated with it, such as: simplicity, directness, immediacy, sharpness, rawness, focus, crispness, visibility, brightness, resolution, distinctness, glare, engrossment, concentration, monotony, explicitness, totality, nakedness.”

The expansion serves Ch.7’s mirror-wisdom work. Tears of rage/frustration are diagnosed as “a ‘clear’ response — it’s very direct, it’s very sharp and certainly poignant” — anger’s distorted mode carries the same clarity-signature as mirror-wisdom; the element’s form-quality-demand is the operating difference.

Wrathfulness as Distinct From Anger

Ch.11’s most technically-precise distinction.

  • Anger = “the most extreme manifestation of duality… When you’re trying to destroy anything that might threaten you, you’re not open to any form of communication.” No space for communication.
  • Wrathfulness ≠ anger:
    • “It means activity, energy, movement, directness, velocity, acceleration, change, contrast…”
    • Can be manifested through “the appearance of anger” by a realised Lama (actor-analogy: outer signs without inner state).
    • Can take non-angry forms — “turning up the volume” of circumstances: a cold plunge, sauna, parachute jump, large-quantity-of-garlic-meal, all-night mantra recitation.
    • “Wisdom-display aspect of wrathfulness is the vajra-whimsy of Tsogyel Trollo” (footnote 5 — most wrathful manifestation of Yeshe Tsogyel, manifesting as Dorje Trollo).
  • Wrathful activity requires total precision — “Wrathful activity needs to be absolutely perfect… If you feel that it’s still possible to make a mistake — no matter how small — then it’s wiser to aspire to being a nice guy.” NR’s self-positioning: “I only have sufficient realisation to be a nice guy. Or, rather, to try my very best to be a nice guy.”
  • Anger vs lusting-after-a-pair-of-boots: anger permits no communication; lusting permits some communication. “To die lusting after a pair of boots would actually be very interesting… you’d have a sense of communication that was quite free.” Communication/compassion link established: “There’s a link between communication and compassion.” NR: “Damn right.”

See Wrathfulness for the distilled treatment.

Element Stickiness — Practitioner-Oriented Ranking

A question from a questioner (“some elements more sticky than others in terms of transformation?”) produces this ranking:

  • Space-neurosis is the most sticky — “probably the most sticky in the sense of being hard to dissolve. It’s problematic, because there’s so little energy there. The space element is very intelligent and very subtle in its deliberate stupidity.”
  • Earth, water, air = middle range — “less sticky because they’re all connected with types of fear.”
  • Fire-neurosis is the least sticky — “it may appear very sticky because desire is about sticking to objects of desire, but it’s actually the least adhesive — because desire is connected most directly with compassion.”
  • NR’s joke: “So if you have to pick a neurosis, go for the fire element. I’m only joking…”

Structural reason: the stickiness-ranking is a function of how close the distorted energy is to its wisdom. Fire = closest (desire-to-compassion transformation is short); space = furthest (indifference-to-dharmadhātu-wisdom requires the most energy because the ground-neurosis is depletion). This closes the theoretical-distance implicit in each element’s practice-gesture (see Embracing Emotions as the Path table).

Fire-Burnout → Space-Neurosis — The Manic-Depression Axis

Ch.11’s explicit named psychological diagnostic:

  • Fire-element burnout: “What often happens with fire element burn-out, is that then the space element neurosis manifests. Space, in addition to being an element, is also the fundamental ground of the elements.”
  • Fire ↔ space alternation = manic-depression: “Manic-depression [is] an extreme form of the alternation between fire and space neuroses.” NR: “Quite so. Congratulations.”
  • Element-dissolution-and-rebirth: “The elements can form sequences of dissolving in and out of each other. Fire could be reborn as any of the other elements, or simply re-emerge as more fire.”

The fire-space alternation is structurally well-posed: fire-neurosis consumes itself (“burn out”), leaving the ground-depletion (space-neurosis); recovery from depression may pulse back into the fire-mode’s “gloriously rampant, over-the-top, audacious, devil-may-care lust for the intensity of life.”

Three Terrible Oaths — Deepened Exposition

Ch.11 returns to the Three Terrible Oaths (introduced Ch.9) with a more extended treatment:

“This adds up to positively willing every situation to be exactly as it is… This is a statement of the totality or completeness of our context. It’s a statement of the totality or completeness of our relationship with our situation, in which we let go of the urge to manufacture anything. It’s the ecstatic appreciation of every moment of experience, in which whatever happens has its own unique texture — and that texture, in itself, is the implicit meaning of the Mind-moment.”

And:

“Each Mind-moment is, in its nakedness, the state of enlightenment. If you live these Three Terrible Oaths it is impossible to doubt that… The moments of doubt are also simply there — raw and tingling; both absolutely and relatively real. Relentlessly real, as opposed to anal-retentively unreal.”

The misunderstood variant: “People misunderstand this as a stand-alone attitude or a self-sufficient raison d’être. Actually it’s an attitude that flows with whatever direction and purpose may happen to be there.” Not fatalism. Not passive quietism. “Getting things done is not a goal for the yogi or yogini — even though they are quite capable of getting things done — they often get a great deal done!”

The practical-pragmatism register: “A nut needs tightening or the wheels will fall off. The car needs more gas, more petrol. The oil needs topping up. I need to send my mother a birthday card. I need to launder my clothes, iron my shirt, and darn my socks. I need to allow the wine to breathe. I need to digest my dinner, or evacuate my bowels…” — yogis and yoginis living the Three Terrible Oaths remain completely pragmatic.

See Three Terrible Oaths.

Security of Insecurity

Ch.11 reprises the “security of insecurity / insecurity of security” from Ch.2 in direct form:

“Security is insecure in its very nature. The desire for security is based on insecurity, and once you gain security from that position — you can never feel secure about it. In fact, the more secure you are, the more insecure you feel — because you’ve got more to lose. But the recognition of fundamental insecurity is totally secure.”

KD: “Once you accept that everything moves — that nothing stays as it is… that has to be the most secure position, doesn’t it?” Not renunciate-stance (“you don’t have to shave your head or your legs”) — anyone can participate in transient-impermanent relationships; “even in the same relationship there can be many relationships” (many phases within the same relationship, not affairs).

Chutzpah — The Tantrika Quality

“Tantra is actually aimed at people who can really do life — people who live life to the fullest. In Tibet there were often really extraordinary practitioners who had previously been bandits. A tantrika requires a certain degree of chutzpah.”

Chutzpah (Yiddish; footnote 7) — “guts, uninhibited style, ‘get up and go’.” The tantrika is not a pastoral-figure but a vigorous life-engagement figure. Tantra is structurally not aimed at people who find aspects of life problematic (that’s the register of therapy, which “at one level is not geared to help you live your life in the same way”); Tantra is aimed at practitioners already doing life, who then learn to dissolve the dualistic-fixation-apparatus while continuing to do life.

Escape clause — devotion: “You can short-circuit all your neurotic sensitivities if you have complete confidence in the practice. But you can never let that slip.” Devotion as the specific practitioner-move that bypasses neurosis-work; the qualifier is that it must be unbroken. Any slip, and “you’re straight back in the slimy pit of all your neuroses, and they’re going at full volume.”

Padmasambhava’s Deathlessness

A questioner asks about NR’s earlier remark that Padmasambhava’s being “continues through his deathlessness in the energy of his accomplished lineage.” NR’s compressed exposition:

“Its just a way of describing the inspiration that Padmasambhava provided, and continues to provide. The quality of ‘deathlessness’ gives Padmasambhava one of his many names — Chhi-‘med Pag’dzin: the deathless holder of awareness. What is meant by deathlessness, is that every Lama of the lineage can become Padmasambhava. We could say the same about Yeshe Tsogyel. Every Lama can become identical to Yeshe Tsogyel. In that way the accomplished lineage is deathless. Padmasambhava and Yeshe Tsogyel are always with us, because realised Lamas are always with us. Padmasambhava means ‘lotus-born’ and the idea of being ‘lotus-born’ applies to us all, because we can all become lotus-born. We can all realise our beginningless enlightenment.”

Deathlessness = lineage-continuity through realised-Lama-becoming-Padmasambhava (or Yeshe Tsogyel). Not metaphorical. The identity-relation (not similarity) is the lineage-mechanism. Every realised Lama is Padmasambhava, in the sense that the lineage-continuity is through the Padmasambhava-mode being available for any practitioner to become. “Lotus-born” is a condition available to all, because every being has beginningless enlightenment as ground.

Khandro-Pawo Definitional Clarification

Ch.11 returns to the khandro-pawo framework with a cleaner definition:

“Pawo means the actual physical elements — their dynamism. Khandro means the glow, lustre, or ambience of the elements — their innate vividness. In terms of emotions, khandro is the feeling-tone, and pawo is the activity that is manifested out of the feeling-tone. Khandro is the atmosphere, and pawo is the way that atmosphere plays in creating its own specific direction in time. However… they are always aspects of each other. So whatever can be seen as pawo, can also be seen as khandro. The beauty of entering this view, is that it can never be frozen — there is never one fixed understanding which can be turned into a reference point without losing the view of khandro and pawo.”

Source-reference: “that’s how it’s expressed in the Khandro-pawo-nyi-da-me-long-gyud” (footnote 8: “the Aro gTer teachings on khandro/pawo reflection, and relationship as spiritual practice”).

See Khandro, Pawo for the full unfolding of this framework.

Dance — The Technical Definition

A questioner asks what “dance” means in the phrase “the dance of the khandros and pawos.” NR’s reply:

“Dance describes the nature of reality, in terms of the oscillation of unitary reality with multiplistic reality. It also describes the way in which non-duality can be experienced as having two aspects that are not separate. If you look at two people dancing together — you have the spectacle of two people; but they are moving together. So is this singular or plural? Or is it both? Or is it both reflecting both? This is the meaning of dance.”

Dance = the structural name of the khandro-pawo non-dual relationship. Two-people-dancing-together as analogue for khandro-pawo as two aspects of one movement. The non-duality here is a specific structural relation (moving-together without losing distinction), not a collapse of distinction.

”Samsara Only Operates Behind Closed Doors”

Ch.11’s compressed formulation of why simply sitting is the practice:

“It’s not so much that you should be asking yourself questions. It’s more a matter of allowing space for the mechanisms of your neuroses to reveal themselves. This attitude of suspicion is more one of not taking the negative emotion as reality. Suspicion, for a practitioner, manifests as the willingness to allow space — to simply sit… If you simply sit, then neurotic patterns can’t remain hidden. As soon as they become visible, they begin to dismantle themselves… We have to hide from the operational methods of our neuroses in order that they can continue to function. Samsara only operates behind closed doors.”

The mechanism-of-neurosis requires opacity to itself. Sitting supplies the transparency under which the opacity-operation fails. The practice-gesture is not-avoidance, not analysis.

Emotional Napalm — Devon Car Vignette

NR’s extended illustration of how desire stuck to self-conception becomes “emotional napalm”:

“I remember once when I had just returned from my first trip to the Himalayas. I was visiting a friend and we were sitting in the garden sipping orange juice… a friend who wasn’t using his car that day, so he tossed the keys over to us saying: ‘Pour in some juice and take a ride.’ The car was a flashy little number — a red two-seater with walnut facia, wire wheels, leather seats… Off we went! Down the country lanes of Devon, changing gears in time with the rhythms of John Lee Hooker.”

Returning, the friend went quiet: “I can’t ever see me getting enough money together to buy a car like that.” “Not having a car like the one we had enjoyed that day, had really upset him; in fact it had made him quite depressed. It wasn’t possible for him to involve himself with this desire without getting stuck. The concepts around the car had become like napalm — bits of hot desire that stuck to his vision of himself and his world.”

Emotional napalm: hot desire that, when the conceptual-apparatus seizes on it, sticks to the vision-of-self-and-world rather than being experienced as desire-without-grasping. The fire-element neurosis diagnostic in vivid illustration.

Ordinary vs Liberated Creativity

Ch.11’s closing movement addresses pain as catalyst for art:

“When perception is highly charged with negative emotion we have the motivation to follow ideas through to a particular end. With that kind of energy we can be creative in a way that’ll often have the capacity to move people. People are rarely as ecstatically happy as they’re utterly miserable, so it doesn’t require too much effort to understand the mechanism of ordinary creativity in this sense. Ordinary creativity as a description of great works of art and music could seem to be an insensitive misconception; but ordinary creativity is linked to liberated creativity; and so genius flashes through — that can’t be avoided. It flashes through in all manner of circumstances, and in all manner of confusion.”

Distinction:

  • Ordinary creativity — based on highly-charged-negative-emotion motivation; the Western “suffering artist” trope. “Not a lot of joyous art.”
  • Liberated creativity — based on recognition of intrinsic space. “The possible horizons… are far more vast.”

“From the perspective of Tantra, recognition of intrinsic space as the basis of art, is ultimately preferable to being a living disaster; even though you might leave a trail of great art in your wake.”

Thig-le — The Essence of Elements

Footnote 6: “Thig-le (bindu in Sanskrit) is the essence of the elements; the matrix of primal creativity.”

Named in Ch.11 as the bridge from “the physical elements in the world around us, to their essence as the thig-les. This continuum contains our physical form, our intellect, emotions, and inner energy patterns. So it’s hardly surprising that there’s some connection between them. Language, among other things, is a bridge between the subtle and the overt.”

Thig-le is the inner-yogic-level of elemental existence (the same register as the “pure elements in the space of the central channel”). See Thig-le.

sKu-mNye — Aro gTér Psycho-Physical Exercises

Footnote 9: “sKu-mNye is a system of psycho-physical exercises from Dzogchen Long-de (the Series of Space) of the Aro gTér.”

Referenced through NR’s Achilles-tendon-rupture vignette: teaching sKu-mNye to sixty people in Germany, dividing into three for “dancing garuda” (requires space), attempting three sets of 111 repetitions, rupturing at end of third set. Nine-month recovery. “This was something of a lesson to me… I had not learnt to be gentle with myself. It was very interesting to be reminded that I had to accept the limits that my body demanded — to accept my vulnerability and to become comfortable with it.” The earth-element-territory of physical-capacity diagnostic.

Yidag / Six Realms

Footnote 1: “Yidag (preta in Sanskrit) means ‘hungry ghost’. Yidags are one of the six types of being, within the realms of being through which one can transmigrate. These Six Realms are essentially psychological perspectives or referential frames of karmic vision.”

See Six Realms — the psychological/referential-frame reading of the Buddhist cosmology is essential to the Aro gTér’s approach.

Shamanism vs Tantra

NR’s technical distinction:

  • Shamanism = “the functions of power through accessing the karmic vision of non-human beings.”
  • Tantra = “the functions of power through accessing pure vision manifestations of the dharmadhatu” (footnote 2: “Dharmadhatu (Tib. cho-ying) is the dimension of space, the fundamental creative space of reality.”).

“In some ways the processes are quite similar.” Both are compassion-capable; both can be traps. “You could also convert Buddhism into a trap if you wanted to. Some people do, especially scholars and academics.”

Living the View

A questioner asks how to approach “justification should be uncompassionately murdered” at a practical level. NR:

“Just approach it on a practical level… Just find yourself in your life situation and let that interplay be what is real. This, as far as I’m concerned, is the very heart of Tantric practice. The approach is to hold it in your heart. This is called living the view. You have to allow yourself to take in the transmission that is etched into those words.”

“Living the view is, actually, a matter of inspired application. On a practical level you would simply attempt to remain in the awareness of the view. You’d make a practice of attempting to remember the view whenever you recognised the pattern of justification colouring your perception.”

“That’s not particularly easy — but it is simple… Also… you have to make a practice of forgiving yourself for continually failing. That’s a valuable part of the process. It’s a practice simply to be a practitioner and, to keep that sense of recognition present.”

See Justification and View Meditation Action.

Space as Both Center and Periphery

Ch.11’s compressed statement of Ch.10’s dual-position principle:

“At the fringes, all the elements come to resemble each other… space is at the periphery as well as the centre.”

Consistent with Ch.10: space is both an element (with its specific associations — blue, khorlo, no-direction-no-season) and the ground from which all elements arise. Ch.11 generalises: any element explored in sufficient depth begins to display the others — “Once you look at any element in sufficient depth, you find the other elements beginning to manifest.”

Dive-Off-the-Cliff Vignette

NR’s extended illustration of the air-wisdom (“continually leaping out of emptiness into the present moment”):

  • Watching a woman dive from a low cliff; thinking “no way!”; visualising the gore; paralysed.
  • Distraction by unusual lady-birds (yellow, orange, enormous red); watching the red one feast on green aphids; forgetting the dive-anxiety.
  • After the lady-bird flew away: “I got up. I took a good long run and sailed off the cliff edge… I was in the water plummeting down — then I was turning slowly and rising to the surface.”
  • NR’s reflection: “Whatever it was that allowed me to make the dive was the space I had experienced while observing the tiny movements of the lady-bird. The decision to dive was the first idea that sprang from that space. If I’d questioned the impulse to dive, I would have been plunged back into emotional turmoil. If the intellect had cut in, it would have been back to the beach for me on foot.”

Structural insight: the space-between-thoughts (opened by the lady-bird-observation) is what permits the dive. The first-impulse-from-space is pre-intellect; any intellectual review collapses it back into incapacity. Practice-application: “It doesn’t just apply to taking physical risks; it can also apply to emotional risks. ‘She who hesitates is lost’.”

Intrinsic Seduction — Practice Notes

KD on the “coital quality of intrinsic seduction as the fabric of reality” (a Ch.8 fire-element phrase):

“Understanding the idea of intrinsic seduction is not really a matter of intellect. We could talk about it, but I feel that you’d be better off resonating… Or maybe just try looking at something that you like. Look at the colour of something. Look at something you find enjoyable, and allow yourself to experience the enjoyment. What is the nature of that enjoyment? What is your connection with that object? What is it like to look at a mountain, or a cherry? What is it like to hear bird-song? What is it like to feel velvet? Is this a one-way process — or is this, in some inexpressible way, a communication? You see, the intellect is a sense field. You don’t have to understand everything through that one sense field. The fundamental genius of Tantra is that the sense fields are interconnected. You can feel with your mind and think with your nose.”

Intellect as sense-field-among-six; the cross-sense-field perception as native to Tantric phenomenology. “There are not such strict boundaries between them.”

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