Orderly Chaos: The Mandala Principle (Dharma Ocean Series) by Trungpa Chogyam

Author:Trungpa, Chogyam [Trungpa, Chogyam]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
Published: 2010-09-28T03:00:00+00:00

Part Two

MANDALA OF THE FIVE BUDDHA FAMILIES

Karmê Chöling, 1974

ONE

The Basic Ground

IN ORDER TO UNDERSTAND the mandala of the five buddha families, I think it is necessary for us to realize the implications of the mandala principle in terms of our psychological state and our awareness in our everyday lives.

First of all, there are some points concerning the ground that is in some sense serving our being. That is the ground of the five buddha families. The five buddha-family principles are not five separate entities. Rather, what we have is one principle manifested in five different aspects. We could speak of five different manifestations of one basic energy: a manifestation of its richness, of its fertility, of its intelligence, and so forth.

We are talking about one basic intelligence, so to speak, or one energy. A wide area of confusion and wisdom exists in the background of all the five principles, whether we look at them in their buddha, or enlightened, form or in their confused form. There is a basic pattern that is common to all that. It is the potentiality for enlightenment and the actual experience of confusion, pain, and so forth.

We are experiencing our existence, our being. If you look further into what that is, intellectually you can analyze it in all kinds of different ways. But if you are trying to find out what it is all about in terms of actual experience, it is hard to find the actual experience. It is hard, very hard, to find even a clear experience of confusion, one that is not colored by the rest of the emotions. In the actual experience, there is also a sense of uncertainty concerning existence or nonexistence (both being the same thing). It is not that we have a vague perception. It is a very clear perception, but it is undefinably clear. It is basically confusion. That kind of confusion is all-pervasive confusion; it happens throughout our life, in our waking hours and during our sleep. There is a rich and thick bank of uncertainty.

If we get into religious or metaphysical terminology, we could call it a soul or ego or godhead, or any number of other things. But if we do not want to use those kinds of terms because we do not know exactly what they mean, then we have to try to look as directly as possible at this experience without any preconceptions, without any terminology or labels. If we look closely, the closest experience we can get is a sense of unnameable confusion. This is a unique confusion, because it does not have a clear and distinct quality of “now I am confused” at all. You cannot even define it by saying it is confusion. And that is the kind of nondual state of confusion that goes on throughout all life.

Experience comes out of that and dissipates back into it. Energies arise and emotions appear. It all takes place within this one all-pervasive state of being, or area. I think it

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