Verses 31-39 of the ancient Tantrik practice manual called the Vijñāna-bhairava-tantra present us with some fairly esoteric practices. Honestly, I have no idea why the compiler of the text would put such esoteric practices up front, apart from the possibility that in the year 850 CE these particular practices were already well-known to the author’s audience of Tantrik initiates and so seem esoteric only to us. At any rate, verse 32 gives us quite a beautiful and fascinating practice, even if we can’t be sure of its details.
VERSE 32, Yukti #6 (of 112):
शिखिपक्षैश् चित्ररूपैर् म.ङ्दलैः शून्यपञ्चकम् |
ध्यायतोऽनुत्तरे शून्ये प्रवेशो हृदये भवेत् || ३२ ||
śikhi-pakṣaiś citra-rūpair maṇḍalaiḥ śūnya-pañcakam |
dhyāyato 'nuttare śūnye praveśo hṛdaye bhavet || 32 ||
Meditating on the Five Spaces as the colorful circles of the peacock’s feathers, one enters the Heart, the Supreme Space. || 32 ||
Word-by-word breakdown: śikhi = peacock (lit., 'having a crest'); pakṣa = feather(s); citrarūpa = colorful, wondrous, variegated; maṇḍala = circles; śūnya = space(s), opening(s), void(s); pañcakam = fivefold, set of five; dhyāyato = meditating, contemplating, imagining; śūnya = spaciousness, clarity, openness; praveśa = entry, immersion (into); hṛdaya = the Heart, the core-essence, the Ultimate, the ground of being; bhavet = one will (certainly) enter.
No one can know for sure the practice intended by the author here, but there are a number of elements that we can unpack and illuminate. In the Tantrik literature, the five sense apertures (mouth, nose, eyes [which count as one]* and the two ears) are commonly called ‘spaces’ (śūnya) and sometimes ‘circles’ (maṇḍala)—but they are commonly considered as separate from each other, while the five circles of the peacock’s feather are clearly nested one inside the other (see the image). This, I argue, is the key to the verse.
In this interpretation, the outermost purply almost-circle is sense-field #1, the next yellowish one circle is sense-field #2, the big orangey circle is sense-field #3 (the visual field, which tends to dominate), the teal one is sense-field #4, the pure black is sense-field #5, and the cobalt blue inside the black is the Heart (aka the Supreme Space, anuttara śūnya).
Since we are instructed to meditate on the sense-apertures as the circles on the peacock's feathers (a point missed by all other available translations), that clearly implies that we should allow the sense-fields to merge. The idea may be to intentionally nest the subtler sense-energies inside the coarser ones—i.e., sound-sense nested inside touch-sense inside visual-sense inside taste inside smell, this being the traditional order—or perhaps that level of detail is not intended here, and you are simply supposed to let all the sense-fields merge into a single sensual field, as if you had a single sense-aperture. Then, the verse suggests, all the phenomena within the single sense-field are to be perceived as vibrations within vast emptiness (the ‘Supreme Space’), decorating it (citra-rūpa) without disturbing it. All the sense-objects dissolve into the space of the innermost Heart, the formless ground of the merged sense-maṇḍala, and that ground is of course pure Being, Awareness itself ( = Bhairava). This is a form of laya-yoga, the yoga of dissolving.
Now, at the very center of the nested circles of the peacock’s feather, you can see an incredible iridescent cobalt blue, and probably not coincidentally, this is the traditional color of Anuttara Śiva, absolute consciousness. The verse explicitly says that through this meditation, one enters the anuttara śūnya, the Supreme Space, which is the absolute Heart of Being.
Having said all this, the ‘five spaces’ could also refer to the five primary cakras in the Trika lineage (pelvic floor, low belly, heart, palate, and crown, which are sometimes called the five voids or spaces) in which case the practice here is to merge those five cakras into one (as taught in Tantrāloka chapter 29) and thereby enter the nonlocal absolute center, the Heart. But to have a five-cakra system implied immediately after the text has established a twelve-cakra system in verse 30 seems unlikely.
However, we do have a problem here that remains unresolved: since the sense of touch does not correspond to an opening/aperture, how are we to understand the practice? Five spaces are explicit here, so it seems very unlikely that touch would be omitted, as it is one of the five senses. Perhaps then this is a point in favor of the five cakras interpretation? Or perhaps we are to consider the five elements that correspond to the five senses—space, wind, fire, water, and earth—as void, as empty of any essence other than awareness itself, and that leads us into the Supreme Space.
Assuming that the five senses are the primary referent here, allow me to present a guided practice that illustrates how this might work in direct experience. The practice is a kind of laya-yoga, where you start with tuning into one sense and then offering it or merging it into the subsequent sense. You don’t necessarily need to follow this order, but in the traditional order of things we would begin with the sense of smell. Maybe you light a little incense or something and you immerse yourself in the sense of smell completely. Then after a little while, you ‘offer’ this sense of smell into the sense of taste—dissolving it into the sense of taste. You could perhaps do this by smelling something and then eating something that has a corresponding flavor. The sense of smell is offered and merged into the sense of taste. Then, the next step in the traditional order is not particularly intuitive for most people: the sense of taste gets offered or merged into the sense of sight. It’s not just shifting attention from one sense to the next, but merging the senses successively so that they’re collapsing in, so smell and taste have both merged into the sense of sight. Then all of those senses get offered into and merged into the sense of touch. This offering process where awareness gets more and more subtle is impossible to describe in words. Now, this sequence might not work for you, because here we have a premodern cultural model of how the senses are organized. We’re much more highly stimulated visually than people were a thousand years ago—we’re constantly bombarded by visual stimuli, so the visual field occupies a different place relative to the other senses for us. Therefore, you could change the order of things in the practice, and that wouldn’t invalidate the practice at all. In the traditional order, sight gets dissolved into touch, the whole tactile field, and now all the senses are now dissolved in touch except for hearing. And then the sense of touch is dissolved into the sense of hearing, the sense of sound. There’s nothing but vibration. Then from sound to silence. You’re listening to the silence underlying and pervading all the sounds—the silence within which all sounds take place. From there, it’s relatively easy to slip into what some would call a samādhi state—a state of profound inner stillness and silence, where all the senses now have merged into this state of silence and stillness. That doesn’t mean your senses turn off necessarily—that you don’t hear or perceive anything at all. But rather, if there are sensory stimuli, they’re barely noticeable; they’re not grabbing the mind even though they’re there in the background. So here’s one version of a practice instruction you could work with, taking into account our modern orientation to the senses:
Become aware of the entire field of perception. Soften your gaze, go into soft focus, and look at the whole visual field simultaneously. Can you be aware of the entire visual field, all the way out to the periphery, equally and simultaneously? Be with the whole visual field; the details don’t matter now. After a minute of that, or however long you want, close your eyes and offer the visual field into the sense of taste. Bring your awareness to the tongue and the mouth—tuning into that sense of taste. And after a minute of that, offering that taste-sense into the sense of smell. Even if you smell nothing, you’re just tuning into the nose and the air in the nostrils—make sure the jaw is relaxed by the way. Then you offer the sense of smell into the sense of touch, bringing your awareness to the whole body, the entire surface of the skin and the feeling of touch. The clothes on your body, the temperature of the air on your face, and also inner touch, meaning the feeling of breathing, the movement of the diaphragm, the rise and fall of the belly and or chest. After reposing in the full awareness of the sense of touch, then offer it into, merge it into the sense of hearing. The whole sound-field is predominant now. All the other senses are still present, they’re just merged with the sense of hearing. Almost as if it’s sound that emanates anything else that you feel. The sense of hearing is predominant, so it’s like you’re listening with the whole body—listening to everything in the present moment. The silence as well. The silence within which all the sounds occur. The profound stillness underlying all activity. Until, seemingly without effort, you just slip into silent, still, spacious presence. Nothing can disturb it. You might even feel that that profound, all-inclusive silence emanates from the very heart of your being, the very heart of what you are.
FOOTNOTE:
* Here the eyes count as one aperture, possibly because the two eyes sum their visual data into a single visual field, whereas the ears count as two, presumably because even though they perceive a single auditory field, the distinction of their data is necessary to perceive sounds spatially. (To this hypothesis someone could object that two eyes are necessary to create depth of the visual field, to which I would respond simply: perhaps our 1200-year-old author didn’t know that.) At any rate, we are presented with the received notion of five sense apertures without explanation of why the eyes count as one and the ears as two.
Simplified practice instructions (be sure to read the more detailed version above first!):
(from the forthcoming set of VBT “flash cards,” designed by Jessica Molina)
ALTERNATE TRANSLATIONS:
a) The yogī should meditate in his heart on the five voids of the five senses which are like the five voids appearing in the circles of motley feathers of peacocks. Thus will he be absorbed in the Absolute void. (SINGH)
b) Meditating on the five voids (of the sensations) by means of the spheres (of the senses), variegated in form (like) the feathers of a peacock, (the yogi experiences) entry into the most excellent (anuttara) Void within the Heart (of consciousness). (DYCZKOWSKI)
c) By meditating on the five voids of the senses which are like the various colors of the peacock's feathers, the yogi enters into the Heart of the absolute Void. (BÄUMER)
d) Contemplating the fivefold empty (sense fields) as being (like) the designs, wondrous and illusory, of the peacock's feathers, one shall enter the heart, absolute emptiness. (DUBOIS)
e) Like the five different coloured circles on the peacock's feathers, one should meditate on the five voids. Then by following them to the end, which becomes the principle void, enter the heart. (SATSANGI)
f) Meditate on the five voids in the form of the five colored circles on a peacock’s tail. When the circles dissolve, one will enter into the Supreme Void within. (CHAUDHRI)
g) Through meditation on the five voids appearing in the form of circles as maṇḍalas on the variegated feathers of a peacock, one reaches the ultimate void in the heart. (Singh & Maheśvarānanda)
h) Imagine the five coloured circles of a peacock feather to be your five senses disseminated in unlimited space and reside in the spatiality of your own heart. (ODIER)
i) Or, imagine the five-colored circles of the peacock tail to be your five senses in illimitable space. Now let their beauty melt within. (REPS)
j) By contemplating peacock feathers—how the color and forms of the color spots morph into each other and, finally, into black nothing in the very center—and, in a similar fashion, contemplating sounds, smells, tastes, and sensations of touch, while placing manas into the anāhata-cakra, an entry to the unsurpassed void can occur. (SEMENOV)
* * * * *
In this post I’ll also present verse 33, since the original author explicitly links it to verse 32.
Verse 33, Yukti #7:
īdṛśena krameṇaiva yatra kutrāpi cintanā |
śūnye kuḍye pare pātre svayaṃ līnā vara-pradā || 33 ||
By this very same process, in whichever [substrate] one’s thinking-mind spontaneously dissolves—whether an [inner] space, a [blank] wall, or a perfectly shaped vessel—such dissolution bestows the boon [of the Bhairava-state]. || 33 ||
Word-by-word breakdown: īdṛśena = by this; krama = process; eva = particle of emphasis; yatra kutrāpi = whichever, in whichever place; cintanā = thinking mind; śūnye = in/on a space or opening; kuḍye = in/on a wall; pare pātre = in/on a ‘perfect’ vessel, a worthy vessel, or a pure-hearted person; svayam = spontaneously; līnā = dissolve(d); vara-pradā = boon-granting, wish-fulfilling.
I think para-pātra is to be taken literally, as a referring to a well-formed bowl or vessel, and not, as the commentators take it, metaphorically, in the sense of “a worthy disciple”. However, the latter reading shows that the commentators understand this text as a manual for a guru.
The thing that really tips the interpretation in this direction I’ve indicated in my translation is the opening phrase of the verse, īdṛśena krameṇiva, “by this very same process.” Clearly we can’t read this verse in isolation, so “by this very same process” seems to refer back to the previous verse, which teaches a practice of dissolution of increasing subtly, a kind of laya-yoga. And here, in this verse, we have the verb līnā, which means dissolved. So we’re still in the realm of some form of laya-yoga. Now, when we look in the commentary, the gloss or explanation of “by this very same process” that the commentator gives is “through the process of letting go and receiving,” which is a bit surprising. Perhaps hāna-ādāna—letting go and receiving—gives us a clue to the previous verse as well: that, when we transition from one sense field to another, it’s a matter of letting go of one and then really fully receiving the next, according to this commentator.
At first glance, you could just read verse 33 to be saying, “Hey, meditate on an open space, on a blank wall, or on an empty cup,” a very Zen-like practice (and this is around the time Zen was just getting going [in China, under the name ch’an]). Take a beautiful ceramic pot and just look at the space inside of it and become absorbed in that space—some have read that verse in precisely that way. But the phrase “by this very same process” definitely implies there’s some kind of sequentially intended here, as we had in the previous verse. So, if we look more carefully at the commentary, what do we find? Interestingly, the commentator brings back in the 12 cakras from verse 30. He talks about meditating on the 12 cakras as 12 open spaces, and then he makes an argument that “yatra kutrāpi” means “here [then] there”—i.e., meditating on those 12 cakras in sequence, letting go of one and receiving the next in sequence, either in one’s own body or in the body of another person. Now, not just any person, he clarifies, but somebody special—the body of one’s own guru or, if one is a guru, one could do this meditation on the body of one’s disciple, where pare pātre could mean a student who has a pure heart. A pure-hearted student would be a “worthy vessel” for this meditation if you’re a teacher, or vice versa. This is an interesting statement—it’s not really there in the verse per se, but it’s true that pātra, ‘vessel’, can also mean a human being, specifically a person who is a vessel of good qualities.
The commentator is saying to meditate on the 12 cakras as 12 spaces in one’s own body or in another person’s body, but not just anyone, somebody who you love and admire and respect and feel connected to, whether as a student or a teacher. You are to infuse the prāṇa-śakti, the life-force energy, in each cakra successively while letting go of the previous one. To me it seems a bit of stretch too far beyond what the verse itself says.
What else can we glean from the commentary? The verse promises a boon. The commentator clarifies that we’re not talking about some kind of magical thing here, but the rather about bestowing utkṛṣṭa-vastu, literally “an awesome thing”, specifically the arising of the experience of para-prakāśa, the supreme light of consciousness.
What does the verse itself compel us to understand? The practice here is just not crystal clear, but we know that some form of laya-yoga is involved here, some form of sequential dissolution like in the previous verse, and we should take whatever substrate (yatra kutrāpi) that causes the thinking mind to spontaneously dissolve, and probably that substrate is a space of some kind. But then the verse mentions a wall (kuḍya), presumably a blank wall. What’s clear is this: take the substrate for contemplation that helps the thinking mind spontaneously dissolve, and then you’ll experience the Bhairava state.
Alternate translations:
a) In this way, successively, wherever there is mindfulness on whether void, on wall, or on some excellent person, that mindfulness is absorbed by itself in the supreme and offers the highest benefaction. (SINGH)
b) Wherever one’s (attentive) thought (cintanā) (settles) by this same process, be it in an empty space, on a wall, or on a worthy disciple, it spontaneously dissolves away into it and (so) bestows the boon (of pure consciousness). (DYCZKOWSKI)
c) In the same way, if one concentrates one’s awareness on anything, be it an empty space, a wall, or a worthy disciple, this (energy of concentration) will merge by itself and bestow grace. (BÄUMER)
d) By that very process (of the twelve steps of rising through the subtle body), wherever (one projects one’s) awareness (cintanā)—(that is), in empty (sky), in a wall, in another (body or) in a (worthy) vessel, (like a good disciple), She who is the Giver of Boons will (go back) hide into Herself. (DUBOIS)
e) In this way, wherever there is mindful awareness, either on the void, or on another (object such as a) wall, or on an excellent person (such as the guru), gradually the boon of absorption into the self is granted. (SATSANGI)
f) Similarly, by gradually focussing one’s attention on anything, whether on space, or a wall, or a great person, one is completely absorbed into the Supreme Reality. (CHAUDHRI)
g) Through meditation on this way on the twelve stations of the Kuṇḍalinī or on an empty wall, on some person of excellence or even on anything whatsoever, all of one’s mental modifications disappear, and the result is attainment of the state of blessedness. (Singh & Maheśvarānanda)
h) Void, wall, whatever the object of contemplation, it is the matrix of the spatiality of your own mind. (ODIER)
i) Similarly, at any point in space or on a wall—until the point dissolves. Then your wish for another comes true. (REPS)