Akshobhya: Transforming Hatred into the Mirror-like Wisdom

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Thank you and happy listening.

It's a big pleasure for me to be here.

I've got a connection with the Birmingham Buddhist Centre, quite a small connection but significant for me.

I used to live in Milton Keynes many years ago and there's no centre there.

So I used to travel down to the North London Centre mostly, but I also used to travel to Cambridge and to Birmingham

because those were my three nearest centres.

So I do remember coming to the centre in Salisbury Road all those years ago.

So who'd have thought I'd be up here now?

So I believe you're spending the year on this particular theme of ceasing to do evil,

learning to do good and purifying the heart, which is a pretty good way to spend the year really.

And you've finished a block on the precepts and this is the first evening looking at transforming the poisons into the wisdoms.

And we're using a particular representation, a particular symbol as a framework for this,

which is the symbol of the mandala of the five Buddhas.

Now that's a big juicy symbol and I can't possibly hope to do anything by way of introducing it very effectively

as well as talking about Akshobhya.

But I'll just say a few little pithy things I hope.

So the mandala of the five Buddhas is a way of conceiving of the awakened mind.

It's a symbol that tries to visualise the many different facets of the awakened mind

through five Buddha figures arranged in a kind of Maltese cross, if you like.

If we could hang ourselves up there and look down, you'd see it a bit more clearly.

But what we have on the corner here is Akshobhya, who I'll be talking about tonight, the blue Buddha.

And then in that corner we have Ratnasambhava.

And then behind me, or behind the Buddha over there, well in fact this Buddha as well, is Amitabha.

And then here we have Ratnasambhava.

And then here we have Amitabha.

And kind of in the centre of the mandala, who could be sitting up there, is Varochana.

And each of these figures embodies, amongst many other things, a particular wisdom.

So it's a way of conceiving the wisdom mind of the Buddha through five different facets.

And curiously, each of these figures also is associated with a particular poison.

To use the language of poison or affliction is the language I prefer.

So you're probably all familiar with the three poisons, the three afflictions of greed, hatred and delusion.

So this just throws in an extra couple for good measure.

We've got pride associated with Ratnasambhava and envy associated with Amoghasiddhi.

So we still have greed, hatred and delusion, plus pride and envy.

So there's something interesting about this relationship between the wisdoms and the poisons.

So we're talking about transforming the poisons into the wisdoms.

There's different ways of conceiving of this.

The way I'll talk about it is from the tantric tradition, which is where we see, we conceive of the human being.

Whereas in a way, already having a kind of Buddha nature, it already has a kind of awakened nature,

which has gotten distorted through the process of delusion, through the process of ego clinging,

of believing in ourself as a separate entity.

And when that happens, what happens to the wisdom is it gets distorted into a poison.

So I won't talk about all the other five, but I'll mention how this happens with Akshoga.

So first of all, I'll talk about Akshoga.

I'll mention how Akshoga embodies a particular wisdom and then try and connect that to the poison.

So the particular wisdom of Akshoga, he is associated with water.

And if you imagine a perfectly still day and a perfectly still lake,

for some reason the image of the lake outside of Dhana Kosha comes to my mind, for those of you who've been there.

Beautiful long loch in Scotland with mountains on the other side.

If you can imagine a still lake surface surrounded by mountains and trees, then you get a perfect reflection.

And the wisdom of Akshoga is called the mirror-like wisdom.

And this mirror-like, in a few different ways,

I'll just mention a couple of different ways in which it's like a mirror.

So a mirror, or at least a plain, perfectly flat mirror,

it reflects whatever falls to it without any kind of distortion.

It just reflects it as it is.

It's just a completely objective image that's formed from the mirror.

And that's what the mirror-like wisdom of Akshoga is like.

It's just things as they are.

It's just the situation in front of Akshoga, in front of the Akshoga mind.

It's just exactly how things are.

It's not distorted.

Which links in with the other quality of the mirror-like wisdom.

Mirrors, when they reflect an image, they don't pick and choose.

They don't like this bit of the image and distort it.

They don't like that bit of the image.

They're just completely impartial.

So the mirror-like wisdom of Akshoga is impartial.

It's equanimous.

It's objective.

And you'll notice that his colour is this dark blue colour.

It's, if you like, the colour of the sky at the very beginning of dawn,

just as it goes from black through to the first hints of blue.

Or even, I think, it's that colour that you sometimes see taken from high-altitude aircraft.

The colour of the sky when it's sort of almost, but not quite, out of the atmosphere.

So it's quite a cool colour.

So Akshoga is, in a way, feels like quite a cool image.

His quality feels quite cool because it's very equanimous.

It's not sort of biased.

But we mustn't let that make us think that this quality of wisdom is cool or disengaged.

I think that's the danger of looking at it in terms of this colour.

And that's why all the other images, all the other symbols of the five Buddhas are important

because there's lots of warmer colours there too.

And they all together form the wisdom of the Buddha mind.

So, okay.

So we've got Akshoga with his mirror-like wisdom, which is objective and impartial.

There's an old Chan text, Chinese Buddhist text,

that begins,

The great way is not hard if only you don't pick and choose.

And the whole, it's quite a long text.

The great way is not hard if you don't pick and choose.

So that's talking something about this mirror-like wisdom, I think.

If only we could give up the whole fight,

this life, in terms of picking and choosing,

wanting this, not wanting that,

it suddenly becomes a lot easier.

But the thing is, we can't short-circuit to that.

We can't just, well, it's not a good idea just to block our emotions and our wishes and wants.

We have to find a deeper way towards that kind of place.

So, I'll now mention his poison.

So it might seem strange that Buddha figures are associated with poisons.

But as I say,

what happens when the wisdom becomes distorted through ego-clinging,

through selfish grasping?

It gets distorted into a certain flavour,

a certain kind of poison, a certain kind of affliction.

And in the case of Akshobhya, that is hatred or anger or aversion.

And I think there's a few different ways we can understand this process.

So one thing to know about Akshobhya is,

and I'm just looking for...

I don't have one.

Is he holds, so his right hand is touching the earth

and his left hand holds a vajra.

So the vajra is a symbol of great energy,

of great power.

It's equivalent to Thor's thunderbolt.

Thor's hammer, sorry, Thor's hammer.

It's called the diamond thunderbolt.

And so it embodies all the energy of a thunderbolt

and all the energy of a thunderbolt.

And so it embodies all the energy of a thunderbolt.

And all the energy of a thunderbolt.

And all the clarity and cutting power of a diamond.

And this clarity and cutting power is used to cut through delusion.

It's used to cut through obstacles.

It's used to cut through suffering, the suffering of beings.

So it's a very potent symbol.

But if...

It's said that people who are given more to this quality of wisdom,

so it's as if individuals,

kind of manifest more of,

or are associated, or affiliated more with one of these Buddha figures than another.

We're said to sort of belong to one of these families.

So my name is Vajra Priya,

and as soon as Singhamati gave me this list of Buddha figures that we could talk about,

I said, I'll go for Akshobhya,

because I kind of associate myself,

I feel myself to be associated with the Vajra family

that Akshobhya is the head of,

is the head of the Vajra family.

So if one is a Vajra kind of person,

and has a greater affinity with the Miralak wisdom,

with the Vajra,

then with the inevitable distortions of ego-clinging,

what tends to happen is that Vajra tends to get used in the wrong way.

That energy gets directed in the wrong way.

It gets directed not to obstacles and to delusion.

It gets directed to people.

And more often than not,

when people seem to obstruct,

then the energy comes out towards them.

Another way of looking at it is that

when we take ownership of this Miralak wisdom,

we believe this Miralak wisdom is our own.

We take ownership of it.

We identify with it.

We think that we're really objective.

We really think we know what's right and what's best

and what they're doing.

We know what they're doing wrong.

And as soon as one takes possession of the Miralak wisdom,

you've already cracked the mirror.

You've distorted the mirror.

You're no longer objective.

We're distorting the situation,

and we've got a partial view of the situation.

The mirror is broken into pieces.

And so this, again,

comes out as anger.

It comes out as hatred.

And in particular,

any sort of flavor of dukkha,

which comes up in one's experience,

tends to immediately trigger aversion, hatred, anger.

So this is what tends to happen to us poor Vajra people.

So the question is, what do we do about that?

All right.

So I was asked to talk quite personally,

about how I work in my own practice on this one.

So this may not work for everyone.

But anyway, I'll say what I tend to do

and see if it works for you.

So one thing which I find important to recognize

is that every moment of aversion,

every moment of hatred, every moment of anger

is conditioned by suffering.

It's conditioned by doing.

It's conditioned by dukkha.

And it's easy for me to miss that.

It's easy for me just to go straight to aversion.

Something unpleasant is happening,

and I go straight to aversion.

I don't like this.

This shouldn't be happening.

I've got it wrong, whatever it is.

So the first thing for me to do

when I notice myself in aversion and hatred and anger

is to try to reconnect to this very basic experience

of dukkha, of suffering, however it's happening.

So if you've come across the wheel of life,

the links on the outside of the wheel of life,

this is trying to find that gap

between vedana, between feeling and craving,

or in this case, it's opposite, aversion.

We're trying to recognize

the raw existential level of unpleasantness

that's happening.

And one thing that I find very helpful for this,

quite apart from remembering,

which is the hardest bit,

remembering to look,

if I can actually remember to do that,

then I breathe it in.

You may have come across a practice called tonglen,

where you breathe in the difficulty,

you breathe in the pain.

And this is simply trying to go

in the completely opposite direction

to the usual direction of pushing it away.

The usual response to dukkha, to suffering,

push it away.

Blame someone else.

Blame myself even, still pushing it away.

It's not recognizing the simple existential reality.

This moment is unpleasant, or painful, or whatever.

So breathe it in.

And yeah, just to have that perspective

that this is conditioned by dukkha.

This experience is conditioned by suffering.

So a little example here.

So I'm quite familiar with techy stuff.

I'm quite patient with techy stuff,

in a funny kind of way.

I've got a general kind of belief

that one way or another, if I persist long enough,

I'll make it work somehow or other.

And I quite often help a friend

who's not very good with techy stuff.

And they get very impatient.

And when I'm with them, I'm very patient.

And when I'm with them, I'm very patient. And when I'm with them,

I get very impatient with them.

It's funny really, because, you know,

here I am, I'm patient with a machine,

but I'm not patient with a computer.

It's not funny, it's tragic.

There we go.

So my practice there is,

rather than getting aversive to their aversion

and their impatience,

it's just to breathe in my own tension

and their frustration.

It's recollecting that this anger of theirs

is their frustration and their suffering

and they find this really difficult.

And if I can just connect to that,

then suddenly the whole situation becomes easier.

Emotionally easier, if not technically easier,

it becomes emotionally easier for both of us

rather than me getting impatient with them

and them getting impatient with the computer.

It doesn't help.

Breathe it in.

So that's the first thing.

Recognize all suffering is conditioned by...

Sorry, recognize all aversion is conditioned by suffering.

And I'm just saying that.

I suggest you go away and see is that true.

The second thing comes back to what I was saying

about the broken mirror, the distorting mirror.

So I reckon...

So certainly when I fall into the kind of hatred, anger,

which is conditioned by a judgment of someone,

it's to recognize that judgment.

What is the story in my head that I'm believing?

So this is what I was trying to do

in the fourth stage of the Metta Bhavana earlier.

Recognize those labels that I'm sticking on this person.

They're lazy.

They're bossy.

Whatever it is, recognize those labels.

Recognize the value that I've got in this particular instance.

I want people to be efficient and well-organized

and whatever it is.

They should be.

Look out for any shoulds.

They should be efficient and well-organized.

They should be able to understand this simple computer problem.

Just look out for those shoulds.

So recognize the labels.

Recognize the stories.

Recognize that I do not have the whole picture.

I do not have the whole picture.

I don't have the whole picture about the situation.

I definitely don't have the whole picture about them.

And if there's any kind of aversion in my experience,

that is distorting my understanding.

It's distorting my vision.

I cannot be objective when I'm experiencing aversion.

It just doesn't work

because the mirror is already bent out of shape.

So this, I think this connects with humility, actually.

I need the humility to recognize

that my perspective on this situation isn't complete.

It may be pretty good.

And Vajra people often do have quite a good perspective on things.

I don't want to take that away.

I'm told that I'm quite clear in situations.

But as soon as there's any kind of ill will, hatred, anger,

that's distorted out of shape.

If only because I'm sort of narrowing down

onto this one feature, this person in front of me.

It's not complete.

So that's the second thing,

is to try to clock the stories, the labels,

the views as I've got operating in that moment.

And that then gives me the freedom to do the third thing,

which is move out of the head,

and into the heart.

Drop down into the heart.

So there's a little text

that was written by an order member called Akupa.

And he called it something like

the Shambhala warrior mind training verses.

So it's a whole load of pithy little verses

which are designed to help those people

who are engaging in the world of the mind.

In transforming the world.

And one of those verses,

I recommend that you can look it up online, I think.

One of those verses goes,

sit with hatred until you feel the fear beneath it.

Sit with fear until you feel the compassion beneath that.

Sit with hatred until you feel the fear beneath it.

Sit with compassion until you feel the fear beneath that.

Sorry.

Sit with fear until you feel the compassion beneath that.

So this is a way of chunking down into the heart.

And what this says to me

is that fear very often underlies our hatred.

I can certainly feel that for myself.

It comes out in my experience as hatred

because I think I'm completely right about this.

It's a subjective situation.

I miss the fear.

So I'll give you a little example.

I was talking to a friend of mine.

I was asking him for some feedback

because he expressed some reservations about me.

And he reminded me of an occasion

when Bhante Sangharajita brought out a paper

called What is a Western Buddhist Order?

And he was reminding me

that I was going to be a Buddhist.

was having a bit of a rant to him about this. I don't remember the rant, I certainly remember

feeling upset about certain elements of this paper. And he said, you sounded very opinionated

and you just kept going on and on about this one little thing. And I said, yeah, I can

kind of believe that because what that paper did for me was it felt like it was undermining

a particular way that I was practicing. And that was scary. It felt like Banzai, my teacher,

was undermining a particular mode of my practice. And this friend of mine said, I completely

get that. I completely get that. If you'd have said that, I'd have really understood.

But you're just sort of going on and on about this particular doctrine that I was disagreeing

with. And this was a real lesson for me, that it's so easy for me to come from the

head and miss what's happening down here.

And if I could have come from down here and said, ooh, this thing that Banzai's just said,

this is upsetting me because it seems that he's undermining me. And that would have been

a big help if I could have done that at the time. So sitting with the hatred, with the

anger, and feeling the fear beneath that. This also works if you've got a self-critical

nature. It's really important, I think, if you find you've got one of these little voices

having a go at you all the time.

That little voice, I guarantee, is afraid of something. In my case, if it's having a

go at me for not practicing hard enough, it's afraid. It's afraid for me that I'm not going

to make more progress. That's the best it can do. All it can do is nag, it seems. So

I have to hear the fear in that little voice. And then, having felt the fear, I can feel

compassion for that place in me that's worried. And if we can do that for other people, and

if other people are angry, then they're probably afraid. And if we can connect to their fear,

then we can connect to compassion. But all too often, other people's anger conditions

our own defensiveness or whatever, and it just doesn't go very far. So if you can hear

fear in anger, that's a great help, I think.

So this is all about dropping.

Out of the head, into the heart.

So there's just a couple of other little things I wanted to say about this.

One is that I think there's a zeitgeist around, there's a kind of mood in our culture at the

time, which really endorses outrage and righteousness.

It's almost kind of the good liberal thing to do, to be outraged and righteous about

all these terrible people like Donald Trump and misogynists and racists and all the rest

of it. And there's very good reasons why there's this kind of tide that's happening. And as

I say, there's good reasons why there's concern. But the emotions of outrage and righteousness

are not good.

They are unhelpful, I would say. And what we need to be doing is finding much more creative

ways of engaging with the world than being triggered off into outrage and righteousness.

That's my own little sort of political rant over.

And ultimately, and this is true of all the different poisons, ultimately, any negative

mental state, any affliction, any poison, is not good. It's not good. It's not good.

It's not good. It's not good. It's not good. It's not good. It's not good. It's not good.

Any negative mental state is a failure of perspective. This is a little saying from

Ahlaka, one of our order members. Any negative mental state is a failure of perspective.

What's the perspective? Ultimately, we're all human. We're all trying. We're all

failing. We're all suffering. We're all going to die. And if we can connect to that

kind of perspective, then the irritations that crop up in life can find a bit more kind

kind of, yeah, they can take their rightful place in our picture of life.

Maybe it needs to be dealt with, but it doesn't have to be dealt with through anger,

or not through hatred anyway, because hatred is trying to destroy, ultimately.

And maybe I'll just say one more thing.

I'll say one more thing, which is about my name.

So, Shirdi Koti mentioned my name, Vajra Priya.

Priya means lover, and the Vajra is this symbol of ultimate reality,

the cutting nature of truth.

And when I was given this name, I was given a nice, favorable interpretation in public,

and my private preceptor called Kulananda, he gave me a little private teaching.

He said, if you want to know...

If you want to know your friends, you have to love your friends.

If you want to know reality, you have to love reality.

So he was bringing out the Priya aspect.

In order to have any kind of objective connection with reality, we need love.

It's not cool, it's not aloof, it's not separate, it's not clinical.

There's this involvement of love that's necessary.

So I think this is what brings us back to the mirror-like wisdom.

If we can do that little journey from hatred, from anger, through to feeling the suffering,

through to recognizing the distortions of our own mirror,

through to dropping down into the heart, into the emotions,

through fear, into compassion, into love,

then we can come up with a much more objective mirror-like wisdom.

And that's the appraisal of the situation, which isn't cool, it's not aloof, it's engaged, and it's loving.

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