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Excerpt from The Five Wisdom Energies
From Chapter One: Discovering Energy My Story One summer day in 1976, I was sitting in a friend's apartment in Boulder, Colorado, where we were both assistant teaching at Naropa University, a school that focuses on training in the arts, Buddhism, and contemplative psychotherapy. Naropa's founder, the Tibetan meditation master Chögyam Trungpa, had written a book called Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, which I was reading. The following passage caught my eye: "In the Tantric tradition energy is categorized in five basic qualities or Buddha Families: Vajra, Ratna, Padma, Karma and Buddha. Each Buddha family has an emotion associated with it which is transmuted into a particular 'wisdom' or aspect of the awakened state of mind. The Buddha families are also associated with colors, elements, landscapes, directions, seasons, with any aspect of the phenomenal world." Reading those words aligned me with my world. It confirmed many feelings and experiences that I had had in my life. Though I had not yet begun to practice sitting meditation and knew almost nothing about contemplative traditions, somehow I instinctively knew about the energies of which he wrote. My immediate connection came from my life as a dancer, choreographer, and teacher. I was passionately interested in examining the dynamic qualities of expressive movement. For example, I had choreographed a piece about animals called "In Wildness," which explored how a prairie dog moves in contrast to a deer, how the energy of a flock of birds contrasts with the feeling of a lion coming in for the kill. In other dances I explored human emotions—the heat of love, the strength of anger, the stiffness of pride, the sparkle of joy. Reading Chögyam Trungpa's words that day changed my life. It led me to a contemplative tradition with an understanding of energy at its core that acknowledged the inherent sanity and richness of my art discipline—and life—while allowing me to step onto a meditative path. For the next few years, the five Buddha families increasingly became part of my dance work. As they did, my awareness of these energies began to color my perspective in other aspects of my life, particularly my relationships with people. Why was it that one man brought out my intellectual curiosity and another my physical desire? Why did I feel at ease with one person and anxious with another? Why would I feel powerful in one situation but inhibited and frustrated in another? What was the energetic relationship between myself, these people, and these situations? Seven years later I was able to begin working with the practice associated with the five energies—that of taking postures in colored environments to heighten their qualities. (See appendix B, "Maitri Programs.") At that time I staffed a three-month program in which people practiced like this in depth. Meanwhile, I had become the director of undergraduate dance and dance therapy at Naropa. I was seeing dance students become extremely self-conscious about their creative work when they began to practice meditation. It dawned on me that to hear the message "Be who you are," which the five wisdom energies work had brought home for me, might also be helpful for them. Gradually I introduced energies work into the dance curriculum. When I realized that I had become more interested in my students as people than as artists, I took a degree in contemplative psychotherapy and worked as a therapist. As my work with the five energies evolved, I became more interested in group dynamics and moved into organizational development work and education. Today I train, consult, facilitate, and coach with the five energies work for health professionals, leaders in organizations, educators in schools, artists, and private clients. In writing this book, I drew from the teachings of Buddhist master Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and from my own experience and understanding, which is reflected in the examples, images, and exercises.
The Five Wisdom Energies The five wisdom energies pervade our very being, our interactions with others, and every aspect of the phenomenal world. They manifest in posture, emotional tones, and personality types as well as in landscapes, seasons, and environments. Each energy style expresses itself in some personality traits that we commonly classify as dysfunctional or neurotic and in some that we consider constructive or wise. Both troublesome emotions and pleasant ones arise out of this energetic matrix. The energies are easily identified by their colors, which hold the essence of their qualities. Just as light radiates, so does energy. The color of energy is like colored light. The following descriptions of the five energy families capture their colors as well as both their wisdom and their confusion:
In five energies work we often talk as if people were one type or another. Thus I refer to "vajra people" and "padma people." However, although certain individuals may manifest a particular family vividly, it is probably more accurate to say that Rebecca displays a lot of vajra energy than to say that she's a vajra person. Although someone's style of behavior might display one particular energy clearly, the other energies are always at play. It takes awareness, time, and practice to really understand the full range of energies within ourselves. We are all very colorful. As in any good novel, the people and their circumstances in this book are fictitious. Their stories are based on what I have observed, and sometimes I have simplified them to make a point.
Origins: A Practice for Westerners In the early 1970s Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche introduced a way of approaching the five wisdom energies, traditionally known as the five Buddha families, that made them accessible to non-Buddhists. His great friend and spiritual colleague Zen teacher Shunryo Suzuki Roshi was involved with the initial idea. The two of them observed that some people, especially those who were emotionally disturbed or confused, found traditional Buddhist sitting meditation difficult. They thought of creating a community where such people could live together and practice. The question was, what practice would they do? Unfortunately Suzuki Roshi died before the seeds of their discussion could bear fruit. But something was soon to happen to Trungpa Rinpoche that gave him an idea for putting their original inspiration into practice. While teaching a residential program in a hotel, Trungpa attended a party one night in someone's room. One person was creating a scene—singing and dancing, trying to get everyone else to join in. As the energy became more and more intense, Rinpoche felt the room becoming claustrophobic. Suddenly he realized that, in fact, they were in a box—four walls, ceiling, floor—and that the box was becoming colored by a particular energy. It reminded him of a traditional Tibetan Buddhist retreat practice using a small room in total darkness. Shortly after that evening Rinpoche started drawing diagrams of rooms. Eventually he designed five rooms, each with its own color and window shape. In each room the student would lie in a specific posture. The combination of space, color, and posture evoked and intensified one of the five basic energy patterns. The process of taking a specific posture in a specific room would allow the student to work through that particular neurosis and find the wisdom and sanity inherent in that energy. Thus Maitri Space Awareness TM practice—"Maitri" for short—was born. The word maitri in Sanskrit means openness and friendliness. Space refers to the total environment—not just of the room but also of the world at large. Space is the totality of experience. It includes everything in our sphere: what we think, see, feel, hear, touch. Awareness is our attentiveness to what is happening in that space. It was part of Trungpa Rinpoche's genius to present esoteric tantric teachings in an immediate and direct way that was accessible to anyone. With Maitri Space Awareness practice, anyone can experience and transform the energies of the five Buddha families. So although this practice is presented as a contemplative discipline, it is not presented in a traditional Buddhist format. (For further information see appendix B, "Maitri Programs," and appendix C, "Places to Practice Meditation and Maitri.")
Levels of Understanding When we begin to become aware of the energies,we see how our patterns of behavior, emotions, intellect, and temperament correspond to one or more of the five families. This awareness can become the foundation for developing a practical way of working with ourselves, others, and the phenomenal world. It's not that we'll filter every minute of our day through the perspective of the five colors. However, we will find that some situations become clear and workable only when we connect to their energetic dynamic. My children, Julian and Chandra, have been brought up on the five wisdom energies. As a result they better understand many aspects of their lives: their own style, their relationships with others, where they feel at home. They talk about the energies of their friends, teachers, and work colleagues. They also enjoy observing people's styles in movies and books. They are attuned to environments and how they react to them: earthy, more ratna Chandra loves to live in the country and care for animals; fun-loving, speedy padma/karma Julian loves cities. His padma passion dramas over the years have given us occasion for many a conversation about the energetic patterns of relationships. The importance of developing a sense of loving-kindness—maitri—toward ourselves plays a big part in working with the five wisdom energies. It is a universal truth that we all want to love and be loved. Yet what we often miss in desperately seeking love from others or loving blindly without reserve is that what we most need is to love ourselves. It is only when we love ourselves that we can love others; it is through loving ourselves that we become lovable. No matter how many times we hear it or from whom, this message is all too easy to forget. Loving ourselves has to do with accepting, relaxing, opening, and feeling warmth. Even as I write and remember this, I feel the tension in my body unwinding; I feel gentler toward myself. As I open to myself, I feel gentler toward others as well. The space provided by relaxing my body allows me to open to my sense perceptions. Looking out my window, I see that it is a beautiful day; I almost missed it. Gentleness toward myself feels peaceful. I notice that I breathe more deeply and easily. I am no longer struggling against myself or what's around me. I feel comforted by the openness of my own heart. This nourishment is coming from within. This is maitri. Working with maitri in the context of the five energies is a way of tuning in to the energetic quality of life. When we experience loving-kindness, we allow ourselves to feel the energies without holding back; we have the potential to be brilliantly sane. With maitri we see that we and the world are fundamentally good. Maitri allows us to make friends with ourselves and our world. Five energies work is based on the premise that fundamentally we are good, sane, intelligent people. When we experience a sense of well-being, we know that, however bad we sometimes feel about ourselves, our sanity is intrinsic, fundamental. We discover that we accept more fully who we are and engage genuinely with every aspect of our lives. The unconditional friendliness of maitri is the key to the most powerful aspect of working with the five energies: transforming neurosis into wisdom. As a frequent flier, I never cease to be amazed that up there, above the clouds, the sun is always shining—twenty-four hours a day. Too often we forget this, see only the clouds, and become convinced that they are real. We make the clouds solid and identify with them. However, with maitri we can begin to see the clouds as transparent and illusory. In fact, we can fly right through them, though the ride might get a little bumpy. When we identity with the sun, we are touching our intrinsic sanity. It is characterized by openness, clarity, and compassion. Knowing what the five energies are is only the beginning. To experience their transformative power, you need to tune in to them daily, refining your sensitivity and understanding. Direct experience speaks louder than words. So, please, jump in. This book requires your input, your engagement. Working with the five wisdom energies is not academic; it's experiential. The approaches offered here are intended to guide your experience, drawing it out as well as elucidating it. They encompass three stages: learning, contemplating, and embodying. In the learning stage, the five energies and ideas around them remain somewhat conceptual. In the contemplating stage, you start to feel affinity with the energies as part of who you are and spontaneously use them as a reference point. At the embodying stage, they become both psychologically and physically integrated, and there is no separation between what you understand intellectually and how you live. |
