Tantra buddhist psychology
Only through tantra direct experience can we begin to perceive our world differently. Philosophical speculations and intellectual conjecture that are not experienced cannot be integrated into our fundamental perception of the world, - it will remain abstractions. It follows that the experience of tantra meditation practice is essential as a means of realizing the Buddhist view, for it is only within the development of the meditational experience that we become transparent to ourselves through witnessing the mechanics of our stylized perception. According to the Tibetan Tantra view there are three spheres of being: the outer world of our surroundings, the inner world of our perceptions, and a spatial continuum that underlines and interpenetrates both. This spatial continuum displays itself as five fields of primary energy, which make up the elemental basis of both external and internal phenomena. These fields are solidity or earth, fluidity or water, combustion (heat) or fire, motility or air wind, and emptiness or space without content. The primary purpose of Tantra is transmutation, which, rather than trying to 'get rid of our problems', facilitates the transformation of their intrinsically enlightened energy. Tantra sees us as being symbols of ourselves: we are not the ‘real thing’, simply colorful energetic of vibrant free energies that are utterly real. The enlightened being that you actually are, and have always been - this is ‘the real thing’, rather than the collection of neuroses, anxieties, and habits with which we are familiar. So, the pattern and individual character of our psychological and emotional framework is 'symbolic' in the sense that we symbolize our own enlightened being in ways that take the form of one or a number of the elemental fields: earth; water; fire; air; and space. Our expressed personality is derived from the encyclopedia of symbols of our enlightened nature. As such it offers the key to discovering that nature. Every state of mind, however distressed or distressing, is linked dynamically to an aspect of the intrinsic freedom of the non-dual play of our free elements. The Tantric methods reveal that mind is intrinsically free (unconstrained by symbols), and that this complete openness of mind needs to be personally disclosed rather than created. There is no concept here in which one has to artificially re-structure oneself according to a spiritually healthy philosophical perspective - all positivist intellectual formulations, are based either on wishful thinking or naïve idealism rather than on direct experience. So, although the view of our distorted emotional patterning which we are now about to explore may be a positively creative perspective, if it remains in the realm of theory it won't actually be of any real use. As soon as we are able to witness our stylized perception directly we will become aware whether what we are exploring is heartfelt or intellectually fabricated. When we are able to see ourselves in operation, then other people also become increasingly transparent to us, and this may facilitate compassionate responses of less restricted scope. In healing ourselves, we may develop the clarity and insight essential if we are to facilitate the healing of others.
To discover the raw methodology of embracing emotions as the path, we need some understanding of the tantric perspective, in which human beings are seen as lacking psychological health and freedom. In Tibetan medicine, the first premise which prospective doctors have to acknowledge is that they themselves are ill. The doctor/therapist - patient relationship is considerably influenced by the fact that Tibetan doctors see themselves as having specific knowledge to help others suffering from more severe and externally manifested variants of their own illness - the illness of duality. This duality is the mind-constructed division of emptiness and the forms which continuously arise from (and dissolve back into) emptiness. When we polarize emptiness and form, and then reject emptiness is favor of form, we enter into duality. This occurs when we react inappropriately to the intrinsic spaciousness of being in terms of mistaking the intrinsic spaciousness of being as emptiness. This maladaptive reaction appears to be our 'characteristic human predilection', and seems to evolve in five recognizable patterns of distorted experience. The five patterns take their character from the elements (earth, water, fire, air and space) as they manifest in terms of our emotional/psychological energies
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