by Paul Greer
A Buddhist Reflection: Ignorance, Wisdom and Perfect Wisdom
Wisdom cannot be separated from ignorance. One presumes the very existence of the other. But what is “ignorance” (avidya)? For Buddhists it may imply many things – a lack of understanding of the impermanent nature of the self; clinging to objects and ideas that change; living in the memories of the past or in the expectations of the future; a disregard for the consequences of our actions; a general unawareness of the endless round of Samsaric life. At the bottom line, ignorance is to exist in a fabricated dream-world of our own creation that we believe to be real. It is to live in “delusion” (moha). Yet, within the parameters of Buddhism’s non-dualistic understanding of reality, “awakening” is not the Gnostic flight from matter to spirit, nor the neo-Platonic ascent of the soul. It means changing our perceptions of the only world we have. As Ayya Khema puts it, we only really have to change ourselves because there is “nothing to change out there.”10 Thus in Buddhism, the realization of the spiritual world that exists “behind” the High Priestess’ veil is nothing more or less than that which Thich Nhat Hahn describes as “the removal of wrong perceptions.”11
In Theravada Buddhism especially, the removal of wrong perceptions is achieved through the practice of Wisdom in tandem with Morality and Meditation. These three are the conduits through which skillful cetana is centered and directed. In the Theravada tradition, Wisdom is concerned with the cultivation of Right View and Right Intention.
Right View means ultimately to see things as they really are. To begin with, this entails reflection upon the core aspects of the Buddha’s teachings; for example, the Three Marks of Existence that are said to characterize all aspects of the phenomenal world – suffering (dukkha) impermanence (anicca) and no-self (anatta). Analysis of the so-called “self” leads to awareness of the aggregates from which our sense of self arises. Reflection upon dukkha leads to an appreciation of how suffering or unsatisfactoriness arises through thirst, craving, and attachment to objects that turn out to be impermanent. Reflection upon thirst (tanha) leads to insights concerning how our grasping attitudes are conditioned by sensations that arise through our sense organs. Yet Right View means more than a mere intellectual understanding of these ideas. A reasonably-intelligent person is well-aware that this thing we call our “self” is often more elusive and insubstantial that we sometimes like to think; but this basic appreciation will not make much of an impact upon our lives. Right View, as Rahula points out, is not merely having an intellectual grasp of something (anubodha), but “penetration” (pativedha) into that thing, which can only be developed properly through meditation.12 Khema concurs, and points out that there is a real difference between an intellectual understanding of impermanence and no-self, and “knowing” and “feeling” these truths in meditation.13
In Theravada Buddhism, Wisdom is also linked to Right Intention. This constitutes the type of ethical outlook that must be cultivated alongside Right View, but to some extent arises naturally out of it too. Right Intention involves the cultivation of attitudes of harmlessness, detachment, and renunciation. What Buddhism recognizes here is that most of our unskillful actions are based upon the opposite kinds of mental attitudes – hatred, attachment and greed. Right Intention is therefore linked with skillful actions in the world, whether of body, speech, or mind. These actions are enmeshed in the ethical requirements of the path – Right Speech, Right Action and Right Livelihood. Here, Buddhism recognizes that our actions, and even the very professions we pursue, are not simply indications of a “good” or “bad” character, but reflections of our wisdom or lack of it.
The general message of Mahayana Buddhism is that the earlier Buddhist perception of Wisdom was appropriate for a particular time, but it is not as penetrative as it might be. The suggestion voiced in texts like the Lotus Sutra is that in his skillful means the Buddha did indeed “hold back” insights that could only be divulged when the time was right. This approach is explained in a variety of parables, including that of the Phantom City. Here, the Buddha is depicted as a guide, leading his followers through the wilderness of Samsara to the City of Jewels. His followers, too tired to go on, feel they must head back. In response, the Buddha conjures up a “Phantom City” in which the explorers can rest until they have gathered enough strength to carry on. The earlier view of Wisdom is just this very Phantom City. By contrast, the Mahayana or “Great Vehicle” offers what it considers to be the Perfect Wisdom (Prajnaparamita); the Wisdom that goes beyond the limited and provisional scope of the Hinayana (“Little Vehicle”) perspective.
This Perfect Wisdom was encapsulated in a type of literature of the same name, and includes such texts as the Prajnaparamita, Diamond and Heart Sutras. At the same time, the notion of Perfect Wisdom became personified as a goddess, who, like our High Priestess, stands as a mediator between wrong and right perceptions of the world. Her unsurpassed status is captured in an invocation from the Prajnaparamita Sutra of 8000 Lines, in which she is described as “Emptiness,” the “wisdom of the Buddhas,” and the one who “turns the wheel of the dharma.” 14
Prajnaparamita as goddess is usually depicted with four arms, two of which are in a meditation gesture, suggesting that penetrative wisdom cannot be attained through knowledge alone. Like our High Priestess, she also holds a book in her hand, representing the teachings which reveal the reality she embodies – emptiness.
One of the key insights of the Prajnaparamita sutras is that since no beings truly exist as separate, substantial realities, then ultimately, no “beings” actually experience Nirvana. Nor can it be said than any “beings” actually experience the sufferings of Samsara. One jarring feature of the texts is placing such penetrative insights alongside the conventional wisdom of the earlier teachings. Thus we read in the Heart Sutra that there is no ignorance and no end to ignorance, no suffering and no path.15 Similarly, according to the Buddha in the Diamond Sutra, although “I have thus delivered immeasurable beings, not one single being has been delivered.”16
Another insight of the Prajnaparamita perspective, and a counterpoint to the view expressed in The Magician, is that enlightenment cannot be conceived of as the end result of a causal process. If it was, it would be dependant upon something for its existence, making it Samsaric. Nirvana simply is. This insight is expressed in the Diamond Sutra, in its denial of the thirty-two marks as indicators of enlightenment. In his commentary on this text, Edward Conze notes that the marks are traditionally associated with the accumulation of positive qualities gained from “a hundred acts of merit.” This, as we have seen, was certainly Asita’s view on things. From the perspective of Perfect Wisdom however, enlightenment is “not produced by anything.”17 All beings carry within themselves the Buddha Nature, and the potential to actualize it. As the 13th-Century monk Nichiren reasoned - even a heartless rogue loves his wife and children, and in this way, manifests to a certain degree that “bodhisattva world” within.18
In Theravada Buddhism, Right View gives birth to Right Intention – the cultivation of harmlessness, renunciation and detachment. In a similar way within Mahayana Buddhism, Prajnaparamita gives birth to compassion (karuna). True compassion in Buddhism as we have said is not just based upon feelings of kindness or generosity, but upon identification. It originates from the abandonment of the self, and a subsequent expansion into wider fields of identification. As Shantideva puts it:
By constant use the idea of an “I” attaches itself to foreign drops of seed and blood, although the thing exists not. Then why should I not conceive my fellow's body as my own self? … I will cease to live as self, and will take as my self my fellow-creatures. We love our hands and other limbs, as members of the body; then why not love other living beings, as members of the universe? By constant use man comes to imagine that his body, which has no self-being, is a “self”; why then should he not conceive his “self” to lie in his fellows also?19
The Empress (3)
General Overview
> As a pair, The Empress and The Emperor suggest more “earthy” reflections of those abstract ideas presented in the previous two cards. There are though a number of ways in which this Empress-Emperor relationship can be conceived. From a Jungian perspective, the pair represent a complementary dyad, symbolizing those forces and qualities involved in personal development, whether familial or social. The Empress here conforms to the “mother archetype”; the idealized depiction of the “feminine” and the “motherly” qualities of nurture, relationality, sensuality, sexuality and fecundity. Such qualities are often projected onto some divine figure, illustrated in the card’s associations with various Earth Mother goddesses, including Cybele, Demeter and even Venus. The Emperor here conforms to the complementary “father archetype,” associated with authority, law, order, structure, reason, and emergent identity. Divine figures associated with this archetype may include Zeus and the “Heavenly Father” of the Abrahamic faiths.
Another way to envisage the relationship between both is in terms of a cultural “transition,” reflecting the popular view of a prehistoric shift from matrifocal to patriarchal culture. In the movement between the cards we find, says Sallie Nichols, the shift from a “matriarchal realm” focused on communality and the celebration of natural cycles, towards the masculine world of Logos, reason, and the dominion of “spirit over nature.”1
A third approach is to view the two cards in relation to philosopher Owen Barfield’s developmental model of human consciousness and its relations with nature. In the era of Original Participation, humanity engages with nature in a pre-rational unconscious manner. The era of Separation indicates the rise of rational thought, of science and technology, in which humanity becomes separate observers of the world around. In the era of Final Participation, humanity moves once more towards a position of reconciliation with nature, grounded in a new holistic synthesis of reason, imagination, and creativity. Such reconciliation, I will argue, is suggested in the final cards of the Trumps.2
In the RWS deck The Empress reclines on an opulent throne with the symbol of Venus emblazoned on a nearby shield. She sits open-legged and pregnant, surrounded by images of a fecund world. As in The High Priestess, she holds dominion over an expanse of water; except here, it is the running waters of life, as opposed to the still, dark and deep waters of mystery and wisdom. She wears a three-tiered crown composed of twelve stars and a necklace of seven pearls, representing her presence within the entire cosmos.
In contrast with the notions of intuition, passivity and wisdom evoked by The High Priestess, The Empress represents the more earthy aspects of the feminine principle. In her presence we are reminded that the word “mother” is perhaps etymologically derived from the sound “ma,” the simplest cry of a child, and one from which we obtain many words connected with the processes of birth, life, and nurture – matrix, maternal, manifest and matter.
For Pollack, the earthiness of The Empress connotes a sense of “passion” - a life lived within the body, the world, the senses and our emotions; which, she argues, form the prerequisites for authentic spiritual development.3 Her views echo those of many contemporary Neopagans, like Starhawk, who places the true locus of spiritual value within bodies, nature, sensuality and sexuality, rather than some “abstract otherworld.”4
Yet, within the spectrum of possibility, The Empress evokes darker and more ambivalent connotations. This is a point recognized by Hajo Banzhaf, who sees a “wild, destructive” element within the dark and wooded background of this card.5 This neglected or hidden side of The Empress is more-readily seen in a number of “darker” stylizations; for example, in those of the Deviant Moon and Dark Grimoire Tarot decks. In Jungian interpretations, this is the “cruel” shadow of the mother archetype; the neglectful, uncaring, and distant parent. At a more metaphysical level, we are reminded that the Great Goddess of the Earth has a darker side too. In Egyptian mythology we find it in Sekhmet, the Powerful One - the ferocious side of Hathor who takes the form of a lioness to devour and butcher humans and drink their blood. In Celtic lore we find it in the figure of the Morrigan or Phantom Queen – the crow goddess of war, strife, and violent death. Campbell also reminds us that the rituals associated with the goddesses of the past were not all of the “nurturing mother” variety. There was as much sacrificial blood and gore in the twilight groves of the ancient Minoans it seems as there was “spiral-dancing.”6 According to feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, the rites of the ancient Mother Goddess were ambiguous in character, suggesting not only a sense of awe and marvel at nature’s fecund powers, but that of dread in relation to her more mysterious, chaotic and chthonic processes. If men worshipped the Goddess, or by reproductive association, women, it was because they “feared nature.”7
By the time of the Babylonian Enuma Elish in the 7th-Century BCE, and its description of the hero Marduk’s victory over Tiamat, it is clear that the Great Goddess of the Earth had become linked with a sense of chaotic violence and disorder. The subsequent centuries witnessed a profound shift in religious thinking, now concerned with spiritual deliverance above and out of nature, which by now had become associated with the notions of distortion, deception and enslavement. In some forms of ancient Gnosticism for example, this world of ours is viewed as a distorted reflection of a perfect Heavenly World; a counterfeit reality regulated by various celestial rulers (archons) who govern the stars and heavenly spheres above the earth. In Gnosticism, the “divine spark” within humanity is viewed as being “imprisoned” in matter, and subject to the harsh laws of a false god. These laws are designed to keep the spirit in a state of ignorance concerning its divine origins. The spirit is left to linger in a world of sensuality, deficiency, darkness, ignorance, illusion and terror. For many of the ancients, the uncertain qualities of nature prompted what Hans Jonas calls a “revolt against the world”; a “violent denunciation” of physical existence.8 For the Gnostics and other spiritualities of the time, nature, as Ruether says, became viewed as an “alien reality” and not our “true home.”9
Such observations seem to confirm the view discussed above that the shift from Empress to Emperor may reflect a shift in sensibilities regarding our bodies and the natural world. Many feminists and Neopagans would concur, and describe the history of Western spirituality in terms of a transition from an earth-based matrifocal culture, to a patriarchal one focused around attempts to control and transcend the confines of matter, the body, and the world.10
In the Story of the Buddha: The Death of Queen Maha-Maya
The Buddha’s mother, Queen Maha-Maya, makes for an interesting but enigmatic figure within the Buddha’s biography. According to Asvaghosa, she is “chosen” to be the Buddha’s mother on account of her piety, excellent stewardship over her subjects, and for her outstanding beauty and radiance among women:
Verily, the life of women is always darkness, yet when it encountered her, it shone brilliantly; thus the night does not retain its gloom, when it meets with the radiant crescent of the moon.
On account of her qualities as “the most eminent of goddesses to the whole world,” the Future Buddha, assuming the form of an elephant, “entered the womb of the queen of King Suddhodana to destroy the evils of the world.”11
As if the conception were not strange enough, the Future Buddha is said to have emerged from his mother’s side “unsmeared by any impurity,” like “a jewel thrown upon a vesture of Benares cloth.”12 Despite the fact that his mother delivered “without pain and without illness,”13 she dies mysteriously, seven days later, only to be reborn in the Tusita Heavens.
Perhaps the most enigmatic aspect of the story is the Queen’s name itself – Maha-Maya – which literally means the Great Illusion. Sometimes the texts refer to her as Maya-Devi – the Goddess of Illusion. The name immediately calls to mind a darker and more ambiguous dimension to The Empress just discussed – that of deception and distortion.
The concept of maya has a long evolutionary history within Indian thought.
In the early Vedas, it was associated with a magical power which allowed the gods to assume material form and create the phenomenal world. This sense of the term is even found in the Bhagavad-Gita, where it is related to the power which allows Vishnu to assume the form of an avatar. In Vedantic thought from the Upanishads onwards, maya takes on a more abstract and negative quality, viewed as an obstruction which prevents direct penetration into the nature of reality. In more mythological and theistic forms of Hinduism, the concept is associated with shakti – the feminine aspect of the divine which creates the world, but at the same time obscures its underlying nature. Of interest is the fact that this feminine principle became personified as Maha-Maya or Maya-Devi, sometimes linked with the Hindu figures of Kali and Durga.
Within Buddhism the concept of maya became internalized and psychologized, associated with the illusory nature of the ego and with our wrong perceptions of the world. This is especially evident within Mahayana Buddhism. Here, maya indicates our inability to grasp the reality of impermanence; the fact that life is no more than “stars, darkness, a lamp, a phantom, dew, a bubble.”14 Thus, the removal of maya in Buddhism, as it is in the Advaita Vedanta of the Hindu philosopher Sankara, is really a shift in our perceptions of the reality which is ever before our eyes. Maya is a perceptual error arising in the human mind, not a description of the world outside us. Unlike Gnosticism, Buddhism aims at clarity, not transcendence. Sankara’s well-known snake analogy, in which a person mistakenly projects the appearance of a snake onto a piece of rope, and believes it to be real,15 could equally-well apply to the Buddhist view of Samsaric experience.
