by Paul Greer
In Buddhism, likewise, the quest for enlightenment begins with the apprehension of dukkha; the awareness that life is characterized by suffering and unsatisfactoriness. It is an amusing coincidence here that the word dukkha is derived from the negative prefix dus and the root kha meaning “hole,” and in its original context may have been used in reference to a chariot with a faulty wheel. Such a chariot may assist us in our travels, but the journey will certainly not be smooth nor enjoyable.
In his first teaching – Turning the Wheel of Dhamma Sutta – the Buddha differentiates between three forms of dukkha – ordinary suffering, suffering caused by change, and suffering as conditioned states. Ordinary suffering describes the suffering or unsatisfactoriness we experience at the everyday level, including being associated with people and phenomena we would rather not be with, and conversely, being separated from people and phenomena we are attracted too. Ordinary suffering also embraces our experiences of ageing, sickness, and death, not only in ourselves, but in those we love. These are the most visceral and potent pointers to the inevitable demise of our ego, and therefore, the most denied and suppressed by a society of heroic charioteers. Suffering caused by change derives from the reality of impermanence, both internally and externally, and how this affects us. We may find ourselves enjoying an excellent vacation, which, inevitably, comes to an end, and this generates dukkha. Or, we feel in love with someone - and yet suddenly wake up one day to find that this is no longer the case. The person may not have dramatically changed, but our internal appreciation of them has.
The third form of dukkha – as conditioned states – relates to the previously discussed view that the individual is comprised of five aggregates that generate and condition a sense of self, but that there is ultimately no “self” either between, behind or within these five constantly fluctuating and impermanent components. This idea of no-self is comprehensively explored in a well-known text called The Questions of King Milinda, where the curious but confused King asks the monk Nagasena to explain to him how he can not possibly have a self if he is plainly standing before him. The monk obliges, and uses the rather appropriate example of a chariot to do so. The chariot appears more than once within Indian thought as an analogy of human existence. In the Katha Upanishad the immortal “Self” as taken to be the chariot’s “passenger.” Nagasena’s “Buddhist” chariot by contrast seems somewhat less metaphysical. Nagasena begins by asking the king to reflect upon the chariot by which he arrived. “Is the pole the chariot?” asks Nagasena. “No.” replies the king. “Is the axle, wheels, chariot-body, yoke, or reins the chariot?” the monk inquires further. “No” comes the reply. In the same way, concludes Nagasena, the “person,” like the chariot, is a convenient designation for a certain gathering of components that when examined separately, or taken apart, reveal no underlying “self.” Terms such as “living entity” and “Ego” are in reality “a mode of expression,” but in the absolute sense, “there is no living entity there to form a basis of such figments as ‘I am,’ or ‘I.’”13
For Dominique Side, dukkha as conditioned states indicates “the background dissatisfaction” and insecurities we experience when we begin to confront, as the charioteer may, a dawning sense of our limitations and our general powerlessness; and, importantly, the apprehension that the fixed identity that we carve out for ourselves is perhaps “not who we really are.”14
Departure and Trials:
From Strength to The Tower
Introduction
For a significant percentage of Western individuals, it is fair to say that besides Death, The Chariot represents the terminal point in their journey through the Tarot. It is quite understandable why this is so, given that the card’s heroic qualities – youthfulness, will, adventure, self-determination, control, sexual prowess, success and victory – are not considered to be mere life options for Westerners, but self-evident ideals to be pursued to the bitter end. In the West they have become fetishized guarantors of one’s status as a successful, “complete,” human being.
Thus, for many, a growing awareness of our intrinsic limitations, of dukkha, tends not to produce reflection, but instead, denial. Such denial has as its main goal the maintenance of the chariot-ride for as long as possible, and may manifest itself in a variety of forms; reflected particularly in the burgeoning profit margins of the cosmetic, pharmaceutical, and alcohol industries, or any other purveyor of mask and medication.
Any refusal to join in the fun results in one’s emerging status as outsider, whether this be a title conferred upon us by others, or one that originates from our own dawning apprehension of society’s ideals as “conjurer’s trickwork.”1 For the outsider, like the Future Buddha on the night of his departure from the palace, there is the distinct impression that the world and everyone in it is asleep; that one stands as some solitary foreigner in a strange land. For some outsiders, like the pneumatikos of ancient Gnosticism, or the Romantic outsider in Byron’s Manfred, there is a felt need to move “beyond the dwellers of the earth”:
My spirit walk’d not with the souls of men,
Nor look’d upon the earth with human eyes;
The thirst of their ambition was not mine,
The aim of their existence was not mine … 2
For the outsider there are really three options available. First, he or she can attempt to get “back on the wagon” as it were, and learn to live a life of inauthenticity, in which “ignorance is bliss” – or at least better than the alternatives. Second, the outsider may choose to stay as an outsider, to forever occupy a position of savvy disengagement; masking their own fears and disappointments by throwing scorn at the general ignorance of the world. The third option is the path of spiritual reflection and awakening – the “call to adventure”; the path of the seeker. This is the path upon which answers are sought to life’s deepest mysteries and questions. – Who am I? Can death and suffering be transcended? How is happiness to be attained?
The title which Pollack gives to this aspect of the Fool’s Journey is Turning Inwards, as the Fool has now moved beyond the outer concerns and challenges of the Worldly Sequence, and has turned to the world within; to the issues of “the self.” It is a sequence which begins with a withdrawal from society, and ends with a figurative death and rebirth, which Pollack equates with the Temperance card.3
My personal opinion is that Pollack ends this second sequence prematurely, and does so principally to create a balanced tripartite structure consisting of seven cards over three sequences. My own view is that the themes of cards 15 (The Devil) and 16 (The Tower) relate more clearly to the concerns of this second sequence. The cards up to and including The Tower seem to suggest the Fool’s ongoing journey into what Banzhaf calls the “Arc of the Night,”4 rather than something new. Indeed, Pollack’s third sequence appears to carry too many themes, and even she admits that it may appear “too vague and fanciful.”5 For these reasons The Devil and The Tower are retained within the second sequence, despite the fact that the division of cards now appears slightly unbalanced (7, 9 and 5 cards respectively).
I have termed this second sequence Departure and Trials, reflecting Campbell’s understanding of the “initiation” element of the monomyth, in which the Hero set off on his or her adventure, encounters a series of trials and ordeals, before finally receiving “the boon.” Campbell saw this primarily as a mythological representation of psychological dynamics, in which the personality confronts the inner world of archetypal forces on his or her journey towards individuation. In terms of the Buddha’s own story, this sequence extends from the night of his departure to his enlightenment under the Bodhi tree.
Strength (8)
General Overview
In conventional interpretations Strength is linked with a sense of endurance, courage and determination, and with confronting inner forces and conflicts with gentleness and compassion, rather than “subjecting them to your will.”1 In the RWS deck, the card shows a woman gently holding or shutting a
lion’s mouth, its powerful neck leashed with a chain of roses, which extends to the woman’s dress. Like The Magician, the woman stands under a lemniscate, indicating the start of a new sequence of creativity, determination and directionality.
In older renditions of the card, the virtue of Strength is depicted in a more forceful and aggressive form, or what Amber Jayanti describes as the now-obsolete masculine principle of “domination by force.”2 For example, the Morgan-Bergamo Tarocchi version shows Heracles about to kill the Nemean lion with his club. Likewise, the Mantegna deck shows a woman holding a broken temple pillar, recalling the story of another lion-killer - Samson.3 As with the Marseilles deck, Waite wished to link this virtue with a gentler and more elegant understanding of strength, connoting the more feminine qualities of introspection, acceptance and compassion. The woman, says Waite, represents “the strength which resides in contemplation.” For Waite, the lion represents the animalistic and instinctive aspects of human nature, whose raw, impulsive energies are tamed, controlled and transformed through the gentle powers of contemplation and love. In Waite’s words, the lion “signifies the passions,” while the woman is “the higher nature in its liberation.”4
According to Nichols in her Jungian interpretation of the card, the woman again corresponds to the Hero’s anima – his unconscious feminine side which acts as a “mediator” between the ego and darker elements within the psyche.5 Here, the card signifies revealing, confronting and taming the darker aspects of human nature. But, this entails doing so in a way that is contrary to dualistic forms of spirituality, which, as Banzhaf says, usually tackle our “sinful” impulses through more brutal means.6
Waite, as Master Magus, is quite guarded in his explanation of why he changed the traditional placement of this card (11), other than to say that he did so for “reasons which satisfy myself,” and that for the general reader, “there is no cause for explanation.”7 Perhaps one explanation is his recognition that the card’s associated qualities are necessary prerequisites for any advancement on the spiritual path beyond that of The Chariot. As Pollack observes, by placing Strength directly after The Chariot we become conscious of a type of power that lies beyond heroic will; one that allows us to engage with our inner turmoil “calmly and without fear.”8 In relation to this, Banzhaf highlights the rather unfortunate ends for those two mythic heroes – Samson and Heracles – who attempt to subdue and defeat their own “wild lions” through more aggressive means. Samson loses his strength, his sight, and is crushed to death by falling masonry. Heracles, more amusingly, is sentenced to dress and serve as a woman for a year in the court of Queen Omphale, while she wears the skin of the lion he defeated, and carries his wooden club.9
In the Story of the Buddha: The Resolve of a Bodhisattva.
Siddhattha’s vision of the “cemetery” we are told “further increased his aversion for sensual pleasure,” and he resolved within himself to “go forth on the Great Retirement.”10 Asvaghosa is keen to elaborate upon this cemetery scene and does so in a way that whilst never purely Gnostic is its execution, comes close. The young dancing women unfortunately take the brunt of Asvaghosa’s contempt for the sensory entanglements of nature. Siddhattha, says Asvaghosa, was “moved to scorn” at the sight of these women, “with every limb distorted,” and declared to himself:
“Such is the nature of women, impure and monstrous in the world of living beings; but deceived by dress and ornaments a man becomes infatuated by a woman’s attractions.”11
Siddhattha arose from his couch, and asked Channa his charioteer to saddle his prize horse Kanthaka. The horse Kanthaka is given some attention in the texts, described as being “eighteeen cubits long … strong and swift, and white all over like a polished conch shell.”12 Such details are not without significance to the themes of the Strength card. The name Kanthaka itself is derived from the ancient Marathi, meaning “possessed of fortitude, enduring, patient.”13 We are also reminded that the white horse has a particular symbolic role within many religious myths, representing new birth from evil and stagnation. In Hindu mythology, we read of Vishnu’s final incarnation as Kalki, the Destroyer of Filth, who will return on a white horse at the end of the Kali Yuga. In the myth of Perseus and Medusa, the white and winged steed Pegasus emerges from the blood of the decapitated priestess who, like the poor sleeping dancers, represents once again the male ego’s demonization of female sensuality – alluring and captivating, yet chthonic and paralyzing.
Before leaving however, the prince desired to look upon his son and his wife once more, and opening their chamber door, “he paused, and gazed at the two from where he stood.” He felt an intense desire to hold his son in his arms, but recognized that should he do so, his wife “would awake, and thus prevent my departure.” “I will first become a Buddha,” he reflects, “and then come back and see my son.”14 Unlike the Gnostic pneumatikos who desires to transcend the phenomenal world, to move “beyond the dwellers of the earth,” the young bodhisattva yearns to return to his family some day, but realizes that this desire must take second place to a more compassionate one. “[W]hen thanks to you I have become a Buddha,” he whispers to Kanthaka, “I will save the world of gods and men.”15 Having thus uttered his great Bodhisattva Vow of Aspiration, he mounts his horse, and with Channa holding on by the tail, he makes for the main gate of the city.
A Buddhist Reflection: Taming the Elephant and the Monkey
While the lion remains a useful symbol of the animalistic and unruly nature of the mind within Western mythology, the elephant and the monkey occupy a similar role within Buddhist thought. The association is detailed in a well-known pictorial aid to meditation, sometimes known as The Elephant Path. This teaching tool graphically explains how a meditator’s mind is tamed and transformed through the two meditation practices of “calming-abiding” or “stabilization” (samatha) and “insight” (vipassana).
The diagram shows a monk at the start of his meditative journey on the path to enlightenment. At first, he is shown running, attempting to lasso a stampeding black elephant on the path ahead, which is being led hither and thither by a black monkey. The monkey, which represents the distractions of the mind, moves about entranced by various objects which lie to the left and right of the path. These objects – a piece of cloth, a mirror, fruit, perfume, and cymbals – represent the five sensory entanglements of touch, sight, taste, smell and sound. The black elephant, representing the mind itself, cannot be controlled at this point, and races ahead, oblivious to the hard work of the poor monk behind. Eventually, the monk gains some control with his lasso, the elephant slows down and its color being to whiten. Eventually the monkey disappears, and the elephant now completely white, is led by the monk at his own pace. With the monk finally in full control of the elephant, and sitting on its back, he brandishes a flaming sword – representing wisdom cutting though delusions – and gains penetrative insight into the nature of emptiness.
Of note is the bright flame which sits at every turn on the monk’s path. This is of particular relevance to the theme of the Strength card, representing the effort, energy and potency that must be developed and maintained in order to control, tame and lead the mind towards enlightenment. As Shantideva says: “he who is patient will seek for strength, for in strength lies Enlightenment. Without strength there is no righteous work, as without the wind there is no motion.”16 Right Effort constitutes one element of the Eightfold Path, and signifies an ongoing and persistent undertaking to develop beautiful or wholesome mental formations. Similarly, “energy” or virya is regarded as one of the Six Perfections within Mahayana Buddhism, and one of the ten within Theravada. Virya can also be translated as “enthusiastic perseverance” or “zeal,” and is etymologically linked with such words as “vigor,” “vitality,” and “virtue.” Its root, vir, actually means “hero,” and therefore also denotes a sense of courage and fearlessness – the qualities with which our Hero needs to begin his or her journey.
Buddhism recognizes a n
umber of characteristics that contribute towards the cultivation of energy and enthusiasm, perhaps the most important being that of bodhichitta or “mind of enlightenment.” This is the conscious effort to arouse within oneself a Buddha’s own compassionate perspective on things. For many, the development of bodhichitta is regarded as perhaps the most important Buddhist practice; the means by which one stimulates the emergence of all beautiful qualities, and is transformed into “the priceless jewel of a Conqueror's form.”17 According to the Buddha in The Collection of Pure Dharma Sutra, those who seek enlightenment have no need to pursue many disciplines, but should unify themselves through the single practice of compassion, by which all other virtues spontaneously arise.18
The cultivation of bodhichitta is regarded as a defining trait of the bodhisattva – the “enlightenment being” who aspires to become a Buddha. The Path of the Bodhisattva begins with the solemn Vows of Bodhichitta, in either aspiration (for the initiate) or engagement (for the practitioner). Such vows, reflecting the one the Future Buddha made as he left the palace, are focused on strengthening one’s resolve and determination to bring the mind of enlightenment into this world, “for the sake of all beings.”19
