[jonesboy]

HEALING
WITH
FORM, ENERGY AND LIGHT

by
Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche

For each of us, everything begins with the primordial space, the Great Mother
from which all things arise, in which all things exist, and into which all
things dissolve. In this space there is movement. What causes it, no one
knows. The teachings only say “the winds of karma moved.” This is the
movement of the subtlest level of lung or prana, the energy that pervades
infinite space without characteristics or divisions. Inseparably united with
the flow of prana is the flow of primordial awareness, pure and without
identity. In this pure awareness five lights arise.

The five lights are aspects of primordial luminosity. These are the five
pure lights, the most subtle level of the elements. We talk about the light
and color of the five pure lights but this is symbolic. The five pure lights are
more subtle than visible light, more subtle than anything perceived by the
eye, more subtle than any energy measured or perceived by any means.
They are the energies from which all other energies, including visible light,
arise.

The white or colorless light is space, the green light is air, the red light is
fire, the blue light is water, and the yellow light is earth. These are the five
aspects of pure luminosity, the rainbow-like energies of the single sphere of
existence (tigle nyag chik).

If the five lights are experienced dualistically, as objects of a perceiving
subject, they appear to grow more substantial. The five lights don’t become
grosser, but through the distortions of dualistic vision the individual perceives
them as grosser. As the elements seem to grow toward greater substantiality,
they are further discriminated, and through their interactions they
manifest all phenomena, including the subject and objects that make up all
dualistic experience.

Eventually the five lights become the raw, natural physical elements and
five inclusive categories of qualities belonging to external reality. They become the different dimensions of existence that are various realms in which beings with and without form exist. Internally the five lights seem to thicken and form the organs, the five branches of the body, the five fingers of each hand, the five toes of each foot, the five senses, and the five sense fields.

The five lights become the five negative emotions if we remain deluded, or
the five wisdoms and the five buddha families if we recognize their purity.
This is not a story about a creation that happened in the distant past. It is
about how we live as individual beings and about ignorance and enlightenment.

If the five lights are recognized as a non-dual, unceasing manifestation
of the pure basis of existence (kunzhi), nirvana begins. If the five lights
are perceived dualistically and thought to exist externally, as objects of a
subject, samsara begins. The awareness does not become delusory or become enlightened—it remains non-dual and pure—but the qualities that
arise in it can be either positive or negative. If the awareness integrates and
identifies with the pure qualities, a buddha arises from the base; if with the
impure, a samsaric being arises. In this moment, right now, the process is
ongoing.

Depending on whether we integrate our immediate experience with nondual
awareness or cling to the false separation of our selves as subjects
experiencing external objects and entities, we will be in the non-dual natural
state or in the deluded mind.