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The Prajñas appear

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The Five Female Buddhas are also known as the Five Prajñas. Prajña is a Sanskrit feminine noun meaning ‘wisdom’. All Buddhas have completely developed wisdom and compassion, the two major aspects of the Enlightenment experience. However, meditations upon them may emphasis one aspect particularly. So while they are certainly very loving and compassionate, through devoting yourself to the Female Buddhas you particularly develop the wisdom side of the golden coin of Enlightenment. Meditations on Buddhist figures are usually taught very carefully, with a lot of specific detail about how the figure is to be visualized, and how the interaction with them is to happen. These formal meditation practices are known in Sanskrit as sadhanas.

The sadhanas of the Five Prajñas were introduced into the FWBO in 2002, followed a year later by pujas – devotional ceremonies - devoted to the figures. Since that time, there has been a great deal of interest in the Prajñas. Talks, weekends, and longer retreats about them have taken place in the UK and other countries from Finland to Australia; some Order members have taken up the visualizations; almost a thousand copies of the pujas have been sold. In addition, several artists have painted the figures. In response to this very considerable interest, I thought that I would write a kind of introduction or commentary about the figures. By doing this, I hope to enable people who have made an emotional connection with the figures to deepen it, and to provide some background information which may be new to you.


At the moment there is very little in print about the Female Buddhas. There are bits and pieces written about them in books on the Indo-Tibetan Buddhist tradition, but they have been largely overlooked. For instance, in his recent large book on Buddhist female figures, Glenn Mullin hardly mentions them. I did give them a chapter in my book on Female Deities in Buddhism and a couple of pages in the Tantric section of Meeting the Buddhas. But that doesn’t begin to do them justice. So this book is an attempt to make amends, and to give these rich figures the fuller treatment that they deserve, and that they have been waiting for, in a sense, for over a millennium. This chapter lays the groundwork for the rest of the book, giving the background to practice with the Five Prajñas. In the first part of Chapter 2 I shall explore the rich tapestry of symbolic connections that links these figures to many aspects of life.


Then, in the rest of that chapter and in Chapters 3-6 I look at the figures individually: their symbols, colours, mantras and so on, and then explain some points that may not be obvious in the pujas. Chapter 7 looks at how practicing with these five figures can transform the nature of consciousness. In Appendix B you will find various resources for obtaining materials related to the Prajñas and for exploring them further.


How These Sadhanas and Pujas Appeared

We have my friend Saccanama to thank for the sadhanas and pujas of the Five Prajñas. He is an Order member who has for a number of years been very engaged with the Mandala of the Five Buddhas. This is a set of five archetypal Buddhas in male form, who are often referred to as the Jinasjina means ‘conqueror’ in Sanskrit, and these archetypal Buddhas have overcome all suffering and the ignorance that causes it. Saccanama was responsible for developing a ritual year at the Bristol Buddhist Centre, with the year divided into five segments, during which there were talks, meditations and rituals connected with the Five Buddhas.

(For example, they would do a puja to Aksobhya, the blue Buddha, at a place on the east side of the city at dawn on the Spring Equinox.) Saccanama also lived for a while at Rivendell Retreat Centre, where he led a cycle of retreats of the Five Buddhas. One of Saccanama’s talents is for drawing other people in to his spiritual schemes. For instance, in Bristol he was responsible for commissioning Amir Boestamam – now ordained as Kumuda - to paint large canvasses of the Five Buddhas, which formed the centrepiece of the devotional practice during the ritual year. As his engagement with the Five Buddhas, the Jinas, deepened, Saccanama wanted to develop his involvement with the female consorts, the Five Prajñas. Apart from Tara, there were no visualization practices available for any of them. So he asked me if I would be interested in creating a set of sadhanas. I was planning to take a year’s sabbatical, in order to devote myself to meditation, and this commission seemed as if it would fit very well into my plans.Saccanama also checked the idea out with Subhuti, the Chairman of the College of Public Preceptors, and he was happy for me to see what I could come up with.

So in April 2001 I began my sabbatical. I wanted to do a year’s solitary retreat, but that wasn’t possible as I had one or two responsibilities that I could not put down. So I did the best I could under the circumstances. I went out to Guhyaloka, the men’s ordination retreat Centre in Spain, and settled myself in a wooden hut in the valley there. This hut had been built by my late friend Arthadarshin, who had died of heart failure on a run up the valley the previous year, and I had constant reminders of him. As well as two large hangings of the Refuge Tree that he had created, there was also an urn with his ashes next to my shrine. So I spent most of a year in this hut, doing as much solitary retreat as possible, and in between keeping up a good level of meditation. This gave me excellent conditions for tuning in to the Five Prajñas. It was during a 3-month period of solitary retreat in the second half of my year that I began to turn my mind towards the Prajñas. I began by recalling what I knew of the Prajñas in the Buddhist tradition to date. But that didn’t help me very much…

The Prajñas in the Indo-Tibetan Tradition


The Five Prajñas appear in Tantric Buddhism, and are particularly important in the Highest Tantra, which is the level of Tantra on which Buddhas are often represented in sexual embrace, in what the Tibetans call Yab-Yum (Father-Mother) form. For instance, they appear in a mandala of 32 deities in the Arya tradition of the Guhyasamaja Tantra – one of the earliest forms of Highest Tantra, and the first to be translated into Tibetan. In different tantras the Five Prajñas appear in somewhat different forms. For instance in the Guhyasamaja they all have six arms, Locana is white, and Mamaki is blue. Sometimes too they are associated with different Buddhas. Pandaravasini is almost always associated with Amitabha, and Tara (when she is part of the set of the Prajñas) with Amoghasiddhi, but the other three can shift around. Their mantras too, in these Highest Tantra texts may give the wrong idea to newer Buddhists. For instance Locana’s mantra in the Guhyasamaja includes the word moharati – which means delighting in ignorance!


It is rare to come across paintings of the Five Prajñas as a group. There is a set of murals in a temple at Alchi in Ladakh. And, more recently, Andy Weber has produced a card of them. But considering that they have been around for over a thousand years there is not a lot to show for it. And compared to the Five Jinas they are very neglected. Similarly I have never seen a published sadhana of the Five Prajñas as a set. Doubtless both paintings and sadhanas must exist in the Tibetan tradition, and I would be interested if anyone comes across any. But considering the tremendous amount of material on Tibetan Buddhism that is now available in the West: in books, cards, on the Internet, and in other ways, I find it extraordinary that I can only remember a couple of paintings of the Prajñas, and no texts devoted to them at all.

How the Figures Appeared 2


During my Guhyaloka solitary retreat, I started by reflecting on everything that I knew about the Jinas and Prajñas, especially all the different associations with them. Because a Yab-Yum figure is essentially one figure, then whatever applies to the Jinas must also apply to the Prajñas.

The only differences are ones of emphasis. So I knew that the Prajñas especially embodied the Five Wisdoms (we shall learn about these later on), and that they were also particularly associated with the five elements: earth, water, fire, air, and space. Taking those features as my starting point, and reflecting on them both in and out of meditation, I began to envision the Prajñas.

Saccanama needed a sadhana for Locana quite quickly, as he wanted to meditate on the whole mandala in the course of the year, and Locana in the East would be the figure that he would start with. So I began with Locana, but it very quickly became clear to me that I could not reflect on her in isolation. A mandala is a dynamic interplay of energy, and so, like an artist, I needed to work on all five canvasses at once. As the figures began to emerge, I kept finding that the aspects of the mandala were sensitive to one another. If one detail of a figure changed, it had repercussions for all the figures.


I love this kind of inner work, and I spent a very happy few weeks allowing the figures to appear. As usual, from starting on a more abstract level – thinking about associations and traditional Buddhism – after a while the whole thing came to life, and I found myself dealing with inner realities that had a life and energy of their own. I felt very grateful to Arthadarshin and all those at Guhyaloka who had made it possible for me to be able to focus so undistractedly on the mandala, and to Saccanama for inviting me to take on a task that I would never have done off my own bat.

Eventually all five figures attained a stable form. I have a deep love for the Indo- Tibetan Buddhist tradition, and I wanted to stay loyal to it, even while I was producing something that no Tibetan lama would recognise. So what appeared was a new arrangement of familiar symbols. A lama might not recognise these forms, but he would be able to read all the elements of the symbolic language that they used. There were two ways in which I allowed myself to deviate from the tradition when I need not have done so:

1) To my surprise, the forms of some of the Jinas (who are seated on the heads of the Prajñas) also slightly changed. This seemed to be in response to what was happening in the mandala itself. I didn’t decide that I wanted them to be different; it just happened.

2) Each of the Jinas has a symbolic animal supporting his throne (known as a vahana in Sanskrit). When it came to the Prajñas I could have borrowed the animals from the Jinas, but somehow this didn’t seem right. So after a while the Prajñas acquired symbolic animals of their own. As these are not traditional, I made them an optional extra that could be visualized or not, depending on whether they worked for you.


The Mantras

The mantras only started to appear late on in the process. I looked at traditional mantras associated with the Prajñas, but most of these were ‘too tantric’. I didn’t think it would be helpful for people to be reciting mantras about the ‘bliss of hatred’ and so on. In Highest Tantra hatred and other negative emotions are transformed through seeing the nature of the energy tied up in them. But I thought that something more down to earth would be appropriate.

I came up with various possible mantras in which there was a common template for all five. But quite often these turned up words that were names of Dharmacharinis, and I thought that might be a little odd for people. So in the end I gave up employing formulas and just asked the Prajñas how they wanted to be invoked. As a result I ended up with mantras that did not follow a set formula, though they had some elements in common.

A little later I began to find tunes for the mantras. I have no great musical ability, and the tunes that I came up with may well be superseded, but it felt important to have some way of chanting the mantras. There are a couple of recordings of these mantra tunes available. (See Appendix B: Resources.)


The Sadhanas


Once the forms of the figures had stabilised, I then had to consider the form of the sadhanas in which they would be visualized. As I wanted the sadhanas to be useful to 11 as wide a range of people as possible, including new Order members, I based their structure on that of the revised and simplified sadhanas that have been given to new Order members since the early ‘90s. I followed this structure closely, even when my personal preference was to arrange the visualization in a slightly different way. By the time I had produced the five basic sadhanas I was very much in the creative swing, and so I carried on writing.

Eventually I produced a collection of 13 sadhanas, and called the set Queens of the Mandala. Visualization practices fall into two broad categories. There are practices in which you visualize the Buddha or Bodhisattva in front of you, and there are others in which you become the Buddha or Bodhisattva.

The set contains:

In-front visualizations of the Prajñas individually. 6: A ‘trip around the mandala’ in which all five Prajñas are visualized in front of you within a mandala palace.


Self-visualizations of the Prajñas individually - so that you see yourself as Locana, or Mamaki, etc.

In this sadhana you visualize yourself as the central Prajña, and see yourself surrounded by the other four in the cardinal directions. 13: In the thirteenth sadhana the Prajñas decided to let their hair down, metaphorically and literally. They suddenly changed and took on the forms of dakinis – the wild, dangerous female forms that play an important part in Buddhist Tantra. Whilst in the other sadhanas I had kept their hair the traditional black, in this practice their hair colours changed to a variety of shades. As dakinis often do, they were dancing naked in the mandala, adorned only with bone ornaments. And the animals supporting their thrones changed again…

So far, I have only shown anyone the first six sadhanas, the in-front visualizations. It is good to start with these things slowly and carefully. Perhaps at some point a few Order members will want to practise the self-visualizations. As for the thirteenth sadhana, we’ll see!


The Pujas

I wrote first drafts of all the sadhanas during my retreat at Guhyaloka, and also sent off a finished version of the Locana sadhana to Saccanama. But then, as my retreat continued, I began to feel a lack. The Prajñas had appeared, but I had no adequate way of expressing devotion to them. I knew of no traditional pujas or verses that addressed them. So, with some trepidation I began writing pujas to them. I felt uneasy about this because I have high standards for pujas, and in the past I had always shied away from writing them as I didn’t feel qualified to do so.

However I was in a situation where no-one else was likely to do it, so I thought that my efforts would be better than nothing. On the retreat I wrote the puja to Locana and a draft of the Mamaki puja. That kind of devotional, poetic writing is entirely dependent on being in the right mental state. During the following year I had various times when I sat down to write more of the pujas, but the result was either a complete mental blank or something riddled with clichés. But then in May 2003 I led a retreat on the Prajñas in France for a group of Dharmacharinis. After a few days of living with them in that mandala, I sat down one afternoon and most of the Pandaravasini puja poured out onto paper. Very soon after that I had all five pujas.


As with the mantra tunes, I wrote the pujas because nobody else was likely to do it, and I felt that something was needed. I hope that over time more - and more beautiful - verses, pujas and rituals to the Prajñas will appear.

The Pictures

One of the especially pleasing aspects of watching the Prajñas going out into the world has been seeing artists engaging with them. The first person to paint the Prajñas in the forms that I had seen at Guhyaloka was Vijayamala. She and I were staying in France in semi-retreat over the winter of 2003, and we were talking about a retreat on the Prajñas that was to be held later that year. Vijayamala decided to do paintings that could be used for the five shrines. Although she is not a trained artist, what she produced still affected me quite strongly. I was very moved when she had finished the final painting, and we could put together the mandala of all five Prajñas.

It was a special moment to be able to see the figures that I had imagined again and again in the Spanish sunshine appearing before my eyes in her five paintings. The retreat for Dharmacharinis was attended by Sihapada, an artist who connected with the figures very deeply. Since that week in France she has circled the mandala repeatedly with her paintbrushes. To date she has done five sets of paintings, and has now embarked on her sixth Locana. Also on the retreat was Subha, who has produced small cards with paintings of the Prajñas.

Another Dharmacharini, Visuddhimati, painted a Locana that was exhibited at the Order Convention in 2002. Finally (at least for the time being) Kumuda, a new Dharmachari in Bristol, has begun a set of paintings, commissioned by Saccanama and sponsored by Padmakara. These will be interesting to see, as Kumuda has in the past painted a successful set of large canvasses of the Five Jinas. It is exciting to see Buddhist artists responding to the Prajñas. The more images of them that there are available the more the figures will take root in people’s imaginations.

The Future


That is the story so far, at the time of writing in August 2004. It has been fascinating watching the process unfold. Beginning with Saccanama, and then me in my hut in the Spanish mountains, the Prajñas have engaged the interest and enthusiasm of people in the FWBO around the world.

Although I have spelt out the process by which these forms came about, I no longer feel any particular ownership of them. Writing the sadhanas and the pujas was a strange process. There were times when rationally I felt very presumptuous – who was I to be doing such things? Yet at another level it felt very right – as if the figures just needed a channel to communicate themselves, and I happened to be that channel.

And I decided early on in the process that I needn’t worry about the outcome. If there 13 was no spiritual power in the figures then, perhaps after some initial interest, they would die away. But if they spoke to people’s spiritual needs, and helped them to engage with the spiritual adventure, then they would find a way to do so despite any imperfections that I might have introduced.

We shall see what the future brings. What I am sure of is that, in some form or another, the Prajñas have a part to play in the development of Buddhism in the West. Here, men and women will practise on a much more equal footing than often happened in traditional Eastern Buddhism.

I think that fact is bound to be reflected on a symbolic level: in a change in the relative importance given to the Jinas and the Prajñas. The Prajñas will assume much greater significance in their own right. So I expect that in the West there will be many people who will be meditating on the Prajñas, chanting their mantras, painting their pictures, and writing pujas and other verses in praise of them. I shall be pleased if the particular forms, mantras, and pujas that I produced, catalysed by Saccanama’s vision, contribute to a creative process in which the Prajñas become known and loved in the West.