We Need All Five Wisdoms, Not Just Spaciousness
A lot of “western” Tibetan Buddhists don’t seem to take the five wisdoms seriously.
We mainly believe in dharmadhatu wisdom — which is super spacious and open — but the other wisdoms get forgotten about. Emptiness-only seems to be what many people are looking for. Just freedom. Something away from all of this.
In part, we seem to be scared of our power: the powerful ways that spacious awareness displays itself and connects with others. Maybe we could call this “heart”?
Perhaps this is even more about being scared of the responsibility of using our power wisely and kindly. Do we trust ourselves?
All in all, this is probably more deeply rooted in feeling like this is all some big project I have to pull off. It’s all on me. But this means we didn’t lighten up enough. In Buddhism, selflessness doesn’t mean “I’m bad,” but that “It’s not all about me.” I’m here, I’m a part of it, and . . .
With a more open approach to myself, I can be more honest with what’s going on with me. This offers a deep relief and healthy dose of tender-hearted humor. The path of freedom isn’t all funneled into my freedom, but rather open play.
With this more carefree, delighted attitude, making merit is fun. We can enjoy kindness. It feels good to lovingly care for others and lend a hand.
All the five wisdoms naturally flow from this. We will more wholeheartedly, well-roundedly be open and connected with others and experience. Experience is no longer what I need to avoid, but rather what I enjoy.
This can be called merit. Enjoying what is wholesome. Joy for the virtuous! Without merit, wisdom won’t stick. It has no body: no relationality. It’s a brittle little idea of freedom away from things rather than with them.
Get Dragpa’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Yet without wisdom, merit takes itself way too seriously: tightening around purity is always very dangerous. It’s also not liberative: conceptual holding patterns only get us so far.
But if we don’t have merit, we won’t take our path seriously. The path will be seen as something to throw away at the end rather than using it to carefully learn from and attune with others. Fixating on an idea of openness prevents the lived experience of it, which always shines as responsive, compassionate inclusion.
Merit is about connections, which are woven as stories. And if there’s one thing that tons of “contemporary Buddhists” are scared of, it’s stories. Cosmology. Vast worlds, landscapes, and beings. The six realms. These are treated as either dangerous or silly for many “modern Buddhists.”
Some might say, “That’s all duality!” But this shows we are not properly including all five wisdoms. Discerning wisdom is tremendously important. It is critically important to distinguish bad habits from good habits, negative grasping from positive grasping. It’s not just all about non-grasping. Wisdom alone doesn’t work because unless we’re already enlightened, we need a way to get there. Just saying “we’re already enlightened” isn’t a path, it’s a cop out.
For all Buddhists, wisdom is the main point, but it always requires secondary supportive conditions to be actualized. For Tibetan Buddhists, the main supports are bodhichitta and devotion. For Sutra Mahayanists, it’s compassion. For Theravadans, it’s renouncing selfishness and attachment by cultivating morality and concentration. Yet for realized bodhisattvas and vidyadharas, those same secondary supports become ways to serve the teachings and beings rather than simply a boat to leave behind once we get to the other shore.
As the great Nagarjuna taught, “Shunyata karuna garbum:” emptiness is the womb of compassion. Compassion is the natural expression of wisdom. Freedom without heart isn’t really free.
One thing that our 21st century is already showing us is that if we don’t care-fully include stories of vast worlds, landscapes, and beings, it’s a gigantic trainwreck. Techniques alone are not enough. Ideas are not enough. Maps are not enough. Even bodies are not enough. We need all of our heads, hearts, and guts! Wisdom, compassion, and power. Manjushri, Chenrezig, and Vajrapani. And since we’re never really alone because everything is interdependent, relationships and stories are always a part of a wisdom path. Sangha is an essential jewel that cannot be omitted.
Both “my way only” and “nothing matters” are catastrophic failures during our times. It’s just not all about me, whether I see myself as the center of it all or as the annihilation of any center. Of course I’m the center, and so are you and you and you and every single other being in the six realms. We are a part of each other’s stories. Neverending dreams of one another and ourselves.
Yes, stories are fictions and the story-making aspect of awareness is dualistic consciousness, or sem: the mistaken self-centered narrator that strings together moments of experience. But here I’m using stories more loosely to mean something like patterns or connections. For Mahayana Buddhists, the definition of “relative” for sentient beings is “husk” or “fabrication.” A temporary covering or mask. But in this reflection I hesitate to make the even more nuanced distinction between “impure sentient patterning” and “pure wisdom being patterning” since if someone only believes in emptiness as an absence or untouchable freedom, describing the variety of ways that emptiness displays itself is already off the table, which is kind of the point of this reflection. If we refuse to open our eyes since we believe all “experience” is mistaken, pointing out how the Sutras and Tantras describe what awakened experience is like isn’t going to be taken seriously. Allegedly just “more concepts.” If the positive grasping of conceptual merit is not allowed, the spontaneous emanations of nonconceptual wisdom can’t be clearly discerned. Distinguishing wisdom awareness got lost in space somewhere.
Open, playful, loving display includes stories without taking them too seriously. Connective patterns are infallible even if they don’t absolutely exist — nothing does! Seeing this clearly is exactly what allows for the variety of wisdom’s five-fold expressions to arise, not just the spacious, spaced out one.
May we all be joyfully carefree and caring at the same time. May all of our good dreams come true, even though they never really happened.
All love,
dragpa
