Practice Library

Perception and Imagination in Tantric Buddhism

A three-part seminar on what ritual imagination is actually for, and how perception is tied to the channels and the chakras.

A three-part seminar with Vesna A. Wallace on two important modes of practice in tantric Buddhism, drawing its examples from a range of Indian and Mongolian Kalachakra sources. The first session concerns the role of imagination, and how the ritual performances of imagination work as forms of mental exercise serving several functions at once, methodological, epistemic and ultimately soteriological. Vesna A. Wallace argues that what is imagined is no less real than what the senses report, and works through three early twentieth century Mongolian ritual texts: one performed for a person who has died, one on how a tantra is to be recited, and one joining that recitation to guru yoga. The second session turns to perception, and to how its epistemology becomes closely bound up with the bodily chakras and their constitutive channels, which are responsible for our modes of perceiving and experiencing the world. It follows the six phase yoga through its signs, and draws on the Stainless Light commentary and its account of the five eyes. The third session is given over to questions. These are lectures, and no practice is given.

What this course covers

• Ritual imagination as mental exercise, and what it is actually for
• Three Mongolian Kalachakra ritual texts of the early twentieth century
• The epistemology of perception in the Kalachakra system
• The chakras and their channels as the basis of how we perceive
• The six phase yoga and its signs, up to the image of emptiness
• Questions on the mirror, the elements, bliss and the limits of the brain

Sessions

1. Session 1 - 'Imagination' 38 minutes
2. Session 2 - 'Perception' 41 minutes
3. Session 3 - Q&A 46 minutes