Kalachakra: Winds of Karma & Mental Holograms

Now, the next part of my analysis has to do with the process of causality. The question is: where are these mental holograms coming from? Why are they in the form that they’re in? How does it work? Now, the question then becomes: why would we want to analyze this? We want to overcome grasping for true existence – that’s the main, main purpose here – in order to reach enlightenment, so that’s the bodhichitta aim (bodhichitta motivation, I should say) to help everybody. 

Given that aim, these appearances – these deceptive appearances of the mental hologram – seem to establish themselves just there, like the voice in our head, that this just happened by itself; it seems as though it’s truly established. That’s at a very simple level. I’m not really going into any sophisticated level here of what truly established existence means. Basically, there’s some sort of power on the side of these words, these mental words, that is establishing the thing by itself, independent of anything else. “You don’t love me anymore.” There it is, that mental hologram. 

Now, in order to deconstruct that appearance of true existence… Before we get to the level of deconstructing it in terms of mental labeling and so on, let’s just speak on the level of deconstructing it in terms of cause and effect. We’re confused about causality. If we look at the presentation of the four noble truths, there are various inverted or incorrect ways of looking at each of these four, and then we can join that together with Shantideva’s analysis, for example, of the voidness of causality. 

[See: The Sixteen Aspects of the Four Noble Truths]

It is not that the cause is already sitting in our head. In other words, it’s not that these thoughts or these mental words, these mental holograms, are somehow sitting in our unconscious – to use a Western way of conceptualizing – and just ready to jump out, to pop out. This is not so farfetched if we think about it. We have this memory that is sitting there in our memory, this image that’s sitting in our imagination, and we have no control; sometimes it just pops out. Like a tune that we can’t get rid of, it’s just sitting somewhere in our head and just pops out; it already exists. I won’t go into the whole logic of the refutation of these, but this is not what is happening. It’s not that the cause is existing already in the seed or whatever just waiting to pop out. Literally, what it’s saying is that the cause is not the same as the result. 

Also, it’s not that these thoughts and these images and these verbal things are coming from nowhere, no cause, that it’s all arbitrary. And it’s not that everything is coming from just one cause, our bad karma or whatever. It’s also not coming from a discordant cause of something completely unrelated, like the Devil is working and sending this to us. “The Devil, Satan, is sending these thoughts into my head. I must beat myself in order to chase out the Devil.” People have these thoughts, don’t they, these misconceptions. 

It’s not that the result already exists before it happens, which would be the whole view of predetermination, determinism – we have no choice. And it’s not that the result is nonexistent, totally nonexistent. How could a nothing become a something? A nothing can’t become a something. A true nothing will always stay a true nothing. Just as an aside, that is what we really have to analyze in terms of the whole issue of abortion. Is there a period when this being is totally nonexistent, and then all of a sudden, it becomes existent? How could a nonexistent thing become an existent thing? That’s how it applies to the analysis of abortion. 

In any case, the point being that if we can understand the complex web of causality that’s involved with these mental holograms, that will help us to overcome grasping for the true existence of them. 

As you see, each moment of our experience is made up of the five aggregates (phung-po lnga). We have to understand what the five aggregates are really referring to. It’s not that there are five boxes sitting somewhere, that there are truly existent aggregates. It’s just a useful classification scheme, and each moment of our experience is not some sort of solid partless thing, but it is made up of many different parts. All of these parts are changing at a different rate, and each of them is coming from its own various sources or causes. 

• There’s always some mental hologram form.
• There’s always a consciousness of it. We’re talking about mental consciousness.
• There’s always some feeling of happy or unhappy (tshor-ba) that’s going on with it.
• There’s always a distinguishing (’du-shes). We have to distinguish that it’s this and not that. On that basis, we have the feeling.

Also, we have all sorts of other mental factors that are accompanying it. That includes ethically neutral ones, like concentration, attention, these sorts of things. There are also disturbing emotions that could come with this. There can also be positive emotions, like love and compassion. All of these things are going on at the same time. Of course, there’s grasping for true existence, confusion, and all this. That can accompany it as well. All of these different parts are coming from their own different causes. 

There’s nothing solid about this moment of experience at all. This helps us to deconstruct this grasping for it as a solid thing, the thought “You don’t love me.” It’s just a verbal hologram that in our confusion is representing the whole relationship, and unfortunately, we’re believing that it corresponds to reality. We don’t understand that the hologram itself is coming from some place, our belief in it is coming from another source, our unhappiness is coming from yet another source, the attention we pay to it is coming from another source, and, of course, the whole interaction and relation with the other person that it’s based on is coming from millions of causes. So, what’s solid about it? Nothing. 

Although the analysis that follows is rather complex – I am a little bit apologetic about it – actually, it doesn’t matter whether we follow it or not because the main point is to just appreciate the fact that all these different parts are coming from so many different individual causes and that everything is complex and interrelated. So long as we understand that, that’s enough. We don’t have to know technically that it’s this type of cause and that type of cause, although it can be analyzed. Again, don’t get dazzled by the incredibly sophisticated discussion of causality that we have in Buddhism and forget we’re applying it for a practical purpose – to help us overcome suffering. It’s not just “Oh, formidable!” as you would say in French – “It’s so fantastic!” – that’s not the reaction that we want to have, the response we want to have.

We were discussing the importance of understanding the causal process that is involved with these mental holograms in order to deconstruct the appearance of true existence and our belief in it (that it corresponds to reality). What I’d like to present is my analysis of the role that these drops and the karmic winds play in all of this. Again, I need to emphasize that this is my own analysis. It’s like an educated guess, and it leaves open many more questions for analysis. We don’t find this type of information in the commentaries, but as I explained before, the way that we analyze is to use all the tools that we’ve learned from extensive study of the Dharma and apply them. Let’s jump into this. 

The Role of the Creative Energy-Drops

First of all, what is the role of the creative energy-drops themselves? I would say that these drops give rise to the four types of appearances, these mental holograms, in two senses, two ways.

You see, in the Buddhist presentation of causality, there are many different types of causes and many different types of conditions and many different types of results, so it’s quite complex. We study this in abhidharma. In Vasubandhu’s presentation in Abhidharmakosha, we have six different types of causes, four different types of conditions, and four different types of results (each of these can also have subdivisions). In Asanga’s presentation in his Abhidharmasamuccaya, he gives 20 different types of causes. 

[See: Causes, Conditions and Results]

What it turns out to be is that something could function as several different types of causes for different things. It can serve as one type of cause for something and a different type of cause for something else. This way, as I said, it’s not that just one cause gives one result. It’s not “You said this, and therefore you don’t love me anymore,” one cause, one result, sort of like two balls connected with a stick. 

It’s very interesting. We hear, for example, that only a Buddha knows all the causes and all the results of everything. I mean, that’s one of the reasons why we want to obtain omniscience, the state of a Buddha. Also, it’s said that karma is the most difficult thing to understand in its full detail. The reason for that is, basically, there are an enormous number of different beings and beginningless time, so that means that everybody has had a beginningless number of rebirths and beginninglessly built up different causes for what they experience. In each life, everybody has experienced every moment of their life, and during every moment of their life, they’ve done various things, and they’ve interacted with many other beings during each lifetime. All of that has effects. 

Why do we have a certain set of disturbing emotions? Well, there’s the effect of everybody that we’ve met, the effect of our parents, and then the effect of their parents on them, and then all the previous lives of everybody. It’s unbelievable, and it’s not just in terms of generations but also in terms of the previous lives of everybody. What we do toward somebody has not only an effect on that person, but then that effect on that person affects all their other interactions with others, and so it spreads out. If we think of rebirth going on and on and on and on, the effects of it are enormous. To know all the details of cause and effect, we have to become an omniscient Buddha to know everything, which depends on getting our mind to stop projecting appearances of truly established existence. 

In very simple language, the appearance of true existence of things seems to give an appearance of things encapsulated in plastic, so everything is sort of encapsulated in itself and not related to anything else. If we could get the mind to stop projecting these lines around things or coating everything with plastic, we would see the interconnectedness of everything throughout all of time. That’s what omniscience is all about. Things don’t exist unrelated to everything else and don’t even appear to be, so everything appears interrelated all at once; this is very interesting. 

Again part of the problem is our limited hardware, to use the analogy of the computer again. Come on, we have a brain that is aging, as we saw with Kalachakra, and it’s like – pardon the dualistic flavor of this – it’s like looking through a periscope in a submarine. We can only look out of these holes in the front of our head, and we have to sleep and these sorts of things. It’s very limited because of the hardware; we can’t know everything, we can’t be awake all the time, and we can’t see everything – we can only see what’s in front of our eyes. That’s why we have to get rid of, eventually, rebirth with this type of limited hardware.

A Buddha has this clear-light mental activity and just the energy of that, without this type of limited body or brain. But we have to be very careful in that type of explanation not to think of this clear-light mind and its energy as some sort of atman, a soul, that goes inside a body, uses it, and then comes out and goes into another one. That’s the most basic refutation. 

Let’s not go too far into our discussion here of voidness. In any case, the analysis of causality that we can make on the basis of these Kalachakra teachings will be limited, not like a Buddha’s understanding all the causes from infinite lifetimes. 

The creative drops give rise to these mental holograms in two senses, two sorts of ways: 

1. One would be that they are the dominating condition (bdag-rkyen) that determines the essential nature (ngo-bo) of the occasion as being an occasion in which the consciousness is awake or dreaming or in deep sleep or in the blissful state.

Remember, we discussed how, when winds go through the sensory cells of the eye and so on, that determines or dominates what the experience is going to be. In this case, it’s going to be a visual experience. That’s a dominating condition. It will dominate as a cause. The most dominant feature, the most major feature – the essential nature (ngo-bo) of what it is – is that it’s a visual experience or audio experience or smell experience. Like that, these drops are the dominating condition for the mental consciousness to be, in its essential nature – what it is – awake state or dream state or deep-sleep state or blissful state. That’s a dominating condition. 

2. Then the creative facet of the drops that are giving rise to something, they would be what’s called the natal source (rdzas) for the appearances that arise (the natal source of the mental hologram). 

Well, “natal source” is a technical term. That’s the way I’m translating a technical term. The examples for that would be like an oven for a loaf of bread. It’s the source from which something will be born, will arise. We’re not talking about the uncooked dough. We’re not talking about the water and flour and salt or whatever, the ingredients. We’re talking about the oven, the role that the oven plays in the causal process. It’s like the cooked bread that comes out of the oven, likewise these mental holograms come out of the creative facet of the drop. However, it’s not that these holograms were sitting inside there already happening and waiting to pop out, so the oven analogy is not quite exact. 

Another example of a natal source is the potter’s wheel for a clay pot. In other words, working with the clay and so on for the pot, the final clay pot will emerge from the wheel, in a sense. It will be born from this, but obviously, the clay pot is not sitting inside the wheel. Try to get that image, the natal source of something. I don’t know if this analogy is correct, but let’s say it’s like a movie projector and the actual movie that appears. It both determines what it is – dominates what it is – and is the source out of which it arises. 

However, the drops are not the natal source of the mental consciousness of these holograms. There’s another causal process that is giving rise to the consciousness of the holograms. That’s coming from the karmic tendencies. This is not Chittamatra. Chittamatra would say that the mental consciousness and the hologram are both coming from the same oven, from the same natal source. Kalachakra is giving us a little bit more detail of how they’re coming from different natal sources within our moment of experience. In terms of the actual clay pot that we see, of course, Gelug Prasangika would also say it has its own natal source not related to our mental continuum. Here we’re talking about the mental consciousness of the hologram, so even there, the hologram and the consciousness have different natal sources. 

The Role of the Winds of Karma

This is not so difficult to figure out the role of the drops. What’s much more difficult is the role of the winds of karma here. There are two possibilities, and we need to analyze which one makes the most sense. One possibility accords with the general Kalachakra presentation, and the other explanation would be in accordance with the Guhyasamaja way of explaining things. Now, both could be correct and valid, just analyzing it from a different perspective. Like the example that a liquid is water to humans, pus to ghosts, and nectar to gods, which is a very complex thing – which I will not analyze now – and all of those are valid for each of those classes of beings.

Anyway, we could have several different explanations of the same phenomenon, and as is explained in the commentaries, it’s not that out of the Kalachakra and the Guhyasamaja explanations, one is better than the other. Depending on (pardon the general word) karma, each of us will have different subtle energy systems and so on for which one system of practice and one system of how the subtle energies work will be more appropriate; for someone else, it will be the other one. In any case, two possibilities. 

The Kalachakra way of explaining it – or at least what seems to correspond or fit with the Kalachakra way of explaining it – would be that the subtle winds of karma are the “mount” of the mental consciousness of the four occasions. 

Remember, I explained earlier this morning that when we talk about mental activity, we can explain or describe the mental activity from the point of view of individual subjective experience, or we could describe it from the point of view of the energy that’s involved, the subtle winds. You’ll come across these terms, so let me introduce them: the winds and the consciousness share the same essential nature (ngo-bo gcig, one by nature), which means that they are both referring to the same event, but their conceptual isolates are different (ldog-pa tha-dad). “Nothing other than the wind” or “nothing other than the consciousness,” those are different, but the energy and the consciousness are referring to basically the same event, so they’re inseparable. That’s something that you are going to come across, this terminology of sharing the same essential nature but different conceptual isolates. If you hear “they’re the same, only different,” then you’ll understand. 

The winds of karma would be – the term that’s always used is the “mount,” like a horse, but that’s not really so accurate. We could just say that the winds of karma are the energy aspect of mental consciousness. Remember, we spoke about three different levels of mental activity and the subtlest level being the clear-light mind. The clear-light level is the subtlest level, and that’s going on all the time, underlying grosser levels (mental consciousness and sense consciousness). Then, we would analyze, and we would say that the mental holograms that arise are features of this subtlest clear-light mind underlying the mental consciousness that the karmic winds are the support for. 

To use a simple image, the mental consciousness is riding on the horse of the winds of karma, and the clear-light mind is like the road – of course, they’re on a different piece of the road every moment that they’re riding – and the mental holograms are some features of the road that are rising up (sometimes the road goes up a hill, sometimes it’s rough, like that). That’s a very rough picture, but it gives you the general idea of how this explanation works. 

From the awake drop, these mental holograms, what appears while we’re thinking or remembering or imagining – my guess (this is a guess, purely a guess) is that these are the basis-level devoid forms that are asserted in Kalachakra.

We have to explain a little bit about the devoid forms (stong-gzugs). It’s always very puzzling, and it’s not really explained in the literature so much, what the basis-level devoid forms are. Sometimes the only hint that we get is that they’re sort of the dazzling images when we look up at a light, the dazzling light that we see; that’s the basis-level devoid forms. But we never really get a detailed explanation, and the lamas when we ask say, “Well, it’s not clear in the text what they’re referring to.” So, this is my guess. I could be wrong. 

Now, the image that’s used for a devoid form is the appearance in a magic mirror. It’s not a reflection – it’s not that it’s reflecting anything – it’s just appearing in the mirror. You know, “Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” You must have that in French. It’s not a reflection; it’s just appearing in the mirror. The Tibetans have that – a mirror, and then somebody sees visions appearing in the mirror. It’s a way of doing prognostication, a prediction of what will happen. That’s the image that’s used to describe these devoid forms. It’s an appearance aspect of the clear-light mind. 

We have something very similar in dzogchen. Sometimes in the texts, they will use the term “devoid forms of rigpa,” pure awareness. Clear-light mind can either be with the habits of grasping for true existence, and all these various habits and tendencies either imputed on it or not. When we’re still not a Buddha, the habits and tendencies are imputable on the conventional “me” imputed on the clear-light mind. Did that come out straight? What are the habits and tendencies imputed on or designated on? It’s the “me” designated on the clear-light mind. Actually, they’re designated on the “me” that’s designated on the clear-light mind. When these tendencies and habits are still imputable on the clear-light mind, that’s not rigpa. Rigpa is that clear-light mind unstained by the habits and tendencies, so it’s a subdivision of clear-light mind, just in case you were wondering what the difference is between clear-light mind and rigpa. That’s important to know. We have clear-light mind, and it’s either stained or not stained – stained by the karmic tendencies and the habits of grasping for true existence, and so on; not stained, that’s rigpa.

However, in Kalachakra, we are speaking about a devoid form being devoid of atoms, of particles. This is the explanation in Gelugpa of what devoid (stong) means in “devoid forms.” It’s not a form of voidness. They’re forms that are devoid of being made of particles. When we talk about these mental holograms, they’re not made of the gross particles. If they are basis devoid forms, they would not be made of particles, so they wouldn’t actually be made of the subtle wind, the winds of karma; they would be this basis level, what we normally experience of devoid forms. As I say, I may be wrong. This is a guess. I’m perfectly honest about that. It’s a guess. 

Is subtle energy made of particles? 

Yes. The particles in Kalachakra are not the same as the particles in abhidharma. This is His Holiness’s explanation. He says that the abhidharma type of particles are all on the same level of grossness as the earth particles in Kalachakra. Abhidharma particles are all made of eight sub-particles – earth, water, fire, wind, sight, smell, taste and physical sensation, not sound. Whichever of these eight is strongest will then be that type of particle – it will be an earth particle or a water one, for example. But they are gross. All of them contain all of these eight sub-particles. 

The particles in Kalachakra have various qualities, and they also have the quality of sound, unlike the abhidharma. The earth particle has all the different qualities. That’s why His Holiness says that the abhidharma particles are equivalent to that level. Then water particles have fewer qualities, so they’re more subtle. Fire particles have even fewer qualities. Wind particles have even fewer qualities. They’re more subtle. Then there are space particles in Kalachakra; those have only the quality of sound. The wind particles of Kalachakra, which presumably are what make up the winds of karma, are more subtle than the atoms and the particles described in abhidharma. 

Well, then the question arises: if something is devoid of particles, is it devoid of all abhidharma particles (but could still be the more subtle Kalachakra particles), or is it devoid of Kalachakra particles? You see where we start to question? 

If we say that there are these basis-level aspects or features of clear-light mind, then parallel to these are the types of holograms of the four drops; they would be parallel. The mental hologram from the awake drop would be basis-level devoid forms. When awake, the appearances – the mental holograms – when we imagine, when we remember, would be basis-level devoid forms. That’s the aspect or the feature of clear-light mind to give rise to mental holograms like appearances in a magic mirror. The mental holograms in dreams would also be basis-level devoid forms and the mental holograms of deceptive speech, the voice in our head. 

Again, by parallel, this is my guess, that there would be a basis-level indestructible sound. This is discussed in Kalachakra, that there’s an indestructible sound that travels with subtlest clear-light mind from one lifetime to another. We have this in mahamudra as well. It’s the communicative aspect of the clear-light mind. 

The mental hologram of darkness would also be a type of devoid form, in a sense. The mental hologram of bliss – this deep-awareness thing – I think that this could be corresponding to what is discussed in Sakya of an innate blissful aspect of the clear-light mind. This would be consistent with what we have in the mahamudra system, in which the description of the clear-light mind has these four features – appearance, appearance-making (which is communication), bareness and bliss. 

Although this is a guess of how these mental holograms could fit into a Kalachakra-style explanation, it is based on analogy in various systems within the Buddhist teachings. That would be a Kalachakra explanation of how the winds of karma are involved. They’re merely the mount of the subtle consciousness through which the clear-light mind is giving rise to these various mental holograms as part of its own innate features. We’re still not talking about why a mental hologram takes the form that it takes. We’re just talking about where it’s coming from. And it’s coming through the creative drops. This is the underlying basis, that it is appearing through the creative drops, carried by the wind. 

Alternatively, a Guhyasamaja explanation – we’ll do this very briefly – would be that the winds of karma are the simultaneously arising causes (lhan-cig ’byung-ba’i rgyu), simultaneously arising causes. They’re not the same as simultaneously acting conditions. These are different terms. A simultaneously acting condition, you remember, was the water and the fertilizer and sunlight for the plant. As for simultaneously arising causes, these are the causes that arise at the same time as the result, and that’s referring to the elements that make up something. For example, the elements of our body make up our body, but those elements exist at the same time as the body. They make up the body. That is a simultaneously arising cause. This is the type of cause that is actually speaking about the material thing that makes up something. 

The Guhyasamaja way of explaining would be to suppose that these karmic winds are the material out of which these holograms are made, but the problem with this explanation is that in Guhyasamaja, a different set of winds are described as what makes up the mental holograms. 

Remember, we spoke about the universally-occurring type of conceptual cognition. It’s the winds of those, according to Kalachakra, that actually make up the mental hologram. In some of the Kalachakra commentaries, it mentions both, so in the same sentence, it has both the winds of karma and the winds of these universally-occurring conceptual minds, and one’s going through the right channel, and one’s going through the left channel, this type of explanation. So just because it has the same terminology, is it talking about the same thing as in Guhyasamaja? What’s going on? Because of that problem that arises if the role of the winds of karma is that they are the material thing out of which the holograms are made, it makes one think that maybe it’s more this Kalachakra-style explanation that I gave first. 

We have two possibilities. One possibility, the Guhyasamaja one, has some problems with it. Therefore, it adds more weight to thinking that it’s the first type of explanation. In the Buddhist systems, there are only two possibilities of explanation of what are these mental holograms. What are they made of? Either they are made up of particles – and according to Kalachakra, if they are wind particles, they’re more subtle than the gross atoms of abhidharma – or they’re just the appearances, like in a magic mirror, of the clear-light mind. What else could they be? This is the standard way of analyzing anything in Buddhist logic. So, we see are there any contradictions in one or the other position. The Guhyasamaja style has some problems there, so it makes us think, with indecisive wavering, more going toward the side of the Kalachakra style of explanation. 

I’m just presenting to you how we analyze. This is, I think, the lesson of this part of our lecture. How do we analyze? How do we figure things out? This is how we figure things out using the Buddhist methods of logic, and these are only tentative results, a report of my analysis so far. It may be wrong, as I said. I think it’s not just interesting; it also is very helpful to know what are these holograms made of because they seem so solid. 

There’s a mixing here of terms coming from different sources. A “mirror” is coming from one type of system, a “hologram” is a more modern way of thinking of things, and “virtual,” “illusion,” and so on; all of these have different connotations, and can we really mix them together in one explanation without causing confusion?

One has to deconstruct an explanation and see that the different elements of the explanation are coming from different sources; it doesn’t necessarily have to be one solid thing. I use “mental hologram” because the literal translation of the term that is used in Tibetan and Sanskrit just means “aspect” (rnam-pa). What in the world does an “aspect” mean in this connotation, and is that a more helpful translation? 

Just as we can have on a two-dimensional mirror either a reflection of something else (so it’s produced from another source) or, like a magic mirror, just something appearing – so that’s two-dimensional – just translate that into three dimensions. We don’t live in a two-dimensional world. If we have a three-dimensional space, or whatever we want to call it – I’m sorry, I’m very much into Star Trek, so it’s like the holodeck – then we have the arising of a hologram in the holodeck either coming from projectors or, like on a magic mirror, it just arises. The whole point of the voidness discussion of these is that it is like an illusion. An illusion appears to be concretely real, and its appearance is deceptive; it doesn’t correspond to reality.