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THE TWILIGHT LANGUAGE For our Parents THE TWILIGHT LANGUAGE Explorations in Buddhist Meditation and Symbolism Roderick S. Bucknell and Martin Stuart-Fox ~ CURZON PRE SS THE TWILIGHT LANGUAGE Paperback edition First published 1993 in the United Kingdom by Curzon Press Ltd. St John's Studios Church Road Richmond Surrey TW9 2QA ISBN 0 7007 0234 2 All rights reserved © Roderick S. Bucknell & Martin Stuart-Fox 1986 Reprinted 1994 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP record of this title is available on request from The British Library Printed and Bound in Great Britain by The Cromwell Press, 1\felksham, Wiltshire CONTENTS List of Plates vi Preface by R.B. vii Preface by M.S-F. Xl Acknowledgements xiii I Meditation and Symbolism I II The Twilight Language in Historical Context 23 III Concentration 36 IV Insight Meditation 49 V The Three Knowledges 78 VI The Five Symbolic Groups 103 VII The MafJqala and Cakras 117 VIII Doctrinal and Historical Implications 154 IX Conclusion 192 Notes 198 Index 228 PLATES See pp. 95 -102 2 The four peripheral dhyani Buddhas depicted around a stiipa. The view is from the north-east and shows Amogha­ siddhi (facing north, in the no-danger mudrii) and Ak~obhya (facing east, in the earth-touching mudrii). 2 Ak~obhya (the dhyani Buddha of the east) with his hands in the earth-touching mudrii. 3 Ratnasambhava (south) in the gift-bestowing mudrii. 4 Anlitabha (west) in the meditation mudrii. 5 Amoghasiddhi (north) in the no-danger mudrii. 6 Vairocana (centre) in the Dharma-wheel mudra. 7 A typical Tibetan stiipa or chorten. The stiipa form is con­ sidered to be composed of the traditional four geometrical shapes: the cube, sphere, cone, and hemisphere. 8 A large stiipa of a different style, illustrating a variant arrangement of the dhyani Buddhas. The view is from the south-east and shows Vairocana (who properly belongs in the centre, that is, concealed inside the stiipa) located between Ak~obhya and Ratnasambhava. Ratnasambhava's jewel emblem, in stylized fleur-de-lis form, is visible above him on the tapering tower. Photographs jro/n Kat/unandu and environs. vi PREFACE BY R.B. It is now some sixteen years since I first realized the importance of symbolic language in Buddhism. At the time of that initial discovery I was a bhikkhu (Buddhist monk), living in a quiet forest monastery near Chiangmai in northern Thailand. I had been practising, for the past year and a half, some of the best­ tried techniques of Buddhist meditation and, feeling that they were too limited in scope, had begun developing different tech­ niques which I at the time assumed to be original and unorthodox. This meditative experimentation brought some novel insights into the nature of mental processes. It also led me to rethink certain aspects of Buddhist doctrine; teachings that had seemed to make little sense now became intelligible - provided that certain key terms were understood as having a second, non-literal level of meaning, a symbolic meaning. This finding encouraged me to press on with my experiments in meditation, and at the same time to study more closely the Pali canon of Theravada Buddhism, along with modern commen- tators' interpretations of it. During the next year (my second as a bhikkhu) my meditative experiments led to extension and refine­ ment of the techniques, and my textual studies turned up pro­ gressively more substantial evidence of symbolic language in the canon. Meanwhile, reading on related topics revealed that my findings were not original. The meditative techniques I was developing had been described by various writers decades earlier, and the importance of symbolic language in the Pali canon had been pointed out at least ten years previously by the Thai monk Buddhadasa and discussed by him in a number of lectures and publications. In addition, I learned that other branches of Buddhism explicitly acknowledge the existence of symbolic language. In the Vajrayana tradition, now preserved mainly in Tibetan sects, it has long been recognized that certain important teachings are expressed in a form of secret symbolic language known as saf!1dhyii-bhii$ii, 'Twilight Language'. Mudriis and mantras, mafJifalas and cakras, those mysterious devices and diagrams that were so much in vogue in the pseudo.-Buddhist hippie culture of the 1960s, were all examples of Twilight Language, and were therefore relevant to my developing ideas on Buddhist symbolism. I came to feel that I was confronting a vast vii viii PREFACE BY R.B. problem in decipherment, similar to that which an archaeologist confronts when he examines a corpus of inscriptions in an unknown ancient tongue. I had gained a few hints about the nature of this symbolic language, but for the most part it remained a baffling mystery. At about this time I began communicating my findings to my former fellow-student and travelling companion, Martin Stuart­ Fox. He was in Paris at the time; but a little more than a year previously we had spent some time together when he visited me in Chiangmai, and one of our main topics of conversation had been meditation. In a series of lengthy letters I described to him the meditative techniques I was experimenting with, the apparently intentional symbolic correspondence between those techniques and certain key Buddhist teachings, and the challenging problems posed by the concept of Twilight Language. Martin expressed enthusiasm for my ideas, while at the same time criticizing some of my tentative interpretations as poorly substantiated or historically improbable. An historian, with Asia as his area of particular interest, he was able to point out chronological discre­ pancies entailed in the interpretations, which I, trained princi­ pally as a linguist and with a poor sense of history, had been un­ conscious of. Thus began a fruitful exchange of ideas which would in time lead to our agreeing to collaborate in writing this book. I spent the third year of my monkhood in India, searching ­ in museums, libraries, ashrams, and Tibetan monasteries - for material relevant to my research into Buddhist symbolism. That research grew progressively wider in scope as the far-reaching ramifications of the problem gradually became apparent. On the side of symbolism the study took in material from fields as diverse as temple architecture, cosmology, and mathematical notations; and on the side of meditation it entailed numerous discussions with gurus of every religious persuasion, in addition, of course, to continued personal practice. My ideas on the nature and significance of the Twilight Language developed gradually, and I repeatedly revised and refined my tentative interpretations. In its later stages this process of finding meaning in the symbols became increasingly dependent on Martin's historical insights, particularly on his recognition of the role of macrocosm­ microcosm parallelism. It was during the summer of that year in India that I began writing the first draft of this book. At the time, I was staying near Almora, a small town in the Himalayan foothills, and the PREFACE BY R.B. ix environment was particularly conducive to such work. The people with whom I was sharing the big colonial house were keen followers of Krishnamurti, whose teachings on meditation proved, on examination, to be largely in agreement with my find­ ings; and only half a hour's walk away lived Lama Govinda, author of several books on Tibetan Buddhism, who was always happy to spend an afternoon discussing meditation and sym­ bolism. I completed that first draft shortly after my return to Thailand, and sent it to Martin for his critical comments. He pointed out many shortcomings, but work on revising the draft had to be delayed because of various worldly problems. (These entailed, among other things, my leaving the Buddhist Sangha and returning as a layman to Australia.) Two years later Martin and I met again in Calcutta and began a year-long field trip through India, in the course of which I wrote a second draft. Again Martin read and criticized it, but this time his criticisms and suggestions for ·improvement were so far-reaching and of such value that I recognized that we really ought to colla­ borate. The book thus became a joint work. Progress thereafter was slow because of many competing commitments; but now, a further eleven years later, the work is at last complete. In its final form the book is much less extensive than were the earlier drafts. This is because we decided to delete much material that seemed only marginally relevant; for example, the longest chapter in the second draft, entitled'Alphabet Symbolism', has been completely deleted, as being more suitable for a specialized journal article. The result is a more compact book encompassing only the most important examples of symbolism found in the Pali canon and in the later Twilight Language of Tantric Buddhism. A.major objective in writing this book has been to offer practis­ ing meditators new lines of approach by drawing attention to possible alternative interpretations of certain Buddhist teachings. Some friends who read the nearly completed manuscript asked why we had bothered to discuss symbolism at all, since the meditative techniques to which the sybolism appears to refer are so much more important. We have two main reasons for discuss­ ing meditation and symbolism together. First, meditators with a Buddhist background are often reluctant to tryout a meditative technique unless they have some convincing evidence that it was taught by the Buddha; the symbols may provide this evidence. Second, many people with an interest in Buddhism tend to take the symbols at face value; an attempt to find meaning underlying the symbols may help remove misconceptions.

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