III.  The Buddhist Tradition

 

Where vital breath and mind no longer roam about,
Where Sun and Moon do not appear,
There, 0 man, put thy thought to rest,
This is the precept taught by Saraha.

 -People's Dohas

 

In its early form, Buddhism would have nothing to do with matters "esoteric."  Said the Buddha himself, "the Tathagata has no such thing as the closed fist of a teacher."[i]   There was the four noble truths and the eight-fold path, samsara and nirvana, and though it is true that the Buddha proclaimed that "in this very body, six feet in length, with its sense-impressions and its thoughts and ideas, I do declare to you are the world, and the origin of the world, and the ceasing of the world, and likewise the Way that leadeth to the ceasing thereof,"[ii] it was in quite a different sense than that expounded by the mystical physiological systems that we have studied in this paper.  The opening up of Buddhism to outside influences as well as to internal speculation gave rise to the Mahayanan tradition,  the great vehicle, and Mahayana embraced whatever means (upaya) or disciplines that proved successful in facilitating liberation or enlightenment.

 

The description of the Tantric Buddhist psycho-physical model is usually presented more as a visualization in which discrepancies of opinion abound.   Basically, the only difference between it and the Hindu model is one of emphasis.  Tantric Buddhism emphasizes only four of the Hindu cakras: the centers of the navel, heart, throat, and head.  The other cakras are recognized, but do not play much of a role in practice.  No mention is made of a spiraling course of the two outer nadis (tibetan, rkyang-ma and ro-ma; sanksrit, ida and pingala), though the central channel, always of major importance, is still recognized as leading from the perineum to the upper reaches of the cranium where it "then turns forward into the space between the eyebrows.  Here nothing­ness enters and descends, which is of the nature of Aksobhya (transcending awareness).  Other names for this termination point are Rahu, Time, and Pure Consciousness."[iii]

 

Unlike the Hinayanan conception of nirvana as static and something to be possessed, the Mahayana tradition looked to it as a dy­namic way of being.  Best illustrated by the spirit of Zen, Mahayana found that clinging to nirvana was at best a limited free­dom.  Being, however, is threefold (trikaya), the dharmakaya (chos­sku), sambhoghakaya (long-sku), and nirmanakaya (sprul-sku).  The latter two bodies (tibetan;. sku; sanskrit kaya) or principles constitute the operational mode of Being as rupakaya, the "form principle".[iv]  Kaya (sku), usually translated as body, must be distinguished from the body as deha (lus).  The former is a term which points to em­bodied Being, the latter to the loss of such.

 

            Garma C.C. Chang defines the trikaya as follows: 

The Three Bodies of Buddha, i.e., the Dharmakaya — the Body of Reality; the Sambhogakaya ­the Body of Enjoyment; and the Nirmanakaya­ — the Body of Transformation.  The Dharmakaya is the embodiment of Sunyata, that which is primordially unborn.  It is transcendental and beyond all attributions and designations.  The Sambhogakaya is the divine manifestation of the Dharmakaya — the-Body-of-Splendor-and­-Glory revealed only in the realm of Buddha's Pure Land.  The Nirmanakaya is the Transfor­mation Body incarnated in various worlds for the benefit of sentient beings.[v]

 

Though three kayas are spoken of, in truth they are one indivisible Being, and a fourth kaya, svabhavikakaya, is used to designate the integration and non-dual functioning of all three principles.  The term Being does not indicate an essence or "a" Being, for the trikaya is empty (sunya) of any qualification whatsoever.  As such the three kayas are not "things;" words used in relation to them are only indexes, pointers to what is fundamentally ineffable.

 

The transcendental "structure" of Being may also be described as a tri-unity of actuality (rana-bzhin, irradiative or luminous presence as factual function[vi]), facticity (ngo-bo, an utter open­ness, sunyata), and sensibility (thugs- rje, value-feeling as the incessant support of aesthetic awareness and compassion or respon­siveness as an expression of buddhahood).  Facticity thus refers to the ontological aspect of Being, sensibility to its "mood," and actuality to its functioning.  Under the influence of creative potentiality (thig-le; bindu) this triad of pure consciousness its radiance (od-gsal) in its primacy (ye-shes) and as dullness-luster­lessness, desire-attachment, and irritation-aversion becomes the foundation of samsara.

 

          Creative potentiality (thig-le) is a term for the openness of Being to infinite possibilities which, as an indeterminate field factor, either points beyond itself to Being-as-such or to itself as the seminal root of the psycho-organism.[vii]  In its latter role it can be understood as a sort of genetic code whose formative­ness is designated by the term motility (rlun; vayu) which, as non-dichotomic motility, is an aspect of Being.  Motility implies "the capability of motion irrespective of actual movement."[viii]

 

Although the triad of pure consciousness is not an entity having a foundation on somewhere it is endowed with light, and although motil­ity has no definite shape it yet produces movement; these two (consciousness and motility) are fused like oil with oil and in the twinkling of an eye become a light shines everywhere, out of which in a fraction of a moment the reaction patterns [vasanas] evolve...[ix]

 

 

Like an "atomic gene" within a nucleus of energy which finds expression in an orbiting band of five light values, thig-le is both the controlling and structuring process.  Its five light values constitute the color spectrum of form.  Viewed in rela­tion to the trikaya,

 

The tireless potential energy of the creative potency to which no definite designation can be assigned or the unoriginated, is noetic being (chos-sku), spirituality as such.  Its presential actuality or unceasingness is com­municative being (long-sku), communication as such.  Its existential dynamics, or the phenomenality of all and everything, is meaningful authentic being (sprul -sku), existence as such.[x]

 

In its controlling and structuring activity thig-le is a term for process-product, product-process, indicating the fluidic nature of phenomenality.

 The creative activity of thig-le is group-patterned by the carry-over of experience traces or "experientially initiated potentialities of experience." (vasanas) and can be conceived of as "some kind of extended pervasive medium capable of receiving and retaining modifications of local structure or internal motion."[xi]  In its activity it is responsive.  It is very similar to the Vijnanavadin's alayavijnana, "all-ground cognitiveness".[xii]  Here thig-le has an indeterminate character.

Creative potentiality unfolds itself in a process called "quadruple potency" and changes from an indeterminate field to one that is becoming determinate.  Three phases are isolated and are graphically illustrated below:

 

transcendence
unoriginated
non-memory                             vasanas in latency
memory                                    vasanas, in actuality[xiii]

This is a process in which pure awareness (rig-pa) is lost to a kind of blurred primacy which becomes the subjective component of the developing psycho-organism.  Guenther calls it a "psychological red shift" specifying that the radiation of the triad is dulled, giving way to emotiveness.[xiv]

This shift brings about a "dull" version of the triad which is called the three reaction potentialities (vasanas).  Actuality is dullness-lusterlessness (bewilderment) in its becoming, facti­city is desire-attachment, and responsiveness is irritation-aver­sion.  Motility is the vehicle of these reaction potentialities and as the process continues the non-dichotomic motility becomes more and more specialized becoming dichotomic motility, the vehi­cle of still further distinct reaction potentialities which num­ber eighty.  These potentialities are preconscious patterns which determine overt responses.[xv]  'Thirty-three patterns have their root in the potentiality to aversion, forty in that of passion­-lust, and seven in that of bewilderment."[xvi]  As the creative po­tentiality unfolds so does the polarities of samsara and nirvana.  "Motility in its subtle aspect and spirituality (mentality) as the reaction potentialities have been indivisible from time im­memorial and thus perform what is called Samsara and Nirvana."[xvii]  Memory is the potentiality of samsara as it is the craving for involvement with objects; non-memory is the potentiality of nirvana for it is the craving for no-objects.  Non-memory is the basis of mind (sems).  "Mind, in the absence of conditions, is without memory and association and is sunya.[xviii]  When subjected to certain conditions, mind assumes certain states and this is said to be the causal characteristic of mind.  Mind as such is the basis of memory and association or mental events (dran-pa).

Mind and mental events then introduce a division in what is indivisible, the play of phenomenality on the sunya-like mirror of the dharmakaya, through divisive or interpretative concepts (rtog-pa).  Here rtog-pa is defined in terms of its opposite, mi­rtog-pa:

The 'absence of interpretive concepts' (mi­rtog-pa) is intimately connected with what was referred to as the view that only mind exists.  This view is the rejection of the common-sense belief in physical objects as ontological items corresponding to the epi­stemological object of a particular perceptual situation.  It further declares that the that the notion of a physical object is a category and defined by postulates (vikalpa) which are as innate principles of interpreta­tion superimposed on and applied to what is given in pure sensation.[xix]

 

Appearance standing apart from an apprehender is "a relinquishing of pure sensation."[xx]

 

In psycho-physical terms, in the middle of the potential being (thig-le) there first develops the central channel or path­way (avadhuti).[xxi]   Through this moves transcendental awareness (ye­shes) as awareness motility.  Just as non-dichotomic motility be­comes dichotomic motility, so does awareness motility spread along the two bilateral pathways and becomes action motility.[xxii]  As the dulling of the radiance of the triad of pure consciousness, the central, left (rkyang-ma), and right (ro-ma) pathways represent dullness, desire, and aversion respectively.[xxiii]  Ro-ma establishes the object-polarity in which travels the "sun motility."   Rkyang­-ma establishes the subject-polarity in which flows the "moon motility."  "The object polarity consists of the five forces: solidification, cohesion, temperature, movement, and spaciality; the subject polarity, of consciousness, motivation, feeling, sensation, and formative phases."[xxiv]

 

Through the subject polarity rkyang-ma or the subjective com­ponent every being is linked to the totality field of his individu­ality.[xxv]  Thus, through rkyang-ma comes the input (thig-le) which is then "decoded" and acted out by ro-ma.  Ro-ma represents, therefore, the objective component.  The input of rkyang-ma is initially worked out by ro-ma as four primary control centers.  These are at the navel, heart, throat, and head and are respectively called the control centers of morphogenesis, of meaning, of intercommunication, and of pure pleasure.[xxvi]  They represent processes and regularities in the living organism.  The navel is also called the "initial generator control center," "because it initiates the programming of the manifold actions and emerging functions of the living organ­ism in such a way that it will reach the form and functioning character for the organism... "[xxvii]  Thus, "in the development of this 'control center' the process of synthesis ('water', 'cohesion') is primary."[xxviii]

 

The next control center is also termed "memory storage center" and is "marked by the primacy of gravitational forces ('earth', 'solidification') which are necessary to prevent the escape of what may be said to include all that we have learned in the strug­gle for survival, and to retain this 'knowledge'."[xxix]  The third center, also referred to as the "nutrition storage focal point," is concerned with metabolic processes ('fire', 'combustion,' 'tem­perature,' 'heat') and is "associated with the monitoring agency in the process, and thus is significant for the organisms well-being, health, and capacity for enjoyment and intercommunication, involving the internal as well as the external environment."[xxx] And finally, the last control center is also known as the "top ordering system control center."[xxxi] It is related to motility which is needed to maintain the complexity of the whole, "system" which, in turn, requires 'motility' for efficient working, in particular, for working out the details for which the 'system' has been programmed.[xxxii]

 

The process indicated above is one of 'condensation' in which the "eyes of the elemental forces" oversee the process of develop­ment of organic matter and the body-mind complex.  "In another process, the 'internal radiation energy' of the elemental forces leads to 'spiritual' operations."[xxxiii]  In this process the "eyes of the lamps," the four centers working as 'internal radiation energy,' are stimulated to new functions by the "bioenergetic input" (thig-le) triggering morphogenesis.  They are then sites for "pure awareness."

 

Whereas in this model the control center at the navel evolves first, in another model it is the heart focal point that first appears and, as it is connected with memory, this makes more sense.[xxxiv]   Motility and mentality as a unit are said to reside in the heart.[xxxv]  Through the heart Being reaches man in his being.[xxxvi]  The heart as the singularly most important focal point is correlated with the dharmakaya.  The navel and the throat centers correspond to the nirmanakaya and sambhogakaya respectively.  The head center is associated with svabhavikakaya, the integration of the three exist­ential norms.[xxxvii]

 

The forces responsible for the rigidity of the self-sense, "I" (aham) are represented as white and red streams of thig-le which from the heart lodge themselves in the head and the navel respect­ively.[xxxviii]  The tension created by them is the inflexible "I."  The force in the head is represented by the syllable "ham" and the force in the navel by "a".  The "melting" of the "ham" thig-le (bodhicitta, enlightenment potentiality) through heat created in the "a" or the navel brings about the unfoldment of four blisses which undermine the rigidity of the I-sense.

 

The practice of heat yoga (gtum-mo) is the very foundation of the tantric path.[xxxix] "The syllable gtum ('fierce') signifies the direct overcoming of all that is not conducive to enlighten­ment, that is, all that has to be given up; the syllable mo (mother) indicates motherhood as producing spontaneously all the good in virtues, that is, all that has to be attained."[xl]  Dumo [gtum-mo] is, therefore, the Fire of Transcendental Wisdom that burns up all ignorance and vice.[xli]  The biography of Naropa speaks of four degrees of heat, external, internal, mystic, and ultimate heat.

 

The external one makes the body-structure glow in a vermilion-like light; the inter­nal one lets radiation spread straight like the tense string of a bow; the mystic one lets motility develop forcefully like a skilled archer shooting an arrow; and the ultimate one preserves spirituality as diligently as one would a light in a gale.

 

[The effectiveness] of the external one is that even if the technique related to the control of vibrations is sometimes weak bodily warmth will not get lost.  That of the internal one is that no chance diseases will occur.  That of the mystic one is that the working of action-motility can be stop­ped, and that of the ultimate one is that discursive thought and man' dividedness against himself turns into transcending and unitary awareness.[xlii]

 

 

As the foundation, gtum-mo serves as the basis of the five other "yogas of Naropa," the "apparitional-body yoga, dream yoga, light yoga, bardo yoga, and transformation yoga.[xliii]

 

            When the mystic gtum-mo heat is generated to the point where it reaches the head center, the "ham" melts and at each center there arises a "joy" (dga) which, because of its capacity to de­stroy objectifying thought, is also a "wisdom."  "In the symbolic language of the Tantras, the gradual disappearance of the subject­-object dichotomy and the realization of the non-dichotomic satisfaction which is as much knowledge as feeling, is spoken of as a descent or downward movement of 'enlightenment'."[xliv]  These joys are symbolized by sexual play and consummation.

 

The first type of joy (dga-ba) which comprises five degrees and is linked with the objective reference, is said to be 'small bliss.'   It is present in the amorous exploration of the part­ner.  The next type of intense joy (mcho-dga) which also comprises five degrees is marked by a decrease in the intensity of the objective reference.  In it the division into an I and You fades into a feeling of communion and hence is said to be 'mediocre bliss.'  The third type of joy is termed variously, either as a 'special joy' (khyad-dga) or as 'joyless­ness' (dga-bral).  It is a special joy because in it the division into the I and You has, as it were, completely disappeared, and it is a joyless joy, because the ordinary judgements as to the varying intensity do not apply any more.  Nevertheless, this joy is said also to comprise five degrees.  But since in these three types of joy there is still a latent trace of the division into an I and You, they are indices of and pointers to true joy, rather than the actual consummation which is reserved to what is called the sixteenth degree.  Its name is 'co-emergence joy' (lhan-cig-skyes-pa'i dga-ba), because here thought and feeling have fused into a unitary ex­perience.  This last intensity degree is rarely realized in its purity because of the presence of 'ignorance.'[xlv]

 

These joys are, of course, exceedingly more intense than sexual orgasm.  As one lama puts it, "The Four Blisses produced by the Dumo Yoga practice are so vast and so deep in scope and intensity, that no words can describe them."[xlvi]  When the "ham" melts, at the head center there arises "joyous excitement" (ananda), at the throat "ecstatic delight", at the heart "special delight", and at the navel arises the "co-emergence delight" sahajananda).[xlvii]

 

          The experience of joy and destruction of ordinary object-thinking is not the only element that links the four blisses to sex.  The actual flow of vitality moves in the same direction in both "unfoldments".  And, in fact, sexual intercourse when utilized in conjunction with certain yogic visualizations and manipulations is a means to unfold the four blisses.  The process is described as fourfold: downward motion, retention, backward motion and saturation.[xlviii]  The downward motion is the descent of the bodhicitta; retention is "to hold, like a lamp in a storm, constant in one's inner vision the reality of co-emergence delight;" backward motion is to make the delights ascend and to stabilize them; and satura­tion is to spread the bodhicitta and bliss throughout the body.  The climax of this process of which orgasm is the index or pointer is co-emergence delight which arises when the thig-le reaches the navel and should be maintained or held as long as possible.  It is "the intuitive understanding of the non-duality of bliss and nothingness," though there still remains an element of ignorance, and therefore all the 'bliss-wisdoms" that arise when the bodhi­citta descends are called "corresponding bliss-wisdoms".[xlix]  The "actual bliss-wisdoms" arise when these four corresponding de­lights are stabilized and the pranas enter the central channel.

 

            The gathering of the pranas in the central channel is essen­tial to the practice of the five other yogas of Naropa.  When this is achieved, there arises in reverse order the four degrees of nothingness (memory, non-memory, unoriginated, transcendence which correspond respectively with plain nothingness (sunya), intense nothingness (atisunva), great nothingness (mahasunya), and complete nothingness (sarvasunya).)[l]  "Thus the mere light which is sensed and felt, after the subject-object polarity has given way, is called 'nothingness,' while the subsequent phases are called an 'intense nothingness,' and 'great nothingness)."[li] Complete nothingness is equivalent to the dharmakaya.  The first three phases are associated each with one of the three reaction potentialities: nothingness with aversion-hatred, intense nothing­ness with passion-lust, and great nothingness with bewilderment-­errancy.

 

               Each of the four degrees of sunyata has a sign or symbol as its yogic representative.  In order they are smoke, a glow-worm, a lamp in a container and a cloudless sky.[lii]   Other symbols are also used, "since every account we can give is bound to the sub­ject-object polarity, so also consciousness, even as pure aware­ness, is referred to as somehow sharing this polarity, although the polarity does not exist in the ordinary form.  Thus the sym­bols of sun and moon and of utter darkness do not mean that their light is the content of consciousness, but that consciousness is of such brilliancy as can best be illustrated by the light of sun and moon which shines everywhere."[liii]  Once the yogi is able to unfold the four sunyatas, he is able to practice the five other yogas of Naropa.

 

                        The psycho-organism of every living being is two-fold: a coarse, ephemeral structure created by the materiality-producing forces and "clothed in the experientially initiated potentiali­ties of experience," and a real one which is like an apparition and is "mere motility and mentality-spirituality.  This real one does not leave or become separated from the ephemeral one.[liv]   Even when the coarse body is discarded at death or otherwise as in dreams, etc., the real one remains as a "mind-body."  The real body is like a guest inhabiting the guest house of the ephemeral bodies.

 

In the "apparitional-body yoga," the yogi becomes aware of his real body as a projection arising out of the dharmakaya.  First the four sunyatas are unfolded,

 

Then, when motility begins to stir in this light of complete nothingness, and in re­verse order darkness has set in, this indivisibility of motility and mentality... be­comes an apparition of brilliantly white light in a being-there pervaded by Being-­in-itself with distinct features of a body, a face, and other limbs.[lv]

 

The yogi must come to feel identical with the apparition without the slightest trace of duality.  When coincidence is experienced in full, the yogi realizes the sambhogakaya, which has the follow­ing seven characteristics:

 

These seven features are (i) the richness of value, through the unification of the ultimate truth which is ultimate in the sense that it cannot be resolved into anything else, and the relative truth as supported by the ultimate one before it becomes a partitive and, partial truth (ii) the enjoyment of the bliss of this unitary character; (iii) the unsurpassableness of this bliss because it is not a conditioned pleasure; (iv) the absence of anything that might claim existence exclusively within itself because it is not affected by the delusiveness of the pos­tulates of subject and object; (v) its transcending compassionateness because it manifests it­self in a being-for-and-with-others, although the constructs of subject (self) and object (other) do not obtain; (vi) its continuity, the endless unfolding of a world of facts and values; and lastly (vii) its imperishableness, because it remains above all change.[lvi]

 

Dreams are a particularly opportune occasion for spiritual growth as they in their insubstantial flow are the best index or symbol of the nature of reality.  The process of falling asleep spontaneously unfolds the four nothingnesses.

 

When the vibrations of the psychosomatic constituents, the materializing forces and their interactional fields, become sublim­inal and gather in the 'heart', the various phenomena of falling asleep, which resemble the meditative progress from a soft glow to a spread of light and beyond, dissolve in what is called the spread of light, which in turn dissolves in the darkness of the inner glow, the foundation of sleep, because mind overcome by darkness resembles this darkness of the inner glow.  Out of this darkness then breaks forth the primordial radiant light, a momentary awareness which is absolutely free from all obscurations and all mental constructs.  It is from this light that the various pheno­mena of dreaming proceed.  Although the dream has no independent existence of its own it appears as something being-itself, and accord­ing to its nature, is capable of performing various functions.  And so it is with the whole of entitative reality.  Therefore by means of dreams one can individually experi­ence and apprehend the whole of entitative reality as a divine pattern which is a sem­blance (of the radiant light).[lvii]

 

What is essential in this practice is to become aware that a dream is taking place and by holding onto that awareness to be able to manipulate the dream-process.

 

            The yogi who has perfected the apparitional-body yoga only need wait for the dream to arise.  "Immediately after motility has stirred in the primordial radiant light, a dream will appear at the throat focal point and one must concentrate on holding whatever appears as a perceptual display for the five senses as long as possible."[lviii]  The yogi then practices transforming the contents of the dream.  A who is proficient in melting the bodhicitta must concentrate on his throat center to gather the thig-le there thus creating more vivid dreams.  He must resolve to awake in his dreams and upon doing so he too must practice the dream creativity of transforming the contents.  Through this yoga "the bewilderment which consists in taking for truth all that appears in the waking state is annihilated."[lix]

 

            The practice of light yoga is similar to the dream practice except that what is required in this teaching is the recognition of the four lights-of-nothingness in and of themselves either as they spontaneously unfold at sleep or as the pranas are made to enter the central channel.  This practice is the crucial preparation        needed to recognize one of the lights at the moment of death.  The yogi must be able to "hold" the lights, and his realization at death corresponds to the light which he is able to "hold'.  This is the bardo yoga, the subject of the Tibetan Book of the Dead.  Finally, there is the transformation yoga.  Through this yoga the practitioner hopes to avoid the bardo (after-death) state al­together and to instead to immediately project himself at the moment of death through the fontanel (brahmarandhra) to a higher form of existence.  He is said to be immediately transferred to one of the Buddha's pure lands where he may realize complete en­lightenment.

 

            The foundation discipline for all of the yoga practices are basically two: retention of breath and visualization, though these are often accompanied by physical exercises.  The Hindu mahabhanda, for instance, always accompanies the advanced form of breath reten­tion.  The entire path is summarized under the developing and ful­fillment stages.  The developing practices concern themselves primarily with concentration-visualization.  Here one is taught to visualize the nadis and centers and to visualize oneself as a god or goddess.  This enables the yogi to free himself of con­crete ideas about himself.  Also connected with the developing stage are four initiations which are of a purificatory nature.

           The central concern of the fulfillment stage is leading the pranas into the central channel.  This is accomplished through breath retention, visualization, and certain physical exercises.  The aim of these is to generate heat in the navel which serves as the foundation of all the yogas.

           Certain physical changes accompany these practice.  In With Mystics and Magicians in Tibet, Alexander David-Neel describes how icy sheets of cloth are placed around the body of gtum-mo aspirants and dried off by their generated heat.  In the transformation yoga the yogi visualizes a Buddha above him and in his imagination he shoots the syllable "hum" from his heart through the central chan­nel into the Buddha's heart.  After enough practice there should arise an itchy hot feeling at the top of the skull and in 'its center a lump will rise and secrete a form of yellowish liquid."[lx]  This is a sign that the yoga has been successful.

             According to Bharati, sexual yoga is used by the Tibetan yogi as a means of "stabilizing the three jewels — breath, thought, and semen —  in a simultaneous act which, when successful, yields the state of oneness in duality, the yuganaddha."[lxi]  The biography of Naropa says that through sex a man can experience "the meaning of his own or his partner's being." "The first is experienced by stimulating one's sexual power and vitality, not allowing it to decrease; the second by absorbing the partner's equivalent, so producing a constant feeling of bliss and nothingness."[lxii]

             The trikaya corresponding to the centers of the yogic body are also related to the three purifications of birth, death, and the intermediate state (bardo).[lxiii]  The nirmanakaya, connected with the navel and birth, is purified in the kindling of the mystic heat and spread of higher awareness in the ephemeral body.  The dharmakaya, connected with the heart and death, is purified when motility enters the central pathway in the unfoldment of the four sunyatas.  And the sambhogakaya, associated with the throat and the intermediate state, is purified when the real body is known as indi­visible with the radiant light as it arises out of the heart.

             The entire process of liberation in Buddhist Tantra is com­pared to the melting of ice into water.  Ice is product-process misinterpreted as samsara; water is the same in its Being as svabh­avikakaya.  It is not that the process-product formation of the creative potentiality is an accident, something to be undone.  Phenomenality is not samsara; samsara is the mistaken interpretation of phenomenality.  In fact, any interpretation whatsoever constitutes samsara. The loss of intrinsic awareness under the influence of quadruple potency is the advent of mind and the assumption of per­spective with its limiting interpretations.  It is awareness as interpretative concepts that has gone astray, not phenomenal arisings.  Once trapped or, rather, persuaded by motility that it constitutes an essence as mind, awareness is taken up and "molded" by reaction potentialities and takes the world to be other and real in itself.  Phenomena as concrete object is indeed the "seal" of samsara.

           Water, though fundamentally no different from ice, symbolizes the true nature of life as an indivisible flow of dynamic Being, inseparable from phenomenal arisings.  The great yogin Saraha sums up the process of liberation using the ice-water analogy:

 
First appearance is felt as nothing:

This is like recognizing ice as water.

Then, without appearance disappearing,

Nothingness is indistinguishable from bliss:

'Tis like ice turning into water.

When memory dissolves in non-memory and this

       in that which has no origin,

When everything is indistinguishably one in bliss supreme:

This is like ice dissolved in water.[lxiv]