Circumambulation

by

Rob Preece

While living in India there was a point in the Himalayan winter when I was unable to stay in my mountain retreat because of snow. I was simply not equipped for such severe conditions. As a consequence I used to descend into the plains and make my way to Bodhgaya in the Bihar, where the Buddha sat at his time of enlightenment. There in the magical gardens, which surround the Bodhi tree under which he sat, I would continue my semi-retreat practices. I would make endless prostration and candle offerings and join the visiting Tibetans in performing Kor Wa. Kor Wa means literally to cycle, but in this context it means to circumambulate.

At certain times of the day, particularly evening, the Tibetan social scene would appear and begin the ritual circulation of the Mahabodhi Stupa. There would be the muttering of prayers and mantras mixed with the laughter of greetings as friends met and chatted in whispers. Occasionally they would stop at a particular statue set into the wall of the Stupa and with palms held together at the heart and heads bowed, prayers would be offered. I too would on occasions join this rhythmical cycle of circumambulations and make my prayers and mutter my mantras. When I did so I was often intrigued by the effect this circulation had upon me. There was a definite feeling of being in relation to a centring of my being that had a remarkably settling and ordering even comforting effect. It was as though I was coming home, being brought back to a place of wholeness that was a circulation around a central axis an axis mundi.

More recently I was reminded of this experience when I was preparing for a workshop I was leading. The theme of the weekend was the mandala. As I sat quietly trying to connect to the essential heart of what I wanted to explore over the weekend, I found myself impelled to stand up and begin slowly walking around in the room. This was not frustrated pacing of a caged animal. It was more reflective and purposeful. I found myself gradually circling around the theme I was reflecting upon. My body was guiding me to a direct experience of something that is hard to experience any other way. I was entering into the very essence of what it means to circumambulate, to circulate around a core of being.

As a process of circumambulation I am reminded of the times that Jung spoke of circulation as a psychological process. He often related to dreams as circulatory. They seldom present a sequence that is linear like the frames of a film. Rather they circulate around a central theme slowly deepening and expanding the understanding of meaning. When Jung spoke of the Alchemical process he referred to the way in which our process is most often a gradual circulation around a centralising axis of the Self. In this respect the journey far from being a linear evolution is more a gradual circumambulation around the Self as a deeper centre of being.

In the therapeutic process I am constantly presented with the realisation that the journey a client is on does not begin at a certain point and reach a particular goal. Rather we repeatedly circulate around one or more central themes. These themes are very often places of wounding, which bring us back time and again to the same issue met on deeper and deeper levels. This has often meant that clients express how they feel I must be tired of hearing the same things again and again. They may equally feel they do not seem to be able to get rid of a particular issue even though they are changing in relationship to it. This brings me to consider that if we are searching for some definite point of cure where the wound has gone, this may be a fallacy. One could see this another way. The wound, as with the wounded healer, is our place of awakening when we begin to circulate around it going deeper and deeper into its nature. Does this wound ultimately heal and disappear or is it like the grit in the oyster, the central theme that our process of awakening is fundamentally oriented around.

I know that for myself the central theme of my wounding does not go away, rather as I understand and go more deeply into its nature I discover a quality that is so to speak the wisdom within the wound. I am reminded of the Leonard Cohen line, "There is a crack in everything, it's where the light gets in." In tantra this principle is central to the way in which transformation occurs. The state of enlightened transformation emerges within or from the manure of the deluded base condition. When passion is transformed it becomes the "wisdom of discrimination". When anger and aggression is transformed it becomes the "mirror like wisdom". When jealousy and self-doubt is transformed it becomes the "all accomplishing wisdom". These qualities of insight arise as a reflection of the basic state of delusion once the emotion has been cracked and its innate energy released.

So too with our wounds. As we circulate around them in therapy or our spiritual journey they gradually reveal the innate potential that is constellated through the particular nature of the wound. The pearl emerges as the grit aggravates the oyster. The pearl reflects the oyster's capacity to live with the aggravation and create something beautiful from it. Perhaps just as the oyster doesn't see it as beautiful it is often hard for us to recognise the beauty and quality that is emerging as we circulate around the wound.

The process of circulation gradually opens us to an experience of the Self, our potential wholeness. From a Buddhist point of view this means we will gradually come to recognise that this circulation is bringing us to a deep experience of being utterly present in our true nature. As we come closer to the internal experience of the central axis around which we are circulating we discover the quality of being that is centred as total clarity and openness in the present. It is in this moment that our life is emerging and unfolding.

As we circulate around this central quality of our Buddha nature, at some point there is a subtle shift of awareness. In meditation at first we are aware of the constant sense of circulation as our world turns. Slowly we come to the still centre of that turning. We shift to the quality of presence that lies in the heart of the circulation. At first we are held in the horizontal plain of forces turning around a centre. As we go deeper we shift axis to the vertical where we are experiencing the quality of presence itself. In this awareness we settle in the experience of emptiness that is the core of the circulation. In this place of presence and emptiness there is no person, no I to experience an unfolding of the path. There is equally no path, nowhere to go. In the present we can experience simply the awareness of momentary unfolding with nothing to hold onto as permanent and substantial. Whether we chose to see a path that is a circulation or a progression is at this moment irrelevant.