The Kabbalah, the Tarot and the Middle Way
Kenneth Chan
15. Opening the Door to Briah
With the attainment and adequate development of both Binah and Chokmah, the stage is now set for the most important step in the Tree of Life in Yetzirah, the one that opens the door to the higher Tree of Life in Briah. This is the path between Chokmah and Binah, depicted by the Tarot card, The Empress.
YETZIRAH: Chokmah – Binah
Tarot Card: The Empress
This path is the critical threshold we have to cross to gain access to the next higher Tree of Life in Briah. It is the path that combines the affective and compassionate state of our being at Chokmah with that of our cognitive reference perspective at Binah. It thus combines the altruistic intention of bodhicitta with the realization of emptiness and of nonduality and the unity of all.
This path is the aspiration for a true union of what is known, in Tibetan Buddhism, as method and wisdom (i.e. the union of bodhicitta and the wisdom realizing emptiness). It is the commitment to be nothing other than the bodhicitta ideal, with the focus only on saving all sentient beings from suffering, coupled with the realization that the self does not inherently exist.
Bodhicitta and the wisdom realizing emptiness is a potent combination. It is a transcendental state of bliss with the spiritual intensity of the inner light and is felt as a profound inspirational force. It is the answer to the call of Jesus to “love your neighbor as you love yourself” because this state of being can only be totally achieved if we no longer see any difference between self and others, both at an intellectual and at an emotional level. The union of bodhicitta and the wisdom realizing emptiness achieves exactly that, because of the realization that, in fact, both self and others are empty of inherent existence.
Our aspiration and commitment to implement this state of union of bodhicitta and the wisdom realizing emptiness is the critical threshold between Chokmah and Binah, and is represented by the Tarot card, The Empress. She represents the universal mother figure that nurtures all sentient beings. She is depicted as an Empress because she cares for all her subjects without any exception.
From this point on, progress on the spiritual path is by relying on actions to benefit sentient beings. It is a total immersion of our motives, aspirations and thinking, into the aim of benefitting all sentient beings. In other words, it is a transformation of our entire being into the motherly principle of nurturing and saving all others. The aspirant becomes nothing but that. Hence, this path is represented by the Empress who cares for all.
The Empress is not a ruler in the sense of being someone who can dictate to others what to do. She is, instead, the embodiment of the willingness to sacrifice herself for the sake of all others. She is thus the motherly principle that cares for all her subjects to the extent that she gives herself totally for their benefit.
As for all the thresholds that result in the revelation of the hidden Sephirah, Daath, this threshold is in the nature of a surrender. On the path between Chokmah and Binah at Assiyah, we relinquish our ego. Here, on this path between Chokmah and Binah at Yetzirah, we relinquish all sense of self and focus purely on the bodhicitta ideal. We surrender all motivation concerned with the nurturing of the self, as well as surrender the sense of there even being a self that carries out this motivation of nurturing the All.
In crossing this threshold, we have become the very embodiment of working for the welfare of all sentient beings, and of striving to save all from suffering. In other words, we have become the feminine nurturing principle, the very essence of the bodhicitta ideal.
Upon crossing this path, the hidden Sephirah, Daath, is revealed and now functions as Yesod on the Tree of Life of Briah. This revealed Sephirah now enables us to traverse the chasm between Tiphareth and Kether on the Tree of Life of Yetzirah, which corresponds to Malkuth and Tiphareth on the Tree of Life of Briah.
With the mystical experience of the union of method and wisdom, represented by the revealed Yesod of Briah, the chasm between Tiphareth and Kether can now be traversed. This path between Tiphareth and Kether is represented by the Tarot card, The High Priestess.
YETZIRAH: Tiphareth – Kether
Tarot Card: The High Priestess
Noble Eightfold Path: Right View and Right Livelihood
The High Priestess represents the path of transformation leading towards the unification of bodhicitta and the wisdom realizing emptiness, the perfection of which is known as the ultimate bodhicitta. Hence, it is the path towards achieving the nonduality of method and wisdom (method being bodhicitta and wisdom being the direct realization of emptiness).
Here, the wisdom of emptiness is not just the emptiness of the self that leads to the nonduality of self and others. It is the emptiness of all phenomena. One key aspect of this is the loss of the sense of an agent that is separate from the action. In other words, we become the embodiment of the bodhisattva ideal, with a nonduality that leads to the experience of sunyata or the dharmadhatu.
The High Priestess is seated between the two pillars with the letters B and J, which stand for Boaz and Jachin, the left and right pillars on the Tree of Life, representing the cognitive and affective aspects of our being, now at a highly developed spiritual level. This path from Tiphareth to Kether (at Yetzirah) can only be traversed with the help of the mystical experience of the revealed Daath, which now functions as Yesod of Briah.
So, this path depicted by the High Priestess actually represents two consecutive paths: one from Malkuth to Yesod, and one from Yesod to Tiphareth on the Tree of Life of Briah. On the Tree of Life of Yetzirah, these paths would be that from Tiphareth to the revealed Daath, and that from Daath to Kether.
While neither the Yetziratic text nor the Tarot now provide us with a description of these paths individually, we can deduce the outline of this process since it would correspond to the paths found in both Assiyah and Yetzirah. The crossing of the threshold between Chokmah and Binah of Yetzirah opens the door to the next higher World of Manifestation of Briah. This thus means that the hidden Sephirah, Daath (of Yetzirah), is revealed and will now function as the new Yesod of Briah
We shall look first at the path from Tiphareth to the revealed Daath (of Yetzirah). In the Tree of Life in Briah, the path from Malkuth (which is Tiphareth of Yetzirah) to the newly revealed Yesod is the path depicted by the Noble Eightfold Path as that of Right View. It is the view that leads to the revealed Yesod which is a mystical experience of a new higher level.
YETZIRAH: Tiphareth – Daath
Tarot Card: first part of The High Priestess
Noble Eightfold Path: Right View
On this path, which is depicted by the Noble Eightfold Path as the Right View, we lose the sense of there being an agent that carries out the task of saving all sentient beings from suffering. There is no self that carries out this task. Instead, we merge, like water into water, and become one with the All as well as become one with the very act of saving all from suffering. There is no “agent-that-acts” to be differentiated from the act itself. It is a deeper level of nonduality.
As Nagarjuna states:
Action depends upon the agent.
The agent itself depends upon the action.
One cannot see any way
To establish them differently.
Also, to further deepen the characterization of this combination of bodhicitta with nonduality, we should also recognize that activity also cannot be differentiated from the agent and the action. All are dependently arisen and are all thus empty of inherent existence. Again, as Nagarjuna puts it:
Without detachment from vision there is no seer.
Nor is there a seer detached from it.
If there is no seer
How can there be the seeing or the seen?
Plotinus echoes this same realization when he writes:
We ought not even to say that he will see, but he will be that which he sees, if indeed it is possible any longer to distinguish between seer and seen, and not boldly to affirm that the two are one.
All this characterizes the nature of the union of bodhicitta with the realization of oneness and nonduality. We become one with the action of saving all, where agent, activity, and the effect are all undifferentiated from one another. In other words, there is no agent, no activity, and no effect of the activity, to be separated from one another.
The path, from Malkuth of Briah, depicted by the Noble Eightfold Path as that of Right View, leads to the revealed Daath of Yetzirah, which now functions as Yesod of Briah.
YETZIRAH: Daath revealed as Yesod of Briah
The revealed Yesod of Briah represents a mystical experience of a new higher level, which, as in the Yetziratic text description of Yesod in Assiyah, would be one that “purifies the Emanations” since “it proves and corrects the designing of their representations, and disposes the unity with which they are designed without diminution or division.” These are the words of the Yetziratic text for Yesod in Assiyah, but they would equally apply to the new Yesod in Briah, only it does the corresponding action at a much deeper and more profound level.
After the realization that there is no differentiation between agent and action, we can receive the realization that the emptiness of inherent existence is essentially the equivalent of bodhicitta—the compassionate wish to save all sentient beings from suffering. This results from the fact that the realization of the emptiness of the self and others is tantamount to a state of nonseparation, a profound sense of a union with all, and with this loss of separateness, a genuine state of “loving your neighbour as you love yourself” arises, and hence bodhicitta becomes a natural and inevitable consequence. We begin to realize that both method and wisdom are essentially the same thing, and cannot be separated, since one naturally results in the other.
This nonduality of wisdom and method is essentially a union with the All, with the wisdom-realizing-emptiness coming from a more intellectual perspective, and bodhicitta coming from a more emotive perspective, but nonetheless, they are one and the same. In its perfected state, this union of the wisdom-realizing-emptiness and bodhicitta is known, in Tibetan Buddhism, as ultimate bodhicitta. It is a state where we naturally and spontaneously “love our neighbour as we love ourself” because there is essentially no “self” and no “others,” and hence no demarcation between the two. In addition, there is also no demarcation between the action of bodhicitta and an agent that does this action.
The mystical experience that we attain at Yesod of Briah provides us with a profound verification of this spiritual truth. It is verification by direct experience. It is a transcendental state of the union of method and wisdom, an intense blissful unitive experience of universal compassion and inner light. This will energize us and immerse us well into the world of Briah, enabling us to cross the chasm from Malkuth to Tiphareth. This is the beginning of the Path of Seeing (the third of the five paths or stages of progression, delineated in Mahayana Buddhism, on the route to full enlightenment), and when we reach Tiphareth of Briah, which is also Malkuth of the highest Tree of Life, Atziluth, we will have opened the third of the three Veils of Negative Existence, Ain.
Copyright © 2024 by Kenneth K C Chan. All Rights Reserved.
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