Vajrapāṇi Avalokiteśvara Manjushri – Power Compassion Wisdom

The three perhaps best know Bodhisattvas are Vajrapāṇi Avalokiteśvara and Manjushri. They are thought of as the embodiment, in the Buddha field, of power compassion and wisdom. They can be thought of as the three principle esoteric monadic energies, will to power, love-wisdom and active intelligence. Ray one, ray two and ray three. After all compassion is detached brotherly love advised by wisdom and “wisdom” can be thought of as the active application of intelligence and knowledge.

These three are reflected in the Buddhas of activity.

Avalokiteśvara is the second ray Bodhisattva and an archetype of love-wisdom. He emanates compassion for all sentient beings irrespective of their own personal values and actions. He is om mane padme hum or the jewel in the centre of the lotus. He emanates through the palm chakras the essence of enlightened heart. Avalokiteśvara is the Bodhisattva of the Elephant dreaming class.

These three Bodhisattvas can be seen as the benevolent aspect of what might be otherwise termed deity. These are a kind of Buddhist and energetic trinity.

As an antidote to the spread of division, xenophobia and hatred, the quality of compassion is much needed to offset the nastiness now spreading.

This second ray love-wisdom is the ray par excellence of inclusive compassion. Compassion is not to be confused with gullibility for sometimes the needed medicine lacks sugar.

Right now when the axe of cleavage and brutal coercion is being wielded humanity is in dire need of wisdom and of love. There is a bit of a drought…

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om mane padme hum

om mane padme hum

om mane padme hum

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Water Spirit – Misogi – Clean Water Venture Dream 22-02-2026

Here is last night dreaming which is in two related parts.

The first part opens on the shores of an alpine lake high up in the Japanese mountains. The lake is shaped like a glacial corrie or cwm and is of a pristine light turquoise blue colour. The water is hyper transparent and crystal cold. The air is crisp. To the rear of the lake is a snow covered peak. The scenery is magnificent with Japanese acers and maples. The water from the lake leaves by a small stream over a waterfall cascade which drops twenty-thirty metres over rock to a small plunge pool. The sound of the small waterfall is melody. The ambience of the environment is close to perfection. The view down from the mountains is far reaching out to the sea.

It is ago something like a thousand years ago. I am on the shore dressed as a Buddhist priest. It is definitely me and I am Japanese. In the dream I know this to be my prior life. The smell is also characteristic of Japan. With me on the shore is a spirit warlord and a small retinue of spirit warriors. There is a Japanese woman who is of high noble family and she has her retinue of ladies in waiting and an armed guard. They are dressed in great finery. The Japanese woman is part water spirit, the nature spirit of the high lake and part woman. Because of this and her relationship with the Imperial family in Shintō she is considered the goddess of the pure waters and an embodiment of misogi or purification. The water is already pure but must also always be blessed. The spirit warlord is angry and the woman must choose to either join him back in the spirit world entirely or relinquish her spirit part and remain human. In a sense I am adjudicating.

The woman does not take kindly to the angry demands of the spirit warlord. She walks over to me and places my hand firmly on her genitals on top of her clothes. She then slips it though her clothes and I can feel her flesh. Forcefully holding my hand there she rubs herself against it until she orgasms. At which point she shudders and relinquishes her water spirit aspect. She has become human.

The warlord watching says, “so you have chosen!!” He heads off into the pristine forest with his retinue of warriors. I reclaim my hand and the woman is surrounded by her ladies in waiting who comfort her. After she recovers she asks me to do a ritual of purification, of misogi, using the waters of the lake. Although it is Shintō I know the ritual well. I have a bamboo bucket and a small bamboo ladle. Which I prepare for the ritual with water from the stream.

I wake up for a visit and a 3 AM ibuprofen.

I am now in a busy city {London} office building. It is just East of The Strand and I am due to meet some financiers / venture capitalists. They have been funding a high end water business. The idea is to create ultra niche very expensive bottled water which is ritually purified and attracts a premium price. I have been asked to look into their investment. I am with a woman in a business suit who is in a rush. She is a bit “doff your cap” to the investors and anxious. She ushers me into a room in which there a number of “suits” sat around a boardroom style expensive table. They tell me that there is a prototype purification set up and pilot line that they want me to inspect. It takes impure near sewage water and makes it top end. They know I am a chemist-scientist-technologist with an entrepreneurial background.

The scene changes and I am in a laboratory. There is a huge blown glass apparatus with many coils of glass tubing. There are two sand-clay filtration stages and a long flow tube with an ultraviolet laser photolyzing chemicals and killing residual bacteria. The throughput is small and this is what is worrying the finance people. I look at the rig and it seems fine to me. It is obvious however that if they start with such impure water the throughput must be very slow. Purification is a process that takes time and effort. If they want top-end water they must start with a source which is already very good, premium and which only needs a bacteriological cleanse.

I am due to present my findings to the committee. As I walk through the building I am told that it is shutting up for the weekend. That I need to close off the lab and give my keys to the people on the third floor. The financiers have pretty much decided that they are going to pull the plug on the investment. I know that they have totally missed the point. All they can see is high throughput. They cannot see the value of purified water blessed by the likes of me. That brand which we might call misogi can attract premium price.

I go through the emptying building and I cannot find the office where I am supposed to deposit the keys. The occupants have rushed off for their hedonistic weekend jollies of excess. I walk past the front security desk and leave the keys with the uniformed man on the desk. I exit via the revolving door onto a busy central London street.

The dreaming ends.

Regional Nepotism in Buddhist Narratives ?

Although my mother, when  sun tanned could negotiate discounts from the Indian traders in the market in Gravesend, I am not of Indian nor Asian genetics. If she wore a sari and a bindi she could pass as Sikh. Yes one could say the Celtic migration had a terminus in a valley to the South East of Snowdown. I was however born a ginge…

As an outsider I note how many so-called previous lives of Buddha are in the general geo-location of Northern India – Himalayas- Afghanistan. He is often a prince and sometimes Brahmin. I note that the vast majority of Tulku rebirths are in Tibet – Nepal – North India – Bhutan area. If not there then there must be some familial nepotism.  Tulku begets tulku out of some follower or nun. I have never heard of a Viking incarnation. Once Buddhism spread East we did not get a sudden burst of Icelandic Bodhisattvas. The streets of Rio were not awash with them dancing at carnival.

My scientific mind notes this discrepancy. It seems unbalanced.

Surely a Bodhisattva reincarnating for the benefit of all sentient beings would not restrict themselves geographically or demographically?  Global impact in isolated countries high up in the mountains is not likely to be high. Skilful means suggests ploughing other wider fields.

There is a kind of perhaps spiritual snobbery. After all the Vedas and Buddhism predate Christianity and Islam. Only the pilgrim skilled in meditation, asceticism and vegetarianism can get enlightened. Beer and twice cooked chips are verboten, interdit. Turmeric is a must.

It is illogical that someone should only be born in the same geolocation if they are to garner a wider experience. If you have not tried rollmop and aquavit…you have missed something.

This for me seems slightly problematic in the around the camp fire tales of Buddha. The other problem I have is with the notion of many Buddhas stretching back millennia. The human vehicle was according to archaeology not as intellectually advanced and capable. All those millennia ago it did not look human.

How could a Buddha be Neanderthal?

There is an evidenced based narrative chronology which errs from the verbatim understanding of canon and Mahayana canon more so. If these are meant to be metaphor and parable, there is less problem.

Nevertheless is seems strange that Buddha only hung out there or thereabouts…

How Things Pan Out…

I think it fair to say we never really know how things are going to pan out. Sometimes hindsight and retrospect enable us to re-frame our narratives concerning how we got here, wherever here might be.

I can say that my “future” at the turn of the century looked markedly different to how it turned out and actually is now. I doubt even the greatest “seer” could have pictured what happened and how we live our lives now. The divergence of imagined future and subsequent actuality was large.

Aside from what goes on in the dreams, it is more straightforward to suggest an on-going likely trajectory now than it was back then. For a start the number of variables in life are reduced as is the dramatis personae.

Of course there could be an influx of new and new people but given the circles we move in, the likelihood is low.

We will have provisional answers on the major events of 2026 in a few months. One of these question marks we have a good indication on already.

I have been toying with an idea and that is about leaving the wheel of rebirth. In the hagiographies this is often represented as quasi-miraculous perhaps to generate aspiration. Maybe it is a whole lot simpler than that. Perhaps all one needs is to have seen a lot, experienced a lot and to be essentially {in its core meaning} used up. If one is used up and has zero residual ambition there is no driver to take on another body, another slab of meat. One becomes quiescent and has not the impulse to energise another biological form. This idea is perhaps more logical that others. The urge to be reborn ceases and it is no more complicated than that. No desire – no rebirth. No want – no rebirth. No greed – no rebirth.  The list goes on.

Maybe it is a kind of boredom that allows one to escape the wheel. I have been there, seen that, done that and now at last, I have the t-shirt. I have learned along the way.

What hindsight may also suggest is the role others have had in our lives. How we perceive that role may differ from how they do. We may learn a little about for what purpose we called them forth into our lives. We may have missed the point entirely. Too often we berate and blame instead of considering. The way modern life is lived, lacks patience. In our haste we miss so very much.

Maybe that is it, no more drama…

Siddartha said, “stop being such a drama queen and like a cart follows an ox you will find satisfaction, serenity and peace. In time, after you have discarded your pink feather boa and ludicrous overreactions, you will be free.”

I have an inkling that many obsessed with complexity and intellectual masturbation fail to see the buddha-field of simplicity…

You never know what life has in store for you, nor how things will pan out.

All you every really have is now…

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Chapter VII: The Venerable (Arhat)

90 There is no suffering for him who has finished his journey, and abandoned grief, who has freed himself on all sides, and thrown off all fetters.

91 They depart with their thoughts well-collected, they are not happy in their abode; like swans who have left their lake, they leave their house and home.

92 Men who have no riches, who live on recognised food, who have perceived void and unconditioned freedom (Nirvana), their path is difficult to understand, like that of birds in the air.

93 He whose appetites are stilled, who is not absorbed in enjoyment, who has perceived void and unconditioned freedom (Nirvana), his path is difficult to understand, like that of birds in the air.

94 The gods even envy him whose senses, like horses well broken in by the driver, have been subdued, who is free from pride, and free from appetites.

95 Such a one who does his duty is tolerant like the earth, like Indra’s bolt; he is like a lake without mud; no new births are in store for him.

96 His thought is quiet, quiet are his word and deed, when he has obtained freedom by true knowledge, when he has thus become a quiet man.

97 The man who is free from credulity, but knows the uncreated, who has cut all ties, removed all temptations, renounced all desires, he is the greatest of men.

98 In a hamlet or in a forest, in the deep water or on the dry land, wherever venerable persons (Arhanta) dwell, that place is delightful.

99 Forests are delightful; where the world finds no delight, there the passionless will find delight, for they look not for pleasures.

Dhammapada (Max Muller)

Inspecting Budda Relics Dream – 22-01-2026

Here is last night’s dream which finished around 3 AM but which was subsequently revisited on going back to sleep.

The dream starts in a brightly lit room. There is a sense of subterranean of basement and of vault. The overhead light is bright like a fluorescent light but there is no hum. I am sat at a very large  lab-bench like table but which is large boardroom size. I am on the only chair in the room. The table is a work table for inspection of artefacts. It feels forensic and museum like. The air is treated for humidity and is slightly warm but dry.

The door opens and in walks a man and woman. They are younger than me and wearing a dark olive green curators uniform with trousers and short sleeve shirts. The uniforms have been immaculately pressed. They are both wearing white jeweller’s gloves. The woman has curly blonde hair held back in a clip and the man is dark haired. The man places an object in front of me. I know this to be a reliquary containing pieces of Buddha’s body or so the narrative goes. The box is the size of a tissue box. It is on four curved ornate legs which have an animal {query lion} foot finish. The whole thing is made out of an exquisite light yellow gold carved in a motif of India query Sri Lanka. The pattern is exquisite, fine. The box is surprisingly light. I know that it has a mechanism whereby the lid can be rotated to reveal two compartments. One of these is smaller than the other. Without opening the box I know that the compartments have a red “felt” lining. I inspect the box from the outside. The workmanship is impressive. The woman looks at me for permission and then picks the box up and together they leave the room.

They return. This time the woman is carrying a small cloth bundle. It is square shaped with a depth of a couple of inches. The cloth is folded over and over to make a parcel. She handles it with reverence. The cloths are heavy and exquisitely woven with a fine shiny silken thread running through it. There are layers of a purple-ish base fabric cloth and a rich red-magenta cloth. The cloth is luxury.  She places the bundle in font of me on the table. I know that it is Tibetan-Himalayan in origin and that it too contains a relic of the Buddha. I pick the bundle up and inspect it from all sides, paying particular attention to the bottom. I am holding it in both hands just above my head inspecting.

{This relic is “privately” owned and on loan.}

As I do this I see a “wall” to a room or cave. The wall is made of a grey sandy granular sedimentary rock. In my mind’s eye I touch the rock and it starts to crumble and flow away leaving a couple of small pillars about 20 cm tall. There is an opening in the wall about 40 cm wide and 20 cm tall with pillars of a few centimetres thickness and a void or opening behind. There is a sense of a store or a cache behind the wall. In the dream I know that in this space are other relics pertaining to Buddha and his corporeal. I can see that the cache extends to both the left and the right of the opening in the wall.

I return from the vision and place the unwrapped bundle back on the table. The man signals to me and I nod. He picks the bundle up and they leave the room.

They return and this time the man is carrying a clear plastic sample storage drawer. It is around 10 by 10 cm on the front face and has a depth of about 30 cm. There is a catalogue card with number and content written in German. There is an acquisition date and I understand it to be a museum piece kept under preserving conditions and attributed as a Buddha relic considered by some a part of Buddha. They place it on the table in front of me and nestled on a bed of tissue paper and with a moisture absorbing paper silica sack is a small bundle of jet black felt cloth held together with a thin golden drawstring. It is a small bundle.  

The man and the woman, the curators, stand back behind me one on either side of me and against the wall.

The dream ends.