The Eight Consciousnesses and the Five Principal Elements

by Kalu Rinpoche

In order to understand clearly the connection between the teachings on mind and transmigration in the bardos, and to better understand these bardo processes, it might be helpful to consider the transformations that the mind undergoes throughout those phases.

Buddha nature or pure mind, that primordial wisdom, is, after all, emptiness, lucidity, and infinite possibility. It is the dear light encountered by all beings at the end of the dissolution of consciousness at the moment of death or, in the bardo of agony, followed by the bardo of emptiness. This clear light, or basic primordial wisdom, has as its essence the five principal elements: space, air, fire, water, and earth. These transform when the mind and its manifestations are modified, as we will see.

When Buddha nature is obscured by ignorance, it becomes the universal ground of samsara. As such, it is called the universal or fundamental consciousness, or the eighth consciousness. It encompasses and pervades everything, and from it arise all the illusions of individual consciousnesses.

The development of delusion begins with the appearance of duality. The nondual state of emptiness, lucidity, and unobstructedness splits up into subject-object duality and acts out of that perception. From emptiness arises the me-subject, from lucidity arises the sense of otherness, and from unobstructedness arise all relationships based on attraction, repulsion, and ignorance. With this split, contaminated consciousness or dualistic consciousness occurs-the consciousness that someone has something. It is referred to as contaminated because it is polluted with dualism, which is the seventh consciousness. This contaminated consciousness has an entourage of six other consciousnesses, corresponding to the different sense faculties: visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, tactile, and mental.

ALTERATION OF THE ELEMENTS IN THE MIND AND BARDOS

Empty, luminous, and infinite in potential, mind can be understood as having five basic qualities: emptiness, mobility, clarity, continuity, and stability. Each of these corresponds respectively to the five principal elements of space, air, fire, water, and earth. We have already described mind as not being a tangible thing: it is indeterminate, omnipresent, and immaterial; it is emptiness, with the nature of space.

Thoughts and mental states constantly arise in the mind; this movement and fluctuation is the air element's nature. Furthermore, mind is clear; it can know, and that clear lucidity is the fire element's nature. And mind is continuous; its experiences are an uninterrupted flow of thoughts and perceptions. This continuity is the water element's nature. Finally, mind is the ground, or basis, from which arise all knowable things in samsara as well as nirvana, and this quality is the earth element's nature. 

The five qualities of pure mind also have the nature of the five elements. Entering into illusions and duality, the mind is altered, but the productions of the mind preserve the nature of the five elements in different aspects. All manifestation is the play of mind in the transformations of the five principal elements. Moreover, there are subtle energies sustaining the mind and its mutations, traditionally called winds or airs. Mind, consciousness, and myriad diverse experiences are produced by these wind energies; they are indistinguishable from mind and are the energy that animates and influences them.

The five basic qualities of mind just described correspond to five very subtle winds, whose energy manifests in mind as the five essential luminosities which are referred to as extremely subtle. They are, respectively, blue, green, red, white, and yellow. These luminosities begin to manifest at the moment when the consciousness is re-established at the end of the bardo of emptiness. They make up part of the process of "birth," the emergence of dualistic consciousness. The experiences and projections of the consciousness subsequently arise from the five luminosities; they produce the appearances of the five elements which are perceived through illusion as the mental body and the outer world.

All illusory appearances that the consciousness experiences are basically emanations of mind, the manifestation of the five principal elements, initially occurring as essential qualities of mind, then in the winds and luminosities and finally as appearances. Each of these levels has the nature of the different elements: space, air, fire, water, and earth.

The process of structuring the consciousness occurs at every moment, in all our states of consciousness, but particularly at the beginning of the bardo of becoming. Then, during that bardo, by the interplay of the five elements, the consciousness projects the appearance of a mental body, a subtle form with which it identifies as a subject, while at the same time it projects these objects, perceived in an illusory way as the outer world.

So this consciousness subject, identified with its mental body, develops relationships with these form-projections that are gradually structured as the other aggregates: sensations, representations, and factors. The five aggregates that together form an individual (forms, sensations, representations, factors, and consciousness) are thus created. But at this stage of the bardo of becoming, the mental consciousness lives out all of its experiences only within itself, and the individual thus composed has only four and a half aggregates. In this way, the experiences of the bardo of becoming will last up until conception. At the moment of conception, the migrating consciousness is made up of four and a half aggregates, or heaps, combined with outer elements, present in the father's semen and the mother's ovum. So, the conceived embryo includes all five elements in their inner aspect-consciousness-and in their outer aspects, which come from the parent's gametes.

The five elements of space, air, fire, water, and earth exist in the embryo, and then in the physical body, as cavities, wind, heat, liquids, and solids on the one hand, and on the other, as the principles of stretching, mobility, energy, fluidity, and cohesion. The tangible form that the body acquires is the gross aspect of the form heap; an individual made up of five heaps is thus created, and slowly the six sense faculties develop-visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, gustatory, and mental. 

In the realm of these different sense faculties of the mental consciousness, two aspects, pure and impure, emerge. The first aspect proceeds from primordial awareness and the second from dualistic consciousness. The contaminated and afflicted mental consciousness proceeds from dualistic awareness along with everything negative, such as anger, greed, ignorance, attachment, jealousy, and pride. On the other hand, a positive mental consciousness arises from primordial wisdom with the qualities of wisdom, compassion, love, and faith. These two aspects of the mental consciousness extend throughout the six consciousnesses and sense faculties. This results in a variety of experiences of the six kinds of objects: forms, sounds, smells, flavours, tactile objects, and thoughts.

To draw an analogy, the fundamental consciousness is like the master or king; the mental consciousness is like his son, the prince; and the sense consciousnesses are like their emissaries. This is how we distinguish the eight consciousnesses. When the prince, or our contaminated mental consciousness, reigns over the six sense consciousnesses, they function in relation to their objects by way of the six sense faculties.

The interaction of the many elements within dependent arising, or tendrel, gives rise to innumerable conceptions that control body, speech, and mind. The various karmas activated by these illusions leave imprints in the fundamental consciousness, much like seeds planted in the ground. And, like the various interdependent factors such as fertiliser, light, and moisture that cause the seeds to yield a harvest, karmic imprints left in fundamental consciousness yield the harvest of a mass of happy or miserable lives, depending upon whether those imprints are positive or negative.