I’d stumbled on one of the rare Buddhist schools that taught mainly through the elements: the natural forces, earth, water, fire, air, space. Perfect for me. It brought my beloved nature into my spiritual practice. The poetry of my youth was about bush, sea, and the mysterious presence within nature, in mountain fastnesses and rushing rivers. Now I had ways to practise with it, that reduced suffering.
We meditated on the elements in all sorts of ways. Colours and shapes showed the elements’ character and qualities. The yellow square was earth, the heaviest, most slow-moving element; the blue circle, water, was heavy and mobile; the fire triangle swiftest. Air, the green half-moon, was lightest; the teardrop was space or consciousness.[i] It was as if you had five colours to paint everything in the world. The combinations made a billion shades. I was one of infinite shapes that nature painted.
Body was earth, emotions water, actions fire, thoughts air, consciousness space. Then within each of those, you found all the elements. A thought by its nature was air; you might be thinking fast: fire, or about food: earth, or steady, slow, stodgy or stuck; or philosophy, air. Every moment had its unique mix.
We meditated on the elements in our body – bones, blood, muscles, breath, nerves. The stomach was earth, digestion fire; there was lots of detail about which organs and functions of the body were which elements. I felt the five forces physically, in body and heart, in movement, in the senses, in the body space with emotions and thoughts. They had the qualities of rocks, water and heat, the shining streams and blustery winds I loved.
This simple system of five elements encompassed all the complications and seemingly disparate things in our world, our personality and doings. Everything in my life, buses, frustrations, dancing, were made of those primeval powers of nature. I was the flows of nature. It physically transformed what I thought I was. Instead of, I’m a pathetic useless girl who can’t do anything and everybody hates girls so I’ll never be able to – very separating – that wasn’t who I was at all. (though I was still inclined to behave like that, couldn’t shift the habits instantly.)
There was wind and water blowing through me, that’s who I was. I loved the elements the way I loved nature; loved that I was made of these fundamental natural forces. I became a creature I could love.
When moods moved in me, I was feeling the natural forces inside me; like a liquid with colours swirling in it. I felt the character of those forces, in all their combinations: emotional flows were water moving in different ways, like a stream or a clogged up stagnant lotus pond. Earth of water was mud; swamps were water of earth. All moving and changing; I felt a breeze blow through and the mud loosen.
Instead of thinking oh, I’m angry, I felt fiery heat rising. It was fluid and movable. I could think, that’s intense, so spread it out. Change the flow. I could move the energies as in a sculpture: too much red, add blue cool water.
It was like the origins myths I loved, that tell of creation arising out of nothing, from vast void or mother ocean – then light comes, land forms, animals arise out of it. Primordial forces became trees and ants. I felt the forces in myself, before they formed into Dido doing the dishes. Then doing the dishes was part of primeval forces.
Greek gods were natural forces, also our human passions. From childhood I felt my emotions were the same as weather.With the elements, nature and what was inside me were the same forces. So was everybody else. There were no egos left in the world.
We were all the beauty of nature, all changing and growing. All subject to confusion, not evil. I could be proud, be the dignity of high peaks, rivers, clarity of water, birdsong. If I felt sad it was nature, if I was frustrated or confused it was nature; not only the beautiful bits.
Now I didn’t have to drive like a maniac to wild places. Nature wasn’t only sweet rivulets tinkling in bluebell nooks: it was every manmade catastrophe too. Pavements, noise, smog. Concrete had seemed a tragedy, losing connection with nature; now the exhilarating power of the wild was in every city day, in London streets crowded with buses, fumes and big buildings. I didn’t even need a blade of grass; me, nature and ‘civilisation’ were all elements. I could relate better to aeroplanes and nuclear bombs when I knew they were of natural forces. It wasn’t an excuse for bombs: there, the elements were not in balance.
In India, H.H. the Dalai Lama had asked me, ‘Do you know who you are?’ Now I heard the classic Buddhist teaching: there is no permanent, separate, self-existing ego. Yet my teacher was a powerful vibrant self of some sort. His teacher obviously was too. Our practice built a confident, well-functioning healthy self: yet somehow there was also no self.
Elements made it clear in what way ‘ego’ didn’t exist. We were not separate: just a combination of the same elements as everything else. We were not permanent: I was a changing mix of natural forces, a bodily and emotional shape, in dynamic balance. I wasn’t a fixed personality; the elements were always responding to what went on around me, and the fluxes within. We were interconnected, all arising together in the great void, that gave all creation a sense of spirit.
That broke down the isolated separate self. My life could be beautiful without having to be me me me. I could enjoy my glorious natural spirit, because it wasn’t me. Me, separate, isolated and about to be unfairly attacked: all that could drop away. I felt I had a right to be there. It was thrilling, comforting. How could we be anything but glorious, when we were made of nature?
I wasn’t troubled by the Buddhist idea that we didn’t exist. The world was like a dream. We didn’t evaporate; we were part of nature, and shared in the beauty and vitality of her creatures.
In that light, it was comfortable to build a functioning bodhisattva ‘self’, to do good in the world. Our aim was to be a bodhisattva, to help others, and help them awaken. We developed our skills, to build a liberated self, free to be strong, creative and wise. Very different from the prevailing ethos, which was, I have no responsibility except for myself, to get ahead of others.
I was full of excitement; I was learning something that could save the world. I’d found a culture changing path. the element system was so simple, clear and obvious. if we all did it, we’d change our world. This could change our political attitudes and structures. How could we not be compassionate and kind to all beings? They were our self. We could never harm anyone, never let off another bomb. We’d look after nature. It would give us a completely different sense of what our culture could be like. You didn’t even need to be Buddhist to understand this map. It could be widely shared.
From my memoir vol 1, ‘Women should rule the world, my Mother said.’
[i] The colours here are from my later Tibetan practice; in this school air was white, space gold or black.