A Video about Maitri Space Awareness Practice
What is maitri space awareness? A brief definition:
Maitri space awareness is typically practiced in five specially designed rooms, each of a different architecture, color, and lighting. (Alternatively, colored glasses can be used if the rooms are not accessible.) A specific posture is maintained within each of these environments. Each room highlights one of the five general patterns of energy, called Buddha families, which are associated with colors, natural elements, landscapes, seasons, personality types, areas of the body, and phases of psychological development. The Vajra Room is a deep royal blue penetrated by crystalline blue light from slit-like windows. The Ratna Room is a majestic yellow bathed in warm, golden light from large, round windows. The Padma Room is a fiery red illuminated by glowing red light from large, rectangular windows. The Karma Room is a forest green with green light radiating from its apex. The Buddha Room is a flat white awash with a muted, indirect white light. Experiencing one's body and mind and environmental interactions in these rooms intensifies the different patterns of energy inherent to everyone. Both the neurotic and sane aspects of each energy can be directly experienced and discriminated, thus inviting one to become more appreciative of the different energies of spaces and of people.
Photos of Jeffrey Fortuna in the Maitri rooms at Drala Mountain Center, circa 1987.
The following is a transcript of the introduction read by Jeffrey Fortuna in this video, provided here for you to read along, if you’d like:
Good day. My name is Jeff Fortuna. Recently two Naropa faculty members, Giovannina Jobson and Cassell Gross, asked me if I were willing to be interviewed by them over Zoom. They were looking for people who were applying the maitri teachings to therapeutic work with people in real world settings. The Windhorse Project has been integrating these teachings and practice with our clinical experience for forty years. So they contacted us. The idea was that the recording of this interview would then be shared with the students of the Master of Divinity course that they were teaching on maitri practice. I accepted their invitation with the understanding that the interview recording could be shared more widely.
Before the interview begins, I would like to provide a commentary on the painting that you are now looking at.
This is one of two Buddhist art works that Ed Podvoll painted while he was in long retreat in France, from 1990 to 2002. The other painting is of a peony flower. This one is his mystic diagram of the wisdom mandala of the five buddha families. Paintings like this are used as an aid to visualization in meditation practice. One could regard this as a unique lens through which we can view ourselves and our world as a dynamic pattern of colorful energies. Such a view is known as mandala perspective, which sees that awareness covers the whole of existence: from the ground of being out to the expanse of phenomena. The diagram fills every gap of the canvas which conveys this sense of the totality of awareness. Mandala is described as the orderly chaos of wisdom and confusion that constantly emerge together in nowness. Chogyam Trungpa discussed the mandala principle as “orderly chaos” in his early book by that name. He wrote: “It is orderly, because it comes in a pattern; it is chaos because it is confusing to work with that pattern.” Chogyam Trungpa developed the maitri space awareness practice for his students during the 1970s. It was intended as a healing practice both for persons recovering from extreme states and their therapists, to be done in therapeutic contemplative communities.
Let’s contemplate the details of the graphic meaning of the diagram. Ed never spoke to us about this painting. Here I humbly offer my experience of the diagram, based on years of maitri practice, study, and teaching alongside of Ed. In fact, each of us will resonate with the diagram in our own way. The symbols and iconography are based in Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism.
In Trungpa’s tradition a symbol does not refer to something else as a second thought, but rather a symbol embodies its own living meaning. For the practitioner of mandala, perception and understanding occur together as first thought. Everything happens now.
The diagram has a hand-made quality which conveys the raw and rugged experience of someone walking the path of meditation. The diagram appears in two spatial dimensions. The third dimension of depth and the fourth dimension of time can be imagined. In this way, for example, seemingly flat circles can be visualized as spheres of radiant light in constant change. The many concentric circles of the diagram can be imagined as nested spheres of brilliant light.
Let’s progress from the outer fringe to the center of the mandala. First, we see the end points of four golden dorjes at the corners on a dark green background. A dorje is a symbol of indestructibility and is often translated as a vajra thunderbolt. The blue, yellow, green, and red wisdom flames blaze out from the narrow band of primary colors ornamented with gold designs of small dorjes. The flames sweep to one side, suggesting that the colored circle is spinning clockwise. This circle surrounds the black ring showing dried human skulls which symbolize the uncompromising truth of death and impermanence. Taken together—dorjes, flames, rings, and skulls—comprise the protection boundary of the mandala. This space of sacred truth is protected from deception and corruption.
Within that boundary is the light green space which is gentle and life-supporting. This accommodates the two overlapping red triangles ornamented with six spinning spheres. The white edges of the triangles represent the essential purity of the five families and the whole situation. The triangles represent the source of ever-arising phenomena of experience and environment. Crossing the threshold of the pink inner circle we enter the heart of the mandala, which again softly glows with gentleness.
The four inner circles around the central red-white circle seem to swell against edges making them elliptical. This expansion represents the intensification of experience by the practice, which rubs up against the sharp edges of discipline. These five circles represent the five buddha families, each with their own symbol, element, and function.
The blue vajra family to the east shows a dorje and is associated with the water element that clarifies.
The yellow ratna family to the south shows jewels and is associated with the earth element that enriches.
The red padma family to the west shows a flame and is associated with the fire element that magnetizes.
The green karma family to the north shows a flaming sword and is associated with the wind element that accomplishes.
The red-white buddha family in the center shows a hooked knife and is associated with the space element that accommodates.
This diagram embodies the elemental meaning of the maitri space awareness practice. The mandala follows the basic paradigm of Windhorse environmental therapy, which is that we work from the outside in. This means that we first bring awareness to the outer decorum of body and environment, including one’s personal household. Then we engage with the more inner speech level of relationship to open up channels of communication with friends. Only then do we work with the most secret personal level of mind and emotions.
And so it also is with the maitri space awareness practice. First, we arrange the boundaries of our place as outer protection and then take on one of the postures. We practice the instructions of being present with experience, while soaking in colored light. By the power of our intention to be of service, we tune into our intrinsic ground of fearless clarity. Our awareness opens to the intensification of thought-forms and emotional energies in our field of experience. We come to appreciate the accommodating space within which we can simply relax and accept what is made so obvious. The path of maitri practice shows us the vivid mystery of orderly chaos . . . do we freeze space? do we dance with space? Who are we anyway, and what do all these patterns mean to us? Perhaps we catch a glimpse of ourselves and our world as being so good and beautiful. These are some of the gifts of maitri practice.
It is my sincere wish for each of us that we realize and live from the loving kindness that is at the core of our being. In that way may we come to know the wisdom of space.
Thank you, and I hope you enjoy the discussion to follow.