Five Pure Lights

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The Five Pure Lights (Tibetan: 'od lnga) are a conceptual mystery in the Dzogchen tradition of Bön and Nyingma and are aspects of non-dual clarity and primordial luminosity of dharmakaya, Kunzhi and/or the Void. It is important to emphasize from the outset that their light-like essence-quality and their associated colours are oft-described according to the five coloured Himalayan Rainbow.[1] The Five Pure Lights are the Yoga of Clear Light (Od-gsal) are entwined.

The Five Pure Lights are the most sublime essence-quality of the mahābhūta or classical elements ; namely: Space, Air, Water, Fire, Earth and constitute the Rainbow Body of Dzogchen. The Five Pure Lights are essentially the Five Wisdoms (Sanskrit: pañca-jñāna).[2]

In the rite of the Ganachakra, all that is offered or within the chakra or mandala is augmented and purified by the Five Pure Lights of which it is constituted. There is understood to be a sanctification comparable to transignification and/or transubstantiation which instead of adding anything new to the substances, returns them to their primordial purity.[citations needed]

Tenzin Wangyal holds that the Five Pure Lights become the Five Poisons if we remain deluded, or the Five Wisdoms and the Five Buddha Families if we recognize their purity.[3]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Color Symbolism In Buddhist Art. www.exoticindiaart.com. Retrieved on 2008-04-24.
  2. ^ Keown, Damien (ed.) with Hodge, Stephen; Jones, Charles; Tinti, Paola (2003). A Dictionary of Buddhism. Great Britain, Oxford: Oxford University Press. P.209. ISBN 0-19-860560-9
  3. ^ Wangyal, Tenzin (author) & Dahlby, Mark (editor). Healing with Form, Energy and Light: The Five Elements in Tibetan Shamanism, Tantra, and Dzogchen. Ithaca, NY, USA: Snow Lion Publications. P.9 ISBN 1-55939-176-6

[edit] References