Can you explain the chakra system as understood by Tibetan Buddhism and tantra?
Reginald Ray: According to tantra, Enlightenment is fundamentally and originally present in the body. By putting one’s awareness in the body you find that the further down you go the more primordial, unconditioned and unmanifest is the energy you encounter. The chakras begin at the perineum, which is the most primordial level of awareness, and as you go upwards they are more connected with expression. At the navel there is a sense of the earth, stability and equanimity; at the heart is a feeling of warmth and compassion; the throat is about communication, expression and connection; and the head is less a conceptual centre than a place where the energy reaches a crescendo. So the different chakras have very different feels. Are the chakras ‘real’ or ‘symbolic’? How do they relate to western ideas about physiology? Tibetan tradition says that we have different experiences of the body depending on our level of realisation. One experience is that the body is a physical reality with form an
