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The Year of Akshobya

Chair’s Letter – February 2026

Dear Ipswich Sangha,

Over the next two months I will share my presentations from the Myth and Manifestation Day in January where I set out a vision for the Ipswich Buddhist Centre. This month I will talk about the Mythic Context which is a five year plan that I hope everyone will enjoy participating in and benefit from it.

We are going to have one year for each of the 5 Buddhas in the Mandala.

One description of a Mandala is, ‘To make a Mandala is to take a prominent aspect of reality and surround it with beauty’. This quote comes from Sangharakshita’s talk on the Greater Mandala which is a booklet in the bookshop that I highly recommend, It is Bhante describing a universal approach to the word Mandala.

As Buddhists the Centre of the Mandala is the Buddha and in the 5 Buddha Mandala he is white. It is as though the white light then refracts out and you have four magnificent Buddhas that are blue, yellow, red and green, surrounding him. Each has particular qualities and holds particular emblems.

  • 2026 is the Year of Akshobhya, the Blue Wisdom Buddha.
  • 2027 the Year of Ratnasambhava the Yellow Buddha of beauty and generosity.
  • 2028 the Year of Amitabha the Red Buddha of meditation and compassion.
  • 2029 the Year of Amoghasiddhi the Green Buddha spontaneous action
  • 2030 the Year of Virochana the White Teaching Buddha
Each of the Buddhas is associated with an element. The Buddhas are the purified elements. They can be seen arranged in a mythic stupa one on top of the other. Stupas are architectural forms that are a symbol of Enlightenment.
At the base is the Earth element symbolised as a yellow cube
Then the water element is a white sphere.
The fire element a red cone.
The air element a green saucer shape.
And finally a white or flaming drop symbolising Space.
 
Akshobhya – Guardian of the Dawn
One enters the Mandala of the 5 Buddhas from the East and here we meet Akshobhya in his Pureland of joy, bliss, peace and wisdom. East is the direction of the sunrise so Akshobhya’s time of day is Dawn. The title of this presentation comes from a historical novel by Richard Zimler. Its meaning is different but I am grateful for it because it sparked inspiration for me. I saw Akshobhya as the Guardian of the Dawn.
 
Dawn is a very precious time of day when light replaces dark, it is the moment of the new day starting when the sun starts to rise over the horizon. But we also use the word that means the whole process from the first light in the night sky turning it a rich blue, through to all the warm hues of sunrise. Dawn is both a moment and a process of transition that holds possibility and potentiality.  Are we able to let the next moment be unknown but full of possibility, or do we just cling to habitual ways of being?
 
Many years ago I remember meeting up with my first Mitra convenor and she said to me, you swing from hope to hopelessness. It took me some years to really work out what she meant. I was working at the Bethnal Green Evolution shop at the time and I would drive towards a fixed expectation or outcome and then when it didn’t happen all was hopeless. I did the same with my mental states. I kept oscillating from hopeful, ‘I’ve sorted it,’ to disappointment and depression. 
 
But the symbolism of being aware of the dawn is the Middle Way. One neither holds to the darkness nor grasps at the new day. Each moment of dark to light is a wake-up call to change, to potentiality and to beauty. If we are awake we can break our consciousness open to a new way of experiencing life, where we are not focusing on the content of thoughts, that can be judgemental or hold expectations, but rather be in the process of awareness of what is unfolding.  It is here that Akshobhya appears. He is guardian of the preciousness of the Middle Way of dawn consciousness, moment by moment, that is free from self clinging. He is guardian of our sources of inspiration that arise in that space of ‘anything is possible’.
 
Now Akshobhya like the other Buddhas has many qualities and symbols associated with him and I am only touching on a few. We have a whole year to explore him and he is the theme of the next Sangha retreat. At Vajrasana retreat centre there is even a statue of him sitting on a lotus in a pond holding the poised golden vajra.
Akshobhya is a deep blue Wisdom Buddha and so he is also guardian of our depths. His element is water and water is associated with the unconscious. He supports us to bring what is unconscious into consciousness. Akshabhya’s Wisdom is the Mirror-like wisdom and when water is perfectly still it reflects with the accuracy of a mirror. ‘In the seen only the seen, in the heard only the heard.’ and so on until, ‘in the cognised only the cognised’, without all our subjective add ons and stories about our experience.
 
I am going to quote Sangharakshita from the new book about him, Reimagining Buddhism, by Vishvapani.  A particular quote jumped out at me and made my heart sing, and I thought this is Bhante’s genius. He can describe a deep truth of the Dharma in an image. In the quote he uses a word from Yogacara school of Buddhism. Yogacara means the way of meditation and they drew out various modes of consciousness, which, when in there purified Enlightened state correlate to each of the 5 Buddhas. So the mind of the Buddha Akshobhya is what is termed the alaya in its purified state. Alaya means the store-consciousness. For an unenlightened being the alaya is an aspect of consciousness where all the seeds of our previous karmic actions, traces of our skilful and unskillful actions, traces of our habitual ways of being, are stored. 
 
Here is Sangharakshita:
 
‘I have spoken before in terms of where there is a reflection, that which is reflected is upside down, so that, if a mountain is reflected in a lake, and you see into the lake, the peak of the mountain appears to be deepest in the lake. So it is in that way there is a reflection of the alaya in us. The alaya represents the highest level, but it is the lowest or deepest in us in the sense that it is the most hidden and the most obscured.’ 
So here we have the possibility of peak of the Dharma reflected in the depths of ourselves. The purified alaya is the peak of the mountain, the Buddha Akshobhya. Bhante goes on to say that pure store-consciousness in us is hidden by many layers because we interpret that reflection as a separate real self. He says you experience it as yourself at the core of your being deep down within you, rather than what is actually up there. The truth is obscured, because we interpret experience as a self rather than the truth of the Dharma. The Truth is a clear reflection of the peak. It is the mirror of the mountain peak, but for the unenlightened the reflection is clouded.
 
So my question is how can Akshobhya help us shift all the obscurations so that we can experience the clear peak of the mountain in the depths of us?
 
I am going to give an example. Some weeks ago I was triggered by someone and I felt hurt. The hurt was then accompanied by ill-will/ anger, which then sparked a whole load of thought proliferation.The snowball built into upset, anger, blame and confusion that in many ways was centred around poor ‘me’. It softened as the days went by and I didn’t do any unskilful action in relation to the person, it was all in my mind. I reflected that it is ego that has been bruised. Also this is the nature of conditioned existence, there is suffering/dukkha. We don’t always get it right for each other. However it was only when I took it to my weekly Chapter meeting of Dharmacharini’s to explore that a new level of awareness opened up. The initial shift came through spiritual friendship. Someone who knows me well said something about the incident reflecting something in the relationship between us. It was only afterwards that I realise that a big shift happened in our relationship when we were in our 20s. It had lain dormant in my consciousness all these years. It was a dormant seed in the store-consciousness and it was only the recent conditions that triggered that seed to fructify and emerge as a reaction. That dormant seed was rejection. Our views had parted way and I experienced rejection. It was so painful that self preservation stored it in the depths and the conscious mind forgot all about it. 
 
So this is where the water element comes in. What was unconscious became conscious. That rejected 20 year old needs love and kindness and then she is free to bring into consciousness what happened, not as blame but as dukkha. 
It was stored and dormant because it was too painful. It was the suffering of a distancing in relationship to someone very dear to me. 
And this is where meditation comes in, one can just sit without stories as the seed emerges from the store-consciousness with kindness and awareness and thus the alaya is purified. One obscuration is removed. The cloudiness of the water is a little less dense.

Living the Dharma life in the realm of Akshobhya purifies the depths.

Instead of interpreting experience from the perspective of a separate real self who needs to protect itself with blame and ill-will, experience is seen from the perspective of Truth and metta. The truth of suffering and the Truth of conditionality.

Does this explain why Akshobhya and his Mirror-like Wisdom are the antidote to Hatred? The anger and blame dissipate, in the present and the stored past, when experience is seen clearly without attaching to anything of or pushing anything away. Experience is seen from the perspective of Unshakable Dharmic Truths.

Is that why the meaning of Akshobhya’s name is ‘The Imperturbable One’?

He cannot be shaken from Truth. He cannot be shaken from the beauty that we can experience unfolding moment by moment free from self orientation, and selfish expectation. The new moment is pure like when we are absorbed in the experience of dawn. The new moment is unknown and full of potential, it is rich in inspiration and has no place for hatred or ill-will.

I will finish with a poem from Bhante that goes beyond what I have tried to communicate.

“ABOVE ME BROODS…”
 
Above me broods
A world of mysteries and magnitudes.
I see, I hear,
More than what strikes the eye or meets the ear.
 
Within me sleep
Potencies deep, unfathomably deep,
Which, when awake,
The bonds of life, death, time and space will break.
 
Infinity
Above me like the blue sky do I see.
Below, in me,
Lies the reflection of infinity.
March Newsletter will have my Manifestation Presentation.
 
There is also a special date for your diary, 22nd March, when Ruchitaketa is coming to lead a Day retreat on,  ‘Doing Things Together as a Path of Integration’
 
 
with metta Shubha