चक्रम्

The tradition & historical record

A chakra (; Sanskrit: चक्र, romanized: cakra, lit. 'wheel, circle'; Pali: cakka) is a meditation aid in the form of a psychic or psychospiritual energy centre in the subtle body. Chakras are visualised in Hindu and Buddhist tantric yoga and meditation practices. Medieval Buddhist texts from 8th century CE mention four or five chakras, while Hindu sources use various numbers. The best-known variant has seven chakras, as described in the 1919 book The Serpent Power by 'Arthur Avalon', a rough translation of Pūrṇānanda Yati's Ṣaṭ-chakra-nirūpaṇa ("Explanation of the Six Chakras," 1577). Modern Western occultism views chakras as actual though esoteric energy centres. This view arose in the 1880s with Helena Blavatsky and other Theosophists, and was subsequently shaped by The Serpent Power and by Charles W. Leadbeater's 1927 book The Chakras. Psychological and other attributes, rainbow colours, and a wide range of correspondences with other systems such as alchemy, astrology, gemstones, homeopathy, Kabbalah and Tarot divination were added later. ¹

Lexically, chakra is the Indic reflex of an ancestral Indo-European form *kʷékʷlos, whence also "wheel" and "cycle" (Ancient Greek: κύκλος, romanized: kýklos). It has both literal and metaphorical uses, as in the "wheel of time" or "wheel of dharma", such as in Rigveda hymn verse 1.164.11, pervasive in the earliest Vedic texts. In Buddhism, especially in Theravada, the Pali noun cakka connotes "wheel". Within the Buddhist scriptures referred to as the Tripitaka, Shakyamuni Buddha variously refers the "dhammacakka", or "wheel of dharma", connoting that this dharma, universal in its advocacy, should bear the marks characteristic of any temporal dispensation. Shakyamuni Buddha spoke of freedom from cycles in and of themselves, whether karmic, reincarnative, liberative, cognitive or emotional. In Jainism, the term chakra also means "wheel" and appears in various contexts in its ancient literature. As in other Indian religions, chakra in esoteric theories in Jainism such as those by Buddhisagarsuri means a yogic energy centre. ¹

The word chakra appears to emerge within the Vedas, though not in the sense of psychic energy centres, but as chakravartin or the king who "turns the wheel of his empire" in all directions from a centre, representing his influence and power. The iconography popular in representing the chakras, according to David Gordon White, traces back to the five symbols of yajna, the Vedic fire altar: "square, circle, triangle, half moon and dumpling". The hymn 10.136 of the Rigveda mentions a renunciate yogi with a female named kunannamā. Her name means "she who is bent, coiled", representing both a minor goddess and one of many embedded enigmas and esoteric riddles within the Rigveda. Some scholars, such as White and Georg Feuerstein, have suggested that she may be a reference to kundalini shakti and a precursor to the terminology associated with the chakras in later tantric traditions. Breath channels (nāḍi) are mentioned in the classical Upanishads of Hinduism from the 1st millennium BCE, but not psychic-energy chakra theories. Three classical Nadis are Ida, Pingala and Sushumna in which the central channel Sushumna is said to be foremost as per Kṣurikā-Upaniṣhad. The yoga scholar Shaman Hatley states that the Patanjalayayogasastra uses two phrases for what became known as the chakras, namely the "wheel of the navel", nābhicakra, and the "lotus of the heart", hṛdayapuṇḍarīka. He traces the metaphor of the wheel to the depiction within Indian Ayurvedic medicine of the navel as the centre of a radiating pattern of ducts within the body. ¹

The chakras are stated in Hindu and Buddhist texts to be arranged in a column along the spinal cord, from its base to the top of the head, connected by vertical channels. The tantric traditions sought to master them, awaken and energise them through breathing exercises or with assistance of a teacher. These chakras were symbolically mapped to specific human physiological capacity, seed syllables (bija), sounds, subtle elements (tanmatra), in some cases deities, colours and other motifs. The chakras are traditionally considered meditation aids. The yogi progresses from lower chakras to the highest chakra blossoming in the crown of the head, internalizing the journey of spiritual ascent. In both the Hindu kundalini and Buddhist candali traditions, the chakras are pierced by a dormant energy residing near or in the lowest chakra. In Hindu texts she is known as Kundalini, while in Buddhist texts she is called Candali or Tummo (Tibetan: gtum mo, "fierce one"). Chakras are parts of the subtle body, where they have a position but no definite nervous node or precise physical connection. The tantric systems envision them as continually present, highly relevant and a means to psychic and emotional energy. They are used in some yogic rituals and in meditative discovery of radiant inner energy (prana flows) and mind-body connections. The meditation is aided by extensive symbology, mantras, diagrams, models (deity and mandala). The practitioner proceeds step by step from perceptible models, to increasingly abstract models where deity and external mandala are abandoned, and inner self and internal mandalas are awakened. ¹

The chakras are part of an esoteric Indian tradition of an unseen physiology. The belief held that human life simultaneously exists in two parallel dimensions, one "physical body" (sthula sarira) and other "psychological, emotional, mind, non-physical" it is called the "subtle body" (sukshma sarira). This subtle body is energy, while the physical body is mass. The psyche or mind plane corresponds to and interacts with the body plane, and the belief holds that the body and the mind mutually affect each other. The subtle body consists of nadi (energy channels) connected by nodes of psychic energy called chakra. The belief grew into extensive elaboration, with some suggesting 88,000 chakras throughout the subtle body. The number of major chakras varied between various traditions, but they typically ranged between four and seven. ¹

The classical eastern traditions, particularly those that developed in India during the 1st millennium AD, primarily describe nadi and chakra in a "subtle body" context. To them, they are in same dimension as the psyche-mind reality that is invisible yet real. In the nadi and cakra flow the prana (breath, life energy). The concept of "life energy" varies between the texts, ranging from simple inhalation-exhalation to far more complex association with breath-mind-emotions-sexual energy. This prana is what vanishes when a person dies, leaving a gross body. The subtle body is sometimes said to withdraw within when one sleeps. All of it is believed to be reachable and important for an individual's body-mind health, and how one relates to other people in one's life. ¹

The esoteric traditions in Tibetan Buddhism generally teach four chakras. ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Chakra”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

chakra is subtle body psychic-energy centers in the esoteric traditions of Indian religions, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 24 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ²