The Five Wisdom Energies: A Buddhist Way of Understanding Personalities, Emotions, and Relationships

by Irini Rockwell

This book invites us to celebrate our strengths and work with our weaknesses by learning to identify and utilize five basic personal styles or energies. Written in a playful and accessible way, this is the first general-audience book on a Tibetan Buddhist system known as "the five buddha families"—an insightful way of understanding human behavior and promoting personal growth.

Each of the five wisdom energies is associated with particular ways of perceiving and interacting with the world and also with particular colors, elements, senses, seasons, and times of day. With easy, fun, and engaging exercises and stories, Irini Rockwell shows us how to identify which energies are active in our lives, and how we can work with them in any situation to improve self-awareness, communication, and creative expression.

According to the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, each of us has one or two dominant energies, but these can shift and change over time, and we can manifest different energies in different areas of our lives. Each of the five energies has its unique wisdom, but also its neurotic tendencies. By learning to recognize which energies we possess—and which are present in those around us—we can learn to relax and appreciate our natural traits and those of others, and we can move away from our neuroses toward the wisdom-aspects of our character.

Genres: Buddhism, Psychology, Nonfiction, Spirituality, Self Help, Philosophy

160 pages, Paperback

First published March 12, 2002

Reviews

[JP · Rating 4 out of 5]

Irini Rockwell offers a brief introduction to one interpretation of maitri, the mandala, and energy. She presents just enough about Buddhism to arouse interest, but focuses primarily on the concepts of these five energies and how they relate to personality, emotions, and practice. Being nearly sated with personality theories, I'm happy to report the dimensions of mandala appear highly orthogonal to other common schemes. Relative to others, this approach also gives more emphasis to leveraging all the types rather than compartmentalizing the individual into a few tidy little categories.

[Alison · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really took my time reading this book, doing the exercises and applying what I was reading about to my daily observations. It's been very helpful in making sense of relationships and experiences. I haven't read anything else quite like it.

[Susan Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am struggling with a few personality differences at work and thought this book would be helpful.
I liked how the energies are broken out by type with descriptions of each and color references. At the back of the book each wisdom is broken out further with the energies at a glance.

Sometimes I can easily recognize personalities and others I am still struggling with, but I found the information invaluable in trying to put myself in their shoes and experience who they are.

[Janet · Rating 2 out of 5]

Required way too much energy to fully understand each personality type and how to deal with them!

[Helen Carter]

Reading for the 5th weekend of meditation teacher training with the IDproject, NYC

[Yitzchok · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was going to give it a fair chance but all I could do was make it to page 56. I was hoping that the personality types would speak to me, but they didn't.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful book on tapping into balance

[Anne Kadet · Rating 2 out of 5]

Makes a whole lotta somethin out of nuthin.