Vajrayana Books

“In the Supreme Primordial Buddha Tantra, cited in the Stainless Light Commentary, the Primordial Buddha (Ādibuddha) describes the buddha’s gnosis with its five aspects in his discussion of meditation on the five psychophysical aggregates as ultimately being of the nature of the five types of gnosis. The mirror-like gnosis, which is the purified aggregate of form, knows that all phenomena in space are devoid of the nature of ideation (kalpanā) and are seen like an image in a virgin’s prognostic mirror. The gnosis of equality, or the aggregate of feeling, knows that after achieving union with all phenomena, there is only a single, indestructible phenomenon that abides; and arisen from the imperishable gnosis, that single phenomenon is without cessation and without eternity. The discriminating gnosis, or the purified aggregate of discernment, knows that in non-arisen phenomena, which are free from mental formations (saṃskāra), there is neither awakening nor buddhahood, nor a sentient being, nor living beings. The accomplishing gnosis, or the purified aggregate of mental formations, knows the phenomena that transcend the reality of consciousness (vijñānadharmatā) and that are purified in gnosis, untainted, and luminous by nature as the realm of phenomena (dharmadhātu). These five types of the gnosis characterizing the mind of the buddha are represented by five paradigmatic awakened figures, or buddhas: Akṣobhya, Ratnasaṃbhava, Amitābha, Amoghasiddhi, and Vairocana, who also represent the five types of awakened families. Thus, one could say that although the awakened author of the tantra is ultimately a single author, he speaks from the perspective of his five, mutually interconnected types of gnosis manifesting as the five types of buddhas.”
― Vesna A. Wallace, The Routledge Handbook of Indian Buddhist Philosophy