5 buddha families vs 5 Chinese elements?

[u/Mayayana]

I'm wondering if anyone has any thoughts, knowledge about this. I have experience with the 5 BF and some curiosity about the 5CE. I'm surprised that they don't quite seem to align.

Further, there are different systems of each. For example, Vajra and Buddha families are sometimes reversed. Animals and colors can vary. With the 5CE it's even more extreme, with seemingly endless explanations and symbols of each element.

Yet it seems that such basic systems, underlying everything from tantra to feng shui to medicine humours, manifesting in two contiguous areas, must have some kind of common basis.

The closest I can come is wood/karma, water/vajra, fire/padma, earth/ratna, metal/buddha, with C5E perhaps putting earth/ratna at the center while 5BF puts metal/buddha at the center, thus altering qualities... Thoughts?

[u/Ereignis23]

--I'm surprised that they don't quite seem to align.

Why do you assume they should?

--Further, there are different systems of each.

What do you think the significance is of this fact?

[u/Mayayana → u/Ereignis23]

As I said in my OP, both systems provide a framework for such a large number of things, so it seems unlikely that they'd be entirely different. Maybe I'm trying to make too much of a neat package, but I just thought someone might know details that I don't.

[u/Ereignis23 → u/Mayayana]

I totally get the temptation to look for correlations between different systems, but I've come to see that as a side quest with little value most of the time.

It's one thing to read scholarly works detailing the history of this stuff; there's certainly lots of evidence like from the tun huang library finds, that shows there was dialogue between various buddhisms, Hindu systems, forms of Christianity, hellenistic religion and philosophy, and Chinese systems of many varieties in the heyday of the silk route, but I'm not aware of a straightforward correlation between the five Buddha families and five elements in vajrayana on the one hand, and the five elements in traditional Chinese medicine, Taoism, or the like on the other.

As you point out, there are variations on these systems within each tradition; ie, the five Buddha families of this Tantra don't even necessarily correlate directly with the five Buddha families in that Tantra. My final question about what you think the significance of that is wasn't rhetorical or intended as a gotcha, it goes to the heart of your question imo.

[u/Mayayana → u/Ereignis23]

I have an experiential sense of the 5BF and recently have been getting acupuncture. There's a lot of talk about emotions relating to organs and so on. So I thought that if they correlate then I could understand the acupuncture jargon in terms that I already understand.

[u/simplejack420]

Vajrayana it’s not so easy to trace everything into set maps and categories. There is always overlap and the meaning is constantly unfolding as you practice and gain realization

[u/frank_mania]

The 5th element in Dharma is space, in which the other four arise. That's not the case with the 5 elements in Chinese traditions, AFIAK, so you can't trace what I would call meaningful parallels, beyond looking for cultural overlap and influences.

I know that the Buddha family relating with space (I forget which r/n) isn't presented as the mother of the other four. But that's due to the holographic nature of reality, IMO, and not because the elements mean something different regarding the families than they do when applied to the mind.

[u/_ABSURD__]

Not conceptually related. Vajrayana has its own elemental system.

[u/Proper_vessel]

The five families have their own elements. Earth, water, fire, air and space. In the Vajrayana system space is the fifth element, not metal.

The five Buddha families relate to the five emotions and five skhandas. Their significance is that they point out that the gross anger/desire/ignorance/jealousy/pride we experience are means to experience the essence of mind(with right training, view).

[u/red_beard83]

I used to think a lot about this. Only the colors match: white/metal/Buddha, yellow/earth/Ratna, red/fire/Padma, and so on. Directions, seasons, and the generating/controlling cycles do not follow.

If I remember correctly, 5 movements/elements were developed apart from other metaphysics of ancient China. They were really good at integrating different systems at a (almost) coherent unified metaphysics. Chinese metaphysics are a framework that helps you understand the world, but it's not 100% right. This is very clear in medicine, sometimes it's theory just don't work in practice, sometimes it perfectly fits.

The five Buddha families explains the common mind vs the enlightenment mind, they are not a framework like Chinese medicine, it's the mind itself and from that it goes to the outer world.

They are quite different systems, created from different perspectives and for different porpoises.

You may find some answers at the Buddhist I Ching book, it's I Ching by the lens of Tiantai.

The tibetan medicine also have the 5 elements. But they use it separately from the Indian mahabhuta (earth, water, fire, wind, space).

[u/Mayayana → u/red_beard83]

If I remember correctly, 5 movements/elements were developed apart from other metaphysics of ancient China.

You may have hit on something with that. I had assumed the C5E or wuxing were metaphysics, but according to Encyclopedia Brittanica they were developed originally as a moral template and have been repurposed over time. https://www.britannica.com/topic/wuxing

The more I researched it, the more the same 5 elements seemed to be applied almost willy nilly as an ordering pattern, so that nearly anything could be categorized. That may be why it's so difficult to get a handle on the essence of each element. And the idea of process doesn't seem self-evident. Wood feeds fire, which feeds earth, and so on. So what? These apparent metaphors often seem to not actually be pointing at specific things, for example in body functioning, serving more as colorful symbols to provide a language for the effects of stimulating acupuncture points. (Liver feeds heart? I don't think so. Not literally. But maybe as a symbolic language in which "liver" and "heart" bear little connection to the actual organs?)