On the Nature of Mind

Tonight and tomorrow night and the night after that kind of form another little trinity. And tonight and tomorrow night in particular, I want to talk about the nature of mind. I know John has been touching on this a little bit, but I want to go into it from a practice point of view. And I thought rather than kind of cramming it into one very long, complex, dense talk, I'll make it two very long, complex, dense talks. [laughter] Actually, just kidding. I hope. [laughter] Okay, so the nature of mind.

A few things to start, kind of precursors. What we're going to end up saying is that awareness is empty. Awareness lacks inherent existence. That's something very profound to say. It's something very, very mysterious and profound to say. And that's where we're going, so I put that out right away. But again, let me preface the whole thing.

Whether we're consciously suffering at any time, or not -- at times there's no obvious suffering going on -- whether we are or we aren't, we can always pitch practice at different levels. What I mean by that is we have a difficulty -- it might be not even a matter of meditation that needs fixing. It's actually a matter of doing something in life, having a communication with someone, changing jobs, something actually just on that level. And Right Action, and that kind of thing. Or it may be that what's required is just a very simple mindfulness, a very simple meeting with and being with the experience. It may be that we need to bring in some mettā, or some compassion, some lovely qualities of heart to reinforce the being. It may be that we contemplate impermanence or contemplate anattā, things as 'not me, not mine.' It may be that we contemplate objects as empty.

All of that's available, and also the level of contemplating the mind or awareness (and in this talk, I'm using them as interchangeable), the mind or awareness as empty. All of that ends up being available to us, gradually, as practitioners. We could say that contemplating the emptiness of the mind or awareness is the deepest level of practice. It's like cutting suffering at the root. But that doesn't mean that it's always the most appropriate practice. Okay? So that's really, really important. Something much simpler might be more appropriate in a situation. But we could say that seeing the emptiness of awareness is kind of the deepest level of seeing that's available in practice. You could say that.

I just want to touch again a little bit on attitude. And I've talked about this enough; I'm not going to repeat the talks I've already given about it. But I hope you can enjoy. I hope you can enjoy listening to this. And to me, that's quite important. Is it possible to actually listen to a talk like this and enjoy it (or tomorrow night)? And so it might be that you're listening, and something is said, or another time you read something, you listen to another talk, and something's said, and we don't understand. And then right quickly comes in the inner critic: "I don't get it. I'm stupid. I'm not far enough in my practice. I'll never da-da-da-da-da." And it might be okay that that voice is around. It just might be okay. And it can be doing its thing and rabbiting on, but perhaps we don't have to fully buy into it. Perhaps we don't have to completely believe it, that it's just there functioning, doing what it does best, which is basically trashing you ... [laughter] And it's okay. It's okay. And it's just rabbiting on and on, and the talk's going on, or you're reading, and it's okay. You don't have to believe it. Just let it do its thing.

Really what I want to do these next few talks is fill out the map of practice. And it's really, really okay -- and I really want to stress this -- it's really okay if now, in this duration of the rest of the retreat, you don't practise with any of this of what I'm talking about. It's totally okay. For some people, it's not where practice is right now, and that's totally fine. I'm painting a map, and you can file it away for later, or it can just provide you with a sense of orientation of where you might be going. But it's really, really okay. So I hope it's possible to kind of sit back and enjoy a picture of a map, a slideshow of a map, and still be engaged, not just turn off because it doesn't seem to apply to me right now.

[5:34] If I say, if someone says, if the Buddha says the mind or awareness is empty, that can seem very abstract. It can seem like, "Pfft, what does that even mean? Moreover, what does it have to do with me?" If that's just intellectual, us saying that awareness lacks inherent existence, if it's just a kind of, "Oh, I see. That's what I'm supposed to believe," or "I can see that it must be so logically," that awareness -- which we've actually already talked about a little bit in here already -- if it's just on that intellectual level, it's not going to have much of an impact in terms of the freedom. It's just, we can be in the camp of those who are 'right' and say, "Yeah, my team says awareness has no inherent existence, and your team is rubbish!" [laughter] And so what? It's not, it's really not going to make any difference to the felt sense of freedom. But we're talking about -- what I'm interested in is painting a picture of how we can practise with this so it does make a profound, profound difference in one's life, radical, radical cutting of the level of kind of existential suffering in life.

And it's interesting. It's not even obvious, I think -- it wouldn't perhaps be obvious to a lot of people how, you know, if we have loads of talks in the library, and if a talk was called "The Emptiness of Awareness" or something, how many people would even pick that up? Because it seems like, "Well, what does that have to do with me?" It doesn't seem to have much relevance to, say, my fear that I go through or my inner critic, say, or whatever it is. But it is a level of practice. As I said, there's a huge unburdening that can come from actually seeing -- huge, huge unburdening. It's the deepest level of freedom that's available. And I would say that there's no awakening without seeing this level. There's no awakening without seeing this level.

So it might seem like, you know, sometimes when we hear a talk like this, or we read something like this, it's like, "Why fuss? Why fuss about all these different levels and what you really mean by saying it lacks inherent existence? And why be so picky?" Well, because a lot is at stake. A lot is at stake in terms of the depth and the fullness of freedom that's available. And so that's why be picky. In a way, as I said one time, it's a lot easier not to be picky. It's a lot easier not to be fussy about these things. But we'll miss a lot.

And then -- this is also a precursor -- the last thing is, again, remember that this really has to do with compassion. It absolutely has to do with compassion. So again, it can sound a bit abstract, perhaps, but it has everything to do with freedom and compassion.

This point is worth repeating: when we say something is empty, this thing or that thing, or awareness, or whatever it is is empty, that's not a nihilism. It's not saying the thing doesn't exist. It's not kind of trashing something and saying everything's completely meaningless. The other day -- I think it was Tuesday, and Bridget asked this question. It's a really, really important question. And I had said something about suffering being empty as well. And quite right, you know, a little uneasy with that. It's like, "Well, what would that mean for compassion?" But remember, saying something is empty is always -- for us as practitioners, it's a way of looking. It's a way of looking, so we pick up and put down "Suffering is empty." We pick and put down, as I said, "Self is empty." We pick and put down "Object, thing is empty. Emotion is empty." And we pick up and put down "Awareness is empty."

Like all of those, we pick them up and put them down when they're helpful. And 'helpful' means they lead to freedom and compassion. So, for example, that "Suffering is empty" -- if I just kind of blab that, "Suffering is empty," and I don't really have a deep seeing of what that means, I don't really have a deep insight into that, then it's just words. And it's actually dangerous because it's quite right, as Bridget pointed out -- would it not then just lead to a kind of "Who cares? Who cares in the world?" And that's the last thing we want. We want this to lead to compassion. So it's got to rest, all this stuff -- to say something is empty, it's got to rest on a real seeing of that, a real seeing.

[10:19] Okay. In this talk, as I've said, I'm going to use the word 'mind' interchangeably with 'awareness,' 'consciousness,' 'that which knows,' 'the witness' -- I can't think of any more right now, but I'm sure there are a few more. Anyone? Any others?

Yogi: The seer.

Rob: The seer, yeah. All of that. Okay? I'm going to use them interchangeably, but you should know that in the Dharma world, all those words are used differently at different times. In other words, I might in another talk, you know, even not be consistent in terms of using 'mind' one way one minute, and the next minute another way, and the same with 'consciousness.' So it gets very confusing. We can talk about 'mind' also including thoughts, and emotions, and vedanā, and intentions, and consciousness, and attention, and all that. All that's 'mind' -- in other words, the four mental aggregates apart from the body. But in this talk, what I'm really referring to is mind as consciousness. Okay? So something that seems very simple. And in a way, it's the last bastion. It's the last bastion of inherent existence. For a practitioner who's developing, and going deeper and deeper and deeper, consciously or unconsciously, the last thing to be clung to as inherently existent, consciously or unconsciously, will be awareness, will be consciousness.

And so the first thing we need to do -- and actually this goes back to an earlier talk -- is in relationship to consciousness, awareness, is see that it's not-self. Okay? So this goes back to the anattā practice and being able to, just like we regard body sensations and thoughts as not-self, can I have a sense of consciousness in a moment and regard that, too, as not-self? It's actually a practice. Now, as I said in that talk earlier, it's much more subtle to do that than it is to let go of, say, identification with body sensation. It's much more subtle, but definitely possible if one's developing one's practice, gradually, of anattā. And so the emphasis again and again and again is on practice. We can practise that and develop the practice to a point where one's actually able to let go of identification with objects of consciousness -- sensations, and body sensations, and thoughts, and all the rest of it -- and the consciousness itself.

Ajaan Mahā Boowa was -- I think he's still alive, actually. He's very old. He's a great Thai Forest meditation master, and he has written or spoken about his sort of awakening experiences -- quite rare. And there was a point, he said, doing walking practice, he was at a monastery staying for a little while and doing a walking practice. And he said it was very, very silent. He was already very developed as a practitioner. And a thought, kind of a voice emerged intuitively from inside, and it said, "When there is a centre to the knowing, there will be suffering."^[1] And he said that was a real turning point in his practice. He knew how he needed to practise then.

However, a statement like that can be interpreted at two different levels. "When there's a centre to the knowing, there is suffering" might mean when there is a centre in the self, when I identify with it. And then it's on the level of anattā, of identifying with -- sorry, when there's a centre to the knowing -- of identifying with consciousness. But we're interested also in the level of śūnyatā, of emptiness of the awareness itself.

Yogi 2: Say that again?

Rob: So Ajaan Mahā Boowa's statement can be interpreted at two different levels. "When there's a centre to the knowing, then there is suffering": that could mean if I take the centre of knowing to be this self or here, then there's a self-identification with consciousness. But what we're interested in is not just that level. We are interested in disidentifying with consciousness, being able to do that, but we're also interested to know, what does it mean to say that awareness not only doesn't belong to me, but it also lacks inherent existence itself? Okay? So there are a couple of levels, and the second one is a much deeper, a much deeper knowing and understanding, much deeper statement.

So a little bit in this talk tonight and perhaps tomorrow, I kind of want to map out how a practitioner might progress through this -- might. But please remember, every kind of stage or level in this hypothetical journey that I might say is very freeing itself. So they're all stances or places, stages of freedom. Please understand this: although it might sound like I'm just dismissing, dismissing, dismissing, I'm actually saying, "That's fantastic, but it's not quite it. That's even more fantastic, but it's not quite it. That's absolutely, wonderfully fantastic, but it's not quite it," etc. So please, if I don't keep saying that [laughs], take that for given. They're provisional freeing stances, what I'm going to go through.

And remember -- I've already mentioned it in here -- the beautiful, I think, so wise Dzogchen aphorism: "Trust your experience, but keep refining your view." In other words, a practitioner does tend to move through certain stages of unfoldment and understanding -- not exactly the same as another person, and we need to trust that experience and keep the questioning alive. Keep that alive because there's a journey to fulfil. So I want to talk about this movement of practice.

Now, most people who are not particularly (what's the word?) introspective or philosophically inclined probably wouldn't wonder too much about the nature of awareness, the nature of mind. It's almost like we take it for granted. And it's one of these funny things, like the self-sense. I mentioned, as meditators, we get very used to the self-sense. I remember talking with a friend a while ago, and she's not a practitioner, and I was using words like 'awareness' and things like that, and she said, "What do you mean when you say that?" So we live, kind of -- everything we do is with awareness, and it's so much the kind of water we swim in that you can kind of not wonder what it is. That would be very normal. As one begins practising, because we put (in these kind of traditions) a lot of emphasis on mindfulness and awareness, one begins -- some people begin wondering, "What actually is it?"

[17:34] Now, one way of conceiving of awareness -- and I have had practitioners tell me this, and again, very helpful, but also limited -- is awareness is a mirror. Awareness is a mirror which reflects the world. Okay? And you can even find this image in certain texts -- Buddhists texts as well -- awareness as a mirror which reflects the world. Or even -- not quite such a good analogy, but a kind of plane of glass that we want to keep really clean, so that we see the world pristinely and purely. Now, that's helpful. A mirror could be helpful. The idea of awareness being a mirror could be helpful, because the sense of a mirror [is] as something in a way separate from the object it reflects. And that separateness means that the mirror doesn't care how ugly the monster is and frightening the monster is that stands in front of it. So practising with the sense of awareness like a mirror can actually be very helpful, because it allows the mirror -- the mirror just stays as it is. It's not fazed by what appears -- beautiful, ugly, fearful, etc. It doesn't matter. It just comes and goes, and not a problem for the mirror. The nature of the mirror is just to reflect and to stay pure, in a way, and unaffected. And with that unaffectedness is going to come a lot of equanimity. So, really helpful, but there are problems there, and we've already touched on them in the retreat.

The first one is, the notion of a mirror -- implicit in that notion is a reflection of 'things as they are.' It's like a clean mirror will reflect 'things as they are.' But in the retreat right now, we've been talking about the absence of being able to say, "This is how things are." Yeah? Things are empty because they depend on the point of view. They depend on how much push and pull. They depend on the clinging, etc. So the notion of 'things as they are,' which is kind of implicit in the mirror, is not -- the mirror analogy can't hold because of that.

It also has a problem because a mirror is just sort of there, and it's passive. A mirror is passive. And again, in practice we can have a very, sometimes a very profound sense of, it feels as if awareness is passive. Awareness just naturally and effortlessly reveals a world, reflects, is aware of things. So sometimes people say, "Just listen. You don't have to actually do anything to listen. Just being here, you will hear something." So awareness feels effortless. But tomorrow night in particular, when I get into some of the subtleties of dependent arising, we'll actually see awareness is not passive. It's not effortless, even though it might seem to be in the first case. So that notion of passivity that's kind of implicit in the mirror also doesn't really hold water.

Some of you will know, have heard of Hui-neng. He was the Sixth Zen Patriarch. If I remember, he worked in, like, the bakery or something at this monastery, and he was a real kind of nobody. And I think, if I get this story right, the [Fifth] Zen Patriarch was aware that he was nearing death and wanted to find a successor. So he said, "Whoever writes the best poem on the wall, the best kind of satori poem, poem of enlightenment, will become the [Sixth] Zen Patriarch, will be my successor." And the favourite was a guy named Shen-hsiu, and he wrote this poem. And it said:

Our body is a mirror stand,

And our mind a mirror bright.

Carefully we wipe them hour by hour,

And let no dust alight.

And for a while that was up there, and everyone was like, "Really profound. Great. Okay, he's going to get it." And then one evening, another night, overnight another poem appeared, anonymous:

There never has been a mirror stand.

There never has been a mirror bright. [There never has been a mind like that.]

Since all is void and empty,

Where can the dust alight?

And that was Hui-neng, the little, measly little baker or whatever, baker's assistant or something in the monastery, and the dying abbot said, "That's my man." And he became the [Sixth] Zen Patriarch.^[2] Okay, so the mirror.

[22:34] Another one that, again, we can go through as practice -- and some of you, because I've actually deliberately talked about this on this retreat -- is the notion of awareness as a kind of Source, a Source of Being, a Ground of Being. Now, when we did, when I introduced the Cittamātra meditation in the beginning of the second week or thereabouts, there were two versions. And in the first version, it was this sense of vast, spacious mind out of which sounds arose, out of which objects arose and then faded back into that, arising and disappearing -- beautiful, beautiful, beautiful sense to hang out in and develop as a practice. Very helpful because it brings a lot of equanimity, a lot of love, a lot of openness, a lot of freedom, etc. But -- but, but, but, but, but -- it's still a perception. In other words, it's still an object of consciousness. We have a sense of a space out of which things are appearing, and as such, that space is a perception. As a perception, it's fabricated, and it's put together, and we can see it fading. And as a perception, it's still an object.

Now, all of this stuff was actually around when the Buddha was alive. And there's quite an extraordinary sutta -- it's the first sutta in the Majjhima Nikāya, and it's quite long, and I've sort of extracted bits which are still quite long, but I want to read it to you.^[3] And the Buddha goes to a group of monks, and he says, "Let me tell you about the root of things." And the monks said, "Okay." And he says:

An ordinary, uninstructed person perceives the luminous realms as the luminous realms ... perceives the Great Being [or what we could call God or Brahman] as the Great Being ... perceives the dimension of infinite space as the dimension of infinite space ... infinite consciousness ... [etc.] ... [infinite] nothingness ... neither perception nor non-perception [very deep, very expansive meditative states similar to the feeling of the Ground of Being] ... the totality [the all].

And he goes through all this list of possible things and ends up with nirvāṇa, perceives nirvāṇa. Perceives them as that thing,

And then perceiving the luminous realms ... infinite space ... infinite consciousness ... [etc.] ... nirvāṇa [as those things, then he says], this person conceives [things] in the luminous realms ... in infinite space ... in infinite consciousness ... in nirvāṇa.

And then for our purposes tonight:

He conceives [things] coming out of the luminous realms ... coming out of consciousness ... coming out of nirvāṇa, etc. He conceives [all these things as mind]. He delights in [all these things]. Why is that? Because he has not comprehended it, I tell you.

And then he goes on to say:

A practitioner who is a trainee, yearning for the unexcelled relief from bondage, his aspirations as yet unfulfilled, directly knows the luminous realms as the luminous realms ... the infinite space ... the infinite consciousness ... nirvāṇa as nirvāṇa.

And directly knowing [this as that], let him not conceive [things] in [that].

Okay, it's funny language. I hope it's making sense.

Let him [and this is the important one] not conceive [things] coming out of that.

So, "conceive things coming out of that" means this sense, in that big open awareness, of "Wow! It just emerged from the ground of being, and it fades back into it." It means exactly that, exactly that.

Let him not conceive [things] coming out of it. Let him not conceive [things] as 'mine.' Let him not delight in [this thing]. Why? So that he may comprehend it, I tell you.

And then he finishes, saying:

An arahant, devoid of mental fermentations, who has attained completion, finished the task, laid down the burden, attained the true goal, destroyed the fetters of becoming, and is released through right knowledge, directly knows [all these things] as [all these things].

He does not conceive [things] about [these things]. He does not conceive [things] coming out of the luminous realms ... the infinite space ... the infinite consciousness ... the nothingness ... the nirvāṇa ... does not conceive [them] as 'mine,' does not delight in [them] ... Because he has comprehended it, I tell you.

What's quite remarkable about that sutta is that most suttas end with the monks rejoicing in the Buddha's words. And this group of monks -- one of one or two occasions in the whole of the suttas -- it said the monks did not rejoice in this, in the Buddha's words. They didn't want to hear that. [laughter] They didn't want to know. Similar things are going on 2,500 years later. We talked about this a bit before, but briefly, when we talked about the Cittamātra. But it's possible for someone just not to want to know and to reject that kind of pickiness and questioning of it.

Another possibility is -- actually, this is touched on in that sutta -- but the luminous mind. And again, practitioners -- and maybe some of you -- get a sense, when everything's really quiet, it's almost like the senses, things, things fade away. And we're just left with an incredible sense of luminosity inside. The mind itself feels luminous. So I'm going to read you a passage, again from the Pali Canon.^[4] I'm going to read you two translations of it, because partly what I want to say, without getting too scholastic about the whole thing, is that first of all, they're very different translations, and secondly, the texts seem to contradict each other. Even the Pali Canon seems to contradict itself in different places. So listen to this:

Luminous is the mind, brightly shining, but it is coloured by the attachments that visit it. This unlearned people do not really understand, and so do not cultivate the mind.

Luminous is this mind, brightly shining, and it is free of the attachments that visit it. This the noble follower of the way really understands, so for them there is cultivation of the mind.^[5]

That's beautiful, isn't it? Yeah? It's beautiful. Listen to another ... Okay, that's one translation, which is a very appealing and attractive translation. That's quite a loose translation, by the way, very loose, based on the Pali. One of my teachers translated it:

Luminous is the mind. [It's actually very repetitive in the Pali, and it lacks some of the sort of poetry of that first one.] And it is defiled by incoming defilements. And [not knowing this, when people don't know this], there is no development of the mind.

And then it says:

Luminous is the mind. And it can be freed from incoming defilements. [It's quite different.] And [for someone who doesn't see that], there is no development of the mind.^[6]

Okay? Now, I'm not a Pali scholar, but I just want to point out that there's quite a lot of manipulation of translations depending on what the desired meaning is.

Yogi 3: Whose is the first one?

Rob: Do you really want to know?

Yogi 3: Yeah! [laughter]

Yogi 4: You don't want to tell us, Rob?

Rob: I ... The Buddha has a sutta. It's called -- what is it called? I can't remember what it's called, but it's about not causing problems, in a way. And he says, when you're disputing a teaching, focus on the teaching and not the person. At least I think that's what the Buddha says. It makes a lot of sense to me that we can get into picky ... you know.

Let's put it this way. I mean, I'll tell you, okay? It's Gil Fronsdal. Okay? And the second one is from Ajaan Ṭhānissaro. What I want to say though is, again, going back to what I said at the beginning of the talk, which is these are all beautiful, provisional, very freeing stances to develop. So I wouldn't question this; would just question it as an ultimate truth. Okay? So that's all. Please remember that. I dislike quibbling in the extreme, although I find myself doing it a lot just by the nature of teaching and trying to be really clear about things that I feel need clarity. So please remember, if we can have a sense of that, exactly what he's talking about, that's so freeing. It's such a deep resource in practice. Is it the final resting place? Is it the ultimate truth? Do we hang up our hat there? No, I hope not. I hope not.

Ajaan Mahā Boowa, again, this great Thai teacher -- listen to what he has to say about this: "The radiant mind, the luminous mind -- that is ignorance. That's the embodiment of ignorance."^[7] [laughs] So it's like he turned it right around. He was hunting for ignorance. It's the last thing I have to find before I become an arahant, is ignorance, and defines it as the luminous mind. So the texts contradict themselves, translations contradict themselves, even inside the Pali Canon it's contradictory. Again though, I say, if luminosity is an object -- in other words, if it's a perception of luminosity -- that can't be the nature of the mind, because it's a perception. It's an object, right? So it's still in the realm of perception itself. It can't be awareness itself.

Now, when I talked about the Cittamātra*,* I threw out very, very briefly -- and it's possible no one even caught it -- but I threw out very briefly, sometimes we get this sense of a very spacious awareness, and it's almost like a global awareness. And that gets really strong, and everything belongs to it. Everything belongs to it. Everything is that. Then you can go, instead of saying, "That's it," you can go a step further by saying, "Well, that's an impression in awareness too. The sense of awareness is also an impression in awareness." And just see what happens. It's kind of going one step further.

[34:05] Without getting too sectarian about this, when there is this highlighting of the luminosity of the mind as something, really as a kind of final resting place, oftentimes the people who are pointing to that point at another sutta where the Buddha also talks about the luminous mind in the Pali Canon, and it equates it with consciousness without feature, without limit, etc., and luminous all around. But that second sutta goes on to say that that consciousness, luminous, without feature, etc., does not partake of anything at all in the phenomenal world.^[8] In other words, it doesn't know any objects, okay? If you say they're the same thing, then how could we say in the first, in the first quotation, how is such a mind defiled or even coloured if it has nothing to do with any objects? It's not partaking of that. And how possibly could we develop something that has no characteristics? You can't. Something needs characteristics to be able to develop it. If something is devoid of characteristics, it's impossible to develop it. That quote there, it says both that it's defiled or coloured, and that you can develop it.

So I'm highlighting a difficulty here. And all this, what I'm talking about in the talks tonight, I have to say, Buddhists have been arguing about this for millennia. It's not a fresh controversy. It's quite heated and quite a lot to it. At some point in all this, as practice deepens and one reads and one hears and one talks about certain levels of practice, there's another problem coming in which is that language gets very poor. All the language starts to sound pretty similar. So two experiences or two insights of quite different depth might be described in the same language. And a person might -- well, it's confusing. If one goes really hunting through the texts, and the Mahāyāna texts as well, and says, "What does this word 'luminous' mean?" It's used a lot: "The mind is luminous." It's used a lot. Eventually what you'll find is 'luminous' means 'purity.' And then you say, okay, what does 'purity' mean? 'Purity' (guess what?) means 'empty, empty of inherent existence.' So using this word 'luminous' -- I don't know why, exactly, but what it really means is 'empty of inherent existence.'

Another word that's used a lot and, again, gets very confused, is the word -- the nature of awareness is vast like 'space.' And again, you will hear that a lot, a lot, a lot. And again, with this Cittamātra meditation, it's something that we can really have in meditation, that experience, that sense, beautiful, profound, freeing, not to be thrown out too early. But again, one goes hunting for, "What does that actually mean?" And 'space' means slightly different things in technical Dharma language. It means an 'absence of obstruction or contact.'^[9] So we tend to think, "Well, that's space. It's like, it's this thing." But actually, it's an absence of something. So it's like, in another sūtra, it says you have to analyse -- when someone says, "We see space," what are they actually seeing?^[10] It's not that they're seeing anything; it's the absence of something there that they're perceiving as space. And it's the similar with the mind. It's a kind of absence rather than a thing that has the nature of space.

So like I said, I know this sounds very picky, but there will come a point, if the integrity is alive in practice, and if one cares, and if one keeps that question and integrity alive, these will be questions that one is desperate, desperate, yearning to have some clarity about. And I'm aware that it may sound incredibly picky, and -- I don't know. It may not. But there comes a point when it's actually very important. Again, if we have a sense of space, it's still a perception. It's still an object. It can't be awareness itself.

The Buddha in the Pali Canon, again, says consciousness, when examined, is "empty, void, and without substance." Now, if he just says that -- "empty, void, and without substance" -- again, those words, we could interpret, "Well, that sounds like space, doesn't it? Empty, void, and without substance, like space. Right?" But he goes on to say: empty, void and without substance "like a magician's trick."^[11] In other words, there's some kind of illusion going on, the name of which is dependent arising, which we'll talk about tomorrow. Some kind of illusion going on that causes things to appear as if they exist. So it's not just empty, void, without substance in the way that space is; it's like a magician's trick. And as such, it's a dependent arising. It lacks inherent existence.

[39:44] So if this word 'luminosity,' for example -- that we do come across an awful lot -- if that actually means 'purity,' which actually means 'empty' -- and another word that you come across is 'clarity,' describing the nature of awareness, the nature of mind. Luminosity and clarity are the kind of characteristics of the nature of mind. But 'clarity,' again, when you hunt around for what it means, it means actually having the capacity to know, or cognizing, being conscious. So what you've got then is 'empty of inherent existence' and 'knowing.' What it turns out, rather than, "There is some thing which is luminous and clear," it's rather, "There is knowing, but that knowing is empty of inherent existence." And there's no inherently existing entity of knowing, or substance of awareness or mind.

So tonight, in what's left, and tomorrow night in particular, what does that actually mean to say that awareness empty of inherent existence? Again, to reiterate, the Cittamātra and everything that comes out of that is such a beautiful and profound and really, really excellent, helpful basis in practice. You can really develop that practice and go a long way with it. And it's so attractive, as well -- you know, vastness, luminosity, the notion of a Source of things, a Ground of Being, are very attractive notions at a heart level, as well, and they have the added attraction, that kind of conception, the added attraction of being very simple. When I talked about conceptuality, whenever it was, it's like this attraction we have as human beings to simplicity, and we don't -- there's not much there to think about. Like, you just kind of let everything be in the space, let awareness be awareness, and everything can -- it doesn't take much to think about it. It feels non-conceptual. You see? I just let everything be. It's very, very simple -- feels non-conceptual, but actually it's still conceptual. There's still subtle conceptuality holding the whole thing in place.

Yogi 5: Rob, can you just turn around back to 'clear' and 'luminous'?

Rob: Yeah. So what I was saying, if the word 'luminous' actually means 'empty of inherent existence' -- it turns out that's what it means. Now, why they choose the word 'luminous,' I don't know. Why don't they just say 'empty of inherent existence'? I'm not sure. But that's what it turns out it really means. So you've got 'empty of inherent existence,' and the other word is 'clarity.' And what it turns out 'clarity' really means is just 'cognizing, knowing.' What you've got is 'knowing that's empty of inherent existence,' rather than a substance that is luminous and clear. Okay? It's quite different. And what I want to go into especially tomorrow is, what does it actually mean to say awareness is empty of inherent existence? So this Cittamātra -- beautiful, so helpful, vast, luminous, the Source, etc., can be an excellent basis for the next stage, which we might call, you could call kind of Mahāmudrā or something like that.

Third Karmapa, absolutely amazing yogi and teacher from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in Tibet:

Looking at an object, there is none; I see it is mind.

So far, Cittamātra, right? Just Cittamātra. Then he goes on:

Looking for mind, mind is not there; it lacks any essence.

I'll just finish the stanza:

Looking at both, dualistic clinging is freed on its own.

May I realize luminosity, the enduring condition of mind.^[12]

And again, he's using 'luminosity' in that same way. But the important line here is the second one, going beyond the Cittamātra and saying, "Looking for mind, mind is not there; it lacks any essence." This is what I want to explore.

[43:52] So how are we going to discover that mind lacks any essence? In the Mahāmudrā tradition, rather the Kagyu Mahāmudrā tradition -- actually, no, not just the Kagyu but many Mahāmudrā traditions -- the first thing is to find that mind is actually unfindable. So the first thing one does is go looking for the mind and see if you can find it. And what one finds is that you can't find it. I'm going to read you a bunch of quotes now. I hope it's okay. Śāntideva:

Since mind has not been seen by anyone, there's no benefit in saying that it is self-aware and self-illuminating [which is a kind of Cittamātra claim: mind doesn't know objects; it just knows itself]....

When it is not seen by anyone, then whether it is illuminating or not illuminating is like the graceful stance of a barren woman's child.

Got that? [laughter]

Even to talk about it is meaningless.^[13]

It's meaningless, if you can't find mind, okay? I'll read a few of these. Śāntideva again, a different passage:

Mind can be found [awareness can be found] neither inside, outside, nor elsewhere. It's not a combination of inside and outside [actually, or a combination of anything else], and neither is it something apart. It is not the slightest thing. The very nature of sentient beings is nirvāṇa.^[14]

That last line is interesting: "The very nature of sentient beings is nirvāṇa." If I can't find anything here at all -- not in the body, not in the mental aggregates, not in consciousness, that has any inherent existence -- you could say my very nature, our very nature as sentient beings, is peace. There's nothing there inherently to disturb. We'll come back to that. Another one, talking to a guy named Ösung:

Ösung, mind does not exist inside, it also does not exist outside. It also isn't observed [to be] between the two. Ösung, there is no mind to discover, none to show, none to support, none to appear, none to perceive, none to form an idea of, none that abides. Ösung, none of the Buddhas has ever seen, sees or ... will see mind.^[15]

Another one. Now it starts to get a little more involved, actually:

Investigate whether this thing you call "mind" is blue, yellow, red, white, maroon, or transparent; whether it is pure or impure, "permanent" or "impermanent," and whether ... it is endowed with form [or not]. Mind has no physical form; it cannot be shown. It does not manifest, it is intangible, it does not cognize, it resides neither inside, outside, nor anywhere in between. Thus it is utterly pure, totally nonexistent. There is nothing of it to liberate; it is the very nature of dharmadhātu.^[16]

It is the very nature of ultimate reality, you could say. Last one for now. There's a reason I'm reading all these. I'll explain in a minute.

How should one properly understand one's own mind [to be]? Like this: even if you search thoroughly for it as having an aspect, color, shape ... location; as a form, sensation, perception, thought configuration or consciousness; as a self, or possessed by a self, as something to grasp or apprehend, as pure or impure, as a constituent or sense field, or in any other way at all, you won't observe it. This lord secret one is "the portal to the totally pure bodhicitta of a bodhisattva."^[17]

Okay? So there's something about this non-finding that's leading us very deep. Now, I read them in that order for a specific reason, because we can go hunting for the mind and not look very thoroughly for it. So for instance, if I say, "Where is the mind? It doesn't have any form. You can't find it as anything tangible. It doesn't have a colour. It has no shape," that's fine, and I realize I can't find the mind. But some, in the middle of some of those quotes as I went on, were saying things like "it does not cognize," which basically is saying awareness is not aware. I don't know if anyone caught it. Did you catch it? [laughs] It was in there. It would be easy to go through passages like that and just focus on the very obvious unfindabilities, and easy to miss the deeper ones and the more kind of perplexing ones. Those are also the more thorough ones and the ones that are really going to do the trick in terms of cutting suffering at its root.

[49:17] The Dalai Lama has a lovely quote, or rather very clear in explaining this. Talks about conventional nature of mind and ultimate nature of mind. The conventional nature of mind is that

It does not exist as anything physical [okay, I can't see it as anything physical], it lacks anything tangible, any object can appear to it [like the space or the mirror], and it exists as an entity of mere knowing.^[18]

Okay? Now, he says even that level, the conventional level, is actually quite difficult to realize. But that's actually -- well, a little bit beyond the Cittamātra. We need to practise until we can see that level of mind, the conventional level of mind.

Yogi 6: Can you say that over again?

Rob: Conventionally, mind "does not exist as anything physical, it lacks anything tangible, any object can appear to it, and it exists as an entity of mere knowing." Okay?

So I hope you guys are okay with this. I know, as I said going back to the beginning of the talk, it's going to sound very abstract for some. But why I'm mentioning all this is because there comes a point in practice when that's what one sees of the mind. One reaches a point when one actually does see the conventional level of mind -- lacking anything physical, not tangible, anything can appear to it, it's just a kind of knowing. And one might think that I have realized the ultimate nature of mind. And that's exactly what the Dalai Lama is pointing to not quite yet being the case, because then we need to analyse further and deeper, and understand deeper, and actually come to what's the ultimate nature of mind. Okay? So this is a tall order. It's a tall order, but when one glimpses the ultimate nature of mind, that's something extremely profound, and ... I don't know what to say. The practice moves to a whole other level. It radicalizes the practice like nothing else.

Gampopa was one of the main students of Milarepa, and a great, great teacher. And he said there are three problems with giving inherent existence to awareness.^[19]

(1) The first one is this unfindability. For me -- and I'll say the other two, but for me, the unfindability, what I've just talked about, it's actually ... it doesn't quite do it. So I'm saying this because you will come across teachings that all they give for the nature of mind is what we've just said is the conventional nature of mind, and then it stops there. For me, if I see that it's unfindable in that way, it doesn't quite cut it at the same root. It doesn't go deeply enough. And it's not completely convincing. Just because I can't find something, just because I can't see something, doesn't mean it doesn't actually exist inherently. I mean, to me it doesn't totally -- that's not enough of a reason. I don't know how you feel, but I don't feel that it's enough of a reason, just because I can't see it.

(2) Second one has to do with the knowing and the known, and the relationship between the knowing and known, which we touched on a little bit and I want to go into.

(3) And the third one actually has to do with the emptiness of time, which I want to reserve for tomorrow.

So let's explore this. The second one relates to consciousness, meaning a 'knowing.' Okay? We've talked about this. It's very easy, because there's a noun in English -- 'consciousness,' 'awareness' -- to think of a thing, because nouns usually refer to things. But if we replace it by a verb, 'knowing,' it's a process, an activity. And Buddha says, consciousness is knowing, and it's knowing in terms of the six senses and their objects. So we know sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touches, and thoughts and images, mind states, etc.^[20]

Now, knowing -- we've already talked about this, but knowing needs a known. Knowing needs a known. And what does a known need? It needs knowing. Knowing needs a known, and a known needs knowing. There's no known without knowing, and there's no knowing without something known. [laughter] Right? The two are ... [laughs] Does everyone get that? Yeah? The two things are mutually dependent. They're mutually dependent. Now, two things that are mutually dependent cannot have inherent existence. Two things that are mutually dependent cannot have inherent existence because, in a way, both have to precede each other to be a cause for the other. They can't be -- we've been through this before with something else -- can't be simultaneous because there's no time for one to cause the other.

[54:41] So we talked about vedanā and the reaction also being mutually dependent and therefore mutually empty, but the same thing with consciousness and perception, knowing and known. They always go together. You can't have one without the other. So what does that mean -- they're the same thing? Does it mean they're the same thing, that my consciousness becomes a mat when I see a mat, my consciousness becomes an elephant when I see an elephant? They're not the same, but they're not different either. You can't actually separate them. It's a bit like the left and right of a stick again. They're not separatable. You can't have one without the other. You can't say they're the same, and you can't say they're different. They lack inherent existence. They lack a separate, independent existence.

Yogi 8: Would you say they can't arise simultaneously?

Rob: Well, in a way they can, but they can't arise simultaneously as two inherently existing things arising simultaneously. So if you say they arise simultaneously, you can't then say that one is a cause for the other, that's all.

But we can go further with this. We've talked thus far on the retreat about the known -- perceptions -- and we've talked on and on and on about the known being empty. It depends. It's fabricated. It's a dependent arising, depends how much push and pull, how much clinging, how much identification. The known is dependent and so empty. So in a way, consciousness, you could say, is leaning on something empty. It's leaning on a vacuum. It's being supported by something that actually isn't really there.

So in some sense, consciousness is groundless, you could say. It's actually in its true nature -- although it's a little weird with language -- you could say it's unsupported. Objects depend on the mind, as we've talked a lot about, so they are empty because they depend on the mind. Now we're saying that the mind, consciousness, depends on objects. No object, no knowing, no consciousness, and the mind depends on something, objects, which are empty. You have two emptinesses that are leaning on each other, two nothings ... [laughter] flopping through each other.

We can add something -- I'm going to talk about this, not tomorrow night but the night after -- in that this fading that I've been talking about, an object fades, etc., it can actually go all the way (which actually came up in a question and answer period), can go all the way beyond the six sense consciousnesses, all the way to not actually being conscious of anything in the realm of the six sense consciousnesses. And then one asks again -- well, one sees that it fades dependent on letting go, dependent on relaxing the clinging, dependent on not identifying. In other words, saying the other way around, more accurately, consciousness appears dependent on clinging. Consciousness, for its existence, is dependent on clinging, dependent on identification. Is it something real, then? Is it something really real? It's also fabricated, the way everything else is. It's fabricated by clinging. It's fabricated by self-identification, me-mining. And it's fabricated by delusion. Just the notion that things are inherently existent will fabricate consciousness.

Yogi 9: If this ceases, what happens to mind?

Rob: Say again?

Yogi 9: Well, if this ceases, what happens to mind?

Rob: I'll talk about it the day after tomorrow. [laughs] Tomorrow, I will talk about the emptiness of time, which is Gampopa's third reason for the impossibility of awareness having inherent existence, and also talk about some of the other reasons in terms of dependent arising, very, very subtle levels of dependent arising. For me, that totally -- because there could still be a little bit of unsureness here even at the level I've just said. But that just chops it -- at least for me, anyway. I want to talk a bit more about this, because remember, I'm not throwing out stuff now for kind of intellectual ownership or something like that. What I'm talking about is actually the possibility of being able to practise with this, and as I said at the talk, it might not be yet. But it's there for us if we want it eventually, at some point. And it might not take the years that you think it takes.

So how would one do this? Well, here I am in meditation. It's going okay, or even if it's not going okay, and I start to contemplate at a level that feels like it works to me. So if that's the anattā, or if it's that I'm ready to see, just look at things and see that they're empty, whatever. But eventually, it gets to the point where I'm able to look at whatever's in consciousness, whatever that is -- a sensation, a mind state, a perception of whatever -- and look at it, and hold it there in the attention, and look at it, and say, "Empty, empty." And that inner saying and viewing of it as "empty" -- it needs, it's resting on a conviction. So it's not just meaningless words. One has practised enough that one really can look at something and say, "I know you're empty," and it begins to have an effect on that thing, that the thing fades, that the thing starts fading a little bit.

But as you're contemplating the emptiness of this thing, almost then including a sense of consciousness in that moment too. So there's a sense of the perception and a sense of consciousness as well. And reflecting, quietly, background of awareness, that it's dependent, the consciousness is dependent on, it's not separate from the object that is empty. So just going through what we've just talked about, actually very subtly, very quietly in that moment, then you're, in one kind of movement of mind, you're seeing the emptiness of the object and the consciousness that knows it, and you're looking at it. You're kind of holding both and contemplating both.

In a way, the deeper this goes, it's also going kind of deeper into this whole business that we talked about, this holy disinterest. So one has become disinterested in phenomena, and then one becomes disinterested, in a beautiful way, in consciousness as well. As the Buddha says, one doesn't relish phenomena, and one doesn't relish consciousness. Remember, that doesn't mean a kind of blah, meaninglessness.

Now, you can do this in quite a kind of intense way. In other words, you've really got some sense of perception. Maybe it's a sense of stillness inside or a sense of space, and you've really got it kind of quite intensely in the focus, this moment, right there. And you're seeing it's empty, and then you're contemplating the consciousness. You can do it quite focused and intensely, or you can do it in a much more relaxed way, and they're both good. And eventually one experiments with both, and a much more relaxed, spacious sense of, almost like everything is mind, and that mind, too, doesn't exist. So in a kind of restful, resting back, or a more intense way, in a more focused way, or in a more spacious way. There's also a big debate, mostly among the Tibetan traditions, whether one continues analysing in the meditation. In other words, you can have some degree of samādhi and slightly start reflecting on the emptinesses there, and other schools say, "No, you should absolutely never do that," etc. I'm actually happy both ways. What it rests on is the conviction that things are empty. So even if you're not actually going through the reasoning, you have to have really seen it and felt it to bring it into the meditation.

[1:04:05] So just to end, again, it's very possible that all this sounds like extreme quibbling or pickiness, or "Don't really know what all the fuss is about," etc. And it's possible that a person might hear this or whatever and say, "Well, how do you know which of all these is the real one?" Because as I said, you can find texts that say any range of the stages that I've gone through. You can absolutely find that. You can find material to support any level there. "How would you know?" It's possible to know a certain level or a certain state, a certain level of understanding and the kind of states of freedom and expansiveness that come with that, and then actually to move beyond that, to let go of it, to see the emptiness of something there and go beyond it. And what happens is that the felt sense of freedom deepens. And it's like shifting gears in a car. You sense, "Oh, we're in a whole new ballpark here." The whole thing has moved to another level. One actually feels that movement, and then one looks back on where one's come from and actually realizes, "Oh, I see. Where I was before, there was a clinging -- conscious or unconscious, deliberate or not deliberate -- at something there that I was taking to have inherent existence. And then I went beyond that." And going beyond it, there's a much, much deeper level of freedom and understanding. But before, I either believed in that thing as inherently existent, or I didn't realize that I was clinging to it as inherently existent.

So in a way -- and again, if this all sounds like a little bit picky and irrelevant, it's good to remember: very, very, very safe, almost guaranteed that you are clinging to something as inherently existent unless you're deliberately not. Okay? That is the default, automatic, taken-for-granted, unquestioned way the mind works. That's what the Buddha means when he talks about delusion, that we just habitually see things as inherently existent. I've heard people say to me, "I don't, I don't -- but I'm not thinking that big open space of awareness is inherently existent." But they're not thinking that it's not, and so unconsciously, automatically, they will be. And that's a given. This goes for everything. Assume that unless you're deliberately contemplating something as empty, you're seeing it as inherently existent. It's just the way the mind works until you're a Buddha. [laughs] You can pretty much safely assume.

Okay, so I'm going to stop there. In a way, that was part one, and pick this up tomorrow night.

^^