No Mind

I'm going to give four talks in the next four days, and in a way, they're a set. There's a sort of spiral in them so it might seem, to subtle degrees, that I'm going back and forth across certain issues or contradicting. Actually, I'm spiralling around something, in some respects. What I really want to do is give a map of practice. Not the only map -- I wouldn't claim that, but a potential map or maps of how this might unfold into the depths, for many of you, really, in the future, if you want to pursue it. For some a lot sooner than that, actually quite imminently. So I hope that's okay, I really hope that that's okay to do that, to put that out there, and I hope that that can be interesting for you.

In the interviews still, what I'm really, really wanting to hear about is where your practice is at now, what's alive for you, what's working, what's not working, how it can develop. The prime concern of this retreat is the development of your practice, meaning the deep, direct seeing of emptiness in a way you actually feel is freeing. And so that development of meditation is very much what I want to be hearing about from you. So it would be a shame if the retreat was just a kind of expression or, you know, throwing out some ideas which you may or may not be interested in, or you may or may not like, or you may or you may not object to. That actually doesn't interest me that much. What really interests me is the development of your practice in a way that brings freedom.

So going back -- who knows when, some point, several weeks -- I think I talked, on three different occasions, whole talks where it was really about the attitude to practice and the attitude to hearing teachings. And all that's really, really important -- fundamental, I think -- and goes very much in these next four talks. What's the attitude? What goes on when you hear some of this stuff? And is it possible that it can actually be enjoyable? Too often what happens when we hear -- and we've already touched on this -- about places in practice where we're not quite at yet, too often the inner critic comes in, for many people. And this is interesting. I could give a whole talk on the inner critic. I'm not going to. But what goes on there? Why is there this contraction in self-judgment and a sort of collapse of our attitude towards practice? What's going on? I was talking just in the last few days with a few people, and oftentimes, of course, it's related to our sense of self-worth and self-love. Somehow that's in the whole measurement of the self and where we think we are, and what the teacher thinks of us, and all that stuff, and it comes in so easily. And trace it, trace it, trace it. Look at these emotions. Oftentimes it's like my sense of self-worth is dependent on where I am in achieving something or succeeding at something -- in this case, meditation practice, because this is a meditation retreat -- or my sense of self-love, or my sense of being loved by another. Sometimes a person says, "I think a teacher won't be interested in me, what I bring in practice. If you talk about this, then what I bring to an interview obviously won't be interesting. The teacher will be bored or think it's irrelevant, or" -- actually, at the bottom -- "won't love me." And there are roots for that in the culture, there are roots perhaps in the family, there are roots in the education system, all of that. But it goes on. It goes on a lot.

I don't know if I should say this, but just from my point of view, there's none of that going on at all. What I respond to when a person comes to an interview is how much they care and their aspiration. And wherever one is, it's like wanting to be a bit freer, wanting to understand a bit more. Where one is at is completely irrelevant. But that's something that I -- when a person has care, when they have aspiration, that's what my heart resonates to. And whatever your care is, I feel like I'll meet you there. I'll meet you -- with however much care you have, I'll meet you. It's not about where you are. But of course if you don't care, it makes it hard for me, because then I feel like I'm lifting up a weight. We could talk about it all night, but I'm not going to.

So maybe the inner critic comes up in these talks and fine, not a problem, it can be there. It's just "blah blah blah blah blah," and it's okay. It's just the tape machine running. I don't have to necessarily buy into it. Maybe give it lots of room, give it space, it can be there, not a big deal. So having said all that, it's really okay if this feels like it's beyond you, and it's okay if you don't practise any of this now, of what I'm going to talk about over the next few nights. It's completely, completely okay. You may feel like you want to file it for later. You may feel that that's what you want to do, and try and understand, get a picture, make notes if you want, and keep it for another time, keep it for some time to come. That's totally, totally appropriate. So in a way, as I said, for many of you that that will be the case. I hope, then, that that frees you up to just listen and sit back and just kick back, put your feet up (metaphorically), and enjoy and listen, and just kind of curious, and still be engaged. And that's completely fine. So I want to, as I said, fill out a map, to have a sense of how this whole process might unfold and might deepen for a practitioner.

Actually, similarly, still staying on that topic, when we look at practice, practice is huge. It's huge, and it's deep, and it's wide, and it's multifarious -- so rich, what practice is. We talked about this image, way back, of this poisonous tree. So you can cut the flowers off, or you can cut some branches off, or you can prune it a little, or you can cut it in the trunk, or you can really go to the roots and uproot it. Practice is like that. In other words, we have a whole spectrum of where we can pitch the practice at any time. And it's not that as we deepen in practice, we forget about earlier pitches or pruning the leaves or pruning the flowers. It's that we just add more and more.

So for example, you and I are friends and we have an argument; it might be completely appropriate for us to just talk, for me to just think about how I'm communicating. No emptiness, no business of not-self -- just about that: how am I communicating? Totally appropriate, no matter how much practice I've done. It might be the practice of mettā, impermanence, anattā -- these are all, you could say, slightly deeper. We've touched on the awareness of phenomena being empty, or the understanding, the practice of seeing the emptiness of phenomena. That's cutting this poisonous tree deeper down on the trunk. But all of that is available. The beautiful thing as practitioners is that we have a choice. We have more and more choice as practice unfolds.

So tonight what I want to speak about is awareness -- awareness, and how can we as meditators really see deeply that awareness lacks inherent existence? And what does that mean? And how might I move towards a meditative, deep, transformational seeing of that, more than an idea? And that, you could say, is really getting close to the root. It's really beginning to actually lift up the very roots of this structure of the poisonous tree. It's a very, very deep level of insight. But all of those levels are available. They're all available for us, and they're all actually important. So where I'm going with this is to say that awareness or the mind -- I'm using those two synonymously tonight -- mind or awareness or consciousness or whatever, is empty of inherent existence.

Now, that might seem, it might sound abstract. A person says, "What does that even mean? Awareness is empty of inherent existence?" It's important to realize with this stuff about emptiness that the dukkha we have in life, the dissatisfaction, the dis-ease, the pain -- its roots are principally not philosophical. They're not that we've taken a wrong idea of this and that, and we're believing this philosophy as opposed to that philosophy, or this metaphysic as opposed to that metaphysical belief or idea. That's actually not really the deep problem. Going right back to the beginning, the deep problem is the innate, intuitive sense of the inherent existence of things, including awareness. And that's not anything to do with the philosophy or ideas or religious ideas, or what I've read in this tradition or that tradition. It's actually something we gut -- viscerally -- feel: that things, we see things as having inherent existence. We sense things as having inherent existence. And that level, much, much deeper, whether we're conscious of it or not, is where the suffering, the bulk of our suffering, dukkha, whatever you want to call it in life, comes from.

So a person, even plenty of Buddhists in the Buddhist tradition, will say or believe or may believe, "Awareness is the only thing. It's the one thing that's real. It's the one thing that has inherent existence." And that can be a religious, philosophical, spiritual belief or whatever, or intuition or feeling or perception. Another person can say, "I don't believe that. The Buddha clearly said that awareness also lacks inherent existence and is also a dependent arising." If the second one is just an intellectual belief based on what we've read in the suttas and on what the Buddha said, etc., actually the case is that both are kind of still the default view of inherent existence. Just an intellectual view is not going to cut things. I need to see it deeper in meditation. Without that deeper meditative seeing, we just fall back on our default views. No matter what intellectual view we are trumpeting, it doesn't make any difference; we will fall back on the default view of inherent existence of something or other. We may dress it up as this philosophy or that philosophy, this standpoint or that standpoint, but that's the default gut feeling we will have of things.

Now, some of you in this room -- it was very much the case last year, and it's good, it's great -- will be of a sense or an intuition or a feeling or a perception that awareness is not empty of inherent existence, that that actually is some kind of reality there. And it would seem, it would really seem to a person that to say that awareness doesn't have inherent existence would then be a disappointment, a mystical and spiritual disappointment. So we're holding something -- this beautiful sense of awareness, transcendentally, mystically there, embracing everything -- and then someone comes along and pokes at it and says, "It's not really." And we feel like, "What a deflation."

Actually, actually, that's not the case. I would say, and the experience is, that to really see -- again, not just intellectually, but to really see that awareness lacks inherent existence is even more amazing, even more freeing, almost unbelievably so, is something even more beautiful and touching to see that awareness doesn't have inherent existence than is this idea, whatever we might call it, of an awareness that does have inherent existence. And I keep saying this: emptiness is not a teaching of disappointment. It's not a teaching of disappointment. It's the opposite.

Even more freedom, even more amazement, even more capacity to love will come out of that seeing deeply. The release will be even more, to the point where a person wants to laugh out loud when they see that. And, like I said, if I don't see it deeply in meditation -- that's really what I want to be talking about, the meditative seeing -- if it's just intellectual, I just will fall back on my default view of the inherent existence of things. And something in there -- whether it's bare attention, whether it's what the senses seem to be telling me about life, staying at contact, whatever it is, whether it's that the self is a process, something in there, the elements, the time it happens in, the awareness -- something, something, something will be given inherent existence.

Okay, so what I'm interested in is, how does a practitioner move into this and deepen it in a way that really transforms the heart? And again, it may seem -- and I hope it doesn't, that it seems abstract, that it seems that a talk like this has nothing to do with this particular fear or this particular anxiety I have or whatever it is. But again, it's this tree, and what are we snipping? The leaves of a flower, in terms of what our particular suffering is? Or are we going right to the trunk and cutting it there? Even below the trunk, right to the roots?

So it does have everything to do with freedom and unburdening and love. So to remember also that saying that something -- this self, or this phenomenon, this aggregate, or awareness, or whatever it is -- is empty is not a kind of nihilism. It's really not. It feels like it's important to keep saying that. It doesn't mean that we then trash that thing and it becomes meaningless.

Okay. So I said I was using this word 'mind' and 'awareness' synonymously. Sometimes people use the word 'mind,' and they refer to the grosser cogs of thinking and wrestling with things, etc. I'm actually, tonight, using the word 'mind,' 'consciousness,' 'awareness,' 'that which knows,' all meaning the same thing. So this knowing, this capacity of knowing, whatever it is that knows -- that's what I'm talking about tonight. Sometimes people say the mind is the four mental aggregates apart from form. You've got form and then the mental; what makes up the mind is feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. And you could say that's mind. Either way, whether it's the four aggregates, whether it's just one called 'consciousness,' whether I call it 'awareness,' whatever, whether I call it 'that which knows' -- whatever name I give to it, it's empty. It's empty, and that's what I want to go into.

So a couple of weeks ago, when we were doing the anattā practice, we talked about -- there's actually a subtler level in the anattā practice. It's quite a thing to be able to have a sense of consciousness or awareness, and in that moment really to be feeling it as 'not me, not mine,' to unhook the default, normal identification we have with awareness. And that in itself is a practice: unhooking the identification with awareness, with consciousness, with mind.

There's a Thai Forest meditation master called Ajaan Mahā Boowa. He's probably still alive, but if he is, he's very, very old*,* and he gives an account of his practice at different stages. He said he was doing walking meditation years ago, and this voice came up inside him. It just sprang up, this intuitive wisdom, and it said, "When there is a centre to the knowing, there is dukkha." And that, he said, was a real turning point in his practice. When there's a centre to the knowing, we usually think, "I'm the centre of the knowing," okay? "When there's a centre to the knowing, there is dukkha."^[1]

Actually, that statement can be understood at a couple of different levels, a couple of different levels of meaning -- we'll come back to this -- because I can take it as saying that awareness is there, but it's not me or mine. It's the anattā of awareness. I can take a whole other level of subtlety -- which is what I want to get into tonight -- which is awareness is śūnyatā, is empty. Śūnya is empty. Awareness lacks inherent existence. Not just that it doesn't belong to anyone, but that it actually lacks inherent existence. Okay?

It's already subtle to be able to unhook the identification from awareness. Very possible, subtle, difficult. Very possible. It's even more subtle to see that consciousness, awareness, mind whatever we call it, lacks inherent existence. Very difficult, very possible. Very difficult, very possible to see it deeply in meditation. But I want to, again, repeat something I've said before in here. It's a style of teaching, which is that I may, for quite a while, have the view or the feeling or the sense or the perception in my meditation that awareness is it and that it does have inherent existence, that it's not empty, that it's the reality. And I view that as a really, really important stepping-stone. So going back to the talk I gave on the vastness of awareness a couple of weeks ago, not the final truth but really, really an important stepping-stone. So it's like these stances or these views that we can get into and pitch camp there for a while -- very, very freeing. A lot of love comes out of that. Very important -- and they're provisional. To repeat that phrase from the Dzogchen tradition, "Trust your experience, but keep refining your view." So we're talking about the movement of practice.

Okay, so let's go into this. Perhaps at first in practice, or maybe for quite a while in practice, the sense of the mind or awareness or consciousness is somewhat like a mirror. It feels as if there's something inside, so to speak, that is a kind of mirror for the world. It's mirrored inside. Now, obviously, we don't think there's an actual piece of glass inside somewhere, but the sense is of awareness is kind of functioning like a mirror. And some people -- and again, you will hear it in teachings -- some people use that model and say the emptiness of the mind, when people talk about the emptiness of the mind, what they're really talking about is cleaning that pane of glass, scrubbing it. Again we go back to The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley and all that, bare attention -- you're scrubbing this glass so that it reflects. Like a really good mirror, it reflects cleanly the reality outside.

Sometimes also you hear that emptiness of mind or 'no mind' means 'no thought.' But I don't know if you remember I made a division between thinking and conceptuality, which I'm going to go into tomorrow. To me these are helpful, helpful pointers, but not the full thing yet. Why is it helpful to feel or even view awareness as a mirror? A mirror is unaffected by what goes in front of it. A mirror does not care what it reflects -- beautiful, ugly, scary, whatever, a mirror does not care. We can have a sense in meditation, in our introspection, of awareness as like that: it's unfazed, unperturbed, unbothered by what it's reflecting. And that sense of awareness brings equanimity, because equanimity is exactly that: it's not being bothered too much by what's in awareness. So it's actually very, very helpful, but as I said, not quite the real deal. Why not? You don't need anything more than we've already done in here. It implies, if it's reflecting reality, it's implying a 'things as they are,' an independent, inherently existent reality of things which is reflected by awareness. But all this business we've done in terms of seeing the emptiness of phenomena shows us already that there is no 'things as they are,' right? There is no 'how things are.' That is empty. That's wrapped up in the mirror concept or the mirror intuition or the mirror teaching. It can't be the real thing.

Second problem -- and this we haven't gone into in full detail yet; this talk kind of goes with tomorrow night's talk -- but the sense, again, with a mirror sense of awareness, the feeling there, the intuition, the implication is that awareness is something passive. A mirror just hangs out, doesn't do anything; along comes an object, along comes the world, along comes whatever, and passively, the mirror/awareness automatically reflects it. And again, in meditation you can have a real sense of awareness being something that 'just is.' You just leave it, and it just does its thing spontaneously, without effort, without doing. But this, actually, with a lot of deep examination -- I'll go into tomorrow in more detail -- we actually find out that awareness, the whole process of knowing, being aware of something, is not a passive process. It's a fabricated process. It's part of that wheel of dependent arising. It's fabricated. We actually put work in to know something. Very, very subtle, extremely subtle. This is where we get into the subtlety of dependent arising. But the sense of passivity of awareness is actually not quite seen deeply enough.

There's a famous Zen teacher -- I think he was the Sixth Zen Patriarch -- called Hui-neng. Have people heard of Hui-neng? I can't remember the story exactly. He was in a monastery, but not even a monk. He was something like ... Do you remember what he was?

Yogi 1: Bruce tells the story.

Yogi 2: He was an illiterate woodcutter.

Rob: Good, thank you. So you heard the whole story? Did you hear the poems?

Yogi 2: Why don't you read, because there's different ...

Rob: Okay. So anyway, he was not a monk, and then there was -- at least the story I know -- the abbot knew that he was dying and wanted to find a worthy heir, a worthy successor, for the abbotship or whatever it's called. And so, rather than give it to the next-in-line guy, because he wasn't quite sure about the next-in-line guy [laughs], about his depth of realization, so he said, "Okay, what we're going to do is on that old wall out there, everyone write a verse, a poem. Anyone who wants to can write a poem summing up their realization of what there is to realize." And so different people wrote poems. And a guy called Shen-hsiu, who I think was the sort of favourite in the running, wrote this poem:

Our body is a mirror stand,

And our mind a mirror bright [our awareness a mirror bright].

Carefully we wipe them hour by hour,

And let no dust alight.

I doubt it was in such terrible doggerel, but ... [laughter] Who knows? And so the other monks looked at that and said, "This dude really has it. That must be the winner." And then something happened. The abbot didn't say anything yet, and a couple of days went by, and then one night, the next morning another poem appeared:

There never has been a mirror stand.

There never has been a mirror bright.

Since all is void and empty,

Where can the dust alight?

And that was Hui-neng's poem, this illiterate woodcutter who wasn't even a monk. And the abbot said, "That's my man."^[2] [laughs]

Okay, so that's one model, and we're going deeper than that model. Helpful but only provisional. Another model is this sense of going back to the vastness of awareness that we did -- really, really important for a lot of people. And there are two ways it can feel. As we did in that meditation, it can feel like the awareness is sort of infinitely vast and holding everything. It's almost like awareness is the container for everything, and everything just happens in that. And awareness remains unaffected, eternally serene, eternally unperturbed by what happens within it. This is a very important meditative seeing, meditative perception. In other words, as some of you have already tasted, you can have that in meditation. Very, very important. It can also feel, when the meditation goes a bit deeper, that this vast space of awareness is actually the source of phenomena. It feels -- the perception in that space is that everything arises out of that space. Phenomena, sounds, body sensations -- they're arising out of awareness, out of this 'ground of awareness,' so to speak, and disappearing back into it. Very, very helpful. So that goes back to that guided meditation. And out of this will come equanimity, deep equanimity, deep love, deep freedom, will really open the being. But, but, but, but, but, but, but ... [laughter] But awareness can seem that way, in that sense of things, in that depth of meditation. It can seem like it's free. It can seem like it's independent. It can seem like it's just there, eternally there, unperturbed, vast, uninvolved in the more gross cogitations of the mind and experience, thinking, and the reactivity, and the building and all that.

But -- a couple of buts -- we are probably not seeing, or we need to see, that that sense of vastness of awareness too is actually an object. It's an object. It too is a perception. We have a sense of something; therefore, it is a perception. We actually have a sense of this awareness. Still a perception. It's an object, you could say, for the mind. And as such, it's woven in with perception. This very sense of awareness is woven in with the process of perception. Very, very helpful, but that's the thing we need to see, that it's woven in with perception. By 'perception,' remember, I'm using 'perception,' 'experience,' 'objects,' all the same. It's woven in with that process of perceiving. The Buddha said if you understand perception, you don't need to understand anything more. It sounds like such a dry thing to say when he said, "What is awakening? It's the understanding of perception." It sounds very dry. We would rather hear something else, perhaps. But that's the nub of it, because our very sense of awareness is wrapped up with perception. I'm going to go into this in more detail.

There's a sutta -- it's actually the first sutta in the Majjhima Nikāya. It's a very striking sutta. So this sense of awareness, or vastness of awareness, being a kind of source, a kind of groundless ground of being out of which everything emanates from that, disappears back into that -- very important, but again, it's a perception. And secondly, here's a sutta, it's Majjhima Nikāya number 1. It's a little long, but listen:

An ordinary uninstructed person perceives the luminous realms [meaning the jhānas] ... the great being [the sense of God] ... the dimension of infinite space ... the dimension of infinite consciousness [so the Buddha's talking about what you can perceive in really deep states of meditation] ... dimension of nothingness, dimension of neither-perception-nor-non-perception [these are very deep meditative perceptions] ... perceives the All ... perceives nirvāṇa ... and perceives those things as the luminous realms ... as the great Being ... as the dimension of infinite space ... infinite consciousness ... nothingness ... neither-perception-nor-non-perception ... the All ... or nirvāṇa.

Perceiving [to paraphrase] these things as these things, he or she conceives things in that thing.

In other words, I conceive things in that space of awareness, I conceive things in that space.

Or he or she conceives things coming out of that.

Do you understand what I'm saying? Conceives phenomena coming out of that space of awareness or whatever. He/she conceives whichever one of these flavours of spaces, to go back to the talk on the vastness of awareness:

Conceives this or that space as 'mine,' and delights in that space [whatever space it is]. Why is that? Because he or she has not comprehended it, I tell you.

Something there we still haven't understood.

A practitioner who is a trainee [and listen to this language here], yearning for the unexcelled relief from bondage, his aspirations as yet unfulfilled, directly knows the luminous realms as the luminous realms ... the great being as the great being ... dimension of infinite space ... infinite consciousness ... nothingness ... nirvāṇa ... as all those things. Directly knowing these things as these things, let him or her not conceive things in that space. Let him or her not conceive things coming out of that space, not conceive these spaces as 'mine,' not delight in these spaces. Why? So that he or she may comprehend it, I tell you.

May understand that space, what it actually is. In other words, don't give it something it's not. Last paragraph:

An arahant [a totally enlightened being] 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 understanding, directly knows the luminous realms ... nirvāṇa as nirvāṇa. He/she does not conceive things about these spaces, does not conceive things coming out of those spaces, does not conceive these as 'mine,' does not delight in that, because they have comprehended it, I tell you.

One of the most striking things about that sutta is that most suttas end when the Buddha talks to monks or nuns or lay people with, "And the monks delighted in the Blessed One's words." This one ends:

The monks did not rejoice in the Blessed One's words.^[3]

This group of monks was not happy to hear that! [laughter] Going right back to the opening talk, there's a challenge here. It's a very, very deep challenge, especially -- and again, going back to what I said today, it's not a philosophical challenge. It's a meditative challenge. Because if you reach these spaces -- and some of you, this is what we've been doing. Some of you in this space -- you're struck by the beauty, you're struck by the luminosity, you're struck, moved, deeply touched, deeply freed by that sense of things. And yet it's not a final resting place.

So, other flavours: "The nature of awareness is luminous. The mind is luminous." Again, you hear that in lots of different traditions, including the Buddhist traditions, both Hīnayāna and Mahāyāna. And again, a very palpable, striking, moving, freeing sense of things that one can have in meditation. I'm not talking about philosophical abstraction. I'm talking about actual sense of things that one gets with one's own inner seeing. Let me read you two translations of the same passage in the Pali Canon, the Aṅguttara Nikāya 1:49.^[4] First translation:

Luminous is this mind, brightly shining, but it is colored 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]

How do you feel when you hear that? It's not a trick question. [laughter] It's nice, isn't it? Seems to be pointing to the luminosity: "The mind is luminous." There's another translation -- very same passage -- different teacher, different translator:

Luminous is this mind, brightly shining. And it is defiled by incoming defilements. This unlearned people do not understand, and so there is no development of the mind. Luminous is the mind, brightly shining, and it is freed from incoming defilements.

The first one said it is "free." The second one said "freed." Quite a difference, isn't there?

Freed from incoming defilements, and so for these people who understand, there is development of the mind.^[6]

Partly what I want to draw attention to is -- well, a couple of things. Learning a little bit of Sanskrit myself now, very slowly in the last couple of years, already knowing enough to actually see that passages can be bent in their translation quite easily, that a lot of the original texts are not that clear: "Is it saying this? Or is it saying this?"

Ajaan Mahā Boowa -- that Thai Forest master I referred to earlier -- in his meditation memoirs or whatever you want to call it, he then goes to another place where he said the only thing left was this sense of ignorance, delusion. What is this? What is delusion? And was struck by the luminosity of the mind, this radiant mind. He said the thing that really did the trick, that really cut the tree at the root, was seeing that, in his words, "The radiant mind is delusion. The luminous mind is delusion."^[7]

Even within the Pali Canon, you get texts that seem to contradict each other, and certainly when you open it up to different Mahāyāna teachings. So what might this mean: 'luminosity, luminosity'?

Sometimes in the meditation we have a sense of luminosity. Again, it's a palpable, moving, touching, freeing, beautiful sense. We have a sense, but still, if it's an object for the mind, it's a perception. It's in the realm of perception. It's wrapped up with perception. As such, it's fabricated. It cannot be awareness itself if it's a perception. If I have a perception of luminosity, it cannot be awareness itself; it's more of an object.

Do you remember, going back to that talk -- I think it was on the vastness of awareness -- I said that sense of awareness is still a sense in awareness, and you can kind of regard it that way, and maybe free in some way. In these two translations, then, some people -- again, within the Theravada tradition -- will lean towards the first one. And I'm really interested in why people lean in different ways. I'm going to go into this in these four talks. What's very interesting to me is why do I get pulled one way or another way with this? What's going on? I'm interested in pre-deciding, preconceptions, favouritism, etc.

The first one of these two translations seems to give a kind of inherent existence to the luminosity of the mind, kind of by itself there, free of defilements, existing eternally, etc. There's another passage where the Buddha talks about his description in the positive of nibbāna, which is very rare. He says:

Consciousness without limit, without feature, luminous all around.

And so they tend to equate those two: "luminous" with that. But when he talks about (I'm going to get to this; this might not make sense right now, but I'm going to get to this in a couple of talks' time) this, what we could call Unconditioned, Unfabricated -- "Consciousness without limit, without feature" -- when he explains what that is, he says:

It does not partake of anything in the phenomenal world.^[8]

In other words, it's a consciousness that doesn't know anything in the phenomenal world. It's not 'awareness' and 'consciousness' how we usually mean it. It's something else. If it doesn't partake of anything in the phenomenal world, how could it be defiled? How could it possibly be defiled? It would not even meet with anything of phenomena that could defile it. And how could it possibly be developed? I can only develop something that is phenomenal. Do you understand?

Yogi 3: Can you say what the "it" is?

Rob: The "it" is, sometimes -- this is a little hard for it to make sense now, because it really refers to something I'm going to talk about in two talks' time -- the Unconditioned or the Unfabricated. Sometimes the Buddha talks about it in the positive, very occasionally, and says it's consciousness without limit, without feature, luminous all around, but it doesn't partake of any of the phenomena of the world. It doesn't partake of anything in the phenomenal world. We'll get to that, but what I'm really drawing questions about is the equation of this "Luminous is the mind" with that other description of luminosity.

Part of the problem here is language. If you really get into this stuff -- and some of you will, and some of you won't, and that's fine -- but if you really get into this, and you read a lot of texts, and you study a lot, and you really want to understand, what you begin to notice is that people use language, the same word, 'luminosity,' with a vast range of meanings. Vast range. It means very different things. And even I will use the same word, a teacher, even the Buddha clearly used the same word with different meanings at different times. And this is difficult. It makes it difficult. It throws a lot of confusion in the works. Sometimes two people are using the same language, and it sounds like they're talking about the same level of meditation or the same level of insight, and actually it's vastly different, what's implied by the language -- vastly different. So if you rummage around and really, really, really rummage around a lot, you will eventually, hopefully, find what is meant. And you might have to look in Mahāyāna teachings. You might find what is meant by this word, 'luminosity,' luminosity of awareness: it actually turns out to mean 'purity.' What does 'purity' mean? It actually turns out to mean 'emptiness,' emptiness of inherent existence. Strange -- I don't know why they couldn't have just said 'empty.' [laughter] There you are. There's actually a reason; I'll come back to it.

Similarly with language, and the same language getting interpreted in two different ways, and people can be having a debate and actually be talking at very, very different levels of understanding.

"Awareness is vast like space" -- you hear that a lot, a lot. It's in the suttas; it's in the discourses and commentaries; it's in people's sense of things, how they talk: "Awareness is vast like space." But space -- again, when you really go into it, what do they mean by "vast like space"? Space actually ends up -- they are using that word 'space' in a way that's different than we tend to use it. It's a very technical word. It means the absence of obstruction and contact.^[9] In other words, it's just another way of saying it's empty of inherent existence, there's nothing there, rather than "It's vast like space, and space is something that exists that way."

Space is a perception, too, right? We perceive space. We have a sense of space. It's still in the realm of perception. Do you remember that thing that I quoted, that Verse Summary of the Prajñāpāramitā? How does it go exactly?

The Buddha, the Tathāgata, teaches that one who does not see forms ... one who does not see feelings ... one who does not see perceptions ... does not see mental formations ... does not see consciousness [mind or mentality] sees reality.

It continues actually saying, if you're interested in the emptiness:

Analyse how space is seen, as in the expression, "By sentient beings, space is seen." Seeing reality is also like that -- it can't be expressed by another example.^[10]

But it means something different than actually like space, because that's a perception. Space is a perception.

The Buddha in the Pali Canon -- this is from the Saṃyutta Nikāya 22, number 95. It's quite a famous sutta, but it doesn't receive enough attention. He's talking about the aggregates one by one, and he gives different metaphors or similes for how they are actually empty of inherent existence. So right there in the Pali Canon is the teaching on the emptiness of phenomena. And when he gets to consciousness -- I can't remember the other ones. Body and form is like foam floating on the river. I think vedanā is like a bubble.

Yogi 4: Saṅkhāra is a banana tree.

Rob: A plantain, actually; it's empty of something inside. Anyway. But when he gets to consciousness, listen, he says -- this is the Buddha in the Pali Canon:

Consciousness, when examined, is empty, void, and without substance ...

Now if we just cut the quote off there, we could just say, "Well, that sounds like space. 'Empty, void, without substance,' right? It's like what space is." But he goes on. He says:

... like a magician's trick.^[11]

That's the analogy: "like a magician's trick." This whole experience of consciousness is an illusion. It's somehow waved into existence in the most remarkable, as I said, jaw-dropping way. Consciousness, too, is an illusion. It's like an illusion. The whole sense of knowing is like an illusion. He's pointing to dependent arising and the subtlety, the depth, the radicality of understanding what dependent arising is. He's not just saying awareness is like space or a space.

Coming back to these words, 'luminosity' -- sometimes that gets paired with 'clarity,' and you hear, "The nature of awareness is luminous clarity or clear luminosity," or something like that. And I think you also find people flipping the two meanings. So if we say 'luminosity' actually means 'empty,' and 'clarity' actually means 'cognizing' -- in other words, 'knowing' -- then what you've got is: "The nature of awareness is luminous clarity" just means "There is knowing, but it's empty of inherent existence." Do you understand? Do you want me to say that again?

Yogi 5: Yes.

Rob: These words -- it's more in Mahāyāna texts, but if you look, you'll find, "The nature of awareness is luminous clarity or clear luminosity," or something like that. If you poke around for what those words really mean, it gets flipped a little bit, but basically, 'luminosity' might be 'emptiness' -- in other words, 'luminosity' means it's empty. 'Clarity' means there is knowing, there is cognizing. Sometimes it's the other way around -- 'clear' means 'empty,' and 'luminous' means 'knowing.' But basically what it ends up meaning together, 'luminous clarity' or 'clear luminosity' means "There is knowing, but that knowing is empty of inherent existence," rather than "There is something that exists and is luminous by its nature."

It's subtle, subtle. Why those words -- actually there are reasons why, and I want to get to this in the next four talks, because if one says awareness lacks inherent existence, it's very easy to go to a nihilism. And so some streams of the Mahāyāna are concerned with that and giving more of a positive spin on things, more of a reifying spin on things.

Are you guys still with me? Okay, so what does it mean to say, "There is knowing, but it's empty of inherent existence"? In other words, there's no inherently existent entity that knows, there's no mind or awareness as a thing or a substance or even a space. This is what I want to explore the full meaning of tonight and tomorrow night. So we go back to that talk on the vast awareness and say: again, excellent, excellent basis, really important practice for a lot of people, whether there's a sense of vastness in there, luminosity, a sense of it being the source, the ground -- still really important. It's attractive to a lot of people. It's simple. It doesn't need much thinking about. It can seem like it's non-conceptual, but actually it's still conceptual, and that's what I want to get into tomorrow. There's still some conceptuality. It feels like it's very simple and non-conceptual; it still is [conceptual].

So this is from a wonderful, wonderful Mahāyāna teacher from, I think -- actually I can't remember; thirteenth century, maybe -- the Third Karmapa, talking about moving on from that sense of vast awareness:

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

In other words, when we were with that vast awareness, we begin to see, get a sense how mind pervades everything. And we were talking about how it seems like everything is of the same substance as awareness; it loses its substantiality, and everything seems to be awareness. That's one meaning of that; actually there are other, more subtle meanings in the way that the mind fabricates things.

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

Looking for mind, mind is not there [in other words, awareness is not there]; it lacks any essence.

That's the important line.

Looking at both [both object and mind lacking essence], dualistic clinging is freed on its own.

And then, actually, interestingly:

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

But it means something different. It means this absence of essence. So that vastness of awareness is a very important platform practice.

Yogi 6: I didn't get why it came after that.

Rob: Because the first stage is the vastness of awareness: "Looking at an object, there is none. I see it is mind." And then I have to turn my meditative scrutiny, my insight, onto the awareness itself, and looking for that awareness, it's not there; it lacks any essence. So that's the deeper, more subtle level, but I build it on the other one, and then I see both together.

I want to see if tonight and tomorrow I can extract the full meaning of what's meant by "Mind or awareness lacks any essence." It's so pregnant with meaning, what that means. And can we get the full meaning of that? So the first thing that you come across -- and again, very, very common if you get exposed to Mahāmudrā or Dzogchen teachings, and some other strands of the Dharma, as well -- you say, "Looking for mind, mind is not there; it lacks any essence." A person says, "You can't see your mind. It has no form. It has no shape. It's unfindable."

I want to read you quite a few quotes, and I want to read them in a particular order. These are all from Mahāyāna traditions that go that route. Remember, 'mind' means the same as 'awareness.' This is Śāntideva, a great teacher of the Mahāyāna:

Since mind has not been seen by anyone, there is no benefit in saying that it is self-aware and self-illuminating....

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

So do you see what we're doing here? We're saying, "Okay, you get the sense of an awareness, and phenomena are empty because they're just expressions of that awareness, somehow. They're just mind, somehow." And then we're going, "Okay, what would it be to see, how would I go about seeing that that awareness is empty?" The first way or the first reason is the unfindability of mind. That's what Śāntideva was pointing at. I can't see it. I look for my mind. What am I ...? I can't see it. It's impossible. So I say, "It's unfindable. Therefore it's empty." Another quote by Śāntideva:

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

This is -- I can't remember the name of the sūtra, but I think it's the Buddha talking to someone called Ösung:

Ösung, mind does not exist inside, it ... 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 [awareness].^[15]

Next one called the *Sūtra Chapter Showing the Indivisible Nature of the Dharmadhātu **-- ***these Mahāyāna titles are fantastic. This is a meditation instruction, so this gets a little more practical. And remember, the practical is what I'm very interested in, the practical. How are we going to see this for ourselves in meditation?

Investigate whether this thing you call "mind [or awareness]" 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 [ultimate reality,] dharmadhātu.^[16]

Last one, The Manifest Awakening of Vairocana:

How should one properly understand one's ... 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]

Beautiful, I think, very beautiful. Did you notice? I've read them in that particular order because there's a level of thoroughness there of non-findability -- what it really means to non-find, and this fullness of what it means to not find. So anyone can say, "I cannot find the mind." What does it really mean to not find it and to be really struck by that non-findability? Did you hear in those, did you hear one that says "does not cognize"? [whispers] It's pretty weird isn't it? It's pretty weird! Consciousness "does not cognize." We have to put there, "ultimately speaking."

In other words, this is pointing to something very, very, deep and difficult to understand. So just to say that the mind is empty because I can't find it, because it doesn't have any colour or shape -- that's not going to free me at a very deep level. Oftentimes in the sort of easy transmission of these kind of teachings, that's what you hear, but that's not really going to liberate someone at a very deep level.

So we can talk about the conventional nature of mind. This is a quote from the Dalai Lama:

[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.^[18]

So that's that meditative [experience]: when we look for the mind, it doesn't have anything physical. It's just a kind of knowing. That much, just seeing awareness as that, is already quite difficult to see. It takes quite an experienced meditator to have a sense of awareness in that way; that already is quite difficult. But that's just the conventional nature of mind. We have to go even beyond that and deeper than that, analysing more deeply. And actually, what is the ultimate nature of awareness? And this is something very deep to see. It's a very deep practice.

So there was a Tibetan teacher called Gampopa around about the eleventh and twelfth centuries, a very great teacher, a sort of meeting point of the Gelug and the Kagyu traditions. He said, actually, there are three ways or three avenues to see that awareness has no inherent existence meditatively, that we can actually practise with, that we can really practise with.

(1) The first is this unfindability. But remember, we want to go deeper and deeper into what that means. It's not enough to say, "It's not a colour, and it doesn't have a shape." That in itself is quite easy for anyone to see. It won't be liberating. It won't be completely convincing that awareness lacks inherent existence. The other two are much more powerful, really, really powerful in deep practice.

(2) Second one -- the third one I'm actually going to get to tomorrow night, but the second one is what I want to get to tonight. We use this word 'consciousness' or 'awareness'; -ness in the end of a word in English denotes a noun. Consciousness or awareness, right? Means a noun. In Pali the word is viññāṇa; in Sanskrit vijñāna. It's a present participle -- I know this sounds technical -- meaning the translation is 'knowing, knowing.' Subtle difference there. When we give something in English a noun, we automatically assume to find a 'something.' It's 'knowing, knowing.' So a better translation for the word 'consciousness' or 'awareness' is 'knowing, knowing.' So rather than a noun and a substance, expecting a substance or even a space with some kind of spatial substantiality, it's actually knowing. We talk about the six sense spheres and knowing of the six sense objects.

Okay, this puts quite a different slant, it opens up an avenue that goes very deep in meditation because 'knowing' needs a 'known.' 'Knowing' needs a 'known.' A verb needs an object. **'Knowing' needs a 'known.' And vice versa, the 'known' needs 'knowing.' I cannot have a 'known' without 'knowing'; it wouldn't be 'known' otherwise. I cannot have 'knowing' without something that's 'known.' Do you understand?

Yogi 7: Like the observer needs ...

Rob: Something observed, yeah. Exactly, same thing. However, however, two things. So we're saying: 'knowing' needs a 'known,' and a 'known' needs a 'knowing.' They are mutually dependent. Two things that are mutually dependent cannot be inherently existent. It's actually impossible. Two things relying on each other cannot be inherently existent. If one depends on another as a cause, it means they would both have to precede each other to be a cause for the other one. They can't be simultaneous because if they're simultaneous then there's no time for one to be a cause of the other.

Yogi 8: Can they arise together?

Rob: Well, you could say they arise together, so that's correct, they arise together. But I want to extract the full meaning of the implications of what it says, because we can trip off our tongue: "Consciousness and object arise together." Great. If I take the full meaning, that actually ends up meaning that they're empty of inherent existence -- quite radical. So let me just finish it out.

One can't precede the other. They cannot be simultaneous, because there's no time to be a cause. So we've already been into this in terms of vedanā and the reaction, grasping and the thing. Do you remember? We talked about that too -- same deal. 'Consciousness' and 'perception' -- remember, I'm using 'perception' as 'experience' and 'object' -- 'consciousness' and 'perception' (you could say also, in dependent arising, consciousness and nāmarūpa; that perception part of nāmarūpa or vedanā) are the same as 'knowing' and 'known*,'* and they always arise together. They have to arise together. They are not the same. It wouldn't be accurate to say they're the same. They're also, though, not different in the sense that they're not separatable. I cannot separate them. And I cannot have one independently of the other. I can't have a 'known' independent of the 'knowing.' I can't have a perception independent of consciousness. I can't have consciousness independent of perception.

Okay, this is an extremely powerful pivot point in meditation, extremely powerful. But it relies on one thing -- it relies on a number of things, but one of the things it relies on is that I've already seen (and remember, I'm painting a map), it relies on already seeing and having some conviction that the 'known,' meaning 'perceptions,' are empty. Remember, I'm talking about developing our practice, developing our practice, and as I said, if we go back to the beginning of the retreat, I said these three characteristics -- they're not end points. We don't just want to say, "Yeah, everything is impermanent, and that's it." We're taking them somewhere. Where do we take them? When I contemplate with less clinging, with letting go of identification, etc., the perception begins to fade. I begin to see it's dependent on the way I'm looking; it's a dependent arising; it's fabricated. We talked about this. If we see that enough, that conviction that phenomena are therefore empty, they're dependently arisen fabrications -- that gets really, really to a place of conviction in the heart. It's not just that I'm not quite sure yet, because I've developed my practice of the three characteristics to see that, to see it so it's clear. The three characteristics practice -- when I develop it, it has led to this understanding, this seeing of the fabricated, empty nature of phenomena. And then that becomes a conviction, and then that level of conviction, that phenomena are empty -- I can then start looking at phenomena and just saying, "You're empty, you're empty, you're empty," which is different than saying, "Let go of identification, let go of identification, or et go of clinging."

The way I'm trying to present this whole retreat is: do this, you get to a certain level, and then that you can use as a base for the next level, and then that goes. And then that level, which is already a development -- remember, I know that I'm talking beyond where many of you are, but I'm painting a map, and I hope it's okay -- that level then begins to be the basis for the next level. If that's empty and I know that's empty and I can look at it and have total conviction and say, "You're empty," whatever the phenomenon is, "You're empty, you're empty, you're empty," and I know, as I just said, the consciousness must lean on the perception. If perception is empty, it's falling through a vacuum. Do you see? It's leaning on something empty.

If I haven't seen that, then this saying of "Consciousness and object arise together," it's not going to do much for my deep sense of freedom. But if I take these practices developmentally and I really have this conviction based on my own practice, from what I've seen in time, however long that takes -- it's probably going to be some years, probably, of really giving oneself to this (but not with everyone, as some people go very quickly) -- then that pivot point becomes an extremely powerful leverage point into freedom, quite, quite powerful. So as I said right at the beginning of this, we want to go beyond just an intellectual understanding here. It's a meditative seeing that we want to develop.

So consciousness is leaning on something empty. It's leaning on a vacuum. It's leaning on nothing. Awareness is leaning on nothing. You could say, then, the true nature of awareness is that it's groundless. It's groundless in the sense that it's unsupported. Objects depend on mind, so they're empty. Mind, consciousness, awareness depends on objects which are empty. Two empty things falling through each other, groundless, unsupported. Can we wait until afterwards? Is that okay?

Yogi 9: I've got no more pen.

Rob: No more pen. Anyone got a pen? Thank you.

Yogi 10: The pen is empty. [laughter]

Rob: Okay, so if I meditatively am able to develop -- and I'm not talking about anything that is not possible; I'm really not talking about anything that is not possible -- and I go this particular route, I will find that actually even the sense of consciousness begins to fade. What does that mean? So moving beyond the six senses, which is usually what we know as consciousness. And again, that same question: is consciousness really real if it fades like that? We begin to see, as well, like everything else, consciousness is fabricated by clinging, by me-mining, by delusion, like everything else -- empty, empty, empty.

So tomorrow I will go into the third of Gampopa's reasonings, which again is a very, very powerful meditative tool. This one I've already talked about is -- if you feel that this is within the realm of where you're at in practice go for it, go for it. Try to be really clear. If you want to shelve it, leave it, it's fine. If you do use it this way, you can kind of hold in meditation a sense of this moment or this perception, whatever it is -- stillness, or calmness, or whatever, this sensation in the body -- and know that it's empty, if that's ready for you to say, "I just know it's empty," if that conviction is there based on the practices you've been doing. And then almost like subtly, quietly reflect in the seeing -- remember, we're talking about ways of looking -- that this sense of consciousness is actually dependent on and not separate from that which is empty, and see what happens. This sense of consciousness is dependent on and not separate from that which is empty, meaning perception, object. In other words, this thing that I'm looking at, whether it's a state of calmness, or a sense of awareness, or the space of awareness, or a body sensation, or stillness, luminosity, whatever it is, the sense of consciousness is dependent on that as the known, and that thing is empty, and it's not separate from that; it's dependent on that.

That, in a much deeper way now, opens up a whole other level of this holy disinterest, a whole other level of letting go. In the Buddha's words, "Not relishing objects, not relishing perceptions, one does not relish consciousness." Something begins falling apart at an extremely deep level. This housebuilder the Buddha talked about -- it starts being dismantled at quite a deep level. So you can do it in quite a focused way and say this stillness, this whatever. You can also do it in quite a relaxed, spacious way, and again, in the vastness of awareness, it's that sense of this awareness too being empty. And so, like all practices, there's a kind of intensity you can bring to it, really focusing on this thing and really like that, or you can kind of sit back metaphorically and kind of rest in that sense, and the same thing but it's much more relaxed.

So again, like many of these practices, you can do it in a focused way or a spacious way -- it's fine. You can also -- when we talked about, you know, there's a degree of analysing going on, if you're using this reasoning. There's a degree. But you can kind of do the analysis first and then rest in that knowing, or you can actually, in the meditation, bring in that subtle thinking. It's really, really powerful -- both.

So just to wrap up -- it's interesting. Usually, when I talk about this kind of stuff, it brings up reactions in people. And often people get angry for different reasons, or people say, "You know, it just sounds like such quibbling whether awareness ... Why bother?" Or "How would you know, anyway?" Well ... [laughs] You know, a practitioner can experience different things and different states and different openings and different levels of insight seeing or whatever, and actually compare them, and actually see: which one brings the deeper letting go? Which is the deeper release? So, to know that vastness of awareness and the beauty of that and the freedom of that and the seeming immutability of it, the unperturbability of it -- knowing that, and actually letting go of that, and going beyond that, and knowing and comparing. This latter -- the freedom is radically deeper, radically deeper. And then in hindsight, perhaps, one realizes that, consciously or unconsciously, one was ascribing inherent existence to something, seeing something with inherent existence. And as I've said a couple of times, it's a pretty safe assumption to assume we are giving something inherent existence, feeling it, seeing it with inherent existence unless we're deliberately, consciously seeing that it doesn't, actually contemplating this lack of inherent existence. The default sort of setting of consciousness is to see inherent existence of things. Sometimes people say, "I'm in this big awareness, but I'm not giving inherent existence to it. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not even thinking that way." You might not be thinking that way, but, so to speak, unconsciously it's there until I've really seen through it, because to see through it -- this is going right back to the beginning of this talk -- it's not something we can just do because the Buddha said or because we intellectually see it, it must be so. To see it meditatively is something quite, quite profound -- quite profound, and quite radical, and quite possible.