We present here for our readers the appendix to Tharkanam – Zen Manam by V. Amalan Stanley, forthcoming from Tamilini
Drawn from Ajahn Amaro’s ‘Sirupadagu – Maamalai: Iyalgira Mahamuzhumai Kuritha Theravada Sinthanaigal’, which explains the shared outlook of Buddhism’s three schools—Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana (Tibet)—this appendix is offered here in condensed form to aid readers’ understanding of ‘Tharkanam – Zen Manam’.
‘Often, when immersed in the teachings of ‘Dzogchen’ (Vajrayana), I have the strange feeling that I am hearing echoes of my teachers, Ajahn Chah and Ajahn Sumedho, and seeing their images. It is not merely that these teachings describe familiar principles; they seem to use the very same metaphors and turns of phrase. When this affinity first struck me deeply, I realised that, at least in the latter part of my monastic life, I had been practising, to some extent, along a path described by Dzogchen.
Perhaps this similarity is not so surprising. After all, we all have the same teacher: the Dhamma comes from the Buddha. It is rooted in the true nature of each of us. Even if there are 84,000 different gateways to the Dhamma, fundamentally there is only one Dhamma. Foremost among the many Tibetan teachings I admire is ‘rigpa’. It is also called ‘inner vision’ or ‘inner seeing’.
Ajahn Chah would say, ‘The nature of the mind is still, yet it flows.’ We might also say that it flows, yet it is still. He used the word ‘citta’ to refer to the knowing mind, the awakened mind. That citta is utterly still. It has no impetus to act; it is unrelated to all that arises and passes away. It is peaceful and spacious. Sensory impressions—sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touch, and thoughts—all flow through the mind.
We are immersed in a sense of self. We believe it to be solid and real. By becoming aware of that feeling, we can understand, ‘This is merely a feeling.’ Feelings such as ‘I’ and ‘mine’ (ahamkara and mamakara in Pali) have the same capacity to dissolve as any other feeling.
When the mind is peaceful and settled, questions arise: ‘Who is watching it?’ Or ‘Who is aware?’ Or ‘Who knows?’ It is also pertinent here to ask, ‘What does it mean to know, to be aware?’ and ‘What is the practice of non-meditation?’ The whole purpose of these questions is not to seek answers. Indeed, if a verbal answer were to emerge, it would be wrong. The purpose of asking ‘who’ or ‘what’ is to dismantle our habitual assumptions. In the vast expanse of the mind, the words ‘who’ and ‘what’ are absurd. There is no actual ‘who’ or ‘what’ there. What exists there is only complete knowing.
Further, when we investigate that feeling with the depth and subtlety of meditation, the individual sense of self becomes increasingly transparent; its solidity dissolves, expanding and receding ever further. It becomes open space.
Ajahn Chah said that until he met his teacher, Ajahn Mun, he had not understood that the mind and its objects possessed distinct qualities. It was because he had confused and bound the two together that he had never been able to sink into peace.
But after just three days of practice with Ajahn Mun, he could clearly discern the distinction between the ‘knowing mind’—the knower—and the images that were its objects. It was like a mirror and the images it reflects. The mirror is not disturbed by the beauty or ugliness of the things appearing in it. Even when it reflects nothing, it remains peaceful, in perfect equilibrium. From that day on, this understanding gave true meaning to Ajahn Chah’s meditation and teaching.
In this sense, we can recognise that the mind is one thing and the image that is its object is another. We can see the inherent quality, the essence, of the mind that perceives our experiences and the events of life in the world. We can also see that this higher quality has no connection with an individual, space, time, or movement. We can understand that all the movements of the world—its people, everyday activities, and states of mind—are merely transient things that arise and pass away within that space.
Ajahn Sumedho continually emphasised being enlightened rather than attaining enlightenment. Be awake now. Be enlightened in the present moment. This is not a matter of doing something now in order to become enlightened in the future. Such thinking depends on self and time, and nothing can come of it.
What the Dzogchen teachings emphasise is not discovering the inner vision called ‘rigpa’, or doing something now in order to acquire rigpa in the future. Rather, it is about actually being rigpa now. Whenever we begin to do something with it, or say, ‘Hey, look! I’ve got it,’ or ‘How can I hold on to this?’, the mind grasps at that very goal and moves out of rigpa.
Awareness as Buddha
With regard to Buddha-nature, Ajahn Chah’s teachings also accord with the Dzogchen view. Looked at deeply, awareness is not a particular state. It is a fundamental quality of the mind’s nature. It is this awareness, this quality of knowing, that Ajahn Chah calls Buddha. The very ground of knowing is the true Buddha.
Like Ajahn Chah, other teachers of the forest tradition use the word ‘Buddha’ to mean awareness. That is, the mind’s complete wakefulness and that quality of awareness are themselves Buddhahood. This is why Ajahn Chah would say, ‘The Buddha who attained parinirvana 2,500 years ago need not grant us refuge and bestow his grace on us today; we ourselves are Buddha.’
‘How can the Buddha of that time still be our refuge today? He has gone. Gone for good. He is not the refuge. A refuge is a place of safety. How, then, can this great being, who lived and died 2,500 years ago, provide safety? His memory may give rise to a wholesome feeling. But that feeling, too, is impermanent. Inspiring though it may be, it can easily be disturbed and dissolve.’
What happens to the body, feelings, and perceptions is secondary. That knowing is beyond the sensory world. It is therefore the true refuge. Whatever we experience—high or low, pleasure or pain, success or failure, praise or disgrace—that capacity of the mind to be aware remains utterly silent, untroubled, and unstained. No sight, sensory pleasure, thought, emotion, or state of mind can touch that awareness. Its quality transcends them all. The Dzogchen teachings say the same: ‘Knowing and the nature of the mind never have any connection with mental images.’ This is why awareness itself becomes the refuge. Awareness is the taproot of our true nature.
We cannot see our own eyes, yet we can see other things. This means that awareness can exist in its own nature as wakefulness, without being an object. Ajahn Chah and other forest teachers call this ‘resting in knowing’. It is simply being the inner vision called rigpa. In that state, the mind abides in its own nature. The Dhamma knows that nature. That is all. The moment we try to turn it into an object, duality arises. It is as though one thing were looking at another. Resolution comes only when we abandon that duality and withdraw from that ‘searching’. The mind then abides in that knowing.
Discerning Cessation
What is most important in this view is its correspondence with the experience of release called the ‘cessation of suffering’. The experience of rigpa is equivalent to the ending of suffering, the release from dukkha. In it, consciousness is an inwardly luminous, invisible, boundless emptiness.
Often, the language of the Dzogchen tradition and that of the Theravada tradition are strikingly alike. Dzogchen accords with the usual threefold description of rigpa, or awareness: ’empty in essence, knowing in nature, boundless in capacity’.
In the Dzogchen approach, non-dual awareness is the realisation of emptiness in essence, knowing in nature, and boundlessness in capacity. Another way of expressing these three qualities is ’emptiness, knowing, clarity’. In the Pali texts, the Buddha describes the mind of an arahant as ‘consciousness that is formless, without signs, boundless, and luminous in every direction’. The Pali words for this are: vinnanam (consciousness); anidassanam (empty, invisible, or formless); anantam (boundless); sabbato pabham (luminous in every direction, accessible from everywhere).
This is ‘cittam pabhassaram, agantukehi kilesehi’. It means, ‘The nature of the mind is intrinsically luminous. Its defilements are merely guests who come and go.’ That is, it points to the truth that the mind’s nature is intrinsically pure and complete. Whatever appears to spoil this purity is merely a guest passing through, or some other wanderer. None of these can ever spoil the mind’s true nature.
Listening to Dzogchen teachings, one hears a correspondence with these lines from the Third Zen Patriarch’s poem: ‘All is empty. Clear and self-illuminating, without the aid of the mind’s exertion.’ This is the guidance we can receive through the Tibetan tradition. In particular, that last phrase, ‘without the aid of the mind’s exertion’, means without any specific impetus to act. It points to the mind’s intrinsic purity and freedom. Usually, we undertake certain customary forms of meditation, such as calming the mind, making it luminous, or prompting it to awaken. Yet we are merely trying to put in order a conditioned world, a basic life already established. That is all. The mind’s intrinsic nature is already utterly peaceful, boundless in its capacity, and fully aware. That is its inherent, true nature.
The term Buddha signifies awakening and knowing. Thus, taking refuge in the Buddha is taking refuge in awareness. The Buddha arises from the Dhamma itself. Buddha is a quality; knowing is an attribute of that fundamental reality. The Dhamma is the ultimate object, the way mental images exist, and its quality is emptiness. Buddha, then, is the ultimate subject, knowing, and wakefulness.
Thus, when the ultimate subject knows the ultimate object, when the knowing mind perceives the nature of the world, what emerges from this is compassionate action, the Sangha. The Sangha naturally expresses that quality. From awareness of the world’s nature, compassionate, skilful means arise spontaneously. The three refuges are therefore interwoven.
Dhamma Knowing Its Own Nature
As Buddhahood pours forth the virtues of compassion, kindness, and wisdom, this body, radiant through it, is filled with a great light. We are wholly possessed by that radiance. The ‘little self’ within is driven out, and Buddha alone pervades this body. The truth is that the wisdom present here differs not in the slightest from the Buddha’s enlightenment.
When we say, ‘This is only the Dhamma knowing its own nature,’ what part of us is not Dhamma? What part is not a part of nature? Can we point to any such thing? Our human difficulties? Our mental anguish? The mind? The mind’s essence? Thoughts? All of these, every part of this, belong to the natural order. There is no element of our existence, or of anything physical or psychological around us, that lies outside the order of nature. Moreover, when we say, ‘This is the Dhamma knowing its own nature,’ even that knowing mind is an aspect of the Dhamma.
The insight Ajahn Chah gained while staying and practising with Ajahn Mun for a few days was this: there is the mind, and there are its images, yet the two are intrinsically distinct. In Theravada terms, the expansive mind is one thing, and mental images are another. The Dzogchen tradition approaches the same insight in a similar way: there is the small mind, and there is the mind’s essence. Here the word ‘mind’ refers to the conditioned, dualistic mind. ‘Mind-essence’ is used to refer to the unconditioned mind. The conditioned and the unconditioned exist together.
Although these two practices use similar words in different ways, there is a strong resonance between them. Ajahn Mun writes of this in a poem, Kanthangalidamirunthu Viduthalai: ‘While the Dhamma remains Dhamma, the khandhas remain khandhas.’
The khandhas are: the body, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. So Dhamma is Dhamma, and khandhas are khandhas. The conditioned is one thing, the unconditioned another. There is the mind, and there is the mind’s essence. That is all. This is all we need to know. However intense and solid the sense of self may appear or feel, it can, in truth, dissolve.
The Buddha’s simile of the snake and the rope is particularly apt. As we walk through a meadow, something lies coiled on the path. It looks like a snake. Fear rises within us. On closer examination, it is not a snake at all, but merely a coil of rope. Immediately, the body relaxes. In this simile, the Buddha asks, ‘What happened to the snake when the coil of rope was recognised?’ ‘Nothing happened to the snake. There never was one there.’
Similarly, the answer to ‘What happens to the soul after the body dies?’ is fundamentally the same. Since the entire concept of a soul rests on a misunderstanding, the question itself is inappropriate. The very way we perceive ourselves is a fundamental misunderstanding that needs to be corrected. This meditation practice is a matter of learning to see with utter clarity, of recognising and awakening to what is actually there.
When we remain in knowing awareness, nothing can touch the mind. It is the steadfastness of the knowing mind that makes the Buddha a refuge. That knowing nature is unaffected by anything; nothing can affect it.
