Having discussed that direct perception leads to enlightenment and that, during the enlightenment, the knowledge of the Ultimate Reality is wordlessly transmitted from the enlightened cosmic awareness to the enlightened awareness of the enlightened, this post discusses the enlightenment experience of a contemporary American known as Adyashanti as a verification of both.
Adyashanti, “meaning ‘primordial peace,” “born Stephen Gray on October 26, 1962, is an American former spiritual teacher and author from the San Francisco Bay Area who offered talks, online study courses, and retreats in the United States and abroad.”
“At age 25, Gray began experiencing a series of transformative spiritual awakenings. While sitting alone on his cushion, Gray describes how he had a classic kensho, or awakening experience, in which he “penetrated to the emptiness of all things and realized that the Buddha I had been chasing was what I was.” [2] “Besides his meditations and prayer, he also studied books about Christian mystics and the Gospels.” “For the next few years, he continued his meditation practice while also working at his father’s machine shop. In addition to sitting, he spent many hours in coffee shops writing answers to questions that spontaneously came to him. Finally, at 31, Gray had an experience of awakening that put to rest all his questions and doubts. In 1996, Adyashanti began teaching with the approval of his teacher, Arvis Joen Justi.” Today, “he is the author of numerous books, CDs, and DVDs and, together with his wife Mukti, is the founder of Open Gate Sangha, Inc., a nonprofit organization established in 1996 which supports and makes available his teachings.”
In this guided meditation, “What is the Nature of Self?” Adyashanti clarified his goal: “In this meditation, we are looking at the nature of self, or what we call ourselves. The nature of this thing called me. In this meditation, we are looking for ourselves. We are looking inside, so the attention gets directed inside. Where is this thing called self, me? Surely, it’s not simply a thought, a feeling. Surely, one is not simply a body, for there is always something more primary. There is what is seeing the thought. That which is feeling the feeling. That is that which is aware of the body.” “So, the attention gets directed inward. What is that that notices the thought? What is that that is feeling the feeling? What is it that is aware of the body?” “What is this thing called me, called I?“
Yet, “as we direct our attentions inward, we find something unexpected. The more we look for the essential nature of ourselves, the more we look for ourselves, the less we find.” “This elusive self never seems to appear. The more we look for ourselves, the less we find of it. Instead, we seem to bump into an ineffable mystery, a silence, a void.” “And yet, what is it that notices that void, that silence? What is it that is aware?” “Can we find a someone? Can we find a something?” “As we look from our own experience, we keep not locating this owner of awareness, this owner of consciousness, this me. And in looking at our whole definition of ourselves, it’s wordlessly called into question. This whole definition of ourselves, however we define it, must be called into question because when we look for it, we don’t find it.” “We have assumed that we are a something and a somebody.”
Finally, Adyashanti acknowledged, “You are presented with a mystery. You can’t find yourself, and yet, whatever you are, it’s obviously here, obviously aware. Whatever you may be, whatever you are, obviously is here.” “This confuses the mind because the mind only thinks in terms of you being a thing, being a someone.” “As we look in this way, our whole notion of the self can begin to transform because you begin to see for your own self that what you are isn’t a somebody, isn’t a something, it cannot be found.” “So what is there in the absence of somebody? What is there in the absence of something? This that notices the absence of the self, this awareness that notices the complete lack of entity is an opportunity to open to what you are beyond a thought. Maybe you are not a thing at all, a somebody at all. It cannot be found. So, maybe, just maybe, you never were a something or a somebody. Maybe it couldn’t be found because it doesn’t exist.” “What can this thing called I be?”
So, when Adyashanti searched for the nature of his being, he was “presented with a mystery” because “you can’t find yourself.” Instead, he found himself in a “void.” However, even though he couldn’t find himself, he was aware that “whatever you are, it’s obviously here, obviously aware.” Furthermore, even though he was lost in a “void,” where there was no somebody or something, he was aware that he was in an “ineffable mystery,” where there was “the absence of somebodies,” “the absence of things.”
Indeed, when everything vanished, the only thing left was Adyashanti’s awareness of his situation. In other words, the “void” he was in was awareness, which was the “ineffable mystery” with a “complete absence of definition.”
After enlightenment, Adyashahti teaches that “You Are Awareness.” In addition to this statement, Adyashanti also teaches that “you and awareness are not two different things” and that “resting in awareness is not a state of doing, it is a state of being.” Indeed, in awareness, Adyashanti has found the true nature of his being.
One can also be confident that Adyashanti did not understand these relationships through studying but through direct perception. Furthermore, nowhere throughout this description was he actively looking for information outside himself. Instead, he was “looking inside,” “the attention gets directed inward,” and passively waiting for the elusive self to “appear.” Indeed, as discussed earlier, the knowledge Adyashanti learned is the “experiential contents” of cosmic awareness, which he gained when his awareness became one with it.
So, let’s discuss what Adyashanti’s enlightenment tells us.
1) The Void – Nothing But Mentality
The “void” Adyashanti experienced is known as Emptiness in Buddhism.
Emptiness, according to The Dictionary Shambhala Dictionary of Buddhism and Zen, also known as “void,” is a “central notion of Buddhism….Shunyata is often equated with the absolute in the Mahayana since it is without duality and empirical forms.” So, the void Adyashanti experienced is the void of Emptiness, the absolute in the Mahayana.
As discussed before, the absolute in Mahayana is the Ultimate Reality. It is the enlightened cosmic awareness that acts as the “experienced object,” ready anytime and anywhere to form a non-dualistic state of awareness with the enlightened awareness of the “experiencing subject,” which is Adyashanti.
So, the void Adyashanti experienced is the void of awareness, defined as a quiescent and enlightened mentality in Buddhism. The void exists when all the visible “somebody” or “something” vanishes, leaving only his awareness that they vanished.
In other words, the void Adyashanti experienced consists of only awareness, where there is Nothing but Mentality. Awareness is a void because mentality is without empirical forms, meaning it cannot be seen, heard, smelled, tasted, or touched.
Buddha defines mentality as inconceivable (Romanized Sanskrit=acintya, Chinese=不可思議), which, according to The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, is “in Sanskrit, a term to describe the Ultimate Reality that is beyond all conceptualization.”
The importance of “beyond all conceptualization” is that even if mentality becomes “reading in of the mind,” it cannot be conceptualized “in ways we do not govern,” two of the sensing steps Dr. Fisch described in “How Do We Know What We Know.” Without conceptualization, mentality cannot become a visible phenomenon, so it cannot be seen, heard, smelled, tasted, or touched.
Natural gas is another example of something that cannot be conceptualized and, therefore, cannot be detected by human sensory faculties. However, natural gas can be sensed when it burns in flames or provides heat. Furthermore, odorants can be added to it to make it humanly detectable.
However, mentality cannot do any of these. As Buddha teaches, it can only be perceived directly until enlightenment, which Adyashanti did.
2) You Are Awareness – The Illusional of All Things
The statement “You are Awareness” shows that Adyashanti understands that the true nature of his self is awareness. It is also a statement showing his understanding that the true nature of his self is not consciousness, i.e., when his mind is active. The disappearance of all “somebody” or “something” when his mind is quiescent means that all visible phenomena are illusional because they do not exist when his mind is inactive.
3) You And Awareness Are Not Two Different Things
By separating “You are awareness” from “You and awareness are not two different things,” one can surmise that the two awarenesses are different. Instead, it is a non-dualistic awareness, which includes cosmic awareness and Adyashanti’s awareness.
4) “Resting in Awareness is not a state of doing; it is a state of being.”
By getting enlightened, Adyashanti has two states of being from which to choose. On one hand, it is “resting in awareness,” a wordless existence without a physical body in peace and harmony with the cosmos. On the other hand, “resting in consciousness” is an unenlightened and illusional existence with desires to satisfy his bodily needs that cause afflictive obstructions.
Afflictive Obstructions (Romanized Sanskrit=klesavarana; Chinese=煩惱障), according to The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, is “in Sanskrit, obstructions that are the afflictions, and first of the two obstructions that the Mahayana holds must be overcome in order to complete the Bodhisattva path and achieve Buddhahood.” Furthermore, “overcoming these types of obstructions will lead to freedom from further rebirth (and specifically the Paricchedajaramarana, or “determinative birth-and-rebirth (Chinese=分段生死).”
In Buddhism, three poisons (Romanized Sanskrit-trivasa, Chinese=三毒) cause afflictive obstructions:
- Desire or Greed (Romanized Sanskrit=Raga or Lobha; Chinese=貪)
- Hatred, Aversion, or Ill Will (Romanized Sanskrit=Dvesa; Chinese=瞋)
- Confusion, Benightedness, or Foolishness (Romanized Sanskrit=Moha, Chinese=癡)
As an enlightened person choosing “resting in awareness” as his choice, Adyashanti shows his desire not to “rest in consciousness.” By not resting in consciousness, he avoids afflictive obstructions and thus obtains his “freedom from further rebirth (and specifically the Paricchedajaramarana, or “determinative birth-and-rebirth.)”
In other words, Adyashanti has become what Buddha calls an Arhat and forever liberated himself from the endless cycles of birth that all unenlightened suffer. It’s not a bad reward for his accomplishments.
Arhat (Chinese=阿羅漢), according to The Shambhala Dictionary of Buddhism and Zen, is in Sanskrit, meaning “worthy one” who has attained the highest of the Hinayana, that of “no-more-learning” in the supramunda path, and who possess the certainty that all defilements and passions have bee extinguished and will not again in the future. The fruition of arhatship is nirvana with a vestige of conditions (Romanized Sanskrit=sopadhishesha-nirvana (Chinese=有餘涅槃).”
However, from the Mahayana perspective, the second of the obstructions remains. Known as Cognitive or Noetic Obstructions (to Omniscience) (Romanized Sanskrit=jneyavarana; Chinese=所知障), it is, according to The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, “The second of the two categories of obstructions, together with the afflictive obstructions, that must be overcome in order to perfect the Bodhisattva path and achieve Buddhahood. In the Yogacara and Madhyamaka systems, the cognitive obstructions are treated as subtle hindrances that serve as the origin of the afflictive obstructions and result from fundamental misapprehensions about the nature of reality.”
Stated simply, while an Arhat realizes the vanishing of the physical universe, they do not know why the universe disappeared instead of mentality. Understanding that means knowing the origin of the “fundamental misapprehensions about the nature of reality,” and why the world is imaginary. We will discuss this topic when we discuss the Five Aggregates.
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