Having discussed Citta, the Ultimate Reality that exists as the thing-in-itself as Nothing but Mentality, 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.”
Nowadays, 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.
However, in finding the true nature of his being in his awareness, Adyashanti also found awareness to be the true nature of being for everything usually deemed physical, as they all vanished with his physical body.
As discussed previously, enlightenment is “a non-dualistic state of consciousness in which the consciousness of the experiencing “subject” becomes one with the experienced “object.” While Adyashanti was the “experiencing subject, the “experienced “object” referred to is the Ultimate Reality as the enlightened and luminous experienced object of enlightenment. When their enlightened mentality became non-dualistic, Adyashanti became part of the “void” surrounding him, which he called an “ineffable mystery.” To paraphrase Dr. Planck’s words, Adyashanti became “a part of the mystery he was trying to solve.”
While the “void” was Adyashanit experiencing the Ultimate Reality as the “experienced object” of enlightenment, the mystery of the “void” he tried to solve was the Ultimate Reality as an unconditioned realm, existing as the thing-in-itself, which, in Buddhism, is Nothing but Mentality.
However, by experiencing the Ultimate Reality as the “experienced object” of enlightenment and simultaneously that awareness, and only awareness, remained when everything else deemed physical vanished, Addyashati also experienced Ultimate Reality as the thing-in-self, or Nothing but Mentality.
In other words, by experiencing that awareness is the true nature of his being and everything deemed physical, Adyashanti also experienced the Ultimate Reality, Buddha’s most mysterious teaching, and Nothing but Mentality, Buddha’s core teaching about reality, all accomplishments only an enlightened person can achieve.
For all his accomplishments, Adyashanti has become an Arhat and forever liberated himself from samsara, the endless cycles of birth that all unenlightened suffer from. Not a bad reward either.
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