With deep respect to Ramana Masharshi, his explicit teachings about the Real Self do not align with the teachings in the EBTs.
There is no place in the Nikāyas where the Buddha clearly teaches about an Awareness that is independent of changing phenomena.
Instead, as in MN38: “consciousness does not arise without a cause or without a cause, consciousness does not come to be.”
" aññatra paccayā natthi viññāṇassa sambhavo"
He also taught that one’s kamma, whatever happens in one’s life, is utterly predetermined.
Again, this does not align with the teachings of the Buddha in which our intention, cetanā, in the present has effects on our life going forward, as in MN61, SN35.146, and AN3.61.
I also do not understand that IF the core of awakening would be the seeing or discovering of a kind of knowing that is always there, is never arising, ceasing and changing, why this is not explicity said in the sutta’s? Many meditation masters teach this non-arising non-dual knowing (also Maha Boowa) but why is it so absent or not explicitely stated in the sutta’s, if something like that exist, and would even be that what one has to see or discover to awaken?
But i also do not want to think that those masters are delusional, not upright, insincere, defiled.
I do not know but i find it a bit disturbing, and it leads to doubt because i do not know who is a real authority. I find that not easy.
But i also feel it not true that we are mindless without vinnana. I feel vinnana in the sutta’s often refers to what becomes conscious, hearing something is a moment of the arising of a moment (or moments) of ear-vinnana etc. I do not think this is the same as the arising of mind.
I feel it not really farfteched to believe that in deep sleep without dreams there is still a kind of knowing going on , and much what is known, also in waking state, does not become a vinnana, a conscious experience of it. It stays, as it were a sub- or unconscious knowing. We are not only informed in a clear conscious way about things in the world. Things from outside can be assuredly noticed but not in a conscious way.
Anyway, one cannot say, i believe, that the knowing nature of the mind is the same as the knowing of vinnana or the clear conscious knowing.
Sense info may not pass a neurological treshhold and give rise to a conscious experience, but still one can also not say sense-info stays totally unnoticed or unknown when it does not lead to a vinnana, a conscious experience.
So maybe one can also say that vinnana is a course kind of knowing, because strong sense objects, or only sense-object with a certain powerful impact, give rise to a vinnana, an conscious experience.
This is the most adequate scheme how I can conceptualize regarding Buddhist awakening (surely, it is distorted as any experience expressed verbally or imaginatively).
Here, “X” is some state that is unconditioned, beyond any apprehension and is less manifest (Nibbana?)
“I” is what is conditioned and is most manifest through “clingings” (yellow circles). The “I” possibly makes itself “real” only through “clingings” (as it doesn’t have any existence (svabhava?) of its own (empty?)).
Then, following eightfold path we gradually remove clingings and consequently reach the “X” state - the unconditioned.
How is this state defined afterwards, I suppose, is where all of those traditions diverge.
And still, I cannot adequately conceptualize what is “direct knowledge” as opposed to merely “knowing” through mental faculties.
As I said and implied in response to Farid, he would probably need to go out of the Buddhist perspective to find an adequate response to his question.
But in response to Jasudho… What knows or is aware that “consciousness does not arise without a cause.” Furthermore, what would that cause be? Moreover, If there is nirbana, cessation or other such events, how can one know of them? What was present to acknowledge what happened?
One can’t get rid of these questions by simply denying or claiming that consciousness/being does not exist. It is inevitable that one will end up begging the question.
As for the unfortunately widespread view that Ramana taught that evrything is predetermined, you would have to study many of Michael James’ translations from the original Tamil to find out the many mistranslations, nuances and discrepancies that Ramana spelled out himself (in his own handwritten texts). Many if not most people are confused about the teachings of Ramana because the first Westerners who came in contact with him knew nothing of Tamil, had faulty translators and also relied on memory and hearsay when writing their books. So though several authors (like say Arthur Osburne) meant well, they inadvertently distorted what Ramana really meant. It is a little like the Fake Buddha Quotes website situation…or thinking that the many Mahayana texts and myths are included in the EBTs.
That is why I ultimately refer any interested to delve into Michael’s website with a multitude of references to Ramana’s original texts and teachings (notably a new book that was just published: Ramana Maharshi’s Forty Versus on What Is , a translation of Ramana’s foundational text Ulladu Narpadu).
Here is a sample of a long post that delves into the complexity and discrepancies concerning karma, predetermination and will:
According to the law of karma that he taught us, what is predetermined is all that we are to experience or that is to happen to us in each life or dream, and since in order for us to experience that it is necessary for us to do certain actions by mind, speech or body, such actions are also predetermined. In other words, everything that comes under the scope or jurisdiction of prārabdha is predetermined, but not anything else. Since our will does not come under the jurisdiction of prārabdha , it is not predetermined, and likewise since āgāmya (all the actions that our will drives us to do by mind, speech and body) does not come under the jurisdiction of prārabdha , it is also not predetermined.
These are the most elementary principles of the law of karma , and extremely simple and easy for anyone to understand, so it is in the clear light of these principles that we should try to understand whatever Devaraja Mudaliar or anyone else has recorded Bhagavan saying about this subject. If anything that they have recorded contradicts these principles, we can safely assume that they did not correctly record whatever he said.
(…)
However in the final sentence of that paragraph Devaraja Mudaliar records that Bhagavan said, ‘As for freedom for man, he is always free not to identify himself with the body and not to be affected by the pleasures or pains consequent on the body’s activities’, which comes closer to expressing the real purpose for which the body has come into existence. How can we not ‘be affected by the pleasures or pains consequent on the body’s activities’? We are affected by pleasures and pains because we have likes, dislikes and other such elements of our will, so we can avoid being affected by them only by surrendering our will, which we can do entirely and most effectively only by turning our mind within to investigate what we actually are.
Still more importantly, how can we avoid identifying ourself with the body? The very nature of ego is to rise and stand only by identifying itself with a body, so we cannot avoid identifying ourself with a body so long as we rise and stand as ego. Therefore we need to surrender not only our will but also ego, whose will it is, and we can surrender ego only by investigating what it actually is. Therefore as Bhagavan often used to say, we need to harness our entire will to doing just one task, namely investigating ourself and thereby surrendering ego. This is the sole purpose for which this body (or any other body that we may experience ourself to be) has come into existence.
This kind of sums it up. As you wrote, there are no explicit teachings about an ineffable permanent consciousness of any sort in the Nikāyas. So, it’s quite reasonable to infer that the Buddha did not teach it because it doesn’t exist.
Someone once said that if a permanent sort of consciousness or beingness was what the Buddha understood, don’t you think he would have mentioned over and over again, quite clearly?
What we subjectively believe and feel about this topic is separate from what the Buddha taught or whatever the truth of the matter is.
This topic has been discussed many times on this forum so it’s not likely to be very helpful to repeat what’s already been said. The Search function can lead anyone interested to these discussions.
As my last recent post, these topics have been discussed extensively on the forum and they can be very interesting and informative.
The question about “what knows or is aware” is a speculative question. Anyone is free to pursue this line of inquiry, of course, and there are differing viewpoints regarding this in some Buddhist circles.
My point is not what people should think or believe, but only to offer that the suttas in the Pāli Canon do not teach about an ever-present “permanent” awareness.
And the suttas are as close as we can come to the teachings the Buddha during his life.
Sorry for many times answering only with links, but your image reminded me of something I have made many years back, when I studied a bit Theosophy. It’s quite similar to what you drew:
I do not know if there is someone who can really claim he knows what the Buddha taught, discovered, realised. I feel authority is a real problem. There are so much different opinions.
This is understandable since the four nikayas denigrate the importance of direct knowledge. I am an outlier here. I believe the four were written later by philosophers riffing on earlier material as opposed to earlier writings that appear to have been written by mystics. If you go back to my quote above from Ud 1.10, you will see a description of how direct knowledge is experienced. It also goes by the name neither perception or non-perception. It is also described in Snp 4.11.
Form disappearing, sometimes said to “find no footing”, is actually name-form disappearing. Presumably, the meter of the verse led to truncation. So there is no conceptual aspect or other enhancements due to sanna/perception including, but not limited to processing of visual cues that lead to the placement in three dimensional space. So the visual image is flat/2D. This is “to see things as they really are” or “when in the seen there is only the seen”. Without this, there is no implied perspective so there is no you, the implied point of view of a three dimensional space.
Most here do not believe Ud 1.10 is referring to direct knowledge, but I am not alone. Bhikkhu Analayo defends it here. In any case, this is my take on it for what its worth.
Exactly. I responded with a similar comment not too long ago in another discussion:
I suspect that the contention raised by the Buddha was more to do about Brahmanism and their questionnable practices, rites and rituals than anything else. Of course, I can’t know that for sure because I wasn’t there. But neither was anyone else pondering over these things today. Sure the EBTs give us some guidelines along with text critical studies. But what, among other examples I could allude to, did the Buddha say that wasn’t recorded? What about many things I can say as an English speaking North American that mean something quite different in Europe or Australia… just because of say, my intention, intonation, body language, etc.? These details cannot be recorded accurately – either through oral transmission or written – to convey what a person originally meant. To compound these many problems, there are so many things that we think we know for sure on Monday…to be contradicted by more or unknown data coming in by Friday. So we are in a constant mode of defining and reconfiguring our so-called knowledge today. Does anyone really consider how complicated this gets when trying to repiece the past?
This is not a criticism of Buddhism per se. It equally applies to any religion, philosophy or perspective that has its origins in the millenia of time. (The same can be said of what Christ originally said and really meant, compared to the thousands of interpretations and their interpreters out there who continue debating the particulars to this very day. Those making present day interpretations weren’t there either).
So to the point of what the Buddha really meant about many things, I’ll pass my turn. In the end, belief seems to be the name of the game. We often have a tendency to think and believe either one way …or another. Some stick to their guns until the day they die. In many cases, these people are later found to have erred, either through miscalculation, misinterpretaion or misinformation. Finally it seems inevitable that, whether right or wrong, our belief in something or someone is what really calls the shots … and far less what our so-called unbiased analysis is really about.
It boils down to a very concrete and time bound problem: reinterpreting the past. Unless one’s teacher lived in recent times and has formally and clearly written down what he meant to convey/teach, interpretation will always be filled with uncertainty. Though I find suttacentral to be about the best online Buddhist forum today, the interminable arguments and incredibly diverse interpretations, perspectives and positions over many topics – sometimes even over what one single word was meant by the Buddha when he (supposedly) said it – is a most evident case in point.
Some scholars, like Salomon Richards, have explained the many problems related to finding the ‘original’ teachings of the Buddha:
Salomon Richard writes in Buddhist Literature of Ancient Gandara: An Introduction with Selected Translations:
From these and other similar discoveries, it has gradually become clear to scholars that the history of Buddhism is far more complex than previously realized. Early scholars of Buddhism in the West, especially in the English-speaking world, had assumed that the Pali canon represented the true original scriptures of Buddhism while other manifestations of Buddhism and versions of Buddhist texts were secondary derivations, elaborations, or corruptions. This view prevailed mainly because the Pali canon of the Theravāda tradition of Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia happened to be the only one that survived complete and intact in an Indian language, and because it came to the attention of Anglophone scholars at a relatively early date as a result of the colonization of Sri Lanka by England. This led to the illusion that the Pali canon was the only true Buddhist canon, and the misconception was reinforced by the self-presentation of the bearers of that tradition, who were the early European scholars’ main points of contact with the Buddhist world.
But it is now clear that the seeming primacy and authority of the Pali Tipitaka is only an accident of history. The discovery of abundant remnants of a previously unknown Sanskrit canon in Central Asia enabled scholars to realize that there had once existed other, perhaps many other, canons in various local languages both within Buddhist India and beyond it, in regions to which Buddhism had spread but where it had died out in antiquity. The more recent discovery of Buddhist texts in Gandhari emphatically confirms the view that there once existed many Buddhisms, each with its own distinctive literature and canon. Moreover, detailed studies of the Sanskrit and Gandhari manuscripts, particularly with a view to comparing them with their parallels in Pali, Chinese, and other languages, has further undermined the myth of Pali primacy. Comparisons of several versions of a given sutra in the various languages concerned – for example, the Pali, Sanskrit, and Gandhari texts of the Rhinoceros sutra – typically show complex relationships in which no one version can be identified as the sole source or archetype for the others.
For this reason, most if not all Buddhist textual scholars nowadays consider each version of a given text, and by extension each body of Buddhist literature, to have a priori an equal claim to accuracy and originality. This result may seem disappointing and frustrating to those who wish to discover the true and original “words of the Buddha,” be they historically oriented scholars or practicing Buddhists. But in light of recent trends in textual scholarship, reinforced by the discovery of the Buddhist literature of Gandhara, most scholars have abandoned the quest for a single “original” version of the canon as a wild-goose chase.
For even if there ever were, in theory, a single original form of the canon, or at least of a group of individual texts as the Buddha himself uttered them two and a half millennia ago, there is no hope of finding it intact. By the time the texts were set down in writing, apparently in the first century BCE, Buddhism had already spread far and wide around India and adjoining countries, as a result of which slightly, and sometimes not so slightly, different versions had already arisen and diverged in complex and tangled ways that make it impossible to reconstruct a single original archetype.
Moreover, it is doubtful whether, even in the time of the Buddha himself, the texts existed in a single uniform shape. For example, the Buddha may have preached some sūtras several or many times in his travels and probably varied them slightly each time, for example shortening or lengthening his exposition according to the situation or the disposition of his audience. Thus different disciples could have heard, memorized, and transmitted different versions of a given sūtra, so that the textual diversity that has set in by the time of the earliest surviving written texts may have existed from the very earliest days of Buddhism. Therefore any search for the true, original words of the Buddha is doubly a quest for a will-o’-the-wisp.
For modern scholars, then, the focus has gradually shifted from a fruitless search for a single true original Buddhism to a broader understanding of the nature and interrelationships of the many Buddhisms that developed over the centuries and millennia. But where does this leave Buddhist practitioners who want to be sure that they are studying and following the true Dharma, just as the Buddha taught it? This is, of course, a matter of personal inclination and belief, but the multiple versions of texts and canons do not have to be considered a problem. In most cases, the differences between a given sūtra in, for example, Pali, Sanskrit, Gāndhārī, and Chinese are more a matter of phrasing and arrangement than of substance. If such texts are read for the spirit rather than for the letter — an attitude that is explicitly encouraged in certain sūtras — the inconsistency need not be a problem for Buddhists, just as it has ceased to be a problem for most scholars.
I am convinced that the Buddha has seen that anusaya dictate how we know or understand what we experience.
For example, when pain arises, the dosa-anusaya almost immediately gets triggered, the mana anusaya and the avijja anusaya and as a consequence there is the experience of not wanting to feel that pain, pushing away. There is a sense of ownership of pain. There is mental proliferation, all kinds of conceivings.
Because of this strong forces it is almost impossibe to not know this pain as my pain or have a kind of understanding that there is no owner of the pain or not push pain away, etc. This is because pain triggers all kinds of anusaya.
I feel the teaching say that this way of experiencing things is not as it is, but as it becomes for us due to the influence of triggered anusaya. They colour the way we experience ourselves and phenomena.
I feel, direct knowledge refers to the situation when this does not happen anymore. When, for example, pain is not felt as my pain nor a sense of ownership arises regarding pain nor is there a tendency to push away the pain.
AFAIK no modern monks or scholars believe the suttas convey the words of the Buddha exactly as he said them.
At the same time, there is broad agreement that the teachings were accurately remembered and conveyed via oral transmission until they were written down, and that they have preserved the core teachings of the Buddha, (see the works of Bhikkhu Anālayo, Bukkhu Sujato, Ajahn Brahmali, Bhikkhu Bodhi, Mark Allon, Professor Gombrich and many others).
They’re not just guessing or offering subjective opinions.
You may be interested in reading “The Authenticity of the Early Buddhist Texts” by Venerables Brahmali and Sujato.
I mean, we have to start somewhere. And the suttas of the Pāli Canon (and Āgamas) are as close as we’ll come to the words of the Buddha. We’re so fortunate!
It’s our choice whether to engage the Teachings or not, but overthinking this issue won’t get us very far.
Direct knowledge would be the knowledge you gain that cannot be refuted by any future experience.
Like the fact that the area of the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides in a rught triangle.
Once I “directly know” this truth, no future experience of any (or even all if i am an immortal soul) can ever refute my certainty.
I think that this is something that is really poorly understood by many religious buddhists. I keep planning a lemgthy post about it but the moving parts and different domains of discourse make it difficult.
But X cant be a “state” as a “state” would be a conditioned phenomena.
X is not a state
Not a “non state”
Not both
Not niether
Because the awakened understand the limits of thought and language.
Maybe the “state” isn’t the right word to use. It might be just called “whatever X”.
Regarding “direct knowledge” as something similar to the example of a triangle you have provided. Again, the idea of a “triangle” in itself is axiomatic and abstract, and therefore can be easily formulated in language; it simply cannot be refuted through any known means. It has clear and direct correspondence.
In case of Buddhism, there is still a discrepancy between “that X”, which is perfectly known in case of awakening and the way we try to express it in language. And therefore, non-awakened mind cannot truly grasp conceptually what “that X” is about.
Nibanna is just like the triangle, once you undertand the argument you see that no phenomena or experience could alter your knowlege.
Its slightly different in that you are, as you say, “knowing something” about something which cannot be “identified” or “entitled” by language, but I don’t think that makes a substantive difference in the epistemology, theres plenty of “extra-linguistic” facts about triangles too!
However I think your also right in the sense that a person might have only “shallow” understanding of triangles, or the unconditioned, and of course theres a big difference between a high school student and a Fields medallist.
Like i guess what i mean is that i dont think im enlightened, but i do think i understand the basic argument, and i can see how it applies to every aspect of my experience, but clearly I have a lot to let go of before I could concieve of fully “experiencing” the totality of that “direct knowledge”
Direct knowledge is the opposite of intellectual knowledge. For example, by reading one get some conceptual understanding of what Nibbana means, but one will not directly know it untill this is really realised.
Likewise, we can read about all this jhana’s but untill we really abide in jhana we have no direct knowledge of them. It is very important, i feel, to agree with this. It is a huge conceit when one thinks conceptual knowledge is direct knowledge of something.
Many texts make this clear, for example MN26:
“I (Buddha) soon quickly entered upon and abided in that Dhamma (the jhana of his teachers, Green) by realising for myself with direct knowledge…”
This refers to…At first Buddha had no direct knowledge of the jhana of nothingness and no perception nor not perception but he got it very quickly by really entering these jhana’s. One has a direct taste of them. This is direct knowledge.
Direct knowledge is the goal.
For example, there is a huge difference between the conceptual understanding that the one who sees, knows, senses, experiences cannot be an unchanging mental entity, an I or Ego, and direct knowledge of this.
