Yeah, one could suspect they were easily picked up because they are convenient for practical use.
Another great thing about the Thai forest tradition is that many, or maybe most of the Ajahn’s have a broad perspective on the teachings of the Buddha.
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Reading this thread, I feel like reading a paralel of thousand years old debate in Mahayana tradition between Yogacara and Madhyamaka.
In short, Yogacara believe in something like Original Mind, which they called alayavijnana (storehouse consciousness/ 7th consciousness), in which the definition is eternal, unchanging, source and basis of enlightenment blablabla - you are familiar with it.
This is the Real self, the primordial mind.
And then Madhyamaka came and said, “what you said about alayavijnana is true, it exist, but it is also empty”
Yogacara: "no it is not! "
Madhyamaka: "it is, you just haven’t see deeper. "
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In that case it was the Theravadin Yogacara that came to the Theravadin Madhyamikas and said: ‘All that BS about emptiness is BS. We have found a true self.’ Which kinda sounds absurd if it happens in that reverse order, if you ask me.
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As far as I know, Yogacara as developed by Asanga and Vasubandhu did not have something similar to an “original mind”. The storehouse consciousness (8th consciousness) was basically an abstraction for the functioning of karma, rebirth, etc. Similar to the bhavanga in Theravada abhidharma.
When people mention “buddha-nature” type concepts, the basis for that is found in the Tathagatagarbha sutras. Earlier Mahayana sutras typically emphasized the emptiness of self and dharmas. Tathagatagarbha sutras instead emphasized a positive potential to achieve enlightenment.
Some later people tried to combine Tathagatagarbha with Yogacara, as found in the Lankavatara Sutra. Similar hybrid systems eventually took hold in late Indian Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism. Dan Lusthaus goes into some of this stuff in his intro to Yogacara, which covers the original system and its later Tathagatagarbha hybrid variants.
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Hi Ajahn,
my own view of Ajahn Chah’s use of a term such as knower (I assume this is a correct translation) is that he was trying to use simple language to describe a state of knowing/ wisdom aside from thinking and perceiving.
I find this view helpful and it aligns with my conceiving of what an experience of wisdom could be - separate to any identity and comprising a direct experience of non- self.
However, it seems to me that is incredibly difficult to translate direct experiences into spoken language. Hence the popularity of verse and song and metaphor. I think that even the Buddha indicated that the experience of Nibbana is almost impossible to describe given the limitations of language or perhaps as you say, whatever language used is misinterpreted according to our individual biases.
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