Before I entered the three-year retreat, I ran around to every respected Lama or Rinpoche I could find seeking that famous “last minute advice.” Situ Rinpoche said: “Just follow the program.” Karma Thinley Rinpoche purposefully confused me, like some old Zen master, advising me strongly to go, or not to go into retreat, on alternate days. However, Thinley Norbu Rinpoche (Dudjom Rinpoche’s son) just leaned over and whispered gently in my ear: “Wisdom Mind. Only this, Wisdom Mind.” As the retreat dragged on and I was rather violently stripped of all my concepts, including the copious accumulation of Buddhist dogma, my habitual tendencies fought hard to grasp at some kind of identity, any handhold at all. But failed.
To be or not to be
The most pervasive philosophical and spiritual question is: who am I? What is this “self” that says “I am?” While there has been no shortage of answers, with the advent of modern psychology, they have multiplied exponentially. However, in Buddhism we are told to transcend the self, to go beyond ego. All is impermanence, so we should seek the state of shunyata—non-self. This is a good strategy for gradually losing one’s attachment to feelings, thoughts, situations, set beliefs, and the narratives that define our identity in all its complexity. Yet on the occasional instance where Wisdom Mind showed up in retreat, there was still an open presence of “something.” If pure consciousness or pure being seems to underlie our normal flow of experience, is our “self” existent? Or is it just a different self on a different level? This kind of cogitation begins to feel like a shell game; some linguistic sleight of hand. After all, across time and cultures very wise men and women have put a name to a “self” that is clearly beyond one’s mundane identity, for example:
Christians: Imago Dei, Deosis Divinization, Spiritus Sanctus
Ancient Greece: Nous, The One, Logos, Anima Mundi, Pneuma
Kabbalah: Ein Sof, Neshama, Shekinah
Sufis: Haquiqa Ruh, Sirr
Daoists: Ziran, Dao, Xin-Heart-Mind
This mystical paradox, somewhere between theism and non-theism, duality and non-duality, was not lost on the great masters of tantric Buddhism. And some offered a view that can resolve these theoretical conundrums. Moreover, it moves us toward a unitary understanding of the mind’s potential, from both an Eastern and Western perspective.
Shentong and rangtong
Shunyata means that all phenomena lack inherent, independent existence, but instead are interdependent, arising and dissolving based on changing conditions. However, Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen (1292–1361) expressed the position that while all phenomena are “empty” of any permanent reality, the state of pure awakening is free of everything other than itself. Relative experience can thus be called self-empty (rangtong), while mind’s true nature is empty-of-other (shentong). This whole setup avoids falling into either of the two extremes—eternalism or nihilism. Awakened mind is inherently pure and free of all conditions, spontaneously expressing itself as luminosity and many other qualities of the five Buddha families.
Bringing this down to our daily toils and labors, we follow the concept of the two truths, relative and absolute. Relative phenomena are seen as empty of a self-nature—impermanent, dualistic, conceptual constructs. But the ultimate way of being (buddha-nature, pristine awareness, and so on) is empty of everything, but it not empty of its true nature. Here there is pure awareness, a luminous, non-dual, unconditioned being-ness, equated to rigpa, tathagatagarbha, or dharmakaya. This is in many ways synonymous with the “higher self” discussed in many traditions to describe what happens when habitual ego-identification dissolves.
This approach was adopted by many great masters in the Jonang, Kagyu, Sakya and Nyingma lineages, including the very influential Jamgon Kongtrul and other members of the rimé or non-sectarian movement. However, it turns out that things are not so simple, and Brunnholzl points out that there are at least seven different ways of expressing or understanding this shentong view. An easy to follow and fascinating discussion of these subtleties is found in his When the Clouds Part (2015) and is worth the read. For an even deeper look, there is the masterful translator Cyrus Stearns’ The Buddha from Dolpo (2010). Most importantly for the average Western Buddhist, this knowledge relieves us of the burden of existential anxiety and confusion, as we accept that even when all is erased in the understanding of shunyata, something remains . . . only this, Wisdom Mind.
References
Brunnholzl, K. 2015. When the Clouds Part: The Uttaratantra and Its Meditative Tradition as a Bridge between Sutra and Tantra. Boston: Snow Lion.
Stearns, C. 2010. The Buddha from Dolpo: A Study of the Life and Thought of the Tibetan Master Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen. Boston: Snow Lion.
See more
Related features from BDG
Optimizing the Wood Snake Year
Karma: It Isn’t (Always) What You Did
The Five Deaths on the Road to Awakening
