River of Awareness: Buddhist ways to explore consciousness

Everything Lord Buddha said, his entire philosophy and doctrine, was for the purpose of penetrating to the essence of our being, of realizing the nature of the human mind.

Lama Thubten Yeshe, The Peaceful Stillness of the Silent Mind

For Westerners coming to Buddhism for the first time, there is sometimes a bit of a terminological bump early along the way. “If Buddhists don’t believe in a soul,” some of us might remember asking, “then what is it that’s getting reborn and potentially liberated from samsara?” The general answer is the mind, and one might spend the rest of one’s life, if not multiple lifetimes, diving into the complex understanding of consciousness that Buddhism has developed over the course of its history. For some traditions, it is precisely through solving the mystery of the mind (and its deeper nature) that one actually becomes liberated and enlightened—so there are many reasons to take this exploration seriously.

Early roots and Pali sources

The foundation for the Buddhist view of the mind was established by the Buddha himself. Many would probably recall the opening verses of the Dhammapada, arguably the most famous Buddhist text in existence:

These famous words signify that the origination of happiness and suffering is, for Buddhists, fully dependent on the mind. However, beyond the interconnected dynamics giving birth to happiness and suffering lies an even more fascinating type of interdependence: the path that potentially leads to a full purification of the mind, leading to the type of happiness that Robert Thurman refers to as “the ultimately enjoyable experience, the blissful freedom”.

In presenting his teachings on the eightfold noble path, the Buddha presented the specifics of what is to be done with the mind. Quite importantly, he also delivered a separate set of sermons on the functions of the mind, along with the general structure of the phenomenal world. According to the traditional presentation, these teachings, known as Abhidharma in Sanskrit and Abhidhamma in Pali, were delivered in a divine dimension that the Buddha visited in order to mentor his late mother. Later, the Buddha repeated the same teachings for his liberated disciple Shariputra, who, in term, transmitted them further, through a lineage of disciples that eventually put them to writing. In the Pali tradition, these teachings form the foundation of the Abhidhamma-Pitaka, or “the basket of higher doctrine”; commentaries on these teachings serve as the traditional Pali textbooks on the functions and composition of the mind. These explanations on the mind’s structure and workings have been traditionally used by the Buddhists of Sri Lanka, Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, and the study of these sources (now available in several modern editions, such as the one prepared by Bhikkhu Bodhi) remains a veritable source of psychological wisdom.

Sanskrit presentations of the mind

Around the 2nd century AD, the same teachings on the mind (along with all the other phenomena) caught the attention of two brothers, now known to us as Asanga and Vasubandhu—two of the most illustrious thinkers of Ancient India. These two scholars-practitioners, whose influence on the various branches of Buddhism is hard to overestimate, were deeply interested in yogic practice and the true nature of the mind. Asanga, guided by his visionary encounters with the bodhisattva of loving kindness Maitreya, penned down a number of treatises dealing with the yogic transformation of the mind and with the mind’s true potential; Vasubandhu, amongst other things, composed a number of commentaries of the tenet system of “mind-only”, and even left us with a practice-oriented treatise on achieving a Pure Land rebirth. However, both brothers were also actively interested in the makeup of the world we experience and the mind that doesthe experiencing. For that reason, they each wrote a major Abhidharma treatise, and it is these two works—The Treasury of Abhidharma for Vasubandhu and The Compendium of Abhidharma for Asanga—that still form the basis for the mind-related studies in the Mahayana tradition, especially as practiced in the world of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism.

Over time, the study of these two Abhidharma works has become the foundational way of learning about the mind for Tibetan Buddhist monastics. In the Gelug tradition, which forms the basis for the FPMT’s curriculum, the mind section of Abhidharma is generally combined with an exploration of valid cognition (or pramana). This unique combination of disciplines, known as Lorig (or “Mind and cognizers”), is often studied early in one’s academic career, helping monastics to better understand the workings of their own mind and the mindas an interdependent phenomenon in general. Due to the spread of Buddhism around the world, more and more people get a chance to study elements of Lorig in such programs as the FPMT’s Discovering Buddhism.

The study of the mind through the Lorig lens is as sophisticated as any other academic subject. Relying on the foundational definitions established by Asanga and Vasubandhu, students learn about the different mental functions (or, in the technical language of Buddhism, mental factors) and primary types of consciousness, learning to identify each one by its function—the specific type of awareness each state is responsible for. A serious practitioner would also use this as an invitation to identify the very same mental states in their own mind, learning to see how mindfulness, faith, attachment, anger, laziness and many other mental functions come and go, working together to weave the experience we call “being alive.” Later on, this understanding helps one explore the more advanced teachings of Asanga, learning how a specific combination of mental functions helps one progress through the stages of mental evolution leading to full awakening. The same type of knowledge can also aid one’s meditation: while not indispensable, a thorough understanding of the mind’s functions along with their definitions can help us subdue the negative mental states and strengthen the positive ones.

Diving right in: the meditative approach

While the Abhidharma / Lorig approach to studying the mind is undeniably important (to the point of serving as a major element of the dialogues between Buddhism and science, often organized by the Mind & Life Institute), there are other approaches to understanding the mind—or, rather, other tools for looking at it in order to get what the mind is. One such approach is expressed in the practice-oriented teachings commonly referred to as the “nature of the mind” practices, most powerfully represented by the Mahamudra (or “Great Seal”) and Dzogchen (“Great Perfection”) systems of practice in Tibetan Buddhism.

Mahamudra, just like its counterpart, Dzogchen, is a meditation-based approach to understanding the mind and its nature. This means that in order to understand the mind, one meditates on the mind—observes it directly and eventually also probes into its deeper nature. There are, in fact, multiple subsystems of Mahamudra, sometimes classified as the three main branches: the exotericMahamudra of sutras, the esoteric Mahamudra of tantras, and the innermost Mahamudra of the essence. All three of these styles (representing different, though fully compatible, strategies for understanding the mind) trace their lineage back to the great yogis and yoginis of ancient India; it was the hands-on approach of such masters as Saraha and Maitripa that gave rise to this highly experiential approach. These masters, many of whom were also great scholars, explored the mind by meditating on it, pushing their experiential exploration to the limit—all the way up to full awakening.

The teachings of Mahamudra, which naturally draw a lot of interest from Westerners who are short on time but have high aspirations (and, in the words of Lama Yeshe, want to taste the chocolate), are simple in their logic but not easy in application. In order to progress through the stages of practice, one has to rely on expert guidance, eventually spending thousands of hours in careful observation and probing. For example, for the style of sutra mahamudra, one would first seek to master the calm abiding (shamatha) meditation on the mind as the object; with that, having experienced the very flavour of one’s conventional-level mind with unprecedented clarity, one proceeds to insight practice (vipashyana) in order to understand the mind’s ultimate way of existing. Similar processes using other types of techniques exist in tantra mahamudra (which is the source for the Indo-Tibetan teaching on the different levels of mind’s subtlety) and essence mahamudra.

One keyword that unites the study of Abhidharma with the practice of Mahamudra, is, of course, the word mind itself: the very thing that, according to the Buddha, precedes all experiences and is to be explored. Another key word is probably rigour: neither approach can be mastered without exploring and applying the associated teachings over the course of multiple hours, if not years (or lifetimes). Yet what could be more rewarding and exciting? Some of the rewards come almost immediately: the more one understands one’s mind, the easier it is to make the mind happy, transforming the more painful and deluded mental states into ones that are realistic and joyful. To the degree that we are able to become scholars-practitioners armed with the different teachings on the mind (or, rather, different tools for looking into the mind), we are able to awaken ourselves to the blissful freedom that, according to Mahamudra teachings, is always within our reach. What we need on this path is a supportive community, a number of qualified teachers, our own dedication to practice and a type of curiosity that scientists and naturalists have; with all that in our resource kit, we will be able to go on the most exciting journey ever—the journey to the heart of our own awareness where happiness and freedom are said to abide.

By Michael Lobsang Tenpa