Delson Armstrong: the buddha on if consciousness is primary

Do you have an ontology that you resonate most with, in terms of all this consciousness you mentioned, materialism? Do you gravitate more towards consciousness is primary, matter is primary? Or do you kind of feel like, oh, it's a waste of time worrying about that, it doesn't alleviate suffering? Well, I'll say this. I think, to some extent, I do believe that it is intellectual gymnastics. It's for fun. I see it as, is consciousness the primal thing? Is there... what is consciousness? Advaita Vedanta will say, prajnanam brahma, which means Brahman is consciousness, Brahman is that intelligence behind all creation, and so on. Whereas a very staunch Theravada practice, where Buddhists will say, no, we can't say that, because as soon as you do that, it becomes reified into a concept.

And then that concept is dependent upon our mind's attention to be on it. And as soon as our mind's attention is no longer on it, for all intents and purposes, it doesn't really actually exist. So we can't say it's fully permanent and the basis of everything. And that's maybe another aspect of my life journey: to see how best, if at all, and it might be a fool's errand, to synthesize these two differing viewpoints. In fact, I've actually written an essay on this. A friend of mine had invited me to, there's a Berggruen Institute, which had at that point an essay competition on the topic of consciousness.

And what I wanted to do was actually explore, through the two main lenses of Advaita Vedanta, and then even the Vedas, as what they talk about in terms of consciousness, and the different schools of Buddhism, broadly speaking, Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana, let's say. And what I've seen is that I think the language is where we get in trouble, but I do believe that there is something that they're pointing at in terms of an ontology. For example, even in the Theravada perspective, they have the idea of the nibbana dhatu. Now, dhatu here, when we say dhatu, that means it's an element, it's a thing, it's something. And maybe the Buddha didn't intend to use it in that way, but if you look at the context, he's basically saying that the basis of everything is this nibbana dhatu, and that the nibbana dhatu is unconditioned. It's outside of the purview of dependent origination. Dependent origination is what explains everything in terms of that which is impermanent and not-self, and that understanding

leads us to the understanding of emptiness of self, and that ultimately rests the awareness in the panadhat. This is also known as, for example, the vinnana anidassana, which is what I call the non-reflective awareness. So the essay that I have, it's called The Mind Beyond the Mirror, you know, or camera, the mirror beyond mind. But anyway, the idea is that awareness is reflected by that which it lands upon. So I'm aware of something, but I'm not aware of awareness itself. I may be aware of the concept of awareness that's being reflected. So non-reflective awareness, which is dependent upon something known as the nibbana dhatu, that's where the Buddha was pointing to. That's the vinnana anidassana. And so what I kind of conclude there is something known as paraconsciousness, that the usual notions of consciousness as we see it, especially from the Advaita lens, that it is aware, it is sat chit ananda. It means it's existing, it's aware, it's conscious, and it is the source of bliss, or it is bliss itself. But I think these aspects are actually... they are the effect or

the arising of, dependent upon this more primal paraconsciousness. And I think that's where the Buddha is pointing out the nibbana dhatu, which is, you can't define it. You can't put it into laboratory settings. You can't say that it's this or that. It's that non-dual, dual non-dual experience, which you can't even point at. As soon as you use language, as soon as you use concepts, it flitters away. And so my term for it is paraconsciousness. It's para in the sense that it's beyond consciousness. It's one step before the arising of any kind of awareness, the arising of any kind of consciousness. And the only way we know about it is through our reflection on it, or reflection that arises dependent on it. We can kind of understand that from the experience of emptiness. We can kind of experience that, or understand that, from the experience of when thoughts cease. But there's still an awareness when thoughts cease. What is that awareness aware of?

And some people say it's awareness of awareness, it's just awareness of the mind being free of thoughts. But if you go even a step below that, you let go of that, you get into what's known as cessation, cessation of perception and feeling, which I've experienced multiple, multiple times, and I'm able to do that willfully, volitionally, whenever I feel like. And so to me, in that experience, it's nothing. There's no consciousness there at all. And yet the body continues, the brain continues to function at some level, the heart continues to function at some level, everything seems to be okay when it comes to the vital systems, but no subjective consciousness is present. So to me, because of that experience, I believe that the paraconsciousness is still there, which is the mind is tapped into or emanating from that absolute paraconsciousness. This is great. I've got so many questions now. You're the first Buddhist I've heard speak to this in reference to the early canon. Are those terms that you mentioned in the

what's called the Pali canon? If I... Yes, specifically nibbana dhatu and vinnana anidassana, those two you can find in the Pali canon. Because one thing that has come up in these, I've hosted several debates between people that are on either side of the aisle in terms of what you described, in terms of Brahman or consciousness being primary, and those saying no, it's an artifact of mind, it's dependent just like everything else. And one thing they point to is how the Buddha would say, I think my Buddhism is really shaky. But I think there are five aggregates, and one is vinnana. And then some people on the other side say, well, vinnana is not the same as jnana.

It's discerning awareness. It's more like left brain picking things apart. It's not the more oceanic, just taking everything in, even when thoughts subside. Do you think there's credibility in pointing out that vinnana isn't the same as... Yeah, I think what you're pointing out, as far as my Buddhism goes, in terms of how I understand it, is the vinnana, or vijana as you call it, is divided consciousness. V is divided, jnana is awareness or wisdom, actually, or knowledge. And so why is it divided? It's divided because it's dependent upon the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and the mind, and so the awareness is dependent upon that. And so we can say that there is an undivided awareness, which is leading closer towards that vinnanam anidassanam. Anidassanam here is non-manifestative or non-reflective, as I like to translate it, which means that it's actually jnana more than anything else: undivided, unconditioned, unfabricated awareness, which definitely the Mahamudra and Dzogchen style of Buddhism will point out to.

And within that there is an entire school called the Shentong school, which you might be familiar with, which goes as far as to say that nibbana is the same as Self with a capital S. There's a particular practitioner named Dolpopa who mentioned this, which to many Buddhists was completely last blasphemous and shocking. But I don't see it as that way, because I think when the Buddha points out, for example, people in the suttas, in the Pali canon, there are examples of people saying, I believe that it is this awareness that continues to take birth from lifetime to lifetime and is the experiencer of karma and all the things that are happening, and the Buddha says such a view is misguided. He calls those people misguided people.

But the reason he's saying that is because they're taking the vinnana, the vijana, that is divided amongst these senses, as that. And the Buddha said, if we try to say that there is something there, then there is the risk of reifying it. There's a risk of making it into an object, rather than just melting into that oceanic, whatever it is, awareness or consciousness, or whatever you want to call it.

So, I think the scaffolding of Buddhism might not be, you know, might not be suitable for Vedantans. and then the scaffolding of Vedantans might not be accepted by the Buddhists. And again, that's just because of the terms they may use. I think if somebody has had a good enough experience in both and has been able to tap into what they may term as Brahman in Vedanta and what they may term as Nibbana in Buddhism, uh if you let go of the concepts and you go to the very core of it it is really the same thing i mean we could complicate things further and say that it's also referring to the tao you know in taoism the tao that is nameless that is unchanging and so on and to me that points out to something that is unconditioned something that is unfabricated something that is not dependent upon another for its existence, but that all things that arise are dependent on it for their existence.