Excerpts from “The Island: An anthology of the Buddha’s teaching on Nibbana” Ajahn Pasanno & Ajahn Amaro
Atammayata
The term atammayata cannot be found in the Pali Text Society Dictionary. Readers will find it difficult to discover references to it in scholarly works, whether they come from West or East. The meditation masters of Tibet, Burma or Zen do not seem to be interested in it. Mention it to most Buddhists and they will not know what you are talking about. Yet there is clear evidence in the Pali Canon that the Buddha gave this word significant meaning.
Atammayata appears in a number of Pali suttas and each context suggests that the term has important meaning. The traditional commentators’ standard explanation, although vague, describes it as the awakened state of the Arahant, or fully awakened, perfected being. Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, from Suan Mokkhabalarama in southern Siam, first took note of this word about thirty years ago. The contexts in which he found atammayata convinced him that its meaning is important.
The word literally means ‘not made of that.’ It can also be rendered as ‘non-identification,’ focusing on the subject side of the equation. Other translators have it as ‘non-fashioning’ or ‘unconcoctability’ – thus hinting more at the object dimension of it. Either way, it refers primarily to the quality of experience prior to, or without, a subject/object duality arising. This insight leads us into a contemplation of the relationship of the apparent subject and object – how the tension between the two generates the world of things and its experiencer, and more importantly how, when that duality is seen through, the heart’s liberation is the result.
Looking now at the Buddha’s words to Bahiya: Bahiya repeatedly asked the Buddha to teach him the Dhamma even though it was an inconvenient time for the Buddha: “It is difficult to know for certain, revered sir, how long the Lord will live or how long I will live. So, sensing the urgency in Bahiya’s demeanour, the Buddha gave the following Teaching: “ In the seen there is only the seen, in the heard, there is only the heard, in the sensed there is only the sensed, in the cognized there is only the cognized: This, Bahiya, is how you should train yourself. ”
“When, Bahiya, there is for you in the seen only the seen, in the heard, only the heard, in the sensed only the sensed, in the cognized only the cognized, then, Bahiya, there is no ‘you’ in connection with that. When, Bahiya, there is no ‘you’ in connection with that, there is no ‘you’ there. When, Bahiya, there is no ‘you’ there, then, Bahiya, you are neither here nor there nor in between the two. This, just this, is the end of suffering.” [ ~Ud 1.10] Bahiya realized full enlightenment even as he heard the few words of this teaching, kneeling in the dust and clamour of Savatthi town that morning; and furthermore, true to his own sense of the fragile nature of existence, moments later he was impaled by a runaway cow and breathed his last.
This abandonment of subject/object dualities is largely contingent upon the correct apprehension of the perceptual process, and thus the breaking down of the apparent inside/outside dichotomy of the observer and the observed. A spectacularly thorough analysis of the perceptual process and the inability to find oneself anywhere within it (as demonstrated in the brief teaching to Bahiya) is to be found in a key text that revolves around the Buddha’s pressing of Ananda, his closest disciple and ever-watchful attendant, to describe exactly where his mind is: “It is the fault of your mind and eyes that you flow and turn. I am now asking you specifically about your mind and eyes: where are they now?” [~ the Śūraṅgama Sūtra]. The investigation is scrupulous in the extreme, with the trusty Ananda repeatedly being confounded by the Buddha’s wisdom – as he regularly was. Every nuance of object, sense organ and sense consciousness, every possible dimension of subject and object, are explored and demonstrated to be no abiding place for an independent identity. At its conclusion the analysis arrives at the same conclusion as the teaching to Bahiya: any clinging whatsoever to this/that, here/there, subject/object, inside/outside or anything in between is synonymous with dukkha; abandon such clinging and dukkha necessarily ceases.
In the Vedanta, we read that to be wholly and exclusively aware of Brahman is at the same time to be Brahman. The origins of this seem to lie in a theory of sense perception in which the grasping hand supplies a dominant analogy. It takes the shape of what it apprehends. Vision is similarly explained: the eye sends out some kind of ray which takes the shape of what we see and comes back with it. Similarly thought: a thought conforms to its object. This idea is encapsulated in the term tanmayata, ‘consisting of that’: that the thought of the gnostic or meditator becomes con-substantial with the thing realized. [~ Richard Gombrich] That is to say, with the opposite quality, in a-tammayata, the mind’s ‘energy’ does not go out to the object and occupy it. It neither makes an objective ‘thing’ or a subjective ‘observer’ knowing it; hence ‘non-identification’ refers to the subjective aspect and ‘non-fabrication’ mostly to the objective. The reader should also carefully bear in mind the words “The origins of this idea…” and not take the Vedic concept and imagery as representing the Buddhist use of the word entirely accurately. In the state of atammayata, in its Buddhist usage, there is no actual ‘becoming con-substantial’ with the thing that is being known…
In the final triad of the nine insights as outlined by Ajahn Buddhadasa, three qualities describe the upper reaches of spiritual refinement: sunnata – voidness or emptiness; tathata – thusness or suchness; atammayata – nonidentification or ‘not-thatness. When the qualities of emptiness and suchness are considered, even though the conceit of identity might already have been seen through, there can still remain subtle traces of clinging; clinging to the idea of an objective world being known by a subjective knowing even though no sense of ‘I’ is discernible at all. There can be the feeling of a ‘this’ which is knowing a ‘that,’ and either saying “Yes” to it, in the case of suchness, or “No” in the case of emptiness. Atammayata is the closure of that whole domain, expressing the insight that “there is no ‘that.” It is the genuine collapse of both the illusion of separateness of subject and object and also of the discrimination between phenomena as being somehow substantially different from each other.
Of the ten obstacles or fetters (samyojana) that stand in the way of enlightenment, the ninth is uddhacca – restlessness. The restlessness to which this refers is not the fidgeting of the uncomfortable meditator; it is the subtlest of feelings that there might be something better over there or just in the future; a feeling that ‘that’ (which is out of reach) might have more value in some way than ‘this.’ It is the ever-so-insidious addiction to time and its promises. Atammayata is the utter abandonment of this root delusion: one sees that in ultimate truth there is no time, no self, no here and no there. So rather than “Be here now” as a spiritual exhortation, perhaps instead we should say: “Let go of identity, space and time,” or: “Realize unlocated, timeless selflessness.”
The aim of all these teachings on atammayata is to show us that the dualities of subject and object (‘me and the world’), do not have to be brought into being at all. And when the heart is restrained from ‘going out,’ and awakens to its fundamental nature, a bright and joyful peace is what remains. This is the peace of Nibbana.
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