By Ajahn Amaro

[Excerpts from Chapter 3 in “Small Boat, Great Mountain,” a free Dhamma publication available as PDF EPUB MOBI. Look for the link at the end of this text.]

All Buddhist practitioners, regardless of tradition, are familiar with the three characteristics of existence—anicca, dukkha, anattā (impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, selflessness). These are “chapter one, page one” Buddhism. But the Theravādins also talk about another three characteristics of existence, at a more refined level: suññatā, tathatā, and atammayatā. Suññatā is emptiness. The term derives from saying “no” to the phenomenal world: “I’m not going to believe in this. This is not entirely real.” Tathatā means suchness. It is a quality very similar to suññatā but derives from saying “yes” to the universe. There is nothing, yet there is something. The quality of suchness is like the texture of ultimate reality. Suññatā and tathatā—emptiness and suchness—the teachings talk in these ways.

This third quality, atammayatā, is not well known. In Theravāda, atammayatā has been referred to as the ultimate concept. It literally means “not made of that.” But atammayatā can be rendered in many different ways, giving it a variety of subtle shades of meaning. Bhikkhu Bodhi and Bhikkhu Ñāṇamoli (in their translation of the Majjhima Nikaya) render it as “nonidentification”— picking up on the “subject” side of the equation. Other translators call it “nonfashioning” or “unconcoctability,” thus pointing more to the “object” element of it. Either way, it refers primarily to the quality of awareness prior to or without a subject-object duality.

The ancient Indian origins of this term seem to lie in a theory of sense perception in which the grasping hand supplies the dominant analogy: the hand takes the shape of what it apprehends. The process of vision, for example, is explained as the eye sending out some kind of ray, which then takes the shape of what we see and comes back with it. Similarly with thought: mental energy conforms to its object (e.g., a thought) and then returns to the subject. This idea is encapsulated in the term “tan-mayatā,” “consisting of that.” The mental energy of the experiencer (subject) becomes consubstantial with the thing (object) being realised.

The opposite quality, atammayatā, refers to a state in which the mind’s energy does not “go out” to the object and occupy it. It makes neither an objective “thing” nor a subjective “observer” knowing it. Hence, nonidentification refers to the subjective aspect and nonfabrication to the objective.

The way emptiness is usually discussed in Dzogchen circles makes it very clear that it is a characteristic of ultimate reality. But in other usages of emptiness or suchness, there still can be a sense of an agent (a subject) which is a ‘this’ looking at a that, and the that is empty. Or the that is such, thus. Atammayatā is the realisation that, in truth, there cannot be anything other than ultimate reality. There is no that. In letting go, in the complete abandonment of that, the whole relative subject-object world, even at its subtlest level, is broken apart and dissolved.

I particularly like the word “atammayatā” because of the message it conveys. Among its other qualities, this concept deeply addresses that persistent sense of always wondering, “What is that over there?” There’s that hint that something over there might be a little more interesting than what is here. Even the subtlest sense of overlooking this to get to that, not being content with this and wanting to become that, is an error. Atammayatā is that quality in us that knows, “There is no that. There is only this.” Then even this-ness becomes meaningless. Atammayatā helps the heart break the subtlest habits of restlessness as “well as still the reverberations of the root duality of subject and object. That abandonment brings the heart to a realisation: there is only the wholeness of the Dharma, complete spaciousness, and fulfilment. The apparent dualities of this and that, subject and object are seen to be essentially meaningless.

One way that we can use this on a practical level is with a technique Ajahn Sumedho has often suggested. Thinking the mind is in the body, we say, “my mind” [points at head] or “my mind” [points at chest]. Right? “It’s all in my mind.” Actually we’ve got it wrong. The body is in our mind rather than the mind in the body, right?

What do we know about our body? We can see it. We can hear it. We can smell it. We can touch it. Where does seeing happen? In the mind. Where do we experience touch? In the mind. Where do we experience smelling? Where does that happen? In the mind. Everything that we know about the body, now and at any previous time, has been known through the agency of our mind. We have never known anything about our body except through our mind. So, our entire life, ever since infancy, everything we have ever known about our body and the world has happened in our mind. So, where is our body?

It doesn’t mean to say there isn’t a physical world, but what we can say is that the experience of the body, and the experience of the world, happens within our mind. It doesn’t happen anywhere else. It’s all happening here. And in that here-ness, the world’s externality, its separateness has ceased. The word “cessation,” (nirodha), may also be used here. Along with its more familiar rendition, the word also means “to hold in check,” so it can mean that the separateness has ceased. When we realize that we hold the whole world within us, its thing-ness, its other-ness has been checked. We are better able to recognise its true nature.

This shift of vision is an interesting little meditation tool that we can use anytime, as was described before with reference to walking meditation. It is a very useful device because it leads us to the truth of the matter. Whenever we apply it, it flips the world inside out, because we are then able to see that this body is indeed just a set of perceptions. It doesn’t negate our functioning freely, but it puts everything into context. “It’s all happening within the space of rigpa, within the space of the knowing mind.” In holding things in this way, we suddenly find our body, the mind, and the world arriving at a resolution, a strange realisation of perfection. It all happens here. This method may seem a little obscure, but sometimes the most abstruse and subtle tools can bring about the most radical changes of heart.

Reflective Inquiry

Reflective inquiry was another of the methods that Ajahn Chah would use in sustaining the view, or we may say, in sustaining right view. It involves the deliberate use of verbal thought to investigate the teachings as well as particular attachments, fears, and hopes, and especially the feeling of identification itself. He would talk about it almost in terms of having a dialogue with himself.

Oftentimes thinking gets painted as the big villain in meditation circles: “Yeah, my mind. . . . If only I could stop thinking, I’d be happy.” But actually, the thinking mind can be the most wonderful of helpers when it is used in the right way, particularly when investigating the feeling of selfhood. There’s a missed opportunity when we overlook the use of conceptual thought in this way. When you are experiencing, seeing, or doing something, ask a question like: “What is it that’s aware of this feeling? Who owns this moment? What is it that knows rigpa?”

The deliberate use of reflective thought or inquiry can reveal a set of unconscious assumptions, habits, and compulsions that we have set in motion. This can be very helpful and can yield great insight. We establish a steady, open mindfulness and then ask: “What is it that knows this? What is aware of this moment? Who is it that feels pain? Who is it that is having this fantasy? Who is it that is wondering about supper?” At that moment a gap opens up. Milarepa once said something along the lines of, “When the flow of discursive thinking is broken, the doorway to liberation opens.” In exactly the same way, when we pose that kind of question, it is like an awl being worked into a knotted tangle of identification and loosening its strands. It breaks the habit, the pattern of discursive thinking. When we ask “who” or “what,” for a moment the thinking mind trips over its own feet. It fumbles. In that space, before it can piece together an answer or an identity, there is timeless peace and freedom. Through that peaceful space the innate quality of mind, mind-essence, appears. It’s only by frustrating our habitual judgments, the partial realities that we have unconsciously determined into existence, that we are forced to loosen our grip and to let go of our misguided way of thinking.

Continued next week: Jan/25/2024

Link to text source: https://www.abhayagiri.org/books/423-small-boat-great-mountain