# I... amn't?

The spiritual path can be confusing. Different traditions -- or even sub-traditions *within* traditions -- can seem to be saying vastly different things[^kornfield]. Are they *actually* different, or do they only *sound* different to us, the benighted? Do they maybe each contain pieces of the puzzle? If so, how do they fit together?

[^kornfield]: Consider this article from beloved teacher (and lifelong practitioner) Jack Kornfield. https://www.inquiringmind.com/article/2701_w_kornfield-enlightenments/
> So here we have different visions of enlightenment. On the one hand, we have the liberation from greed, hatred and delusion attained through powerful concentration and purification, emphasized by many masters from Mahasi and Sunlun Sayadaw to Rinzai Zen. On the other hand, we have the shift of identity reflected in the teachings of Ajahn Chah, Buddhadasa, Soto Zen and Dzogchen.

Take careful note of how he describes the "shift in identity." We will revisit this description later. A central claim of the present piece is that the indicated traditions do *not* all stop here.

> ... a simple yet profound shift of identity from the myriad, ever-changing conditioned states to the unconditioned consciousness--the awareness which knows them all.

I would be crazy to attempt a complete reconciliation here. Instead, I'd like to focus on one particular aspect that seems to arise frequently, and that was relevant to my own path. Your own mileage may vary.

---

Before I go on, some caveats:

- I am not enlightened. I am *nowhere close.*
- This document focuses on only one aspect of awakening, regarding *insight*. It ignores aspects like devotion and compassion, which are considered **indispensable** in most paths. This cannot be emphasized too strongly.
- This is not meant to be a practice guide or a replacement for one!
- While these notes may be helpful with regard to many traditions, it focuses primarily on Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta.
- **This is not original work.** It is due almost entirely to my interacting with and reading the work of Soh Wei Yu and his mentor John Tan, to whom I am deeply indebted. Their kindness, generosity, and humility are inspirations. Their work is called **Awakening to Reality** (henceforth **AtR**).
- The blog can be found [here](http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/), and he has a Facebook group [here](https://www.facebook.com/groups/AwakeningToReality).
- For a much more thorough treatment of these issues, read Soh's E-Book _Awakening To Reality_, whose latest version can be found on the sidebar of his blog. Current version is [here](https://app.box.com/s/157eqgiosuw6xqvs00ibdkmc0r3mu8jg).
- Any mistakes here are my own.
- I will be fixing grammar issues in some AtR quotes here.
- This document is a work in progress. Comments are welcomed.

May this work be of some benefit. May all beings swiftly attain supreme enlightenment. :pray:

---

## The I AM

> *I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being.* ―Hafiz

There is a particular experience that practitioners of various paths periodically encounter. AtR calls it "I AM," and I will use that terminology here.

Soh describes it well here:

> It is when at a moment where all engagement in thoughts subside. In that gap, there is this sudden realization of doubtless Existence itself -- that even without a thought, just I / Existence / Consciousness. And you realize that is the Luminous core of Existence itself.

Practitioner Sim Pern Chong describes his initial awakening like this:

> In one ‘awakening’ meditation, I came to a state of no thoughts. Such experiences are very hard to describe. This is because the explanation process itself, is within the medium of thoughts and concepts. It is impossible to describe a state of no thoughts using thoughts! Anyway, in the void of no thoughts, one naturally assumes that everything must be an unconscious blank. However, that was not the case! What came next was quite a revelation to me. In the void of no thought, I perceived myself to be a Presence... Here's how I will describe myself.
>
>> "The Presence is all pervasive, yet un-intrusive. He seems to be in all things and observes with utter passiveness. He exists beyond concepts, beliefs and do not need any form. Therefore, I understand him as eternal.
>>
>> He also seems to be the subtler state of myself. I also got the feeling that he existed in all my lifetimes or even more. If I were to name him, I will describe him as The Eternal Watcher.”
>
> You can say that I was completely blown away by the experience. The ‘discovery’ of the Eternal Watcher was a very important event that completely changed the way I understood consciousness. It also made me contemplate very deeply and seriously about the possible existence of the Divine. These spurred me on an ardent search to understand and make sense of it all.

When this Presence is seen with enough precision, it can go from being a momentary *experience* to being an unshakeable *realization* that one is never apart from.

What are we to make of such an experience (or realization)? Reactions tend to fall into a few categories:

- For those attracted to the "mystical" traditions, this sounds like what Hafiz was describing, and a very positive development.
- For people strongly drawn to scientific materialism, it may sound like nonsense. In this experience, people have the *flawless* conviction[^flawless-conviction] that this Presence transcends metaphysical categories like space and time.
- For those drawn to Buddhism (and in particular, Theravada Buddhism), it sounds like delusion. After all, the Buddha went out of his way to forcefully insist that there is no *self* -- including a transcendent, universal one.

[^flawless-conviction]: AtR:
> [It is] a conviction so powerful that no one, not even Buddha can sway you from it [...] because the practitioner so clearly sees the truth of it. It is the direct and unshakable insight of ‘You’. This is the realization that a practitioner must have in order to realize the Zen satori. You will understand clearly why it is so difficult for those practitioners to forgo this ‘I AMness’ and accept the doctrine of anatta.

As you might have expected, none of these capture the whole story. AtR convincingly makes the case that the I AM experience (and realization) is, if not exactly indispensable, then at least *extremely useful*, for the sincere aspirant -- if wielded correctly.

Let's first take a look at how a practitioner may arrive at this realization.

---

## Realizing I AM

The Hindu tradition of Advaita Vedanta, as well as [many Mahayana Buddhist schools](https://www.reddit.com/r/zen/comments/5bo1np/turning_the_light_around_and_shining_back/), tend to emphasize turning the attention *back toward itself*, in order to discover "who is looking."

> *Calm yourself, quiet your senses. Look right into the source of mind, always keeping it shining bright, clear and pure.*
>
> -- Daman Hongren, 5th Ch'an patriarch.

> *By the enquiry ‘Who am I?’ The thought ‘Who am I?’ will destroy all other thoughts and, like the stick used for stirring the burning pyre, it will itself in the end get destroyed. Then there will arise Self-realisation.*
>
> -- Sri Ramana Maharshi

These kinds of instructions stand in contrast to most Theravada Buddhist schools. Of the three major living Theravada traditions[^theravada], the two Burmese schools emphasize a *vipassana* practice that tends to be more *object*- (vs *subject-*) oriented.

[^theravada]: As far as I am aware, there are three major living traditions of Theravada Buddhism. Two come from Burma (the U Ba Khin / S.N. Goenka tradition and that of Mahasi Sayadaw), and one from Thailand (called the Thai Forest tradition, which has more than one sub-lineage).

[From the U Ba Khin / S.N. Goenka tradition](https://www.dhamma.org/en/osguide):

> Move your attention systematically from head to feet and from feet to head, observing in order each and every part of the body by feeling all the sensations that you come across. Observe objectively; that is, remain equanimous with all the sensations that you experience, whether pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, by appreciating their impermanent nature.

Notice how the focus is on *sensations* -- that is, particular *contents* of perception. [Vipassana instructions from the Mahasi Sayadaw lineage](https://buddhismnow.com/2013/09/12/vipassana-as-taught-by-the-mahasi-sayadaw-of-burma/) have a slightly different focus, called *noting*:

> The first [stage] is a simple noting or naming of the object. This simple labelling, naming, noting—whereby attention is pointed at the object—is known as vitakka and is likened to a bee flying towards a flower. ... We just keep pointing the attention at the feeling of movement, the sensations. This attention, as it grows in strength, will eventually take all the energy out of thinking to the point where there is just the noting word.

Note again the focus on "the object." This surely accounts for why Mahayana and Vedanta practitioners are far more likely to encounter the *I AM*.

On the other hand, the *Thai Forest* tradition seems to be the odd one out with respect to Theravada:

> *We sit in meditation, staying with the ‘one who knows.’* -- Ajahn Chah (father of one of the major Thai Forest lineages).

And yet they are emphatically followers of the original Buddhist scriptures. What gives?

---

## The place of I AM in Buddhism

AtR describes very well the uneasy position I AM occupies in Buddhist practice:

> I noticed that many Buddhists trained under the doctrine of anatta and emptiness seem to be put off by the description of “I AM realization” as it seems to contradict anatta. This will prevent their progress as they will fail to appreciate and realize the depth of luminous presence, and their understanding of anatta and emptiness remains intellectual. It should be understood that the I AM realization does not contradict Anatta realization but complements it. It is the “original face before your parents were born” of Zen, and the unfabricated clarity in Dzogchen that serves as initial rigpa, it is also the initial certainty of Mind discovered in the first of the four yogas of Mahamudra[^baby-rigpa]. ... [it] is a direct taste and realization of the Mind of Clear Light. The view gets refined and the taste gets brought to effortless maturity and non-contrivance in all manifestation as one’s insights deepen. ... [T]here is no forgoing of this ‘Witness’, it is rather a deepening of insight to include the non-dual, groundlessness and interconnectedness of our luminous nature.

In other words, there are two big dangers here. One is becoming attached to the *I AM* and taking it as ultimate truth. The other is dismissing it as pure delusion, and thereby missing out on the sheer luminosity; the stunning, too-good-to-be-true, *radical aliveness* of reality in all its glory.

Note that the Buddha himself made reference to this luminous quality in the original scriptures:

> *Consciousness without attribute, without end, luminous all around. Here water, earth, fire, and air have no footing. Here long and short, subtle and gross, pleasant and unpleasant, and nāmarūpa are all destroyed.*
>
> Digha Nikaya 11

On the flip side, care must be taken (for the Buddhist, at least) to interpret this properly. To see why, let's look at the opposite danger of I AM.

---

## I AM as ultimate?

AtR describes a common progression that practitioners can take after I AM -- at least, with the appropriate help.

1. In I AM, Awareness is Realer than real. It is one's true Self, and all perceptions (i.e., "the world" and one's individual self) flow through it.[^kornfield]. The Thai Forest tradition calls it the "one who knows," where the pure mind is seen as distinct from, and unsullied by, its passing contents[^chah].

This mode of experience contains a subtle (but profound) error that causes suffering:
> From a letting go perspective, "a watcher watching thought" will create the impression that a watcher is allowing thoughts to arise and subside while itself being unaffected. This is an illusion; it is 'holding' in disguise as 'letting go'.

[^chah]: [Ajahn Chah, Thai Forest master](https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/thai/chah/the_teachings_of_ajahn_chah_web.pdf) (emphasis mine):
> We sit in meditation, staying with the ‘one who knows.’
> ...
> This is what we call separating the mind from the feeling. If we are clever we don’t attach, we leave things be. **We become the ‘one who knows’**. The mind and feeling are just like oil and water; they are in the same bottle but **they don’t mix.** Even if we are sick or in pain, we still know the feeling as feeling, the mind as mind. We know the painful or comfortable states but we don’t identify with them. We stay only with peace: the peace beyond both comfort and pain.
> ...
> In its natural state, the mind is the same – in it, there exists no loving or hating, nor does it seek to blame other people. It is **independent, existing in a state of purity** that is truly clear, radiant and untarnished. In its pure state, the mind is peaceful, without happiness or suffering – indeed, not experiencing any vedana (feeling) at all. This is the true state of the mind. **The purpose of the practice**, then, is to seek inwardly, searching and investigating until you reach the original mind.

2. It is seen that all perceptions share the same "taste" as awareness. The luminosity or presence is seen to be not just a *background*, but inherent to the perceptions themselves. AtR calls this "one mind." This is the first realization of *non-duality*, and is extremely profound.

> For anyone that is familiar with the “I AM” experience, that pure sense of existence, that powerful experience of presence that makes one feel so real, is unforgettable. When the background is gone, all foreground phenomena reveal themselves as Presence.

However it, too, contains an error.

> Such a person may have realized that their consciousness was never divided from manifestations, that all manifestations are none other than consciousness itself. However the karmic (deep conditioning) tendency to conceive of consciousness as an inherently existing, unchanging source and substratum of phenomena, remains — except consciousness is now seen to be undivided from its manifestation, so one subsumes everything to be modulations of Pure Consciousness.

The error lies in a subtle elevating of the subject over objects:

> Awareness is still understood to be a one-way dependency: transient forms are none other than (expressions of) changeless awareness but changeless awareness is not equivalent to transient forms.

3. Finally, the desire to prioritize "Awareness" over anything else collapses. With it goes all sense of subjectivity and all lingering traces of duality. There is no longer a Self or any ground of being -- just the spontaneous, traceless display of self-knowing phenomena. Although phrases like "*our* nature" or "*the mind's* nature" may still be used, they must be understood in context, so as not to mistakenly impute a self/Self or ground.

This can occur either as a peak experience (which AtR calls "no mind"), or else as the deep, penetrating insight that *reality was always already this way*.

It is this third (permanent) realization that AtR describes as full realization of *anatta* [^anatta].

[^anatta]: Note that there are different kinds of "no-self" experiences that a practitioner might believe are *anatta*. AtR describes some [here](http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2020/04/different-degress-of-no-self-non.html). Briefly, they are:
1. Non-doership
> You no longer feel like a doer or controller, all thoughts and actions are just happening spontaneously on its own accord.
2. Impersonality
> The dissolving of the construct of 'personal self' that [leads] to a purging of ego effect to a state of clean, pure, not-mine sort of "perception shift", accompanied with a sense that everything and everyone is being expressions of the same aliveness / intelligence / consciousness.
3. Awareness-as-everything (AtR's "One mind"; Advaita's *Brahman*)
4. Anatta proper.

From the Buddhist perspective, Advaita Vedanta stops at 2[^advaita], and 3 is part of what makes Buddhism unique. AtR also convincingly makes the case that many *Buddhist* teachers and institutions mistakenly stop at 2 (or even 1), believing it to be the end.

[^advaita]: Though it should be pointed out that Advaita Vedanta arose millennia after the Buddha's death, and so his critiques of Hindu philosophy may not apply to all of its variants. Indeed, there is reason to believe that Advaita and Tibetan Buddhism had considerable interchange in 13th century India, where the lines between them may have become blurred in the *Mahasiddha* tradition.

On the flip side, it may also be possible to be a lifelong practitioner of vipassana and overlook the vibrant luminous self-knowing aspect. Indeed, the Mahasi tradition seem to eschew it entirely in favor of *cessation of consciousness*, which they equate with nibbana (nirvana)[^mahasi-cessation], described as a kind of oblivion[^kenneth-cessation]. The Goenka tradition is pretty mum about what constitutes enlightenment[^goenka], and it can be difficult for such a practitioner to know how to integrate the luminous aspect -- if, indeed, they ever encounter it.

[^mahasi-cessation]: https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/mahasi/progress.html
> the meditator's consciousness leaps forth into Nibbana, which is the cessation of all formations, taking it as its object.

[^kenneth-cessation]: Meditation teacher [Kenneth Folk](https://kennethfolkdharma.com/), who spent twenty years training in the Mahasi tradition, including three years of intensive silent retreat in monasteries:
https://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/5664311#_19_message_5666324
> It's also important to note that the Mahasi tradition teaches us to systematically develop the ability to access nibbana, aka cessation or fruition. Many people, including myself, have trained in this way, and their reports are remarkably consistent; there is no experience in nibbana. You simply lose consciousness. ... What I am saying is that from the point of view of the person to whom it happens, nibbana and oblivion are indistinguishable, an observation that to me is so blindingly obvious that I'm surprised anyone is willing to dispute it.

[^goenka]: This is the closest I could find. http://www.buddhanet.net/bvk_study/bvk21e.htm

> Goenka: Enlightenment is ... observing oneself and eliminating conditioning. And doing this is Vipassana, no matter what name you may call it. Some people have never even heard of Vipassana, and yet the process has started to work spontaneously in them. This seems to have happened in the case of a number of saintly people in India, judging from their own words.

Note that most "saintly people in India" -- like Sri Ramana Maharshi -- would have come from a background of Yoga or Vedanta, which *do* emphasize the luminous aspect. Nonetheless, it is not discussed in Goenka Vipassana retreats (as far as I am aware).

---

## A case study

AtR recommends approaching practice from the "I AM" direction. The primary pitfall, as described above, is *stopping* there. This can often gum up a practitioner for *decades*. Among other techniques for getting un-stuck, AtR suggests certain vipassana-style practices (see the section *Vipassana, John Tan’s Style* as well as *The Intensity of Luminosity*).

Let's take a look at how things can play out from the other direction.

Daniel Ingram has been a sincere practitioner (and teacher) for decades, primarily practicing *vipassana*. By his account, he was stamped as *done* by a lineage-holder in the Mahasi tradition in Burma some time around 2003, and authorized to teach it. In 2009, he felt confident that the Tibetan Buddhist understanding of the mind's true nature (*rigpa*) did not go beyond his own awakening[^Ingram-rigpa]. Then, in 2011, [he encountered a practice](https://www.integrateddaniel.info/my-experiments-in-actualism/) that would deepen his realization. He describes the result here (emphasis mine):

[^Ingram-rigpa]: https://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/188392#_19_message_188392
> *Kenneth [Folk], who says Rigpa and arahatship are two different phenomena, seems to think that with arahatship, one has the best platform to stabilize Rigpa, whereas I claim that arahatship is Rigpa, stabilized and done without other options.*

*Rigpa* is the Tibetan term for (nondual) knowledge of the mind's true nature. *Arahat-ship* is the end goal of Theravada (which both Kenneth and Daniel by that point claimed to have attained).

> [I]t did do something totally remarkable, and that was create the ability to sit totally at rest, totally at peace, just like that, and I don't mean in some stage or state, not in some jhana, just by the field being nice to itself. That simple thing was well worth the work it took to get it. **It doesn't sound as fancy or as flashy as all the other stuff I have done, but it is more valuable than them all.**

This kind of *total simplicity* lines up well with aspects of how the Tibetan Dzogchen tradition might describe *rigpa*[^rigpa]. He goes on to say:

[^rigpa]: The Tibetan traditions often approach from the "I AM" side. [Here is a classic description](https://www.lotsawahouse.org/tibetan-masters/mipham/mipham-lamp) of the opening of *rigpa*:
> Therefore, when mind experiences this kind of dull state that lacks any thought or mental activity, by allowing your attention to turn naturally and gently towards the one who is aware of this state—the one who is not thinking—you discover the pure awareness of rigpa, free of any movement of thought, beyond any notion of outside or inside, unimpeded and open, like the clear sky.
>
> Although there is no dualistic separation here between an experience and an experienc**er**, still the mind is certain about its own true nature, and there is a sense that, “There is nothing whatsoever beyond this.” When this occurs, because you can not conceptualize it or express it in words, it is acceptable to apply such terms as: “free from all extremes”, “beyond description”, “the fundamental state of clear light” and “the pure awareness of rigpa.”
> ...
> You could also say that the state of mental blankness we looked at earlier is indescribable, but it lacks decisiveness, since you are completely **unable** to describe it in any way. Rigpa, on the other hand, is in essence indescribable, but at the same time it has a decisive quality that cuts through any doubt about what is indescribable. So there is a huge difference between these two kinds of indescribability, like the difference between blindness and perfect vision.

Note the similarities with the "I AM" practice and realization. It would be a mistake, however, to equate the two.

> I was just talking to a heavy Vajrayana [Tibetan Buddhist] practitioner about all of this at Buddhist Geeks, and she made the comment that I had attained to Vajrayana results with Theravadan methods.

AtR describes Daniel's discovery like so:

> As for whether I AM phase can be bypassed, the answer is yes, but one will tend to overlook certain aspects. For example Daniel Ingram’s [book] MCTB does not go through I AM (…) before the fourth path, however, as [John Tan] wrote in 2009, “… I think what lacks in the approach of MCTB is an effective way to allow practitioners to have adequate experience of the vividness, realness and presence of Awareness and the full experience of these qualities in the transience.” … This is also the reason why Daniel needed to go through Actual Freedom practice to bring out the luminosity aspect further even though he had certain insights into anatta in MCTB 4th path.

Daniel describes his current experience in [this fantastic video](https://vimeo.com/250616410):

> [W]hen you try to actually see every single one of [the sensations], at first it seems impossible, right? Because there are so many sensations coming in. Except, then you have to start realizing that the sensation coming in *is* the awareness of itself. You already knew it. When the thought arose, or when the sound arose, or when the physical sensation arose, or when the visual arose, that *was* the knowledge of the sensation.
> ...
> All of [the Buddhist schools] at their best are actually pointing to the immediate, high resolution, full-on, natural vibrancy of our complete, direct, immediate, transient, causal, natural, intrinsically aware experience. And when I say "intriniscally aware," I mean that each of the qualities intrinsically know themselves. I am positing no stable awareness or field of luminous light that is actually some stable, transcendent truth or anything like that... lest anybody be getting the wrong message. I posit a field of transient, totally natural changing experiences in which you will find some fundamental pain if *anything* pretends to be a watcher, a doer, a controller, a stable entity.
> ...
> One can flip over to a totally different way of perceiving reality, in which everything just stands for itself, occurs on its own, knows itself as it is, and you lose that annoying sense that "oh, there's this limited thing [in here] that can't possibly keep up with all of *that*." When instead you flip over to this way of being where all the sensations that made up that seemingly annoying attention center thing, as well as all the rest of the sensations, are simply doing what they do, showing up as they show up, knowing themselves as they know themselves, automatically, that is an *extremely* different way of perceiving reality, and *vastly* better.

To be clear, I am not claiming (nor do I think *Daniel* is claiming) that this constitutes complete enlightenment (i.e., *full Buddhahood*), or anything close to it. For example, realizing the emptiness of time goes *vastly* beyond recognizing impermanence or "transience"[^emanations]. Nevertheless, this is surely an important milestone along the way, and would be a major accomplishment for any practitioner.

[^emanations]: Leave alone Mahayana claims of Buddhas being omniscient, or able to emanate themselves in (or as) countless realms simultaneously. But discussing such matters takes us too far our intended purposes here. As for *emptiness of time* vs impermanence, Nagarjuna had this to say:
> *[In a relative sense] everything is impermanent, but [in the absolute sense] nothing is permanent or impermanent.*

Rob Burbea comments:

> Of course at a certain level teachings about impermanence and the arising and passing of things are enormously important. And as we have seen, these concepts and perceptions can serve to form helpful provisional ways of looking that may eventually lead to more profound insights. But in itself, a view of impermanence is not a view of the ultimate and true nature of things.

---

## Materialism

I would be remiss to not touch on the issue of scientific materialism mentioned earlier. Some modern practitioners tend to favor the Theravada approach precisely because it tends not to emphasize those aspects of awakening that are easily seen to contradict modern scientific materialism. Nonetheless, it would be a *tremendous* mistake to conclude that the result of practice is commensurate with that belief system.

While the I AM realization *does* contain an error -- that of there being a transcendent, permanent *Self* -- it also brings the practitioner face to face with an astonishing truth that will forever change her. In particular, it *completely demolishes* her unwarranted confidence in her metaphysical beliefs (i.e., about space, time, consciousness, etc.). She sees that such beliefs are fundamentally untrustworthy.

It is easy enough to arrive at such a conclusion through rational means, but such means tend to have the drawback of remaining purely *conceptual* and never transforming one's *being* or perception. Having those beliefs viscerally shattered, and encountering *that which experiences (and precedes) beliefs* (and later, *that which constructs one's "reality" **from** those beliefs*), one's world is never the same again.

Without such a realization, one might practice and attain remarkable states and *still* give up, believing that all such states -- and enlightenment too -- might merely be illusions generated by one's (very physical) brain.

---

## Conclusion

The path to enlightenment can be tricky. This is especially true when different traditions emphasize different aspects, and often fail to recognize (or even demean) the insights from others. Hopefully this guide helps practitioners reconcile some of the frustrating differences that appear between them, thus removing needless obstacles.

:pray: