The Practitioner’s Letter and Realization (The Inquiry Context)

A practitioner recently contacted me and shared his reflections after reading the Chinese version of Thusness’s Seven Stages of Enlightenment. He said that his own experience differed from what the article describes: from as far back as he could remember in childhood, he felt that his understanding was already at the fifth stage described in the article; after reading the Diamond Sutra, he further considered himself to have stepped into the seventh stage.

He described his realization as: “All dharmas are not self, yet behind them there is an ontological True Self.” He emphasized that this “ontological True Self” was not a conceptual entity constructed by thought. He claimed that he had broken through the opposition of subject and object, reaching a state of “there is no ‘I’ who realizes, and no ‘object’ realized; already entered into Oneness.” He even felt that if even the slightest thought of “there being a subject and an object” arose, this would be equivalent to descending to the level of an Arhat, that is, the dualistic view that “I have suffering to be extinguished by me, and I am able to extinguish suffering.” At the same time, he also frankly admitted the most difficult issue in his present practice: the extremely subtle “ego-grasping of the seventh consciousness” in the subconscious, which arises if he is even slightly careless, and which must be continuously refined and uprooted in daily life.

However, through his description, I found that he had seriously misjudged his stage. I pointed out to him that the view he was clinging to—“all dharmas are not self, yet behind them there is an ontological True Self”—is actually only the first-stage realization of “I AM” (True Self), and absolutely not the No-Self of the fifth stage. He was conflating the experience of “egolessness / impersonality / absence of the small self” with the ultimate Buddhist “Dharma Seal of No-Self” (Anatta). Because he still retained the dualistic view of taking “awareness” to be an unchanging subject behind experience, I gave the following detailed reply. This reply aims to clarify the essential difference between a state of “forgetting oneself” (using my past conversation with another practitioner, Mr. N, as an example) and the “Dharma Seal of Anatta,” to point out his present dissociative state of separating awareness from thoughts, and to guide him beyond the misunderstanding of the “eternal witness” toward the true Dharma Seal of Anatta.

My Reply (The Response)

I think you have confused the realization of the “Dharma Seal of No-Self” (Anatta) with “egolessness / impersonality / absence of the small self.” Even in the realization of Thusness’s Stage One, “I AM,” there are experiences and practices of “egolessness” and “impersonality.” But this is not the realization of the Dharma Seal of No-Self.

Just as I told a Dharma teacher a few years ago: “When I was in the ‘I AM’ (True Self), I also spoke of observing without an observer. That was ‘no small self’ observing, but there was still the awareness-substance of the ‘Great Self / Universal Noumenon’ observing. Only later did I realize that this was not ultimate either. So I think Mr. N mistook ‘observing without an observer’ as ‘no small self observing, while there is still the awareness-substance of the Great Self / Universal Noumenon observing.’”

In true Anatta, awareness is like wind and blowing. “Knowing” and “the known” are also just different names; only the dynamic display of everything is knowing, and there is no knower—dynamic process rolls and knows without knower.

Mr. N still seems unclear about the difference between the “Dharma Seal of Anatta” and “egolessness / impersonality.”

I sent this to him a few weeks ago:

“From where should one practice? Practice from daily life.”
I feel that one must practice both in activity and in stillness. It is very good, and very important, that you have the regular habit of sitting meditation.
“During that period, I was truly so busy for the students that I forgot myself.”

This is very good: in action, forgetting yourself, leaving only action, with no “I” acting. But there is one more point. Many years ago, I also wrote a passage about the difference between “self-forgetfulness” and the “Dharma Seal of Anatta.” The Dharma Seal of Anatta is the truth of how things are by nature; once realized, there is no entering or exiting:

“…There is no ‘awareness’ that can be established apart from the seen, heard, felt, touched, cognized, or smelled. ‘Awareness’ is the presentation of all this luminosity.”

Anatta is not merely a kind of experience in which the personality or small self is released. Rather, there is an insight into the complete absence of a self or agent, a doer, a thinker, a watcher, and so on; none of these can be found apart from the moment-to-moment flow of manifestation. Non-duality is thoroughly seen to have always already been the case: in non-duality, everything is effortless, and one realizes that in seeing there is always only scenery—there is no observer, nor even a “seeing itself” apart from colors; in hearing, there is always only sound—there is never a hearer, nor even a “hearing itself” apart from sound.

A very important point here is that Anatta / naturelessness is a Dharma Seal. It is the nature of reality that has always been so; it is not merely a state of being free from personality, ego, or “small self,” nor is it a stage or realm to be reached. This means that it does not depend on the practitioner’s attainment or level in order to “experience” Anatta; rather, one “realizes” that it has always been Anatta, inherently No-Self. The most important thing is to recognize it as the fact of the Dharma Seal, the nature of all phenomena.

To further illustrate the importance of this Dharma Seal, I would like to borrow a line from the Bāhiya Sutta:

“In the seen, there is only the seen, no seer”; “In the heard, there is only the heard, no hearer”...

If a practitioner feels that he has gone beyond the experience of “I hear the sound” and arrived at the stage of “becoming the sound,” or if he thinks that “there is only pure sound,” then that experience has again become distorted. In actuality, at the moment of hearing, there is only sound; there never was a hearer. Nothing has been obtained, because it—the Dharma Seal of Anatta—has always been this way, originally this way. From then on, there is no entering or exiting. It is not a state of “self-forgetfulness” that one enters and exits. This is the Dharma Seal of Anatta, which can be realized and lived at all times; it is not merely a simple concept.

Teacher Li Zhu also told me last year: “Thank you for sharing. It has always inherently been this way. Thus it is said: observing without an observer, practicing without a practitioner, awareness without an object of awareness. Uncultivated and naturally accomplished, inherently complete, naturally so. There is no need to practice it.”

Intrinsic nature has always been so. To realize Anatta means there is no entering or exiting; from this perspective, we can say there is “no practice.” But realizing Anatta does not mean that there is no longer any need to practice. Rather, practice becomes integrated with Buddha-nature and with the manifestation of every moment. This very exhalation, this very inhalation—absolutely everything—is the luminous manifestation of Buddha-nature. Just as Zen Master Dōgen said, practice is not non-existent; practice and realization are one. Although there is no entering or exiting, and activity and stillness are one, this does not mean that sitting meditation is no longer important. One still needs to sit. But when sitting, there is no desire to modify anything or attain some state. Instead, this very present moment is the perfect Buddha-nature itself manifesting here. It is not “me” meditating; there is no “me” meditating. Rather, meditation is meditating, the whole universe is meditating. Walking, standing, sitting, and lying down are all like this.

In this way, one must accord with intrinsic nature in every moment. It is not a matter of reaching a perfect state from an imperfect state. Rather, whatever presents itself, the present moment is originally empty and luminous; the present moment is entirely perfect, bright, and clear. It is originally the natural state and requires no fabrication. Even maintaining an “awareness existing behind experience and remaining unaffected” is still fabrication; it is still karma. Ultimately, one must see through the illusory facade of “taking awareness to be a background subject.” “Awareness” was never a subject behind experience watching everything; rather, every clear presentation—form, sound, smell, taste, touch, mental phenomena, including each and every thought—is your luminosity itself. There is no “you” behind it. This intrinsic Anatta is the key to liberation.

Those who know this only theoretically, and some who hold nihilistic wrong views, have asked me: “Oh, if you say this, then aren’t greed, hatred, and delusion also Buddha-nature? If thoughts are also Buddha-nature, then since there is originally no defilement, why is there any need to purify the mind? Since everything is originally Buddha-nature, why practice?” It is true that thoughts are Buddha-nature, but they do not know that at the very moment of truly actualizing and verifying intrinsic nature, attachments and habitual defilements fall away without fabrication. Therefore, purifying the mind is important. There is not a single Buddha, or even an Arhat, who still has any greed, hatred, or delusion. No one can become a Buddha while still immersed in afflictive emotions. So what you said about the need to sever habitual tendencies is correct.

It is just that there are many methods for purifying the mind. Some have their function but are not ultimate. For example, as you know, “placing a stone on grass” refers to methods of suppressing thoughts; these are only temporary. No matter how deep one’s samādhi is, even if one enters the formless absorptions such as the sphere of neither perception nor non-perception, once one comes out of samādhi the afflictions will return, because one has not transcended root ignorance. This is not ultimate. Or, if one maintains an awareness in the background observing thoughts while remaining unaffected—although this too is a method, it is still effortful and dualistic. It still cannot bring true liberation because self-view and the reified characteristics of dharmas have not yet been broken through. Yet this is also a process that practice must pass through, because apart from people of extremely high capacity, almost no one can transcend the subject-object duality from the very beginning.

Although at first, maintaining awareness still places one in a dualistic state of subject and object—the observer and the observed—and even after realizing the “awareness-substance” or Witness, awareness still seems like a mirror behind experience, unaffected by reflections, and there is still duality; with right view, or with the guidance of a spiritual friend (kalyāṇa-mitra), one will eventually transcend this duality—sometimes quickly, perhaps even in less than a year. Without right view, it is easy to remain stuck in the dualistic state of “the mirror reflecting its reflections,” unable to transcend it, unable to realize that “there is no mirror behind,” or that “the reflection itself is the mirror; apart from the reflection, there is no mirror to speak of.” If one remains only in this duality of “mirror and reflection,” practice will be in a dissociative process: treating “awareness” and “thoughts” as two separate things, separating awareness from thoughts, maintaining awareness so it is unaffected by thoughts—although without rejecting thoughts, merely “watching” them, but still keeping a distance between awareness and thoughts, resting unmoving in the background awareness as a subject.

True realization of the Anatta of intrinsic nature—the non-duality of agent and action, subject and object—is not like this. Thoughts are Buddha-nature; how could awareness and thoughts be separated? Thoughts are the very treasury of luminosity itself; they are your luminosity. This is why the sūtras say that the five aggregates, the six sense bases, the twelve āyatanas, and the eighteen dhātus are originally the tathāgatagarbha, the wondrous nature of True Suchness. With this realization, in practice there is no need to separate “awareness” and “thoughts,” nor is it possible to do so. You cannot separate them. Nor is it a matter of transforming thoughts into empty luminosity, because nature and characteristics are originally one suchness. It is not that you make them one, or turn them into empty luminosity. Rather, they are originally one suchness, originally empty and luminous. The nature of all thoughts and emotions is originally empty and luminous. It is not that empty luminosity is behind the thought; the thought itself is empty luminosity. Therefore, the method of turning from an ordinary being into a sage is to recognize the nature of this very thought. Just as darkness cannot remain when the sun rises, all afflictive emotions cannot continue when the nature of mind is recognized. Everything naturally dissolves without fabrication, leaving no trace.

However, from his explanation just now, it can be seen that he still does not understand the Dharma Seal of Anatta. He still mistakenly thinks that the Dharma Seal of Anatta refers to egolessness, impersonality, no small self, and so on. He still cannot thoroughly break through subjectivity, or the act of taking awareness to be a subject, subject-object duality, doer-and-done, and so forth. I have found that when a practitioner says “Anatta” or “No-Self,” 99% of the time they are talking about egolessness / impersonality—the absence of the small self and so on—or a non-dual experience, such as a peak experience from One Mind to No Mind. This kind of “No-Self” is also taught in non-Buddhist paths, but very rarely are they speaking of the realization of the Dharma Seal of Anatta taught by the Buddha.

I feel that right view regarding the Dharma Seal of Anatta is extremely important, followed by understanding and realizing dependent origination and emptiness. If one does not understand Anatta and only emphasizes maintaining awareness, very often the practitioner will realize the numinous awareness aspect and take it to be fundamental Buddha-nature. In fact, that is only one aspect of Buddha-nature; one has not yet realized emptiness, naturelessness. Many people remain stuck at the stage of the “I AM” or True Self, becoming an eternal witness, just like Mr. N is now. At this stage, one can also gradually experience “egolessness, impersonality, no small self,” but this is still not what I call “realizing the Dharma Seal of Anatta.” I have noticed that 99% of the people who think they are enlightened—this 99% refers to those who have had “some realization”; of course, most practitioners have not even realized the “I AM”—are mostly referring to the “I AM.” A minority are speaking of “One Mind,” and even fewer, very, very few, truly experience and realize the Dharma Seal of Anatta and dependent origination / emptiness. Therefore, most of those who speak of enlightenment are actually still remaining in non-Buddhist views and have not yet realized the Buddha’s right view. Because this is the crucial key to liberation and cannot be lacking, I feel it must be emphasized. Otherwise, after practicing to a certain stage, one will remain stuck at the “I AM” or “One Mind”; this is difficult to avoid.

Although maintaining awareness is very important in practice, it must be guided by right view. Therefore, right view—Anatta, dependent origination, and emptiness—should be emphasized. As I said to Mr. N above: “Although at first, maintaining awareness still places one in a dualistic state of subject and object—the observer and the observed—and even after realizing the ‘awareness-substance,’ awareness still seems like a mirror behind experience, unaffected by reflections, and there is still duality; with right view, or with the guidance of a spiritual friend, one will eventually transcend this duality—sometimes quickly, perhaps even in less than a year. Without right view, it is easy to remain stuck in the dualistic state of ‘the mirror reflecting its reflections,’ unable to transcend it, unable to realize that ‘there is no mirror behind,’ or that ‘the reflection itself is the mirror; apart from the reflection, there is no mirror to speak of.’ If one remains only in this duality of ‘mirror and reflection,’ practice will be in a dissociative process: treating ‘awareness’ and ‘thoughts’ as two separate things, separating awareness from thoughts, maintaining awareness so it is unaffected by thoughts—although without rejecting thoughts, merely ‘watching’ them, but still keeping a distance between awareness and thoughts, resting unmoving in the background awareness as a subject.”

If one realizes the “awareness-substance” but has the guidance of a spiritual friend and right view, one should soon be able to break through subject-object and duality, realizing inherent Anatta. Without right view, like those non-Buddhist practitioners who have realization experiences at a very young age—such as Ramana Maharshi, who realized the “I AM” at 16—they can live their whole lives into old age and very likely never break through the “I AM” or “One Mind.” In my case, I realized the “I AM,” then six or seven months later entered non-duality, One Mind, and two months after that contemplated the Bāhiya Sutta and realized Anatta. So from “I AM” to Anatta was only eight months. This was because I had already encountered right view and the guidance of a spiritual friend. In fact, I have a spiritual friend whom I have known for many years, John Tan. He himself realized the “I AM” at 17, but probably remained at this stage for 13-plus years. Although he met many Buddhist and non-Buddhist teachers, none of them was a spiritual friend who had truly realized Anatta and dependent origination / emptiness to guide him—most of those Buddhist and non-Buddhist teachers had at most, and in most cases only, realized the “I AM.” Then one day, he contemplated a Buddhist verse:

There is thinking, no thinker
There is hearing, no hearer
Suffering exists, no sufferer
There is doing, no doer

He suddenly had a great awakening. Actually, pointing out inherent Anatta—the Dharma Seal of Anatta—is not necessarily a very difficult matter. Just as John Tan realized it from this short verse, I myself also realized inherent Anatta by contemplating just a short section of the Bāhiya Sutta: “The Buddha said: ‘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. Thus you will see that there is indeed no thing here; Bāhiya, you should train yourself in this way. Bāhiya, you should be guided by this: 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. Thus you will see that there is indeed no thing here; thus, there is indeed nothing. When there is nothing, you will see that you are not here, not there, nor in between the two. This is the cessation of suffering.’”

Related Articles:

https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/2025/06/blog-post_21.html

No nouns are necessary to initiate verbs

Soh

Original English Article: No nouns are necessary to initiate verbs

Traditional Chinese Version

Please refer to: On Anatta (No-Self), Emptiness, Maha and Ordinariness, and Spontaneous Perfection

No nouns are necessary to initiate verbs

Update: One year after this conversation, Fishskull3 broke through the view of “One Mind” and realized Anatta! See: “There is no single unifying awareness, only the luminosity of manifestations.”

Fishskull3:

Everything is not created by awareness; it fundamentally is awareness itself. In your direct experience, there is no one inside looking out at something. What you presently take to be “the seen” is precisely the continuous activity of “the seer,” or awareness.

Soh/xabir:

I love your answer. In addition, I would like to add that awareness is nothing other than that continuous activity. It is not that awareness, as an unchanging entity, transforms into all things. “Awareness” is like the word “weather”: it is merely a nominal designation pointing to the ongoing dynamic activities of raining, soaking, shining, blowing, striking, and so on. “Awareness” has no inherent existence whatsoever apart from its moment-to-moment manifestations. Even in that instant when it is simply a pure, formless sense of “existence,” that too is just another “foreground” non-dual manifestation, not an unchanging background.

Just as there is no lightning apart from the flash—the lightning is the flash; “lightning” is only another name for the flash, not an agent behind the flash—no wind apart from blowing, and no water apart from flowing, no noun or agent is necessary in order to initiate a verb. Apart from colors, there has never been an agent, a seer, or even “seeing.” Apart from sounds, there has never been an agent, a hearer, or even “hearing.” All things simply shine luminously and clearly without a knower: sound is hearing, scenery is seeing. Anatta.

The following is excerpted from Thich Nhat Hanh, the second most famous Buddhist master of our time—second only to the Dalai Lama:

Excerpted from https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/2008/10/sun-of-awareness-and-river-of.html. Other quotes from the book that Thusness/PasserBy liked:

When we say, “I know the wind is blowing,” we do not think that there is something blowing something else. “Wind” and “blowing” go together. If there is no blowing, there is no wind. Knowing is the same. Mind is the knower; the knower is mind. We are speaking of the “knowing” in relation to the wind. “Knowing” is knowing something. Knowing and the wind cannot be separated. The wind and knowing are one. We can say “wind,” and that is enough. The presence of wind means the presence of “knowing,” and it also means the presence of the action of “blowing.” ... The most universal verb is “to be”: I am, you are, the mountain is, the river is. The verb “to be” cannot express the dynamic living state of the universe. To express that state, we must say “to become.” These two verbs can also be used as nouns: “Being,” “Becoming.” But being what? Becoming what? “Becoming” implies “continuous evolution,” and it is as universal as the verb “to be.” We cannot separate the “being” of a phenomenon from its “becoming” and express them as if they were independent of each other. In the case of wind, blowing is both its being and its becoming... In any phenomenon, whether mental, physiological, or physical, there is dynamic movement, which is life. We can say that this movement, this life, is the universal manifestation and the most universally recognized form of the act of “knowing.” We absolutely must not view “knowing” as something coming from outside that injects life into the universe. It is the life of the universe itself. The dance and the dancer are one.

Thusness/PasserBy’s comment: “...As a verb, as an action, there are no concepts, only experience. Non-dual Anatta is experiencing subject/object as a verb, as an action. No mind, only mental activity... The source is the arising and passing away of phenomena... and how to understand non-dual manifestation from the perspective of dependent origination.” .............

Thich Nhat Hanh:

When we say “it rains,” what we mean is that the event of “raining” is happening. You do not need someone high above to perform the act of raining. It is not that there is “rain” and also a “someone” who causes the rain to fall. In fact, when you say “the rain is falling,” this is very interesting, because if it does not fall, it is not rain. In our way of speaking, we are accustomed to needing a subject and a verb. So when we say “it rains” in English, we need the word “it.” “It” is the subject, the “who” that makes raining possible. But looking deeply, we do not need a “rainer”; we only need the rain. Raining and the rain are the same thing. The formation of a bird and the bird are the same thing—there is no “self” in it, no ruler. There is a mental formation called vitarka, “initial application,” or “initial thought.”

When we use the verb “to think” in English, we need a subject for the verb: I think, you think, he thinks. But in reality, the arising of a thought does not need a subject. Thinking without a thinker—this is entirely possible. Thinking is thinking of something. Perceiving is perceiving something. The perceiver and the perceived object are one.

When Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am,” he meant that if I think, then there must necessarily be an “I” existing for thinking to be possible. When he made the declaration “I think,” he believed he could prove that the “I” exists. We have a strong habit of believing in a “self.” But by observing very deeply, we can see that a thought does not need a thinker in order to exist. There is no thinker behind thinking—there is only thinking; that is enough. Now, if Mr. Descartes were here, perhaps we could ask him: “Mr. Descartes, you say that you think, therefore you are. But what are you? You are your thinking. Thinking—that is enough. The manifestation of thinking does not require a self behind it.”

Thinking without a thinker. Feeling without a feeler. Without our “self,” what is our anger? This is the object of our meditation. All fifty-one mental formations are happening and manifesting, and there is no “self” behind them arranging for this one to appear and that one to appear. Our consciousness is habituated to establishing itself on the concept of “self,” on manas-vijñāna, the seventh consciousness.

But through meditation, we can observe our storehouse consciousness more clearly. All the seeds of mental formations that are not presently manifesting in our mind are stored there. When we meditate, we practice looking deeply in order to bring light and clarity to the way we see things. When the insight of Anatta (No-Self) is realized, our delusion is removed. This is what we call transformation. In the Buddhist tradition, transformation can be achieved through deep understanding. Once the insight of Anatta arises, manas, the illusion of “I am,” collapses, and we find ourselves in the present moment, enjoying freedom and happiness.