by James M. Corrigan
The allegory of a mirror is often used to help individuals understand
what awareness truly is like. It is said that, like a mirror, awareness
reflects all manner of things and yet is never affected by what
appears.
Unfortunately, there is a grave problem with this allegory that
instills a very false understanding of awareness in those that take this
allegory to heart. A mirror reflects what is before it, but it also
reverses that image. Perhaps we should focus more on the reversal aspect
than we do on the reflectivity in that allegory because describing
awareness as being like a mirror conveys a completely opposite
understanding of awareness from what is necessarily true.
Awareness is not reflective. That would imply a dualism. Instead of
its reflectivity, it is its “unaffectedness” that is being focused on in
this allegory; but that is contrary to our actual experience and leads
to a proliferation of reified “minds” used as explanatory devices to get
around the initial error of holding that awareness is unaffected by
what appears “in the mirror.” This whole concept of “mind” is a
fundamental error.
Awareness is essentially cognizance, not reflectivity. “Essentially”
means that this cognizance is the characteristic of awareness that makes
it awareness.
Unlike awareness, a mirror is not cognizant of what is appearing in
it. The opposite of “cognizant” would be “ignorant,” “oblivious,” and
even “unaffected by” and that latter antonym is exactly what this
allegory wants to convey, and is touted for conveying—thus this allegory
illustrates the very opposite of awareness’s essential character and
confuses all that hear it and try to make sense of what is being said!
Awareness is affected by what it cognizes; unlike a mirror that is
“unaffected by” its reflections because it is not cognizant of them,
awareness is cognizance in essence.
We are told that awareness is unaffected by what appears in it in a
misleading effort to convey an important point about what is more
properly called “pure presence” and this leads me to the first proof
that awareness is affected by what appears:
Pure presence is directly known once cognizance of the now—the now of
pure presence—is recognized. This is called “Breakthrough” and the
knowledge it brings is called Rigpa. In Dzogchen—the highest teaching in
Buddhism—it is pointed out that once we become aware of the now as
nothing other than pure presence we are liberated. What is liberated?
The cognizant aspect of our nature—awareness—is liberated from
absorption in the appearances. Which appearances? Primarily the self we
have an emotional (egoic) attachment to (our thoughts, feelings,
emotions, sensations, perceptions).
This shows that awareness is affected by what appears. How is
awareness affected? Three ways: by remaining attentive in approval; by
turning away in disapproval; and not paying attention either way when
neither approval or disapproval arises. These three affective responses
guide what can appear next as the natural display.
The second proof that it is affected is more subtle, relying on a clarification of exactly how awareness arises.
Awareness is not something other than the “presencing” (i.e.
naturing) of appearances. It is not a thing. It is not part of a thing.
It is not an “aspect” of a process.
Fortunately, the very word itself, with its “-ness” suffix, signals
that it is a conceptual abstraction of some characteristic of something,
and that is completely wrong in structure—a dead-giveaway that
confusion reigns. First, there is no entity to have an aspect, and
second, because abstracting awareness away, making it a thing-in-itself
(which is the linguistic meaning of “-ness”) completely obfuscates that
it is not only the essential character of a process, it is the only
character of the process, thus it is the process—not some aspect of it.
This is why when awareness is said to be the “ground” of all that arises
a subtle erroneous understanding arises because it is confusing
“knowing” for the unknowable.
Effectively, abstracting awareness removes the natural process (from
itself), confusing us into thinking that something substantive has been
uncovered.
In regard to pure presence, awareness is the wakeful activity of
presencing, which is pointed out to us—our first pointing out
instruction—as the “knowing” of appearances. This very subtle dualism
starts the confusion, which snowballs as we go forward.
Pure presence is not something to be known in a positive sense, and
is only recognized via this naturing or presencing of appearances
now—the evidence of the reality of presence. Why? Because the essence of
pure presence is emptiness—which does not entail awareness in the sense
that is meant when used in conjunction with the appearances—what after
all would there be cognizance of? Thus the “purity” that is pointed to
is the “unknowable” ground state, since nothing positive can be said (or
known) about it. But which we may suddenly recognize is the now of all
appearances. Appearances are ephemeral and are void of any entity;
however, they are evidential—evidence that we can recognize when we
suddenly notice the “clearing” of the now (of pure presence) that is the
venue of appearing.
“Now” is never affected by what appears. Awareness is always affected
by what is appearing because this is the very essence of cognizance,
and thus the very essence of the process of naturing (or more literally,
awareness is the cognizing of appearances now, limiting and guiding the
possibility of what can arise “next,” and this is the sum total of the
process).
To conflate awareness with pure presence is a mental crutch,
conflating ideas with the unknowable. Expressing “facts” about that to
which no facts apply. When recognized, the now is known to be pure
presence. But pure presence is not a thing—there is no nature entity—so
what could be stained by what appears as cognized?
Thus, the problem is that in making awareness some thing, subtly
separating it from the naturing of all appearances, we find the need to
prove that it is unaffected by what it cognizes. Yet we know that the
essence of this naturing is cognizance; cognizance is not the “nature of
the naturing of appearances.” Such a construction is mentation gone
wild.
In reality there is no entity; nor are there any entities in the
appearances that arise, and these—appearances and reality—are not two
things, so why do we make awareness into something that must be kept
clean? Perhaps it is only a lack of direct recognition that creates the
confusion.
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