On Luminosity

Preamble
Ajahn Thanissaro is a Buddhist monk and teacher in the Thai forest meditation tradition. In his talk on levels of the breath, he made several insightful remarks that I would like to share here (in paraphrase) together with my comments.

Thanissaro speaks about how we all bring our stories into meditation. Thanissaro says that the Buddha has done that too on his night of awakening - he brings all his narratives of past pleasures, pain and suffering, physical appearance and food (physical and psychological) to his meditation. The Buddha deals with his story in two ways: generalizing and deconstructing. He generalizes by seeing how his story is not unique in its process though its content might be. He sees how all beings go through the same process of pleasure and pain, appearance and food, in much the same way as he did. Doing this reduces his enmeshment in his own suffering. It creates space and lessens suffering. He then brings his attention to the present, seeing how story-making constructs suffering right now. He sees how thoughts and evaluations, feelings, perceptions and intentions, appearances and food act to create a sense of self - the process of 'I'-making, 'my'-making, and 'mine'-making. Seeing thus enables deconstructing of the story. Deconstructing enables letting go of the constructed and constricted self, freeing consciousness from the precipitation of suffering rooted in self.

Seeing clearly the workings of the breath takes us away from fixation on stories to a more stable place for consciousness to dwell - the reality of this moment, the present. Breath itself is a bodily fabrication. Thoughts and evaluations are verbal fabrications. Feelings, perceptions and intentionality are mental fabrications. Fabrications (sankhara) are what are made up, concocted, composed, and constructed in the flow of experience. They are precipitations of consciousness, so to speak. But we can make skillful use of the bodily fabrication of breath to allow the mind to dwell in a more stable place. As we attend more and more to the breath, taking genuine interest in the breath, we can see how breath operates on different levels.

First, there is the coarse movement of in- and out-breath, with all their associated sensations in the body. Second, there is the subtler movement of breath throughout the whole body, through the nerves and vessels and intensified in various nodes of the experienced body. Third, there is the still breath, where coarse and subtle movements cease and yet a still vibrancy remains. We need to give ourselves the permission, time and space to learn more about the breath, to make friends with the breath, to experiment and improvise on the breath. This allows us to come to intimate knowledge of how the way we breathe correlates to how we feel, experience ourselves and the world, and how we create and heighten or de-escalate and cease suffering in our lives.

Gift of Uncreated Luminosity
At the crux of these creative insights is the fact of clear seeing. Clear seeing means there is unobscured observing and realizing, in this case of the truths of our experience. What makes this clear seeing possible? How is it possible for us to know, to be aware of the workings of the breath and experience? Yes, awareness is the essence of our identity as sentient creatures. But apart from awareness, apart from our knowing capacity that is consciousness itself, there is also luminosity. Luminosity is the bare fact of appearance of everything that is experienced or experiencable. Sights, sounds, smells, tastes, sensations, feeling, thoughts, evaluations, intentions - all fabrications - appear as experienced or experiencable data of consciousness. Like awareness that sees and knows its data, luminosity (of the data) makes it possible for these fabrications to appear and be seen and known. Luminosity is indivisible from awareness.

Awareness itself is luminous, but not in the sense of being knowable by something else. Rather, awareness is luminous by virtue of it being self-luminous. Awareness cannot be known as an object of consciousness, but is itself the source of light that emanates and knows. The luminosity of awareness makes all appearances as experiencable data possible. Luminous awareness, while never known, is ever-knowing and ever-present. We do not achieve luminous awareness. We are luminous awareness. This we know by being who we are, not by attaining who we are not.

Resting and abiding in the luminosity of awareness (that is not knowable as an object) is moving beyond place of mind to ground of mind. Like awareness that is never stained by whatever appears within it, luminosity of all that appears is never differentiated into good or bad, pure or impure, and is not born nor does it cease. Luminosity, like awareness, just is. Yet, like awareness, luminosity can never be save for the ever-present Presence - the infinitude of awareness and luminosity beyond human conception, beyond universal creation itself - that first breathes His luminosity and awareness into created humanity. There has never been a time when luminosity and awareness did not exist. For luminosity and awareness cohere in the very Being of God who has no beginning or end. For humanity, eternally abiding luminosity and awareness was given to us as an act of creative grace from the Triune God who gratuitously grants us life by His Spirit.

Broken by the fall of humanity in Adam, we lost access to this knowledge of luminosity and awareness in our being. All this changed with the incarnation of the Son - the Word made flesh - that assumed and redeemed our fallen humanity and His passion on the cross that removed all judicial barriers to full participation in the Triune dance of love inseparable from luminosity and awareness. In and through Christ who is truly God and truly Man, we are now brought into the eternal vibrancy of luminosity and awareness shared by Father, Son and Spirit in timeless love. In and through Christ, we can now rest in our ever-present luminous awareness - our spirit - cradled by and ensconced in the ever-present Triune Presence of luminosity and awareness who is love. This is wonderful news indeed. The gift of uncreated luminous awareness, restored to an unprecedented quality of being. In and only in, through and only through, Christ.