Mingyur Rinpoche elaborated on this, emphasizing that the teaching in both is not to reify the awareness as self nor to perceive objects as having independent, substantial existence. Khyentse Rinpoche makes the same point: “Those who cling to the lucid or to the void aspect of the mind are caught in dualistic attachment to subject and object.”

In any instruction to rest in awareness, we need to understand that awareness implies recognizing its empty nature as well as its lucid aspect—and not getting attached to emptiness is equally important. Nagarjuna, one of the greatest of the Indian adepts, warns that even the view of emptiness can become a trap when grasped as a view. He writes, “It is sad to see those who mistakenly believe in material, concrete reality, but far more pitiful are those who are attached to emptiness.”

The question then arises: How do we cut through this subtle identification with the knowing capacity of mind, with awareness itself? At one point in my practice, a simple linguistic shift became a pathway for cutting through this identification. By changing how we language our experience (even silently to ourselves) from the active voice to the passive voice, we can settle effortlessly into a receptive, selfless mode.

For example, we usually think of what we’re doing in the active voice: “I’m moving, I’m thinking, I’m hearing.” In the passive voice, this might become: “Movement being known, thought being known, sounds being known.” This shift is striking because the “I” is no longer the subject of the action. Instead, things simply arise and are known effortlessly without a sense of self. As the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein noted, much philosophy is “a shadow cast by grammar”; our language habits easily conjure a “self” behind experience.

The Buddha gave a succinct and powerful teaching on this in his discourse, The All. In this sutta, he described the totality of our experience in just six concise phrases: “the eye and visible objects, the ear and sounds, the nose and odors, the tongue and tastes, the body and tactile objects, the mind and mental phenomena.” By being mindful of these six categories as being known, we gain glimpses—and sometimes sustained experiences—of selflessness, of empty phenomena rolling on.

To deepen this experience of selflessness, we can then ask the simple yet profound question: Known by what? In meditation, as different sounds arise, I may ask myself, Can I find what’s knowing this sound? The sound is being known—but by what? There’s nothing to find. And yet, as the Tibetan Dzogchen master Tulku Urgyen remarked, in searching for awareness, “the not finding is the finding.” This inquiry helps dissolve the subtle identification with the knowing itself, which, when unnoticed, perpetuates the felt sense of a knower.

Even after these transformative insights arise, the path continues. The 12th-century Korean Zen Master Chinul expressed this in his teachings on sudden awakening and gradual cultivation:

Although we have awakened to original nature, beginningless habit energies are extremely difficult to remove suddenly. Hindrances are formidable and habits are deeply ingrained. So how could you neglect gradual cultivation simply because of one moment of awakening? After awakening, you must constantly be on your guard. If deluded thoughts suddenly appear, do not follow after them. Then and only then will your practice reach completion.

Chinul’s follow-up reminder is equally vital:

Although you must cultivate further, you have already awakened suddenly to the fact that deluded thoughts are originally void and the mind’s nature is originally pure.
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Words of the Buddha channel:

https://t.me/wordsofbuddha
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