The Mind Illuminated (Culadasa)
The Mind Un-Illuminated
[My 3-star Amazon review of “The Mind Illuminated: A Complete Meditation Guide Integrating Buddhist Wisdom and Brain Science for Greater Mindfulness” by Culadasa (John Yates).]
There is, on the surface, a lot to like about this book: The quality of writing is excellent, the illustrations are cool, and the author, Culadasa (Professor John Yates), presents a systematic ten-stage path to mind illumination and a Yogacara-based mind-system that will impress neophytes and the non-Illuminati. But the true spiritual cognoscenti, those who have “cracked the cosmic code” and are experts in all the major esoteric mystical traditions, will dismiss Culadasa’s meditation teachings as substandard, and his mind-system as deeply flawed.
Although the thematic structure of this book is copacetic – a ten-stage presentation of the path, with periodic “Interlude” chapters – those who have read B. Alan Wallace’s “The Attention Revolution” (see my two-star review) will see that Culadasa has copied Wallace’s lay-out. But whereas Wallace focuses exclusively on 7th-century Indian Buddhist monk Kamalasila’s ten-stage “samatha” (attention-based) paradigm, Culadasa elaborates, in impressive (though awry) detail, a samatha- vipassana (attention + insight-based) path that, in his words, is a “fusion of teachings from different Buddhist teachings.” While I respect Culadasa’s “system-building” endeavor, I hardly embrace his Dharma concoction.
A “problem” I encountered with this text is Culadasa’s teaching of no-Self. The Buddha himself did not explicitly state whether there is a transcendental Self. But his teaching of Anatta implies that there is, for it rejects the five aggregates as not-Self, which leaves the Self, or Buddha-nature (which is pure Awareness, or Consciousness), as one’s true Nature, or Identity. In other words, a Buddha is one who is Awareness itself. If he were not this Awareness, he could not remain, permanently, unbrokenly Awake, or Aware.
According to Culadasa, when one asks, “Who is conscious?” the answer is the “collective of minds that constitute the mind-system.” This is the wrong answer, because the spiritual illuminati (including innumerable great Buddhist masters) know that it is Consciousness, or Mind, Itself that is conscious of all phenomena it encounters, not a bunch of mini-minds in one’s head. Culadasa’s collectivist mind-system represents a perverted, exoteric interpretation of the Yogacara school of Buddhism, wherefrom he derives it. The highest Yogacara teaching, exemplified in in the Lankavata Sutra, emphasizes that the unborn, transcendental Self-Mind is the Reality behind and beyond all cognized objects. (More on this later in the review.)
Culadasa’s POV regarding the transcendental Self is in diametrical opposition to India’s greatest 20th-century spiritual master, the iconic Ramana Maharshi. According to Maharshi, when a yogi, via the practice of Self-enquiry, seeks the answer to who or what watches and experiences, the Answer is the Self, or Consciousness Itself. But Culadasa, clearly not a Self-realized Master, writes:
“Mistaking the witness state for a True Self is what leads some people to claim that Consciousness is the True Self. To properly use the Witness experience, probe more deeply. Go to the Still Point, the place of the Witness, with a question: ‘Who or what is this Witness?’ Who is watching? Who is experiencing? Adamantly refuse to entertain any answers offered by your intellectual, thinking mind. Also, don’t be deceived by your emotional mind, which will try to make you believe you’ve the answer when you haven’t. Just hold on to the question as you experience the Witness. If and when Insight arises, it will be a profound Insight into the truth of no-Self, and it will be so obvious you’ll wonder why you never realized it before.”
This paragraph by Culadasa displays his ignorance. Innumerable yogis have realized the Self by seeking the Who that experiences and watches. But the ordinary person, who lacks the ability to draw down Shakti (the Sambhogakaya, or Stream) into the Spiritual Heart-center (the Hridayam or Tathagatagarbha), located (or felt-experienced) two digits to the right of the center of one’s chest), cannot have a true Self experience. This is the case because the Self is Siva-Shakti (or Dharmakaya-Sambhogakaya). So until the Shakti, at least temporarily, converges with one’s individual consciousness (immanent siva), in the Spiritual Heart-center, the luminous Self cannot be experienced.
Because this is just a review and not a book (though I could easily write one deconstructing Culadasa’s defective Dharma), I can only touch upon a few of the myriad problems I have with this text. One of the major problems is the absurd primacy of consciousness over existence epistemology that he embraces. According to Culadasa, “All objects of consciousness are constructs of the mind. All we’ve ever known is what the mind itself has produced.”
The computer in front of you is not a mental construct. If you fell over dead, it would still be there and still function as a computer for others. You can form all kinds of mental constructs, or ideas, about the computer, but the computer is an object that exists independent of your consciousness. The mind doesn’t “produce” an object; it identifies it. Independent scientific tests validate the existence of objects that the mind identifies. Your body is not a mental construct; it is a physical “construct” that really exists apart from your mind. If a tree falls in the forest, and no one hears it, it still makes a sound, which scientific instruments can record.
Culadasa’s mind-system derives from Yogacara Buddhism and reflects the exoteric (or lower) school of Yogacara called Vijnaptimatra, which views the universe (and objects within it) as a projection of one’s mind. The esoteric (or higher) school of Yogacara, Cittamatra, by contrast, views the universe and all objects as a manifestation of absolute, universal Mind, or Consciousness. If you read “Principal Yogacara Texts” (see my 4-star review), an anthology of Dharma writings by great spiritual masters, you will see that these masters, in concert, espouse the Cittamatra viewpoint. Likewise, if you read “The Zen Teaching of Huang Po” (see my five-star review), generally regarded as the foremost Zen text, you will see that the great Huang Po also emphasizes that there is single Mind, or Being, or “Zen Master,” from whence all existents derive, and of which they are stepped-down modifications or permutations. But Culadasa, a Dharma atomist, reduces the One Mind, the Dharmakaya, into a committee of unconscious sub-minds that derive from a universal Ocean of Unconsciousness. To my mind, this is nothing short of a quasi-Jungian perversion of Yogacara.
Culadasa’s mind-system may impress the non-cognoscenti, but not the cognoscenti, who will view it as a faulty and circumscribed model of empirical/metempirical consciousness (which is not to say it doesn’t offer some provocative insights). Because there isn’t space for proper elaboration in this already lengthy review, I’ll save that for the comments. Here I’ll just say that Culadasi fails to grok and properly distinguish the levels and functions of consciousness(es) involved in cognition, volition, affection, and Awakening.
Culadasa concludes his chapter The Mind System with a verse from The “Lankavatara Sutra,” which he says, “captures the essence of the mind-system.” I say his translation of this verse is a perverted one that does not reflect Prof. D.T. Suzuki’s version in his “Lankavatara Sutra” (see my four-star review). Suzuki’s translation is easily the most respected English one, and unlike Culadasa, he does not equate the eighth (and senior) consciousness of Culadasa’s mind-system, the Alayavijnana (universal Mind, or Consciousness), with the unconsciousness mind. In short, Culadasa does not grok the “Lankavatara Sutra,” and his mind-system does not reflect the Cittamatra Dharma it espouses.
The “Lankavatara Sutra” is about becoming a tathagata (one who permanently, timelessly dwells in, and as, Suchness, or Beingness), which transpires via Dharmamegha Samadhi, the descent of the Dharma Cloud, or Sambhogakaya, into the spiritual Heart-center, a.k.a. the Tathagatagarbha or “Womb of Buddhahood.” The Tathagatagarbha is the locus of the Alayavijnana, which when contracted by the seven other consciousnesses, functions as the “storehouse consciousness” for one’s subliminal “seed” impressions (samskaras), which when activated, concatenate into habit-energies (vasanas), which “crystallize” as thought-formations in the brain.
Unfortunately, like other Buddhist neuroscience experts, Culadasa doesn’t broach the subject of the Heart-center/brain connection. The Heart (or Buddha)-Mind, the uncontracted Alayavijnana, radiates through a point in the heart located two digits to the right of the center of one’s chest. The great siddhas Ramana Maharshi and Adi Da Samraj describe this “Heart-shining,” but the un-en-Light-ened Buddhist neuroscientists, including Culadasa, are ignorant of it.
There is much (most of it critical) that I could say about Culadasa’s ten-stage meditation program, but the fact that this is just a review doesn’t allow for such a consideration. Positively, his meditation teaching provides plenty of interesting information and helpful insights regarding remedial spiritual practice, but when he gets into the deeper, more esoteric aspects of the Illumination project, he reveals his un-en-Light-enment. This is most blatantly evident when he discourses on jhanas (states of contemplative absorption) and nimittas (“illumination phenomena”). Esteemed Buddhist monk Thanissaro Bhikku discounts the importance of nimittas, and so do I (see my two-star review of Ajahn Brahm’s “Mindfulness, Bliss, and Beyond”).
What particularly bothers me about Culadasa is his spiritual ignorance. He might look like Yoda, but he’s a hardly a gnostic sage. For instance, when he introduces his path, in Step 1: Focus on the Present, he writes, “First close your eyes and spend few moments becoming fully present… remain in the present here and now.” Then he proceeds to elaborate his 10-stage teaching, which is a stepped-down, complex, and contracted path – a retraction from the integral and radical (or gone-to-the root) Dzogchen practice of simply remaining present (and spontaneously transcending binding acts of attention). The highest spiritual practice in mystical traditions is direct, immediate presence, or awareness. Culadasa starts you there, but instead of instructing you how to remain there, he then launches you on a progressive spiritual path (based on reductive acts of attention) that, in effect, exploits your suffering and seeking.
This is a difficult book for me to rate, because while it’s a cool and engrossing read on meditation and the mind (which most neophytes and novices will appreciate), it’s also a deeply flawed one that suffers terribly from Dharma perversion and the author’s spiritual, ontological, and epistemological ignorance. After considerable internal debate, I’ve decided to give it three stars.
[My 3-star Amazon review of “The Mind Illuminated: A Complete Meditation Guide Integrating Buddhist Wisdom and Brain Science for Greater Mindfulness” by Culadasa (John Yates).]
There is, on the surface, a lot to like about this book: The quality of writing is excellent, the illustrations are cool, and the author, Culadasa (Professor John Yates), presents a systematic ten-stage path to mind illumination and a Yogacara-based mind-system that will impress neophytes and the non-Illuminati. But the true spiritual cognoscenti, those who have “cracked the cosmic code” and are experts in all the major esoteric mystical traditions, will dismiss Culadasa’s meditation teachings as substandard, and his mind-system as deeply flawed.
Although the thematic structure of this book is copacetic – a ten-stage presentation of the path, with periodic “Interlude” chapters – those who have read B. Alan Wallace’s “The Attention Revolution” (see my two-star review) will see that Culadasa has copied Wallace’s lay-out. But whereas Wallace focuses exclusively on 7th-century Indian Buddhist monk Kamalasila’s ten-stage “samatha” (attention-based) paradigm, Culadasa elaborates, in impressive (though awry) detail, a samatha- vipassana (attention + insight-based) path that, in his words, is a “fusion of teachings from different Buddhist teachings.” While I respect Culadasa’s “system-building” endeavor, I hardly embrace his Dharma concoction.
A “problem” I encountered with this text is Culadasa’s teaching of no-Self. The Buddha himself did not explicitly state whether there is a transcendental Self. But his teaching of Anatta implies that there is, for it rejects the five aggregates as not-Self, which leaves the Self, or Buddha-nature (which is pure Awareness, or Consciousness), as one’s true Nature, or Identity. In other words, a Buddha is one who is Awareness itself. If he were not this Awareness, he could not remain, permanently, unbrokenly Awake, or Aware.
According to Culadasa, when one asks, “Who is conscious?” the answer is the “collective of minds that constitute the mind-system.” This is the wrong answer, because the spiritual illuminati (including innumerable great Buddhist masters) know that it is Consciousness, or Mind, Itself that is conscious of all phenomena it encounters, not a bunch of mini-minds in one’s head. Culadasa’s collectivist mind-system represents a perverted, exoteric interpretation of the Yogacara school of Buddhism, wherefrom he derives it. The highest Yogacara teaching, exemplified in in the Lankavata Sutra, emphasizes that the unborn, transcendental Self-Mind is the Reality behind and beyond all cognized objects. (More on this later in the review.)
Culadasa’s POV regarding the transcendental Self is in diametrical opposition to India’s greatest 20th-century spiritual master, the iconic Ramana Maharshi. According to Maharshi, when a yogi, via the practice of Self-enquiry, seeks the answer to who or what watches and experiences, the Answer is the Self, or Consciousness Itself. But Culadasa, clearly not a Self-realized Master, writes:
“Mistaking the witness state for a True Self is what leads some people to claim that Consciousness is the True Self. To properly use the Witness experience, probe more deeply. Go to the Still Point, the place of the Witness, with a question: ‘Who or what is this Witness?’ Who is watching? Who is experiencing? Adamantly refuse to entertain any answers offered by your intellectual, thinking mind. Also, don’t be deceived by your emotional mind, which will try to make you believe you’ve the answer when you haven’t. Just hold on to the question as you experience the Witness. If and when Insight arises, it will be a profound Insight into the truth of no-Self, and it will be so obvious you’ll wonder why you never realized it before.”
This paragraph by Culadasa displays his ignorance. Innumerable yogis have realized the Self by seeking the Who that experiences and watches. But the ordinary person, who lacks the ability to draw down Shakti (the Sambhogakaya, or Stream) into the Spiritual Heart-center (the Hridayam or Tathagatagarbha), located (or felt-experienced) two digits to the right of the center of one’s chest), cannot have a true Self experience. This is the case because the Self is Siva-Shakti (or Dharmakaya-Sambhogakaya). So until the Shakti, at least temporarily, converges with one’s individual consciousness (immanent siva), in the Spiritual Heart-center, the luminous Self cannot be experienced.
Because this is just a review and not a book (though I could easily write one deconstructing Culadasa’s defective Dharma), I can only touch upon a few of the myriad problems I have with this text. One of the major problems is the absurd primacy of consciousness over existence epistemology that he embraces. According to Culadasa, “All objects of consciousness are constructs of the mind. All we’ve ever known is what the mind itself has produced.”
The computer in front of you is not a mental construct. If you fell over dead, it would still be there and still function as a computer for others. You can form all kinds of mental constructs, or ideas, about the computer, but the computer is an object that exists independent of your consciousness. The mind doesn’t “produce” an object; it identifies it. Independent scientific tests validate the existence of objects that the mind identifies. Your body is not a mental construct; it is a physical “construct” that really exists apart from your mind. If a tree falls in the forest, and no one hears it, it still makes a sound, which scientific instruments can record.
Culadasa’s mind-system derives from Yogacara Buddhism and reflects the exoteric (or lower) school of Yogacara called Vijnaptimatra, which views the universe (and objects within it) as a projection of one’s mind. The esoteric (or higher) school of Yogacara, Cittamatra, by contrast, views the universe and all objects as a manifestation of absolute, universal Mind, or Consciousness. If you read “Principal Yogacara Texts” (see my 4-star review), an anthology of Dharma writings by great spiritual masters, you will see that these masters, in concert, espouse the Cittamatra viewpoint. Likewise, if you read “The Zen Teaching of Huang Po” (see my five-star review), generally regarded as the foremost Zen text, you will see that the great Huang Po also emphasizes that there is single Mind, or Being, or “Zen Master,” from whence all existents derive, and of which they are stepped-down modifications or permutations. But Culadasa, a Dharma atomist, reduces the One Mind, the Dharmakaya, into a committee of unconscious sub-minds that derive from a universal Ocean of Unconsciousness. To my mind, this is nothing short of a quasi-Jungian perversion of Yogacara.
Culadasa’s mind-system may impress the non-cognoscenti, but not the cognoscenti, who will view it as a faulty and circumscribed model of empirical/metempirical consciousness (which is not to say it doesn’t offer some provocative insights). Because there isn’t space for proper elaboration in this already lengthy review, I’ll save that for the comments. Here I’ll just say that Culadasi fails to grok and properly distinguish the levels and functions of consciousness(es) involved in cognition, volition, affection, and Awakening.
Culadasa concludes his chapter The Mind System with a verse from The “Lankavatara Sutra,” which he says, “captures the essence of the mind-system.” I say his translation of this verse is a perverted one that does not reflect Prof. D.T. Suzuki’s version in his “Lankavatara Sutra” (see my four-star review). Suzuki’s translation is easily the most respected English one, and unlike Culadasa, he does not equate the eighth (and senior) consciousness of Culadasa’s mind-system, the Alayavijnana (universal Mind, or Consciousness), with the unconsciousness mind. In short, Culadasa does not grok the “Lankavatara Sutra,” and his mind-system does not reflect the Cittamatra Dharma it espouses.
The “Lankavatara Sutra” is about becoming a tathagata (one who permanently, timelessly dwells in, and as, Suchness, or Beingness), which transpires via Dharmamegha Samadhi, the descent of the Dharma Cloud, or Sambhogakaya, into the spiritual Heart-center, a.k.a. the Tathagatagarbha or “Womb of Buddhahood.” The Tathagatagarbha is the locus of the Alayavijnana, which when contracted by the seven other consciousnesses, functions as the “storehouse consciousness” for one’s subliminal “seed” impressions (samskaras), which when activated, concatenate into habit-energies (vasanas), which “crystallize” as thought-formations in the brain.
Unfortunately, like other Buddhist neuroscience experts, Culadasa doesn’t broach the subject of the Heart-center/brain connection. The Heart (or Buddha)-Mind, the uncontracted Alayavijnana, radiates through a point in the heart located two digits to the right of the center of one’s chest. The great siddhas Ramana Maharshi and Adi Da Samraj describe this “Heart-shining,” but the un-en-Light-ened Buddhist neuroscientists, including Culadasa, are ignorant of it.
There is much (most of it critical) that I could say about Culadasa’s ten-stage meditation program, but the fact that this is just a review doesn’t allow for such a consideration. Positively, his meditation teaching provides plenty of interesting information and helpful insights regarding remedial spiritual practice, but when he gets into the deeper, more esoteric aspects of the Illumination project, he reveals his un-en-Light-enment. This is most blatantly evident when he discourses on jhanas (states of contemplative absorption) and nimittas (“illumination phenomena”). Esteemed Buddhist monk Thanissaro Bhikku discounts the importance of nimittas, and so do I (see my two-star review of Ajahn Brahm’s “Mindfulness, Bliss, and Beyond”).
What particularly bothers me about Culadasa is his spiritual ignorance. He might look like Yoda, but he’s a hardly a gnostic sage. For instance, when he introduces his path, in Step 1: Focus on the Present, he writes, “First close your eyes and spend few moments becoming fully present… remain in the present here and now.” Then he proceeds to elaborate his 10-stage teaching, which is a stepped-down, complex, and contracted path – a retraction from the integral and radical (or gone-to-the root) Dzogchen practice of simply remaining present (and spontaneously transcending binding acts of attention). The highest spiritual practice in mystical traditions is direct, immediate presence, or awareness. Culadasa starts you there, but instead of instructing you how to remain there, he then launches you on a progressive spiritual path (based on reductive acts of attention) that, in effect, exploits your suffering and seeking.
This is a difficult book for me to rate, because while it’s a cool and engrossing read on meditation and the mind (which most neophytes and novices will appreciate), it’s also a deeply flawed one that suffers terribly from Dharma perversion and the author’s spiritual, ontological, and epistemological ignorance. After considerable internal debate, I’ve decided to give it three stars.
