"What Does It Mean to be Awake?" with my commentary

The text analyzed here is "What Does It Mean to be Awake?" by John Lee Pendall.

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I originally intended this site as a place to explore "real" (read: old) eastern philosophical texts. However, I can't resist examining Pendall's essay, an ingenious attempt to explain Mahayana Buddhist concepts (namely, the identity of nirvana with samsara and the arhat/buddha distinction) in a completely straightforward and non-"mystical" way. Plus, I can hardly deny that Pendall's essay is a "real" work of Buddhist philosophy, given that Pendall is a Chan Buddhist priest.

As always, the goal of my commentary is not to uncover what the author "really meant" (as if there always is such a thing, and as if it's always the most useful or interesting thing about a text) but, rather, to see what sense I can make of the text as it stands. Out of respect for Pendall, whom I don't know and who may not appreciate my "creative reading" of his work, I'll write, "The essay does such-and-such," instead of, "Pendall does such-and-such."

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What’s the first thing you do each morning?

People answer that in a lot of different ways: get out of bed, open my eyes, go to the bathroom, check my phone, get dressed, eat breakfast, turn on the light, on and on. 

All of that’s inaccurate. The first thing we do each morning is wake up. We can’t even say we do it though, since it isn’t on purpose. Waking up is something that happens to us whether we want it to or not. 

Commentary: In pointing out that "we" can't really say that "we" wake up, the essay is setting the stage for an argument that there really are no selves, no "me" and "you," no "we."

So everything else we do, everything else that happens throughout the day, is built up from that foundation. If we weren’t awake, we wouldn’t be doing any of it, and we wouldn’t be aware or conscious of any of it. 

Commentary: Bodhi, "enlightenment," literally means awakening or wakefulness. (We might translate buddha, "enlightened," as "woke.") From our perspective, we're always awake; bodhi—in the sense of literal wakefulness—is ever-present. Of course, bodhi isn't present when we're asleep, but then we aren't awake, so we don't know that bodhi isn't present. This observation provides a mercifully simple explanation of the Mahayana claim that we're already enlightened but don't realize it.

One straightforward aspect of practice is just be awake. Stick with that fundamental basis of experience.

Commentary: The essay takes bodhi, wakefulness, to be the goal of the Buddhist path. (Several scholars would disagree, arguing that Buddhism was essentially the practice of dhyana, meditation, and that the centrality of "liberating insight" was a later import from the surrounding Indian traditions.) If bodhi means literal wakefulness, as the essay has suggested, then the obvious first step in Buddhist practice is to just ... be awake.

One story in the Pali Canon has a dude asking Buddha, “Are you a this? Are you a that?” Buddha just keeps saying, “Nope.” Finally, the guy asks, “Well, what are you?” Buddha replies, “I’m awake.” Now, when I first read that story, I thought he was pointing to something kind of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey. Some kind of mystical—maybe even omniscient—state of mind.

Commentary: The essayist surely knows that the Theravada tradition (not to mention the even more fantastical Mahayana tradition) views the Buddha's enlightenment experience as a mystical—indeed, omniscient—state of mind. The essay is about to offer an alternative interpretation.

Then, years later, I reflected, “Ya know what’d be funny? If he literally meant, ‘I’m awake,’ as in, ‘I’m conscious, I’m aware. I’m not sleeping or a rock.'” I giggled at the idea until I looked around. Then it hit me that that’s probably exactly what he meant. “What are you?” “I’m awake.” After that, the traveler basically said, “Yeah, okay… see ya later, weirdo!” and that’s when Buddha decided to take another approach to teaching the Dharma. 

Just being awake is a very subtle, elusive practice, and it’s incredibly difficult to keep at it. It also seems anti-climactic on the surface. Emptiness and the Four Noble Truths are a lot sexier.

Commentary: Earlier, the essay the equated Buddhist wakefulness with literal wakefulness. Literal wakefulness isn't something you practice; you're just awake when you happen to be awake, and when you aren't, you're asleep. But now the essay calls wakefulness "a very subtle, elusive practice." What's going on?

The essay is distinguishing the mere fact of wakefulness from our awareness of that fact. The fact is ever-present, as we have seen. But we don't keep our attention focused on that fact.

The mind switches out being awake for being a fuck ton of other things. “I’m happy, I’m sad, I’m angry, I’m me, I’m a parent, I’m a worker, I’m driving, I’m eating,” and so on. That causes suffering because whatever we put after that “I am” is empty, it arises from and changes with the situation. 

Suffering is what happens when we want an “I am” to stay or go, when we want it to not be dependent on the circumstances. We want, “I’m lonely,” to go, and, “I’m loved,” to stay. Reality can’t meet those demands, and neither can our dreams and fantasies.

Commentary: The Buddhist tradition tells us that the "three marks of existence" are suffering, impermanence, and no-self. Here the essay explains how these three marks are interrelated.

From our perspective, wakefulness is the only thing that we always are and, therefore, the only thing with which we can reasonably identify ourselves. Yet we're constantly identifying ourselves with the passing contents of our awareness, of our wakefulness, rather than with the wakefulness itself. It's as if the sky were to identify itself with the passing clouds.

When we identify with the contents of wakefulness, instead of wakefulness itself, we suffer. From our perspective, wakefulness is constant, but nothing else is. To identify ourselves with the contents of wakefulness—happiness, sadness, anger, the concept me, the concept parent, etc.—is to identify ourselves with things that cannot last no matter how much we cling to them.

But we don’t have to trade awakening for something else if we don’t add anything to it or try to take anything away from it. 

Instead of thinking, “I’m hungry, I’m tired, I’m lonely,” we can go with, “I’m awake,” and then that’s what we’ll be. Then everything else will happen in that context, it’ll be what’s experienced with awakening. When we’re hungry, tired, or lonely, those will just be situations, not who or what we are.

Commentary: If we simply think, "I'm awake," then we identify with our wakefulness, our awareness, instead of any of the things that cause suffering. The contents of our awareness—hunger, etc.—may still be unpleasant, but we will view those contents as passing situations rather than as part of us.

This is an empirical claim, and one to which I can attest. I've found that if I calmly "watch" my negative emotions come and go, like a scientist observing animals passing by, then the emotions lose much of their power over me. They're still there, but they seem somehow distant, like external objects. As a result, I can simply accept them as part of the world around me and get on with my day.

BTW, this detached "watching" of mental states is a common practice in both Buddhism and ACT (Acceptance and Committment Therapy).

Because we’re not that, we’re just awake. Even the “I am” is something extra, something built on it. When we’re not awake, there’s no “I am” or “I’m not.” With that realization, 99% of our up close and personal suffering vanishes, and we can work with the remainder in effortless, skillful ways since all the I-me-mine garbage related to it is gone.

Commentary: Stated baldly, this argument is fallacious. If we aren't awake, then we aren't entertaining any concepts at all, including the concept of self. Therefore, the concept of self is "built" on top of our wakefulness. But the essay concludes that the self is built on top of our wakefulness—that it's merely a mental construct. This conclusion seems to conflate the self with our concept of it. Granted, the self may be no more than a mental construct, but the essay has given no evidence for that claim.

To make sense of this argument, we must remember that the essay is talking about things from our perspective. (Remember, the essay claims that wakefulness is ever-present. As we saw, this means that from our perspective, wakefulness is ever-present. When wakefulness isn't present, we aren't awake, so we don't know that wakefulness isn't present.) From our perspective, the only self that we'll ever know is our idea of self. As long as we believe in our self, it's our idea of self that we're believing in. As soon as we stop accepting ideas of self, we'll no longer think that there's a self at all. As far as we're concerned, therefore, the self just is the idea of self that's built on top of our wakefulness.

Indeed, I would argue that most ordinary people who have not been corrupted by academic philosophy identify a person's self with the person's idea of himself. Most people don't think of the self as a little man who sits inside a person's head, experiencing the person's experiences, nor do they think of the self as some kind of ghostly entity inhabiting the person's body. (This, I think, is true even of people who believe strongly in an immortal soul.) Most people would be quite happy to admit that the self, the "me," the person, is just a self-image that the mind constructs from memories, experiences, and so on.

Hence, if we focus on our own wakefulness, we undermine the idea of self. From our perspective, wakefulness is always present, but the idea of self is not. Therefore, we can exist without the idea of self. If we can exist without the idea of self, then we clearly aren't the same thing as that idea. Since that idea is the only self that we'll ever know, we can say that we aren't the same thing as the self. But the whole point of the self is that it's supposed to be what we are. Thus, it turns out that the self—that is, the idea of self, which is the only self we'll ever know—is not really a self.

You’re awake, so be awake. These days, that’s really the only teaching and method I can, in good conscience, endorse. But that might not be enough. It wasn’t for me. I had to have illumination (insight) crack me open first. 

Sometimes, before just being awake, we have to figure out who it is that’s awake. We have to see for ourselves that “I am” and “I’m not” follow from awakening, they don’t precede it. All we need to do is ask, “Who’s awake? Who’s awake? Who’s awake?” all the while knowing it’s us, but unsure about why it is that that’s not enough. 

We can carry that inquiry with us throughout the day. “Who’s awake? Who’s awake? Who’s awake?” and feel it gather intensity and momentum. You start to feel it in your bones like an electrical current or a pending orgasm. 

Then, out of the blue, something will seem to give, and it’ll be obvious: I’m awake.

Commentary: At first glance, it's unclear what's going on here. If you ask who's awake "while knowing it's [you]," then how is "I'm awake" a legitimate answer to the question? We already knew that you were awake.

Here's what I think is going on. Recall that the self is just an idea "built on top of" wakefulness. From this perspective, wakefulness is more fundamental than self. So if we ask what you really are, then the answer must be not the self but, rather, wakefulness. In other words, we should read "I'm awake" as "I = awake" or, more grammatically, "I = wakefulness."

To see the real upshot of this argument, we must take it a step further. Your self is you by definition. As we just saw, if we ask what you really are, then the answer is not the self—not you—but wakefulness. Hence, we reach the conclusion that you aren't really you. In other words, the concept of you collapses. There really is no you, just a little occurrence of wakefulness, of awareness, over here. And there really is no me, just a little occurrence wakefulness, of awareness, over here.

Aside from the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta's arguments, this is probably the best argument for anatta (no-self) that I've encountered thus far. Because the essay argues purely from your personal perspective (or so I have claimed), the essay's claim is more modest than those of the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta. The claim is simply that, from your perspective, the concept of self dissolves if you persistently attend to your own wakefulness.

Whether this claim is true is an empirical question, and I haven't attended closely enough to my own wakefulness to answer it. Yet the claim itself is perfectly reasonable and straightforward if it means what I think it means.

So, once that lightning bolt goes flashing through you, I recommend not chasing it. It’s already illuminating each moment of your life, so there’s no need to go running after it. You might, however, want to find someone to verify that it was indeed illumination and not just a trip.

Commentary: I've skipped over a few paragraphs that contain interesting reflections on Buddhist practice but have little relevance to my theoretical interests in this commentary. I'm including the above paragraph, however, because I suspect that it's good advice for anyone who wants to try out the essay's approach to awakening.

“But being awake is another situation. We’re not awake all the time. So that can’t be what the Buddha meant.” 

Awakening and nibbana aren’t the same thing. Nibbana is the endless absence of all affliction; awakening is insight into the true nature of things. Nibbana is blowing out the candle of affliction; awakening is lighting the lamp of wisdom. They don’t necessarily go hand in hand. Arhats have entered nibbana, but they don’t experience awakening insight; Bodhisattvas have experienced that insight, but they haven’t entered nibbana.  

Buddhas are both—awake and free of affliction. 

Commentary: For the life of me, I can't see how this is a logical answer to the question in quotation marks. But let's just ask what overall point is being made here.

The essay says that awakening is not just different but separable from nibbana. Even if this claim is true, early Buddhist texts portray nibbana as just as important as awakening. Indeed, the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta portrays suffering as the central problem and nibbana as the solution. So we can rephrase the question in quotation marks as follows: "If the Buddha didn't think that awakening was everything, then how can you say that that's all he meant when he said, 'I'm awake'?"

The answer? As we will see, the essay focuses on awakening alone because the essayist isn't in the business of discussing nibbana.

I don’t talk about nibbana because I want all of us to be Buddhas. Traditionally, the way to do that is to wake up first, and then deal with your shit. The desire to Wake Up (Bodhicitta) is a vital part of awakening and inquiry practice. Without it, we just kinda spin in circles.  

But, desire is an affliction, so if you stumble into nibbana, you won’t even have the desire to Wake Up. The candle of pain and suffering is what we use to light that lamp. Can’t do that if we blow it out first. Also, attaining nibbana is a huge pain in the ass. You practically have to be a monastic to do it. 

Commentary: Here the essayist explains why he prefers not to discuss nibbana.

“So, I should ask, ‘Who’s awake?’ Not do anything else?” 

You can do whatever the fuck you want. No shoulds. You can learn and practice mindfulness, counting the breath, etc. Can read through the whole Buddhist Canon and practice patience and generosity. It’s just that it’s all gonna be an uphill battle if you don’t realize that you’re starting the journey at its destination. 

You’re already as awake as you’re ever going to be. Nothing we do can make us shine any brighter or dimmer than we are right now. 

Commentary: The "destination," of course, is awakening. That's the goal of the Buddhist path, at least according to this essay. By now, the essay has argued that we're already as awake as we're ever going to be. So we're already at the destination; we just don't realize it most of the time. All those other practices—counting breaths and the rest—are only an aid to realizing what we already are. Of course, that's standard Mahayana philosophy, though in a much simpler and more "secular" form than most traditionalists would probably be comfortable with.

I leave you with the essay's closing lines:

“Well, that’s kind of disappointing.” 

What’d you expect? 72 virgins in a private jet? The plus side is that that jet will break down, but being awake is something you can rely on for the rest of your life. It’s always there when you need it, always reminding us that we’re not the situations we’re in, we’re not the pile of traits, habits, and characteristics we identify as. We’re just awake. This is something very beautiful and subtle, and everything depends on it. 

Take care.