01 Meditation Panel Preface.indd - United Nations Day of Vesak 2013

Buddhist Philosophy and
Meditation Practice
and irreducible pure subjectivity – the ‘‘I’-ness’ – of intentional consciousness. If there were
no intentional consciousness, with its inherent property of pure subjectivity, not only would
the pronoun ‘I’, ‘aha’, have no meaning: it could not exist. Yet, it does exist, and the Buddha
had no qualms about using it in the same breath with which he preached the principle of anatt,
because he understood, much more deeply than we, its true meaning and nature. Indeed, without
that meaning, there would be no ‘path’ (magga) and no ‘escape’ (nissaraa). 116 If we confuse
and conate the root error of ‘aham-asm’ti with the true but hidden meaning of ‘aha’ – namely,
the intrinsic ‘‘I’-ness’ of consciousness-of – then I believe that we lose sight of the genuine
possibility of the path and the gateway of escape.
By you the effort must be made. The Tathgatas are (but) teachers. 117
116
MN 7 (at M I 39): ‘there is an escape beyond this whole realm of perception.’ atthi imassa saññgatassa uttari
nissaraa.
117
Dhp 20, §276a (at Dhp 40): tumhehi kiccamtappa akkhtro tathgat.
235