Self-Awareness ( rang rig ) and Nondual Presence: Tibetan Mahāmudrā and a Christian-Adjacent Correlation

Abstract

abstract: This article brings together authorities in the Tibetan Mahāmudrā (“Great Seal”) tradition of the Kagyü school with a contemporary, Christian-adjacent account of mind and consciousness, drawn from the psychologist and theologian Daniel Helminiak. It draws them together on the basis of their shared affirmation that conscious states and operations are intrinsically and nontransitively self-aware. Consciousness as such, on this view, is this simple, nontransitive—and so nondual—self-awareness. Beyond this shared affirmation, both affirm that contemplative training includes heightening awareness of this nondual self-presence constitutive of consciousness as such. More than that, both describe a process of deepening awareness of this nondual self-presence: a contemplative passage from awareness of the relatively superficial nondual presence that renders ordinary intentional contents experientially available to awareness of a more profound nondual self-presence sensed as a limitless, primordial-most ground. Helminiak’s account thus provides a basic understanding of consciousness, and with it a contemplative psychology and gnoseology, which can mediate further Christian theological reception of Tibetan Mahāmudrā and other traditions where nondual awareness is central: it is both Christian-adjacent (connate with deep Christian trends) and also speaks in the terms of these Mahāmudrā descriptions—namely, a philosophy of mind and consciousness for which consciousness as such is nondual self-presence. Helminiak’s account thus gives us a Christian-adjacent cognitional theory and gnoseology for which the kinds of contemplative development described by Mahāmudrā make sense—in other words, can be anticipated and to a significant but not total degree restated in the terms of a Christian-adjacent contemplative psychology.

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