Hey just wondering if someone could point me to a good source explaining what is meant by luminosity when used by people on this forum and how it relates to some other terms. It is only recently since I think got 1st path that I could really understand at all the idea of my own Awareness as a thing. But now I can understand a little what people are talking about when they say your 'true nature' is timeless, being-as-awareness.

When I tried before path to work out what the background to the sensory experience was, I would seem to get "me", the idea of a watching entity in one place, which was seemingly very very "me", and the objects were very not-me.

Now, when I look at the visual field, say I look at the kitchen sink, it just seems less separate from the total sensate field and 'myself', leading me to say that it's a bit like my own being-as-awareness being over there, as the sink (for now).

(There was a period of a couple of days where this sense really went overdrive, where it would seem that if I looked at the floor, the floor was part of my body, coming right out of my eyes. Or I would be eating and too confused to eat a mushroom on my fork as I thought it was part of me, and would be biting myself. But this has diminished.)

so here is what I understand by these terms:

Being-As-Awareness - the basic nature of what everything is including my 'true' self, a sort of infinite "aware capacity" which fluxes around and reflects objects, or shows itself as objects, but itself is timeless and unstained.

But I can't get what is meant by luminosity - e.g. in mahamudra, it is said the mind is empty and luminous, is that the same as what people on DhO refer to?

If people talk about perceiving luminosity, what do they mean, phenomenologically?

also, what is Shinzen Young referring to as The Source? e.g. in this pdf?
http://www.shinzen.org/Retreat%20Reading/Return%20to%20the%20Source.pdf

thanks for any help
anthony

Luminosity is defined in two ways - either as 'emptiness free of extremes' or as 'clarity'. They have two different meaning. It's important to know the context of it being used. What you are describing for example, is the 'clarity' aspect. I believe most people use 'luminosity' to mean 'clarity' here.

Here's what Lama Tony Duff describes luminosity as - clarity:

Luminosity or illumination, Skt. prabhåsvara, Tib. ’od gsal ba: The core of mind has two aspects: an emptiness factor and a knowing factor. The Buddha and many Indian religious teachers used “luminosity” as a metaphor for the knowing quality of the core of mind. If in English we would say “Mind has a knowing quality”, the teachers of ancient India would say, “Mind has an illuminative quality; it is like a source of light which illuminates what it knows”.

This term been translated as “clear light” but that is a mistake that comes from not understanding the etymology of the word. It does not refer to a light that has the quality of clearness (something that makes no sense, actually!) but to the illuminative property which is the nature of the empty mind.

Note also that in both Sanskrit and Tibetan Buddhist litera- ture, this term is frequently abbreviated just to Skt. “vara” and Tib. “gsal ba” with no change of meaning. Unfortu- nately, this has been thought to be another word and it has then been translated with “clarity”, when in fact it is just this term in abbreviation.

Here's what Loppon Namdrol describes luminosity as - emptiness free of extremes, as opposed to 'clarity': http://dharmaconnectiongroup.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/how-luminosity-clarity-and-clear-light.html



You might also be interested in reading my narration of various states of realization - http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com.au/2011/12/experience-realization-view-practice.html

What Shinzen Young describes as "The Source" is the I AM realization. That is the direct immediate apprehension of that Awareness or luminous clarity of mind, and further realizations are just refining the views about that luminous clarity, which also has its corresponding experiences.

AEN thank you thank you thank you very much for this.

It was incredibly helpful. But actually in particular your narration of realisation states was amazing.

I think I had a really big realisation (for me) yesterday from reading some bits from it, then contemplating. Stuff about
in the seen has always only been the seen, even pre-anatta experience, and always will be only the seen. So it is for everyone, whatever their 'stage' and has always been. It is not possible to to get tangled up, it never was. It just appears that it was possible to get tangled up, somehow, which I can't even really understand now. Let's see what happens.