What is Mahamudra?

Normally I find Berzin to be a little bit difficult for me to digest. However, I was interested in reading about how Mahamudra is approached in different traditions. This article very nicely defines Mahamudra, discusses the approaches among traditions, and incorporates the Four Noble Truths. I think it's well worth a read.

Mahamudra and the Four Noble Truths
Alexander Berzin
Seattle, Washington, April 16, 2003


-The Four Noble Truths in Terms of Mental Activity-
-Mind as Mental Activity-


This evening, I have been asked to speak about mahamudra and the conventional nature of the mind. It is difficult to speak just about the conventional nature of mind without also bringing in mind's deepest nature, since both natures are inextricably connected. In Mahayana, when we speak about the conventional and deepest natures or truths, we are talking about two different facts that are true about anything. Conventional nature or relative nature or apparent nature is what something is; deepest nature is how something exists.

If we ask what is the conventional nature of mind - what is mind - in very general terms, mind is the individual subjective mental activity of experiencing things. We are not talking about some sort of tool or thing in our heads called "mind." What we are talking about is an activity, mental activity. From a Buddhist point of view, it is always individual and always subjective. What is its function, what does mental activity do? In the most general terms, mental activity experiences things. Mental activity always takes an object; it always has content.

How does mental activity exist? It exists in a manner devoid of all impossible manners of existence. Its manner of existence is voidness - the absence of all impossible ways of existing. The various Mahayana tenet systems identify these impossible ways differently. Mahamudra meditation is done according to the Madhyamaka explanations of voidness.


-The Meaning of the Term Mahamudra-


Mahamudra is a system of meditation that concerns the two natures of mental activity: what it is and how it exists. The word mahamudra means great seal. "Maha" means great and extensive, in the sense that the mind, mental activity, covers all phenomena as objects. It is something completely extensive in that sense.

Buddhism defines all phenomena as that which is knowable. What exists can be validly known. What does not exist can be invalidly known. Thus, everything can be specified in terms of being an object of mental activity. "Maha" conveys this idea of being vast and extensive.

The word mudra means a wax seal that attests to the validity of something. In ancient times, when important people signed a letter, they stamped it with a seal and used that as a signature to attest to the fact that this was an authentic letter from them. Here, these two natures, conventional and deepest natures, are the seal for all moments of the mental activity of all beings. They attest to the fact that this is mental activity; this is mind. This is one explanation for the term mahamudra; there are others.

These two natures are not "things" that exist inherently in some phenomenon and which, by their own power, on the side of the phenomenon, independently of everything else, make that phenomenon "mental activity." It is not that mind is like a blank diskette that comes preformatted with two natures and those two natures, by their own power, make it functional "mental activity." That is an impossible manner of how this phenomenon exists as "mental activity." Rather, the two natures are simply what mental activity is and how it exists.

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