In the preceding video, I said that awakening does not move backward. This does not mean that the mind can never darken after awakening. Knowing this in advance can make the changes of practice much easier to navigate. I did not know it while living with the first awakening, so I suffered considerably.
After the first brightness, I became dark again for perhaps three or four months. A KakaoTalk record allowed me to identify the date precisely. On August 29, 2021, my younger brother sent me a YouTube link. Our father’s relationship with Buddhism had affected my brother as well as me, so he understood something of my inner history. I had begun studying because awakening made me recognize how little I knew about the world and myself, and we sometimes exchanged relevant material.
Criticism aimed at another person returned to me
The video argued that Southern Buddhism is not simply early Buddhism and offered a critical account of treating contemporary Theravada as identical with original Buddhism. After watching it, I wrote to my brother that the monk seemed to be speaking about secondary issues rather than the heart of life and death.
The instant I sent the message and saw the sentence on the screen, my own words—“a different subject outside life and death”—turned and struck me. Light that had been aimed at another suddenly pointed inward. What was I now grasping beyond life and death? I had thought that my father’s questions—Who am I, and how should I live?—had brought me through one stage. Why was I again reaching for something above life and death?
The realization landed with tremendous force. Immediately after sending the message, I spent four or five hours walking around my neighborhood, sometimes sitting, continuously reviewing my mental state and the preceding months. Through this observation, I emerged from the darkness.
Turning the light inward means redirecting illumination from outside to inside
I later found a precise term for this process: turning the light inward and illuminating oneself. In ordinary Korean usage, the expression is sometimes applied to the brief return of energy and clarity just before death. In Zen Buddhism, however, it literally means reversing the light so that illumination traveling outward shines within.
It resembles Jesus’ instruction to stop focusing on the speck in another’s eye and first remove the beam from one’s own. I had judged another monk’s discussion of early Buddhism as a departure from the central matter of life and death. The instant I put that judgment into writing, its light returned to me. A sentence evaluating someone else became a mirror exposing my own condition.
During the exceptionally bright months after my father died, I had known that there was nothing outside life and death to grasp and that every moment mattered. I had lived accordingly, yet I had forgotten and begun grasping again. Once inward illumination made this clear, the mind rose, concentration deepened, and I examined myself more completely. At that point, I entered non-returning.
At non-returning, the cause of the fall is seen clearly
Once bright again, I could review myself in detail. Awakening had not gone backward. I had already embodied not-self and obtained part of the answer to “What am I?” Even in the period of darkness, I therefore saw what was happening more clearly than before.
After liberation of mind opened again, I understood why I had fallen from the first awakening. This time I learned more explicitly about myself and human beings. Earlier, it was as if most of a sheet were dark and only one portion bright. Each return of brightness arose for a different reason, and each darkening had another cause, making the whole structure difficult to know.
Looking back through the eyes of a non-returner, however, I could see many of the causes that had pulled me down from not-self and liberation of mind. Because I knew what had caused the fall and had resolved it, I also knew that I would not fall again in the same way. This is the first great characteristic of non-returning.
Observation of bodily and mental inertia becomes finely woven
The mental brightness of a non-returner resembles that of the first awakening, but an important difference remains. A non-returner is still human, still has a body, and still carries old habits and inertia. The possibility of darkening is known, so observation is not abandoned.
Because we are human, contemplation may occasionally lapse. Yet the mesh of observation is now much finer. Mind, psyche, and body become highly sensitive to the slightest sign of darkening. When an anomaly appears, it is quickly noticed and illuminated again. A non-returner does not cease returning to the desire realm because every human tendency has evaporated, but because awareness continues to operate before inertia can topple the mind.
The first awakening resembles the impact needed to move a stuck cart
Imagine a cartwheel. A cart that has stood for a long time may be fixed by mud and rust, and moving it initially requires a powerful strike. The first awakening is similar. The more strongly a whole life has been held in place, the greater the initial impact may have to be.
Yet even a moving cart eventually stops because of friction. Attachment, desire, habit, concepts, and thought are the friction within us. Without another push, the wheel stops and the mind falls back into the desire realm. Then a new fact not understood before must be discovered, and another large impact moves the cart again.
In non-returning, one watches the cart as it begins to slow. Observation may briefly be missed, but its intervals have become fine. Instead of waiting until the cart has stopped and applying enormous force, one gives a light push at the first loss of speed. Momentum is renewed before it disappears, and the wheel finally does not stop.
Clear seeing and ease strengthen one another
I call this seeing directly. Because attachment, error, mind, and the smallest movements of the body are seen directly, harmful action and suffering decrease. With less suffering, the mind is at ease and remains near liberation. Because it is at ease, it sees still more clearly.
Direct seeing lessens attachment; reduced attachment brings ease; ease permits clearer seeing. This is the circulation of tranquility and insight. Tranquility is the peaceful mind, and insight is the power to see directly. Peace allows fine observation; fine observation releases grasping; releasing grasping deepens peace.
From the sensation of having eaten too much to subtle waves of desire and habit, I observe everything that enters me as an animal and human being. Even if a wave briefly penetrates, continuous observation soon restores ease. The mind remains in stable liberation, and if it starts to darken, awareness raises it again.
The cart that receives another push whenever it slows, the wheel that finally never stops, is non-returning. The mind no longer permits itself to fall into the desire realm, and seeing becomes continually finer. This is why the non-returner can be called one who does not collapse back into that realm. The next discussion will ask what the non-returner comes to understand completely in becoming an arahant.
This article was edited by AI solely from the supplied video captions and description. No external sources were used.