What Kind of "Knowing" Is "Right Knowledge"?

Question: There is a "knowing" in our mind that is an unchanging observer—is it the manas? Is it the same as the "knowing" in dreams? Why does it disappear when we fall asleep? Is maintaining this luminously aware "knowing" right mindfulness?

Answer: This knowing in the mind is impermanent and subject to change; in many situations it ceases to know. Therefore it is the knowing nature of the consciousness, which arises and ceases and is impermanent. This knowing also exists in dreams, and it is also the knowing of the consciousness. However, on all dharmas there is also simultaneously the knowing of the manas; it is just that the manas is hidden extremely deeply, and its knowing nature is very hard to discover.

Maintaining this knowing nature and being clear about the nature of the six sense objects belongs to methods of cultivating meditative concentration (samādhi); it is not seeing the Path. If it is not the knowing of the consciousness in the state of awakening to the true mind, then a knowing that falls within the five aggregates is not right knowing, because it does not know the eighth consciousness and does not know the operation of the eighth consciousness; it only knows conditioned dharmas that arise and cease, and does not know the unarisen and unceasing—this is the consciousness's wrong knowing. The true right knowing is the knowing nature of the eighth consciousness, the knowing nature of the tathāgatagarbha, which does not fall within the five aggregates, the twelve sense bases, or the eighteen elements. He has no outflows, no ignorance, and no impermanent mutability of arising and ceasing. This is the true right—thorough and ultimate rightness—which need not be born and will never perish.