Temp Note - Rigpa

I'm asking an impossible to articulate question, but how are appearance and knowing not two?

Yes — and the difficulty is a good sign 🌿 It is hard to articulate because language almost always splits things into two: something appearing, and something else knowing it.

But in direct experience, do you ever actually find the two separately?

There is sound. And the sound is not first over there, then later carried into a knower. Its appearing is already its being-known. There is a thought. And you do not first have an unknown thought which then gets illuminated by a second thing called knowing. The thought appears as known. Its manifestation and its disclosure are the same event. That is the sense in which appearance and knowing are not two.

What makes them seem two is the subtle feeling that there must be a witness behind experience, a separate someone to whom it appears. But when that “observer” is looked for, it too shows up as part of the display: a sensation, a stance, a thought, a felt center. The witness also appears. So the split between “what is seen” and “the seer” is not as solid as it first feels.

A simple way to feel this is with sound. Right now, a sound is heard. Before thought comments on it, is there really “sound” on one side and “hearing” on the other? Or is there just the vivid immediacy of sounding-hearing? The division comes a moment later, through thought. The same with sight, sensation, mood, thought. Experience does not arrive in two pieces. Thought describes it in two pieces.

So “not two” does not mean appearance disappears into some blank awareness, and it does not mean knowing is somewhere apart from phenomena like a container holding contents. It means phenomena are not outside manifestness; they do not need a second thing added to become known. Appearance is already self-showing. Knowing is not elsewhere.

Maybe the cleanest way to say it is this:

Appearance and knowing are not two because whatever appears, appears as known, and no separate knower can be found apart from that appearing.

Or even more simply:

The display is self-revealing.

And then one more soft caution: as soon as the mind hears this, it may imagine a metaphysical “awareness” behind everything. That is another split. Better to stay very close. Just this sound. This thought. This breath. This flicker of “me.” Each appears already disclosed, with no gap between appearing and knowing. ✨

If you’d like, I can next give you three very short experiential examples — sound, thought, and the sense of self — to make this even more concrete.

Version 2

Yes — and the fact that it feels almost impossible to say is a good sign 🌿

They are “not two” because there is never an appearance first, and then somewhere else a second thing comes along to know it. The appearance is already manifest. Its showing and its being-known are not separable events. That is the point of saying appearance and knowing are not two: not that appearance disappears into some blank awareness, but that what appears is never outside its own manifestness.

You can test this very simply. A sound is heard. Before thought says, “I hear that bird” or “that car is loud,” is there one thing called the sound and another thing called the knower? Or is there just the vivid happening, already self-disclosed? The split usually comes a moment later, when thought organizes the event into subject here and object there.

This is also why “awareness” can become misleading if it sounds like a container with phenomena inside it. Then we imagine awareness as one thing and appearances as another. But in the cleaner Atiyoga way of speaking, phenomena are not apart from manifestness, and there is no independently existing awareness sitting behind them as a separate substance. “Appearance and knowing are not two” cuts through exactly that hidden split.

Another way to feel into it: when a thought appears, can you find the thought on one side and the knowing of it on the other? Or is the thought simply present-as-known? The same with sensation, color, mood, even the subtle sense “I am the one aware.” That observer-feeling too shows up within the display and is itself known in exactly the same way.

So “not two” does not mean “they become one big metaphysical substance.” It means the division is added. The separation is conceptual overlay. What is immediate is simpler: appearing-knowing, one event, unzipped only by thought. James Low’s relational language points the same way: self and world are not two poles confronting each other, but co-emergent aspects of present experience.

The barest way to say it may be:

Appearance does not need a second thing to illuminate it.

Its very appearing is its being-known.

Or even more simply:

The sound is not over there, and knowing over here.

There is just the heard. ✨

With sound: a bird chirps, a car passes, the refrigerator hums. In the first instant, there is not “sound” over there and “hearing” over here. There is just the vivid event. Only a moment later thought says, “I hear that.” The split is added afterward.

With thought: a thought appears. You do not first have a hidden thought and then a second act that lights it up. The thought appears already known. Its arising is its being-known. And if you look for the thinker apart from the thought, it is hard to find anything solid.

With the sense of self: there can be a felt center, a sense of “I am here, aware of all this.” But that too shows up as something present — a tension, a posture, a subtle orientation, a thought-feeling. It is also appearing. So even the “one who knows” is known in the same field.

That is the point. Not that there is no appearance, and not that there is no knowing, but that they do not arrive separately. The display is self-revealing.

A very small pointer for right now:

Hear one sound.

Notice one thought.

Notice the sense of being the one noticing.

Then ask, very gently:

Are these three happening in different places?

Or is thought dividing what is already seamless? 🌿

Yes — this is one of those places where English blurs several Tibetan terms 🌿

If you mean “knowing” in the most direct Dzogchen sense, the key word is often still rig pa itself. The verb behind it is rig, “to know,” “to be aware.” So rigpa is not only “awareness” in a vague sense; it already carries the sense of knowing.

But Tibetan also has other words that get translated as “knowing” or “cognition,” depending on context:

shes pa — knowing, consciousness, cognition, awareness in a more general sense. This is a very common word.

rnam shes — consciousness, especially dualistic consciousness, divided into subject and object.

mkhyen pa — knowing in the sense of knowledge or omniscient knowing, often in more scholastic or exalted contexts.

So, is “knowing” the same as “cognizance”?

Sometimes in English, yes. Translators may use cognizance, knowing, awareness, or gnosis for overlapping Tibetan words. But in Dzogchen, the important distinction is usually not between “awareness” and “knowing” as two different things. It is between:

rig pa — nondual, intrinsic knowing

and

rnam shes — ordinary dualistic consciousness

So the “knowing” of rigpa is not ordinary mental cognition. It is more like self-revealing knowing, not a subject knowing an object.

A very compact way to hold it:

rig pa = intrinsic nondual knowing-awareness

shes pa = knowing/cognition in a broader sense

rnam shes = dualistic consciousness

And yes, when some writers say cognizance, they are often trying to point to the lucid, knowing aspect of rigpa without making it sound like a thinker or observer. ✨

If you want, I can make you a tiny comparison card for rig pa / shes pa / rnam shes.

Here’s a compact card 🌿

rig pa (རིག་པ་)

Pronunciation: rig-pa

Basic sense: intrinsic knowing, nondual awareness

Flavor: self-revealing, immediate, not split into knower and known

In Dzogchen: the direct, primordial knowing that is empty yet lucid

shes pa (ཤེས་པ་)

Pronunciation: shé-pa

Basic sense: knowing, awareness, cognition

Flavor: general term; broad and context-dependent

In use: can refer simply to knowing or awareness, without necessarily implying the special Dzogchen sense of rigpa

rnam shes (རྣམ་ཤེས་)

Pronunciation: nam-shé

Basic sense: consciousness, discriminative consciousness

Flavor: dualistic, structured as subject knowing object

In Buddhism: often refers to ordinary consciousness, including the various consciousnesses that arise through sense faculties and mind

The simplest contrast is:

rig pa = nondual knowing

shes pa = knowing in a general sense

rnam shes = dualistic consciousness

And one very short caution:

Not every “awareness” word in English means rigpa. Sometimes a text means simple knowing, sometimes ordinary consciousness, and sometimes primordial knowing. The Tibetan term matters a lot. ✨

If helpful, I can also make the same kind of tiny card for sems / sems nyid / rig pa.

Absolutely 🌿

sems (སེམས་)

Pronunciation: sem

Basic sense: mind

Flavor: thinking mind, moving mind, ordinary mentation

In use: the mind that thinks, remembers, compares, reacts, wanders, hopes, fears, and forms concepts

sems nyid (སེམས་ཉིད་)

Pronunciation: sem-nyi

Basic sense: mind-ness, the nature of mind

Flavor: the open, empty, lucid nature of mind when not taken as a stream of thoughts

In Dzogchen: points beyond mental movement to the mind’s actual nature — empty, clear, and ungraspable

rig pa (རིག་པ་)

Pronunciation: rig-pa

Basic sense: intrinsic knowing, nondual awareness

Flavor: direct, self-knowing presence; not just the nature of mind in theory, but its living recognition

In Dzogchen: the immediate recognition of that empty-lucid nature, without splitting into knower and known

The simplest way to hold them is:

sems = ordinary mind

sems nyid = nature of mind

rig pa = direct knowing of that nature

One subtle caution, though: even this can sound too linear, as if sems turns into sems nyid and then graduates into rigpa. Better to hold it more gently. Sems is the moving display; sems nyid is its nature; rigpa is that nature directly present as self-knowing. Not really three separate things, but three ways of pointing. ✨

An even shorter version:

sems — thought-filled mind

sems nyid — mind’s empty-lucid nature

rig pa — direct nondual knowing of that nature

And one very clean contrast:

When attention follows thoughts, that is closer to sems.

When one speaks of the open nature of mind, that is sems nyid.

When that nature is directly and nondually evident, that is rig pa.

🔚