The expression “Innate
Luminousism” is a neologism that I am coining here to express the Buddhist
philosophical idea that the nature of mind is luminous. Readers who know this
Buddhist concept well may, for the time being, withhold their enlightening
lecture on the topic, because this is not my motive for addressing the issue
here. My interest here is how precisely does Rong-zom-pa, an eleventh-century
Tibetan scholar, understand this concept. Those readers who can provide
insights on Rong-zom-pa’s understanding of the concept based on concrete,
explicit, and unambiguous textual sources are, of course, welcome to comment. I
shall propose my own understanding of how he understands the concept. As far as
I am concerned, the most fundamental understanding of the statement that the nature
of mind is by nature luminous is that mind in its elemental state is untainted
and “untaintable,” unpolluted and “unpollutable.” All stains, pollutions, or
contaminations are thus adventitious and are foreign to the actual pure nature
of the mind. It is because of this quality of the mind, that is, the natural
purity of the mind and its quality of pollutability and purifiability, that
purification and pollution are at all possible. This seems to be the very crux
of Buddhist soteriological mechanism. The pure nature of mind at its elemental
level or state may be compared to water in its molecular state and level (i.e.
H20). The question is if mind can be reduced to non-mind, that is,
to the extent that it loses the identity and quality of mind. I have a feeling
that some Buddhist philosophers believed that it is possible. This would be
like splitting hydrogen and oxygen present in H20, thereby losing
the identity and quality of water. But what about Rong-zom-pa’s understanding
of the statement that mind is by nature luminous? If to carefully examine the
way he explains the concept of rang bzhin gyis ’od gsal ba’i rnam par
thar pa (obviously according to the special soteriology of what he
calls “special Mahāyāna”), it seems to be clear that rang bzhin gyis
’od gsal ba’i rnam par thar pa is the realization that both pollutants
and purifiers are not substantially existent. For him, therefore, mind and its
pollutants and purifiers are not only like water, its pollutants and purifiers
but more so like mirage-water and its pollutants and purifiers. Apparent mind
may appear to polluted and purified, but like mirage-water, there has never
been mind, nor its pollution, nor its purification, even when the apparent mind
appears to be polluted or purified. So it seems that for Rong-zom-pa, it is not
so much because of the natural purity of the actual mind and its quality
of pollutability and purifiability that one speaks of the luminosity of the
mind, but rather that one speaks of the natural luminosity of the mind because
of the innate non-substantiality of the apparent mind and its immaculate nature
which is always and essentially devoid of pollutants and purifiers. Perhaps one
might say that for Rong-zom-pa only that quality or reality that
transcends the duality such as of pollution and purification, day and
light, light and darkness, and so forth, can be called naturally luminous. My
understanding might become a little more plausible if we consider the
expression “the nature of space is luminous” that he, if I am not mistaken,
also employs. That is, for him, we cannot say that the nature of space is
luminous only when the sun shines or only when there is light. Luminosity in
its ultimate sense should be, I think according to him, that quality or reality
of the space that is inherently, intrinsically, and primordially pure (i.e.
empty) of anything that does not belong to the quality of space. For the time
being, I cannot think of a better explanation of his understanding of innate
luminosity. There are many shades and levels of understanding the concept of
luminosity, but the two that I alluded here seem to be crucial or significant.
