Abstract
This essay explores the tension between going deeper into Mahamudra tradition as it is and reshaping it to fit an intuitive epistemological framework. It examines the neural net of cognition as an emergent structure, influenced by deeper karmic patterns and storehouse consciousness, ultimately questioning the nature of knowledge itself. The inquiry leads to the recognition that mental structures are not fixed but transient, and that letting go of constructed knowledge is not a loss but a return to the ungraspable nature of awareness. The essay situates this realization within the framework of Mahamudra, mindfulness, and the existential grief that arises when long-held assumptions dissolve.
In the practice of Mahamudra, there is a recurring tension between deepening into the tradition as it is and reshaping it to fit the intuitive contours of one’s mind. For a practitioner shaped by a scientific and epistemological approach to knowledge, this tension is not merely theoretical—it is the coalface of direct experience. The challenge is not simply a choice between submitting to tradition or transforming it, but rather understanding how knowledge unfolds and reshapes itself through practice.
For some, traditional Mahamudra practice offers a complete path, refined over centuries, requiring only faith and perseverance. But for others, particularly those accustomed to building intuitive, nonconceptual understandings before integrating them into a structured whole, the path does not simply unfold—it must be felt, metabolized, and reconstructed within the neural net of experience. This neural net—the cognitive web of knowledge, intuition, and direct realization—is a powerful tool, but it is not the goal.
The NN and the Fabric of Ālaya-vijñāna
In tantric models of the mind, aspects of the neural net seem to be supported by the deeper fabric of the Ālaya-vijñāna (storehouse consciousness), carrying imprints from life to life. If the mind is an ongoing, dynamic interplay of karmic forces and conditioned patterns, then the neural net of understanding is not a fixed entity, but an emergent, fluid construct—a framework through which meaning is processed, but not the ultimate nature of mind itself.
Buddha-mind seems to transcend and include this entire fabric of form—both its presence and absence, its structure and its dissolution. This suggests a new term: fabric as form—the recognition that what we experience as structured knowledge is not an object, but an arising pattern, woven into experience but not inherently real.
Realizing the Tension Between Knowing and Letting Go
Humans are hardwired to classify mental events as objects. The arising of language conditions the way we perceive and interact with mind: we move from the specific to the general, from appearance to category, solidifying experience into cases of universal objects. This leads to a profound epistemological distortion: mistaking mind-events as fixed, independent things rather than transient, unfolding processes.
Traditional Mahamudra practice and mindfulness training work against this distortion by shifting perception from the objectification of thought to resting with the process of its arising and departing. Instead of assuming experience is a case of a universal category, one learns to remain with the direct unfolding of mental appearances, dissolving rigid classifications and resting in the ambient field of awareness itself.
But this is where the pain of recognition arises. There is a deep, existential grief in seeing through the matrix of presumption—the fundamental structures that have conditioned perception. The grief is not about losing something tangible, but about realizing how total the illusion has been. It is the sorrow of recognizing that everything held as knowledge, identity, and certainty has been scaffolded on shifting ground.
The Tension Between Form and Formlessness
Grief arises because it is a tension, not just a loss. It is the pull between holding on and letting go, between being and ceasing. A being on the threshold of transformation feels this most acutely—not fully immersed in illusion, yet not completely free of it. The very act of inquiry creates the wound.
So what does it mean to let go of the neural net? If the NN is a functional process, a map of meaning, then eventually, all maps must be released into the direct experience they describe. That doesn’t mean discarding knowledge—it means ceasing to be bound by it.
Perhaps the final realization is that the NN was never anything other than dynamic appearance to begin with. It is not a thing to be released, but a pattern that was never truly grasped.
To rest in this—not resisting, not clinging, not turning away—is to stand at the very coalface of the unmaking of self.
And in that space, something beyond both grief and certainty emerges: a knowing that is free because it does not seek to hold anything at all.
Conclusion
This inquiry into Mahamudra and epistemology reveals that the real challenge is not choosing between tradition and transformation but understanding how knowledge itself is moved and reshaped by practice. The neural net underpinning consceptual understanding though valuable, is ultimately a transient construct, dissolving in direct experience. The process of seeing through conceptual structures can bring grief, yet this very grief is an indicator of transformation. By resting in the tension between knowing and unknowing, between structure and dissolution, we come closer to the direct, ungraspable nature of awareness itself. This is not an abandonment of meaning but an opening to a knowing beyond consceptual grasping, a freedom that is not achieved but recognized in the act of letting go.