The Buddha’s teaching on the constructed (saṅkhata) and unconstructed (asaṅkhata) is radical, in part because as we study the Buddha’s understanding of experience it becomes clear that for him, whatever we think is going on, isn’t. Concepts cannot convey truth. Nothing we believe is true, because our beliefs are just concepts.

What’s real is nibbāna, and nibbāna can be known. But known as what? As soon as we have a belief, an idea of nibbāna, we are wrong. Then how can we recognise it? By its effect, for intimacy with nibbāna, the asaṅkhata, is known through how the heart is transformed. “Hunger gone, completely cooled,” as the Buddha says. What is true, real, brings peace.
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Today we explore the concept of “unlanded awareness” (apatiṭṭhita viññāṇa), awareness that does not get stuck anywhere, and so does not provide a platform for any kind of clinging.
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We continue with our exploration of non-indicative awareness. An awareness with no ground, and a sky that paints itself. Here we can see how the Buddha’s understanding of concept goes so deep. If experience itself is bound up with concept, what can it mean to experience without concept?
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How can we know the unconstructed? How can we be aware when awareness has ceased? One term the Buddha uses to describe this mysterious state is anidassana viññāṇa, or “non-indicative awareness.” This is awareness that does not indicate, point out, anything — and yet, remains awareness. The Buddha provides the image of painting the sky to illustrate the nature of non-indicative awareness. He asks, “Can someone paint pictures in space?” No. Why? “Because space is formless and non-indicative (anidassana).”
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How are we to understand the cessation of the entire world of the constructed? What grounds our experience? What lies beneath? And how can it be spoken of? Here we look at this issue through Mahākaccana’s discussion in Madhupiṇḍika Sutta (M18 The sweet essence).
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The framework for the Buddha’s understanding of experience is dependent arising (paṭiccasamuppāda). Whatever arises (in experience), does so because of events other than itself, and ceases because of events other than itself. We are examining arising and cessation, but here with particular emphasis on cessation. We can see cessation in two different aspects. The first is normal, everyday cessation — events cease, to be replaced by other events. This is the flowing along which is saṃsāra. The other is cessation of the constructed itself. This is the entry into nirvāṇa, and it is this aspect of cessation that we need to understand.
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Here we look at the Buddha’s concept of name-&-form (nāma-rūpa), the way in which the mind reaches out to and makes sense of its experienced world. We see that for the Buddha, experience - which here he speaks of as name-&-form conditioning contact - has concept built into it. But if experience is inherently conceptual, and the unconstructed is beyond concept, how can the unconstructed be experienced?
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A key to understanding the Buddha’s approach to “reality” is that his teaching is a first person discourse. He is interested only in the nature of experience from the perspective of the one undergoing the experience. For the Buddha, the world is our-experience-of-the-world, so much of the Buddha’s teaching concerns the process of experience itself. If we are to speak of the experience of the unconstructed (asaṅkhata), of nirvāṇa, then we need to understand what the Buddha means by experience. This brings us to the concept of phassa, “contact” or “stimulus,” the immediacy of experience, how we are “touched” by the world.
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Here we look at the logic of the constructed and the unconstructed as found in Pañcattaya Sutta (M102 The five and three), where the Buddha speaks of the relationship between the development of practice over time with the immediacy of insight, now.
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Painting the sky is a study of Udāna 80-83, where the Buddha speaks of “the not-born, not-become, not-made, not-constructed.” This first session introduces the twin concepts of the constructed (saṅkhata) and the unconstructed (asaṅkhata), and their role in the Buddha’s understanding of liberation.
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