Radiant Mind: Awakening Unconditioned Awareness

The purpose of Radiant Mind is to turn the reader's attention toward cultivating unconditioned awareness in the midst of everyday experience. Peter Fenner is a well known teacher, writer, scholar, and counselor. In the world of nonduality, Radiant Mind is one of the few all-encompassing, structured nondual teachings for students of the early 2000s. If your current involvement with nondual teachings is unsatisfactory, you may be very pleased with the breadth and depth of Radiant Mind. I recommend investigating it. Fenner anticipates and confronts the reader's avoidance and dishonesty. He points out the difference between disconnecting from and deconstructing our problems. He's honest: "We don't necessarily want to examine our patterns. In fact, the patterns are constructed with a dual purpose. They are designed to sabotage our life and the lives of others, but in such a way that we don't recognize them." Following each chapter are exercises. Their initial objective is to connect you with your fixations or conditioned existence. Then the exercises are designed to cultivate unconditioned awareness through sitting, pure listening, and various ways of deconstruction, especially conversations: "These conversations dismantle the structures of our conditioning and introduce us to the experience of contentless awareness." For those who think they are beyond meditation, or contemplative practice, Fenner points out that practice is necessary in order to reveal to us that practice is not necessary. More honesty: "This constant denial saps our energy and demoralizes us, because we're engaged in a losing battle with a reality that simply isn't interested in our existence." Peter Fenner does not allow you hide anywhere. He knows all your tricks and spells them out. At the same time, he is open about the paradox of functioning out of the nondual space. He says, "You're so complete it doesn't mean anything to say you're complete. This book is a paradox. ... I'm sure you also know that it has nothing to do with unconditioned awareness." Counselors, psychotherapists, coaches, spiritual teachers, and self-realized gurus looking for ways to explain things better, and anyone functioning within, or with, or as the paradox, will benefit from reading Radiant Mind. Radiant Mind may also be engaged as an 8-month course. Fenner mentions the course in passing at the very end of the book. He gives all he's got within the limitations of a book. The course is not necessary, however the serious reader/student will know soon enough. Finally, I want to briefly talk about the index. The index is excellent and professional. The only thing that puzzles me is why the material in the exercises at the end of each chapter was not indexed. For example, under the entry "pure listening," all the appropriate page numbers in the book are noted except for pages 123-124, which are exercises in pure listening. Perhaps the indexer or publisher could explain to me the justification. As

Peter Fenner writes with a noble purpose: to make the wisdom of "nondual" spiritual traditions accessible for modern people. Nondual teachings maintain that there is really no separation, no duality, that isolates confusion from clarity, suffering from enlightenment. They coexist in every moment of experience. Fenner regards access to the experience of nonduality as the ultimate goal of all human endeavors. It's what life really should be all about. In this book, he has done a masterful job of presenting the subtleties of nondual wisdom in a way that actually provides openings for readers to experience it, not just think about it. Radiant Mind "dispenses with the doctrines and complex rituals that can attach to spiritual traditions and goes to the heart of their liberating intention." The publisher chose to emphasize Fenner's PhD (in Buddhist Studies), but his nine years as a monk in the Tibetan Buddhist Nyingma tradition are a more definitive qualification for this highly experiential book. Fenner is an innovator who presents many original techniques and exercises designed to open people to their innate wisdom. For example, he describes how to "just sit." Sit or lie still, eyes open, and "remain comfortable, quiet, and awake." That's it. No breathing technique, no concern with thinking/not thinking, no attempt to be mindful--"you will be adequately mindful (present/aware) without trying." "You don't need to do anything other than what you're doing. You can't go wrong." We can't go wrong, Fenner says, because we're continuously, inevitably manifesting radiant mind, which simply comes with the territory of being human. Especially for those who've been meditating a while, this non-meditation can be oddly powerful. One gets a sense of how the "spiritual path," with its complex methods, gradations, and distinctions, can become just another consuming project, a dead end. Religious and spiritual-minded readers from all traditions will appreciate the book, but it might be of greatest interest to those who have actually done a contemplative practice for a while. Fenner writes straightforwardly and directly, in a compact, lucid style that some might find a bit cerebral. Refreshingly, he's not setting himself up as the focus of attention, as a guru. There's an extensive bibliography, accompanied by a note that pretty much sums up the spirit of this gem of a book: "if you read any of these books...read them not so much for what you can understand but rather with a view to shifting your consciousness into a state that's more spacious and open...the ideal function of nondual reading is to give our minds nothing to think about!"

Radiant Mind: Awakening Unconditioned Awareness Peter Fenner's teachings are extremely powerful. He has isolated the essential elements of Buddhist non-dual teachings and presented them in a manner that can be comprehended and deeply engaged by someone of this day and age. The wisdom and exercises in the book are all coherently directed at opening to, and deepening into, underlying Unconditioned Awareness. I have taken Peter's training for two years and have been profoundly affected by it. He is a man of heart who lives deeply in the waters of contentless awareness. His capacity to presence this consciousness is transmitted to the student, and creates a palpable field of support for those doing the work. The book was clearly written from this depth of connection which is conveyed directly to the reader. These teachings lead one on the path of disidentification with the beliefs, assumptions and basic orientations of the old identity. There is a satisfaction in seeing more clearly the immensity of the mind's operation that keeps us from discerning and opening to this universal underlying consciousness. And pleasure in having tools that actually succeed in helping us to question and erode the framework of fundamental beliefs that obfuscate our True Nature. And a joy in the direct experience of the constant presence of Unconditioned awareness. There is especial power in the ongoing discovery of how the presensing of Awareness infuses and transforms one's entire perceptual orientation to ordinary reality. Over the last 45 years I have studied with many teachers, and walked many paths. I have come to see that all were absolutely necessary at the time. The Radiant Mind teachings have been wonderfully valuable for me, and unquestionably the just right teaching for this stage of my journey. Ron Aarons

Imagine if after only 20 years of practicing meditation you could experience the same unconditioned peace and bliss as the Buddha, Lao Tzu, Milaropa, St. Theresa of Avila, Ramana Maharshi, Krishnamurti and all the great sages from past to present. Now, imagine you can experience it in just a few moments from now... This is the promise of Peter Fenner's most accessible and comprehensive book to date, and it delivers in a gentle yet challenging style. If you're willing to step outside the strictures of religious tradition to taste the spiritual fruits of all seeking, this book will prove a reliable and friendly guide.

Peter Fenner's Radiant Mind contains the essence of the information offered in his highly respected eight-month course, also called the Radiant Mind. As a graduate of the Radiant Mind course, I was very pleased to have the timeless wisdom presented in the course packaged with a very complete index for easy reference. Just reading Fenner's work often seems to lift the veils of conditioning and to open one to unconditioned awareness. For example, his wonderful insights about our addiction to suffering, our need to be constantly doing, our need to know where we are and what's happening, and various other modes of ego-control, gently remind us how we unconsciously construct much of our suffering by believing our "stories" and acting on them as though they were real. There is much very valuable information in this book on many psycho-spiritual subjects. It contains very clear descriptions of the differences between the unconditioned and the conditioned and dispells many psycho-spiritual myths. It is a book for mature students and one I highly recommend.