Abstract

At first glance, there seems to be a striking similarity in the notion of innate and free natural awareness of the fourteenth-century Tibetan philosopher and teacher Long-chenpa, and the notion of Inner Experience of the twentieth-century French philosopher Georges Bataille. For Longchenpa, innate natural awareness is synonymous with Buddha-nature—the pristine awareness that directly perceives reality as it is, without the mediation of beliefs, labels, or any other means stemming from the individual’s conditioned existence. Abiding in that state gives one the capacity to release oneself from suffering. For Bataille, Inner Experience is naked, free from ties, even from an origin, in which its..