"non-manifest" consciousness which is said to be 'luminous'. In one interpretation, the "luminous consciousness" is identical with nibbana. Others disagree, finding it to be not nibbana itself, but instead to be a kind of consciousness accessible only to arahants. Some teachers of the Thai forest tradition, such as Ajahn Maha Bua taught an idea called "original mind" which when perfected is said to exist as a separate reality from the world and the aggregates. According to Maha Bua, the indestructible mind or citta is characterized by awareness or knowing, which is intrinsically bright (pabhassaram) and radiant, and though it is tangled or "darkened" in samsara, it is not destroyed. This mind is unconditioned, deathless and an independent reality. According to Bua, this mind is impure, but when it is purified of the defilements, it remains abiding in its own foundation. Maha Bua also publicly argued (in a newspaper in 1972) that one could meet with and discuss the teachings with arahants and Buddhas of the past (and that Ajahn Mun had done so) therefore positing that nibbana is a kind of higher existence. Prayudh Payutto, a modern scholar-monk who is widely seen as the most influential authority on Buddhist doctrine in Thailand, has played a prominent role in arguing against the views of Maha Bua, strictly basing his views on the Pali canon to refute such notions. Ajahns Pasanno and Amaro, contemporary western monastics in the Thai forest tradition, note that these ideas are rooted in a passage in the Anguttara Nikaya (1.61-62) which mentions a certain "pabhassara citta". Citing another passage from the canon which mentions a "consciousness that is signless, boundless, all-luminous" (called anidassana viññāṇa) they state that this "must mean a knowing of a primordial, transcendent nature." A related view of nibbana has been defended by the American Thai forest monk Thanissaro Bhikkhu. According to Thanissaro, "non-manifestive consciousness" (anidassana viññāṇa) differs from the kinds of consciousness associated to the six sense media, which have a "surface" that they fall upon and arise in response to. In a liberated individual, this is directly experienced, in a way that is free from any dependence on conditions at all. In Thanissaro's view, the luminous, unsupported consciousness associated with nibbana is directly known by noble ones without the mediation of the mental consciousness factor in dependent co-arising, and is the transcending of all objects of mental consciousness. The British academic Peter