The acclaimed American Zen master, D. T. Suzuki, dates the modern understanding of Zen Buddhism to the Chinese teacher, Hui-neng, in the seventh century A.D. In focusing on the doctrine of “no mind,” he taught, “From the first not a thing is.” This statement, more than any I have read or written, conveys the essence of the first tier of consciousness.
“From the first” leaves no room for a discussion of self-awareness or meditation practice or the attainment of a particular experience. It indicates a starting point that comes into existence when we do. “Not a thing is” is not the same as “nothing is.” Abstract discussions of nothingness miss the point entirely. Hui-neng is saying as plainly as possible that “not a thing is.” In The Two Tiers of Consciousness: A Physiological Paradigm, the differentiation of things does not take place until the verbal-symbolic tier of consciousness is articulated.
The physical core of experience established at the first tier of consciousness is undifferentiated, but it is not empty nothingness. It represents an undifferentiated infinite realm rich with unlimited possibilities. It is within this realm that we encounter reality and navigate our way through its unknowable and unlimited landscape. First tier generated behaviors are conscious in the sense that we are aware of our physical involvement in these encounters even though they involve undifferentiated movement sequences. These are the “discourses never discoursed” and the “acts never acted” that Hui-neng describes within the Buddhist unconscious that occur when Prajna (self-knowing) is “awakened.”
The verbal-symbolic tier of consciousness is differentiated from the infinite, unknowable encounters we physically experience at the first tier as we identify a world of entities and events. This latter world, defined by “body, form and function” according to Suzuki, is the only one we will ever know. These are the things we encounter that are useful to us, and we learn to identify them and assign them a place within the conscious version of the world we create.
I did not set out to incorporate a Buddhist understanding of reality into the framework I was creating. I would not have known where to start. Two days ago, I ventured into a large storage cabinet in my garage to look for a book on the recovered memories controversy that electrified psychology 60 years ago. I didn’t find that book, but I did discover Suzuki’s book, The Zen Doctrine of No Mind, a text that I had looked through years ago but never read. I read through the beginning pages and quickly arrived at the quote I cited above from Hui-neng.
“From the first not a thing is”
I was immediately taken aback by what seemed to be a more elegant description of the first tier of consciousness than I could have ever imagined. Thus, this “extra” entry to my Of Two Minds blog.
Comments (1)
Just started reading. spent too much time on the ambigram.