3. THE LAST CONCEPTUALIZATIONS AND THE CHAN CONTEMPLATIONS

When we examine the Buddha's path to Awakening we discover that several mental attitudes were important at the beginning. Buddha named them as:

Serenity, Patience, Initiative, Determination, Perseverance and a Free Critical Inquiry with Introspection.

His final trajectory, in his Awakening contemplation, based upon his early apple-tree meditation when he was but a boy and the teachings of his two Masters, led to his passing upon the Path of Wisdom through Supramundane Insight.

In discussing the Wisdom of this Supramundane Insight we saw that the perseverance of Hengshen was considered an integral part of introspection and therefore "insight", and was the gateway to a higher state of Contemplation, although mundane perseverance in and of itself did not lead to that state.

LANDMARKS

 The various landmarks upon the Buddha's path were:

1.  THE FOURTH TO EIGHTH JHANA MEDITATIONS

Dimension of Infinite Space - "the perception of the dimension of the infinitude of space".

Dimension of Infinite Consciousness - "the perception of the dimension of the infinitude of consciousness".

Dimension of Nothingness - In the dimension of nothingness, there is "the perception of the dimension of nothingness, singleness of mind".

Dimension of Neither Perception nor Non-Perception - Resulting attitudes are detached, released, disassociated, and without clinging or craving with a general awareness without barriers. There is a discernment experience that 'There is a further escape,' and perseverance is restored preparing one then for an advance upon Supra-Mundane Insight meditation.

2. INSIGHT ABSORPTION

Insight, Buddha related, can proceed from the first Jhana (under certain circumstances), from the fourth or from any of the successive four mentioned above. The question is how is Insight different from the Jhana meditations.

Well, first it must be remembered that LIBERATION is attained upon two different fronts: insight knowledge (vipassanāñāna) and the knowledge pertaining to the supramundane paths (maggañāna).

The first is the direct penetration of the three characteristics of conditioned phenomena: impermanence, suffering and non-self. It takes as its objective sphere the five aggregates (pancakkhandhā): Body form/sensations, discrimination, perception, consciousness and mental formations (the contents of the conscious mind).

Because insight knowledge takes the world of conditioned formations as its object, it is regarded as a mundane form of wisdom. Insight knowledge does not itself directly eradicate the defilements, but serves to prepare the way for the second type of wisdom, the wisdom of the supramundane paths, which emerges when normal insight has been brought to its climax.

3. THE WISDOM OF THE INSIGHT SUPRAMUNDANE PATH

This wisdom is called "supramundane" because it rises up from the world of the five aggregates to realise the state transcendent to the world, which the Theravadins would call Nirvana, but to us it is the State of the Uncarved Wood, the Pure Mind.

When Insight issues in supramundane wisdom, the "Right View" factor of the Noble Eightfold Path turns from conditioned formations to the unconditioned Pure Mind state and thereby eradicates the defilements, including clinging to Duality and Identity.

The climax in the development of insight is the attainment of the four supramundane paths and fruits.

Each path is a MOMENTARY PEAK EXPERIENCE directly apprehending the Pure Mind State (Nibbāna).

4. THE SUPRAMUNDANE EXPERIENCES OF THE PATH

Each path is followed immediately by the supramundane EXPERIENCES OF FRUITION. 

But whereas the path performs the active function of cutting off defilements, fruition is simply that resulting "one mind-moment experience" when the path has completed its task. That is the meditative state called fruition attainment (phalasamāpatti) for the purpose of experiencing the Pure Mind here and now.

The supramundane paths and fruits always arise as discernments of states of higher discerned consciousness.

Chan-Dao students can see that this is precisely the same final fruit of Chan Contemplations.

5. WISDOM and ATTENTION

The ATTENTION has no object and is effectively the insight factor of PURE MINDFULNESS.

We can intuit therefore (correctly) that the WISDOM also has no object and is the insight factor of PURE WISDOM.

These two melding thus open the gate to the Pure Mind Discernment, which was Buddha's Awakening.

Through the Contemplation experiences we can determine that the Pure Mind Discernment of the Buddha's experiences are identical to those of Chan, which we call PURE AWARENESS and PURE MINDFULNESS.

Wisdom is identical with Pure Awareness and the Attention with Pure Mindfulness.

THE CHAN CONTEMPLATIONS

PURE AWARENESS and PURE MINDFULNESS

We must conclude that the coincidence of Wisdom and Attention is not a coincidence and points to an interesting possibility that the path to that point also may have coincidence.

Is it also true that the Supramundane Insight that Buddha used to attain Awakening is in some manner or other a logical equivalent to the Chan Contemplations discovered and developed by the early Chinese Buddha Dharma followers?

Is there also coincidence in the melding of the set of nine Contemplations of Function, Essence, and Non-Differentiated Form that brings about the union of the right hemisphere experiences without mind of:

1. Correct Qi interface operation with the apparent external world of Life Force Function,

2. Correct Operation of the Six Sense Doors,

3. Correct Reception of Undifferentiated Form,

and further, speculatively,

4.  Correct Operation of Space/Time relations?

We have seen how the early Chan scholars and teachers developed the conditions for the correct development in adepts of Initiative, Determination and Perseverance. How did they then continue?

THE SIX GREAT CHAN MASTERS OF THE GOLDEN AGE

The strategy and tactics of the six great Chan Masters were an essential part of the later (Golden Age) teachings and augmented the readiness for a greater level of Contemplation.

In addition they provided a bridge, generated as a sudden catalyst, for the final transition to the state of Pure Mindfulness and Pure Awareness when there was an important obstruction.

THE CONTEMPLATIONS AND THE LAST CONCEPTUALIZATIONS

In Chan contemplations we begin at this stage with three different possible Last Conceptualizations based upon the temperament of those contemplating. They are (each with three aspects which will not be discussed here):

THE FUNCTION OF FUNCTION

THE AWARENESS OF AWARENESS (SENSORY)

THE FORMLESSNESS OF THE FORMLESS (EMPTINESS of EMPTINESS)

We describe FUNCTION as the Beneficial Activity of Fundamental Nature.

As in Supramundane meditations, the entry into these states brings the melding of the set of nine Contemplations of Function, Essence, and Non-Differentiated Form. This brings about the union of the experiences without mind of the Four Sublime States, together with discernments of primitive experiences which are subliminal.

These are equivalent to the practices of SUPRAMUNDANE INSIGHT and, as in the supramundane insight practices, the discernments are just mind-momentary and entry into one leads to spontaneous entry into the others and a state rather like the Becoming of Consciousness, which here we can term the Becoming of the Unconscious.

THE LAST CONCEPTUALIZATIONS

Within Contemplation the LAST CONCEPTUALIZATION is that point when a particular cognitive concept has been reduced to its simplest form and at the same time produces an ABSTRACT, though cognitive, EXPERIENCE of that last conceptualization. Thus the bridge to the unconscious, consisting of NAME-LAST CONCEPTUALIZATION-ABSTRACT EXPERIENCE-ATTAINMENT, is built.

Generating those Last Conceptualizations is the most difficult task.

In the early days of what was to become Chan, these Conceptualizations were not formally necessary, because the old Chinese characters were not at all conceptual as they are today. The ancient Chinese were fully integrated with the Characters and their representation so that, although cognitive, they generated EXPERIENCES not word chains.

Today the Chan adept must learn to reproduce that state of understanding. In other words, when the Character representing 'horse' was presented to the ancient adept, he actually experienced "horse" not a set of conceptual word pictures.

The normal adept walking every moment carried with him the five Chan Paramitas of Understanding Vacuity, Unity, Impermanence, Clear Comprehension and the Life Force. These were carried as a continual "presence" not as a series of conceptual word chains.

Similarly, the Two Truths, the Buddha Nature and the Unity which is Interdependent and Interpenetrated then required no Last Conceptualization.

For example, the Unity which was Interdependent and Interpenetrant generated that actual experience of Being, and holding that state in what we may call the Becoming of the Unconscious, all conceptualizations were left behind and the higher state reached in which the later discerned experience of Primitive Security and corresponding Well-Being was experienced.

Now the Chan Contemplations of THE FUNCTION OF FUNCTION, THE AWARENESS OF AWARENESS (SENSORY), and THE FORMLESSNESS OF THE FORMLESS (EMPTINESS of EMPTINESS) are more complex, so even in ancient times the Last Conceptualization was necessary.

For example, in the Contemplation of the Vacuity of Vacuity one had to first generate the discerned experience of Vacuity and then, using that as a new cognitive fount, generate the abstract experience of the Vacuity of that state of Vacuity and hold that within the Becoming of the Unconscious.

Thus we come exactly to the same method practiced by Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva (Kuan Yin), who turned inward the ear to hear the all-embracing awareness, or the self-natured bodhi (see the Surangama Sutra). Therefore the pretension that the Chan Transmission is different from the Teaching in the sutras is totally groundless, for the principle is the same in both.