With just a little wisdom, if it has filtered through that pseudo-intelligence that is cognitive or with a little virtue that has opened a small crack in your craving and clinging, perhaps you have learned that you must forget the Awakening altogether and just concentrate your energy upon walking the path.
But I must ask really why you opened this section. Probably it was because you were attracted to the idea of this Higher Consciouness. It is really less likely that the concept of gathering Chan Understanding appealed to you as much.
See if that is true or not and perhaps take a lesson from it.
So, now let me correct the title, which should read:
CHAN CONSCIOUSNESS AND HIGHER UNDERSTANDING
Now that puts the Path in better focus.
CHAN CONSCIOUSNESS
We must first explode the mistaken idea that "we" are our consciousness. First of all important teachings is that the "I" is pure fiction. It is a delightful tool and nothing more. So the idea that "I" in some way is absurd.
At the end of World War II, the Russian army was graced with men and women with little education, many of whom had little contact with what we would consider the civilized world.
When some of these entered the "modern" cities they encountered electricity in the form of lights. They saw that all one had to do was turn a switch and, lo and behold, there was light. So naturally what did they do? They tore out the switches, believing that that was the secret, and when they returned to Russia they took the "light" with them.
True or not, it does not matter. What matters is that you are today doing the same thing. You are ripping out this "Consciousness", believing that that is the "light" that brings "understanding" and, of course, "liberation".
That is an error.
Identity has built the "Past," which from memory invades consciousness. Identity builds the ideas of the "Future" which invade consciousness.
Consciousness is there to reflect the "NOW," not the past or the future.
Let us grasp that idea of the "Now" more clearly.
How often are you mindful of what is happening? Most of the time not, probably.
Where is that mindfulness taking place? The answer is obvious.
It is taking place within Consciousness.
In the last seminar I presented students with four wood cut prints that were made in China many many years ago.
One showed a Chinese man, bare to the waist, carrying across a stream a lady with all her finery.
The question asked was, "What is happening?" and the correct answer was, "This man is carrying the woman across the stream."
A second print showed two men seated quietly resting after having been fishing.
The question asked was "What is happening?" and the correct anser was "Two fishermen are resting." That was a fairly logical reply.
The third print showed two warriors fighting. The same question drew the obvious answer, "Two men are fighting with swords".
The fourth print showed a young fisherman looking at a beautiful lady who is shyly looking at him. The same question brought the answer, "Two lovers looking at each other."
I explained that they were wrong.
In the first picture I explained that the man was carrying his wife across the stream and was thinking, "Why the hell am I doing this? Here I am with hardly a cloth to my back and I from obligation have to carry this dumb chick across the river, because if I don't I will have to pay for any clothes that get spoilt. What I should do is take her to the middle of the stream and drop her off and hope she drowns."
In the second print the two fisherman have stopped for the day. One is looking at the other and thinking, "What a dodo, he came without his rod and I had to catch the fish that we will both eat. I should eat it all and give him none." The second fisherman is thinking, "Here is that big blabbermouth with his rod. If he didn't give me all this camping baggage I wouldn't have forgotten my rod. Now I suppose I will have to plead with the son of a bitch so I can eat something."
In the third print both warriors are thinking the same thing, "I am much better than him and any moment he will make a mistake. I will then run him through and his property and his wife will be mine".
In the fourth print the woman is looking at this young handome creature and thinking, "He looks like he is wealthy and would be a good provider. If I play it cool and flirt a little he will fall for sure." He is thinking "She is a beautiful creature and with a bit of luck if I play this right she will hit the sack with me tonight and perhaps a few other days."
Do you get the idea?
In those second descriptions the thoughts were present in consciousness. But what thoughts were these? They were all thoughts of Identity which had no real place within consciousness.
The first descriptions were correct, but what was not seen was that what was presented were moments of the Now. Furthermore at those moments there was nothing present except Mindfulness of the task in hand.
Mindfulness of the now. Full experiencing of the important moments which were passing like a "stream of true consciousness".
In fact, streams of correct and natural mindfulness.
Intruders in that stream are always Identity Mindfulness, which is concerned as you can see with memory traces filled with the Past and the Future.
When the past and the future are not present every mind moment is filled with the present, which is pure mindfulness OF the task at hand.
What is more, the mind is not VACUOUS... It is filled with clear and correct "mind moments".
The aim then of the Dharma contemplations is to develop the Mindfulness of the NOW, the clear consciousness of the moment, which becomes the stimulus cue for the next mind moment of the stream of consciousness.
We can say then that we are best served by:
"Living in the NOW in which there are no empty mind moments."
Mind moments are vacuous whenever Identity is present.
Perhaps then you can see that our daily practices of Mindfulness are just training sessions to liberate Consciousness from the past and future stains of Memory.
THE EIGHT CONSCIOUSNESSES
Let us put this Consciousness together is a way that is clearer. There are eight Consciousnesses:
Consciousness of Vision
Consciousness of Hearing
Consciousness of Smell
Consciousness of Touch
Consciousness of Taste
Consciousness of Mind (note this is not the consciousness of the content of mind, which would be thinking)
Consciousness of Stained Identity
Alaya Consciousness
The first five are clear and when focus is correct then these are all correct MINDFULNESS OF the NOW moments of each.
The sixth is the Consciousness of Mind. This really is the Consciousness of Doing, which is Pure Mindfulness without content. This can produce a consciousness of a particular mindfulness.
The seventh Consciousnes is the stained Consciuosness provided by Identity and Duality.
The eighth, Alaya Consciousness is the Consciousness of Being, which is Pure Awareness, which is without content, and can be easily blanketed by the Stained consciousness.
HIGHER UNDERSTANDING
We all can declare that "Knowing" is "Understanding" and that the understanding arises from from the satiation of Curiosity and Learning.
What then is "Higher Understanding"?
It is not "Knowing more", or even "Knowing more profoundly".
It is Experiencing and Unlearning.
Now unlearning does not mean "Forgetting". It means letting go the power that cognition, led by Identity, has over the entire natural system.
We then can considerr that experiencing has two faces. One face is that which has its links to Cognition of the left hemisphere, which transforms all experiences into language, and the second face is that of the unconscious experiences that actually run the natural system.
Actually, they are not experiences in the normal sense, they are simply an inner language which can under the special circumstances of concentration, absorption, contemplation and penetration be transformed into experiences.
These experiences are, of course, much more primitive and much less complicated than those of cognition and if and when they are, under circumstances which develop discernment, available to consciousness, they are subject to the distortions of cognition.
If the human creature is dominated by cognition then there is no "listening" to the natural system and it is clear that the object of all the types of true meditations is to revitalize the communication between the internal signals that really are essential to the system and the cognitive system. In this way, balance is restored and cognition returns to its place as the tool of the natural system and not its master.
THE MISTAKEN IDEA
There is a rather tragic and mistken idea that Chan Contemplation and Penetration is all about attaining the Awakening and later developing that Awakening to the Enlightenment.
Awakening has no real unility or function except to confirm that the path has been accomplished. It is like the university degrees that mean little except as wallpaper or in some cases for use in the toilet with a hole punched in the corner to hang by.
The idea that Awakening is the fruit is foolish. It does not produce a deeper knowing.
The task of Chan aided by Dao is to return the system to a balanced and harmonious state so that the "human creature" can once more become "human" and not a creature that lauds its humanity with false pride and actually stoops lower than the earthworm.
The question is, then, how does this revitalization take place?
This has been discussed previously, but here it may be a good idea to present a model of the human system and how the left brain cognition interacts with the important internal signals (experiences) to produce this "human creature".