The Meaning of the Term "Cosmic Unconscious" in Suzuki Daisetz's Teaching (revised manus 2011)

Tim Pallis

in

Religion, Science et Pensée au Japon

Cahiers D'Ètudes et de Documents sur les Religion du Japon VIII

(Actes du 4 Congrès International de l'EAJS, Paris 1985)

édites par Harmut O. Rotermund

Once Suzuki Daisetz (1870-1966) expressed his regret, that he ever used the term "unconscious" to explain Zen. The misunderstanding caused by this word did not escape his attention. In spite of the danger of repeating the obscurity connected with the understanding of it, I would like to explore the meaning of an expanded form, namely "Cosmic Unconscious". It is my feeling that through a close examination of this designation, it would be possible, at least intellectually, to understand the essence of Zen's religious realization. Not to be tempted to muddle a difficult subject with my own thinking, I am going to rely heavily on expression used by Suzuki and other true Zen people, who have contributed to the clarification of the meaning of the "Cosmic Unconscious" in Zen.

I his earlier writings (1) Suzuki translated Bodhidharma's (ca. 470-543) mu-shin and the 6th patriarch Huineng's (jap. Eno 638-713) mu-nen with "Unconscious", because they were often used interchangeable as the "Unconscious" underlying all activities, mental and bodily, conscious and unconscious (2). Later Suzuki added "Cosmic" to unconscious and used this term "Cosmic Unconscious" to denote the original nature of life and reality. In his many writings Suzuki used other terms like the "Unborn", the "Unknown", the "True Mind" or "Self Nature" synonymously to designate a metaphysical or ontological aspect of man's mind, which is at the same time the root of all things and the fountainhead of creativity.

Mu-shin or mu-nen is therefore something more than what we usually understand by unconscious, because man's consciousness was awakened from the "Unconscious" sometime in the course of evolution. Nature works its way unconscious of itself, and the conscious man comes out of it (3). All of our conscious thoughts and feelings grow out of the "Unconscious", and without this as basis there can be no function of consciousness. Man's mind therefore functions by means of the "Unconscious", but without being aware of it. Only because of the "Unconscious", seeing and hearing, remembering and recognizing are possible. To see, to hear, to remember and to recognize are the very act of the "Unconscious" (4).

In the same way as our consciousness comes out of the "Unconscious, the ordinary field of consciousness again vanishes away somewhere into the "Mysterious Unknown". But this does not mean that it is beyond the reach of our consciousness. I fact it is always the most intimate thing to us, and it is just because of this intimacy that it is so difficult to see, in the same way as the eye cannot see itself (5). "The Mysterious Unknown" is the "Cosmic Unconscious" or the inexhaustible source of infinite possibilities and creativity (6).

Suzuki identified it with the Japanese Zen Master Bankei's (1622-93) "Unborn", which is the "Metaphysical Unborn", the root of all things that includes not only our daily experiences, but the totality of all realities, past, present and future, and filling the cosmos to the ends of the ten quarters (7). Suzuki spent 70 years teaching the importance of being awakened to the presence of this fountainhead in all things and in all our doings. As he said: "The Cosmic Unconscious must be made to reveal itself unreservedly" (8). "Once recognized it enters into ordinary consciousness and puts in good order all the complexities there" (9). "We are then thoroughly at rest and at peace with ourselves and with the world generally" (10).

The Daitoku-ji Zen master Kobori Sôhaku (1918-92) has often mentioned that his former teacher at Otani University did not just approach the reality of Zen from the outside, but he himself became one with the reality of the "Cosmic Unconscious", which lies at the root of all existence and unites all in the oneness of being (11). Kobori wrote:

The Consciousness, once culminated in him at its non plus ultra, was then broken through into infinite Cosmic Unconscious (Chaos) which precedes any of the bifurcations or polarizations necessary to the thinking process. The Cosmic Unconscious as such is the real basis which is common to the vast expanse of nature - space, time, constellations and universes, non-being as well as beings, including animals, plants and human beings. This Cosmic Unconscious goes beyond the limits of the intellectual realm of man, so that sometimes it is likely to be called the "mysterious" or the "supernatural realm" (12).

When Kobori identifies the "Cosmic Unconscious" with "Chaos", he is translating the Japanese term konton (C. hun-tun) into English. The word hun-tun is used in Chinese cosmogony to denote the condition of the "Mysterious Unknown" before its separation and complexities of the phenomena of the visible universe. "Chaos" should not be understood in the sense of the confusion that exists after an order or a system has collapsed, but in the cosmogonic sense of the undifferentiated condition of oneness without any particular sound, form or substance before the creation of orderly forms. "Chaos" which means a gap or yawn, was the most ancient Greek God, the deity representing the personification of the dark and limitless void, that preceded the creation of the universe (13).

The Taoist goal of spiritual practice was to become one with the primordial condition of hun-tun, which was called "Returning to the beginning of the ten thousand things". To achieve this Chaos like condition, the Taoist must use "arts" or practices of meditation to remove his "face", "fast the heart", "still the mind", "congeal the mind" or "close up the sense-organs", that usually give him the "face" or mode of being defined by ordinary social, moral and intellectual standards. The hun-tun experience was what it meant to be a true man - to be like a dead man while alive, to have no human "face". "His bone and flesh were fused and his eyes were like his ears, his ears like his nose and his nose like his mouth - everything was the same" (14).

Suzuki on the other hand tirelessly emphasized that satori or awakening, as the goal of Zen training, is not to remain in the sameness and oneness of meditative absorption, but to awaken from it and being just about to divide it into subject and object. Satori is therefore the staying in oneness and jet emerging from it and separating into subject and object. It is the oneness dividing itself into subject-object and yet retaining its oneness at the very moment that there is the awakening of consciousness (15).

The verb form satoru in Suzuki's definition means to become conscious of the "Unconscious" (16). This experience may suddenly happen during Zen training owing to the unceasing fixation on a kôan or existential dilemma. The kôan of the Zen meditation practice like: "Where does it come from?", "Who am I before my father and mother were born?", "Where do I go?" or "What is the Mind before the creation of the universe?", are all pointing to the experience of hun-tun or "Chaos", which is tantamount to being conscious of the "Cosmic Unconscious".

Suzuki knew that the metaphysical or "Cosmic Unconscious" was liable to be misunderstood, because of its psychological connotation (17). As long as it has a psychological sense, there cannot be any satori or Zen awakening. The psychological territory of the unconscious must be transcended, and what may be termed the "Ontological Unconscious" should be tapped (18). The Zen "Unconscious" is therefore not the same as the psychological unconscious, because it is with "God" even prior to his creation. It is what lies at the basis of reality (19). The Japanese scholar T.P. Kasulis , from the University of Hawai, has this to say about Suzuki's "Unconscious":

D.T. Suzuki once lectured on the nature of the "unconscious" in Zen Buddhism, but his usage of the term is patently not Freudian. Not only does Suzuki call this unconscious "ante scientific" and "Cosmic", but it is also clearly a state of awareness rather that unawareness (20).

The Japanese psychologist Akihisa Kondô wrote that Suzuki's expression " To become conscious of the Cosmic Unconscious" was different from Freud's notion of bringing the libidinal unconscious into consciousness, because it is achieved by awakening of Prajna (21). Prajna is often translated as transcendental wisdom, but Suzuki explained that it meant "Immovably Mover", which unconsciously operates in the field of consciousness (22). Sigmund Freud's (1856-1939) work to transform Id into Ego or to make the unconscious conscious is not the same as Suzuki's to become conscious of the "Unconscious".

Freud's concept of the unconscious is a personal aspect of man's mind, which is like a basement containing dynamic processes, not ideas or thoughts, but wishes, instincts and impulses, which cannot reach consciousness, but nevertheless always determine behavior and experiences. As this unconscious is supposed to consist of mainly repressed materials, to make the unconscious conscious means de-repression according to the psychologist Erich From (1900-80) (23).

Another interpretation of the psychological unconscious is the Jungian impersonal "collective unconscious" which contains archetypes or mythological aspects of mankind. Suzuki once made it clear that the "Cosmic Unconscious" is not the same as C.G. Jung's (1875-1961) "collective unconscious" (24). Still another interpretation is the humanistic idea of the universality of man, which means man as a whole, rooted in nature and cosmos. It represent man's evolution and past, down to the dawn of human existence with all its possibilities for positive and negative states of mind.

Even the humanistic idea of making the unconscious conscious means the living experience of our universality, and thus enlarging one's consciousness through getting in touch with all aspects of reality (25), it is not the same as Suzuki's idea of being conscious of the "Cosmic Unconscious" , because the psychological process of discovering the unconscious would just be an endless expansion of experiences. The "Cosmic Unconscious" on the other hand is beyond all experiences and expansions of consciousness.

The aim of psychoanalysis is to make one experience that which is unconscious and integrate it into consciousness, that is, to make one become conscious of something one was not conscious of before. The point is that if all repression is lifted, there is no more "unconscious" as against "conscious". There is then the unreflecting, immediate grasp of reality, without neurotic hang ups or intellectualizations. It is a recovery of the pre-intellectual, open and responding mind of the child, but on a new level, that of the full development of man's maturity, individuality and universality (26).

This sounds very Zen like, but there is an important difference, because Suzuki is not talking of lifting something repressed, to integrate it into an enlarged consciousness, but to be in communion with the ontological or metaphysical "Unconscious".

Erich From in his attempt to equalize the aims of Zen training and psychoanalysis proposed to replace Suzuki's term "Cosmic Unconscious" with Richard Maurice Bucke's (1837-1902) notion of cosmic consciousness (27) According to Bucke, man has progressed from animal consciousness to human self-consciousness, and is now about to develop cosmic consciousness. Erich From misunderstood the meaning of Suzuki's "Cosmic Unconscious" and used Bucke's cosmic consciousness, because in psychoanalysis the conscious is unconscious only so long as we are alienated from it. If the unconscious however becomes conscious, it ceases to be unconscious (28). But Suzuki's "Unconscious" never ceases to be the "Cosmic Unconscious" or the "Unknown" or the "Unborn".

Zen adopted the devision of the human mind in 8 Vijnanas or aspects of consciousness from the Indian Yogacara school of Buddhism. The bedrock of our personality is the 8th Vijnana or Alaya-vijnana, that is the "store-house" or "all-conserving consciousness", which is like a primordial ocean pregnant with all the fertilized seeds of the phenomenal world. This Alaya-vijnana is the basis of mental life, as it comprises all the programs of memory, subconscious and the different dynamic processes of a psychological personal and impersonal unconscious. The Japanese Zen master and philosopher Keiji Nishitani (1900-1990) has given a clear interpretation of the Alaya-vijnana:

Constituting the basis of our minds, it is at the same time of the nature of what may be called a cosmic consciousness, or rather a Cosmic Unconscious. This unconscious is of course not to be understood merely in a psychological sense, but also as having ontological significance such as is implied in the concept of "life". The Alaya-consciousness is understood to include the aspect we call universal "life" on the world plane. At the root of and at one with cosmic "mind" is a "life" embracing the entire spectrum of life of the flesh, the unconscious, and consciousness. Such an Alaya-consciousness lies latent at the base of the human mind and of the minds of all living things (29).

In agreement with this Suzuki says:

The Cosmic Unconscious is the principle of creativity, God's workshop where is deposited the moving force of the universe. All creative works of art, the lives and aspirations of religious people, the spirit of inquiry moving the philosophers - all this comes from the fountainhead of the Cosmic Unconscious, which is really the store-house (Alaya) or Zero-reservoir of infinite possibilities (30).

The Japanese Zen master Hakuin Zenji (1686-1768) expressed his opinion of the Alaya-vijnana, and here we see a practical approach to the experience of being conscious of the "Cosmic Unconscious". It must be noted that Hakuin's statements are in harmony with the above mentioned explanations by Nishitani and Suzuki, but they are extricately negative, as only a Zen man can express his deepest consent:

Alaya-consciousness, that dark cesspool of stupidity and ignorance (31). The dark cave of the vacuous, neuter Alaya-consciousness (32). At the moment you smash open the dark cave of the 8th or Alaya-consciousness, the precious light of the Great Perfect Mirror Wisdom instantly shines forth (33). One of the jakugo or capping words in Zen says a similar thing: Fling the Dharma storehouse open in your bosom and carry out your own treasure (34).

One will come to satori only through tremendous effort. Such awakening will not happen unless one has gone through a long, basic training of Zen meditation. The student's spiritual consciousness must reach culmination, which is the condition of great fixation and concentration. A Chinese monk named Ting Shang-tso (jap. Jojoza) once inquired of the famous Chinese Zen Master Linji Yixuan (jap. Rinzai d. 866), "What is the heart of Buddhism?". Rinzai slapped him and pushed him away. Jojoza, brought abruptly to a state of concentration, stood motionless and in such total self-oblivion that a monk nearby had to remind him to bow to his master. At the moment of bowing he is said to have attained the great Enlightenment (35).

The Chinese Zen Master Yuanwu Keqin's (jap. Engo Kokugon 1063-1135) commentary to this case 32 in the Hekigan Roku describes the monk's condition very well: He has fallen into a dark cave where only dead devils are gathering. Lost all consciousness. The student stands there all lost, with the consciousness merged into the "Cosmic Unconscious". At this culmination the consciousness is not yet enlightened, being in a state of darkness. In the awakening experience the darkness of the "Cosmic Unconscious" suddenly change into light. Engo says: It is just like finding a light in darkness". Hakuin said: All of a sudden a once dead has revived.

But before that moment can arrive the Zen student must be submerged in the ocean of unconsciousness, not knowing who he is, where he is or what he is doing. Satori will happen when some event suddenly stimulates the student in a special indeterminable way and makes him break through the abyss of unconsciousness (36).

As long as we are conscious of something there are always two aspects, subject and object, questioner and question. This dualistic condition may lead the questioner to a mental and spiritual crisis, so that his consciousness sinks back into itself. When the crisis through the quest reaches its culmination, consciousness of subject and object dies and sinks into unconsciousness. This is what is called Samadhi or being deeply absorbed in meditation. When the Zen student come to this condition in his training everything is lost. There is psychologically a complete state of unconsciousness.

But this state is not to be taken as the final one. There must be an awakening, and this awakening usually takes place through a sense-stimulation. Shakyamuni was awakened from unconsciousness and returned to the state of consciousness. From utter unification separation takes place, and after the separation has happened, this world come to be. What Buddhist call Enlightenment is when the "Unconscious" begins to move into the state of consciousness or awareness of subject and object. The instant when we begin to be aware is the moment of enlightenment (37).

The 17th century Zen Master Takasui describes this process of enlightenment in the following way:

Doubt deeply in a state of singlemindedness. Become completely like a dead man, unaware of even of the presence of your own person. You will arrive at a state of being completely self-oblivious and empty. All the time being like a dead man. And after that, when you are no more conscious of the procedure of the great doubt, but become yourself, through and through, a great mass of doubt, there will be a moment, all of a sudden, at which you emerge into a transcendence called the Great Enlightenment, as if you had awoken from a great dream, or as if, having been completely dead, you had suddenly revived (38)

To get satori or enlightenment the self-reflexive nature of consciousness must be suspended. This is the condition of Samadhi. Entering Samadhi is to attain a uniformity of consciousness, a perfect state of mental equilibrium with no feelings and no intellectual functions. In this state there is only a perfect balanced condition of indifference such as that of the ocean on a calm night, reflecting the stars when there are no waves stirring. The aim of Zen training is to attain this quiet tranquilized equilibrium which is called Samadhi.

This is not, however, a state of Satori. Samadhi is not enough and no more than a unification of consciousness. There must be an awakening from this state of unification or uniformity, and that is the awakening of Prajna. Compared with Prajna, Samadhi is like a state of trance; nothing comes out of this evenness of consciousness. Prajna awakens suddenly from the torpidity of deep concentration and fixation. It is awakened consciousness or enlightened consciousness which rises out of the tranquilized state of cosmic unconsciousness (39).

The importance of the preceding condition of "Cosmic Unconscious" being the basis for the Satori experience is accounted for in the late Nanzen-ji Rôshi Shibayama Zenkei's (1894-1974) spiritual narrative:

After 3 years residence in the Zen hall, my consciousness was so numb that I felt as though I had turned into an automaton. I had regressed gradually into a state in which I no longer knew if I were dead or alive. I lost the awareness of seeing, even as I was seeing, and my awareness of hearing was gone too even when hearing, and finally my awareness of walking departed too, even as I was walking. In a word, I had been reduced to a robot-like existence. Everything went on in a cloud of vagueness, a state of which the ancient sages described as a feeling, as if one's mind had turned into an inanimate piece of wood or rock. In fact I often ran into the wall with my eyes wide open. Only after the jolt of butting against the wall, I regained enough amount of awareness to turn round the corner. But no sooner had I turned it, that I turned myself into the unconscious automation once more. In short, I behaved very much like a psychotic being. I was living a life in which I could hardly tell day from night. In the world of Zen, the words mushin, no-mind or muga, no-self are often spoken of. These should not be confused with the idea or concept of mushin or muga. For Zen is the real and genuine experience of mushin or muga (40).

The state of unconsciousness, in which there is neither the kôan nor the one who meditates on it, is known as the state without subject and object. But it is not the final state. An old master said:

Do not think the state of unconsciousness is the truth itself, for there is still another frontier gate, which is now to be broken through. While you are in this state of mind, you happen to hear a sound or to see an object, and the whole thing comes to a sudden end; you have at last touched the ultimate reality (41).

We can say that it is the "Unconscious" announcing its presence through consciousness, or that it cuts into consciousness again. The "Unknown" cuts into the known. The "Unborn" cuts into the created. The "Formless" cuts into the formed. "Emptiness" cuts into something. The "Infinite" cuts into the finite.

Sôhaku Kobori's elucidation of this intrinsic moment is the best in modern Zen literature:

The consciousness of of a human being is rooted deeply in the "Cosmic Unconscious". At the moment when human consciousness, having gradually submerged into the ocean of Cosmic Unconscious, suddenly rises up to the surface of that Unconscious, it cuts into the level of normal consciousness again. Here, Zen declares that it is human consciousness awakened to the original nature - Satori (enlightenment). We must be very careful regarding the process of awakening experience. We must bear in mind that it by no means is a mere continuation of the conscious state of mind, nor is it a mere submission into the abyss of the Unconscious. But it is the regaining of consciousness after having once "gone through" the Cosmic Unconscious (42).

According to the Japanese Zen Scholar Professor Masao Abe (1915-2006), Rinzai's "True man of no title" is supra-individual as well as individual. "Supra-individual" means "Emptiness", "Cosmic Unconscious" or "Bottomless Abyss". Individual means a concrete living existence. Rinzai's "True Man" has these two aspects. He exist as a final individual, but at the same time he is a "Bottomless Abyss". The Zen student must go through this "abyss" aspects of himself, if he is to be an individual in the true sense. Masao Abe makes this point very clear:

The Supra-individual Emptiness, or Cosmic Unconsciousness cannot manifest itself directly unless it materializes in an individual existence. On the other hand, an individual existence is really individual only in so far as the Supra-individual Emptiness or Cosmic Unconsciousness manifest itself in and through it. Rinzai's "Man" is nothing but a living individual who is always (therefore right here and now) Emptiness, Cosmic Unconsciousness or Seeing. I other words, the living oneness of the individual and the Supra-individual is "Man" (43).

Notes

1) D.T. Suzuki: Essays in Zen Budhism (EZB) 1-3 series, London 1927-34.

The Zen Doctrine of No-mind, London 1949.

2) D.T. Suzuki: EZB 3. Series, London 1953, p.24n.

3) D.T. Suzuki: Lectures on Zen Buddhism (LZB). In Zen Buddhism and

Psychoanalysis by Suzuki, From and DeMartino, London 1960, p. 18.

4) EZB p. 24.

5) LZB pp. 16-18.

6) LZB p. 17.

7) LZB p. 19.

8) D.T. Suzuki: Zen and Japanese Culture (ZJC). Bollingen Series 64,

Princeton 1959, p. 226.

9) LZB p. 16.

10) LZB p. 17.

11) Sôhaku Kobori: The Enlightened Thought (ET). In The Eastern Buddhist,

NS. Vol. 2, no. 1 (1967), p.101.

12) ET p. 102.

13) ET p. 99.

14) N.J. Giradot: Myth and Meaning in Early Taoism. The Theme of Chaos

(Hun-tun) pp. 154, 160, 258.

15) D.T. Suzuki: The Meaning of Satori (MS). In D.T. Suzuki: The Field of

Zen. New York 1969, p. 24.

16) D.T. Suzuki: Living by Zen. London 1950, p. 88.

17) ZJC p. 199.

18) LZB p. 49.

19) LC p. 88.

20) T.P.Kasulis: Zen Buddhism, Freud and Jung. In The Eastern Buddhist,

NS. Vol.10. no. 1 (1977), p. 69n.

21) Akihisa Kondo: The Stone Bridge of Jôshû. In The Eastern Buddhist, NS.

Vol. 2, no. 1 (1967), p. 94.

22) LZB p. 21.

23) Erich From: Psychoanalysis and Zen Buddhism (PZB). In Zen Buddhism

and Psychoanalysis by Suzuki, From and DeMartino, London 1960, p.

106.

24) ZJC p. 226.

25) PZB pp. 106-111.

26) PZB pp. 128, 135.

27) Richard M. Bucke: Cosmic Consciousness. New York 1901.

28) PZB p. 134.

29) Keiji Nishitani: The Standpoint of Zen. In The Eastern Buddhist. NS.

Vol. 17 no. 1 (1984), p. 18.

30) ZJC pp. 242-243.

31) The Zen Master Hakuin (ZMH): Selected Writings, Translated by Phillip

B. Yampolsky, New York 1971, p.62.

32) ZMH p.64.

33) Isshu Miura and Ruth Fuller Sasaki: Zen Dust. The History of the Kôan

and Kôan Study in Rinzai Zen, New York 1966, p. 66.

34) A Zen Forest. Sayings of the Masters, compiled and translated, with an

introduction by Soiku Shigematsu, New York 1981, p. 46 (170).

35) Keiji Nishitani: Religion and Nothingness (RN), translated, with an intro-

duction by Jan Van Bragt, Berkeley 1982, p. 20.

36) ET p. 104.

37) D.T. Suzuki: Buddha and Zen. In D.T. Suzuki: The Field of Zen. New

York 1969, p. 17.

38) RN p. 20.

39) MS p. 25.

40) Two Cases og Zen Awakening (kenshô) Experiences, 1. Master

Shibayama's Case, ed. and translated by Jirô Anzai. In Psychologia, Vol.

13 (1970) pp. 140-144.

41) D.T. Suzuki: The Training of a Zen Buddhist Monk. New York 1965, p.

110.

42) ET p. 102.

43) Masao Abe: Zen and compassion. In The Eastern Buddhist, NS. Vol. 2

no. 1, 1967, p. 62.