Buddhists were interested in human consciousness. They have practiced meditation
as their methods of training, and they have engaged in careful self-observation on
changes in consciousness during meditation.
This sort of work is practiced not only by Buddhists. Other paths, such as Taoism
and Shamanism, have similar practices. Indeed, they are common to every religion
in the East and South-east Asia.
In daily consciousness, it is important to see the differences in things. By doing so,
you can discriminate usefully. Through finer and more accurate discrimination,
science develops. Natural science requires increasing refinement of ordinary
consciousness. With the development of natural science and technology we humans
became capable of manipulating our environment in nearly any way our hearts desire.
Buddhism has refined its way of consciousness in a different direction. It has moved
in the direction of negating the use of consciousness for discrimination between
things. In an image, I might say ‘gradually lowering’ the level of consciousness or
gradually annihilating discrimination. When you lower it to an extreme degree—that
is, when consciousness becomes emptied—the world manifested is that presented in
the Garland Sutra, as we have seen. You might say that the lowered level of
consciousness means the ‘unconscious.’ But, as Jung noted, ‘the characteristic of the
unconscious is not being able to be conscious.’ Therefore, the so-called ‘unconscious,’
as long as you can talk about it, actually is conscious. The modern West has thought
ego so important that it identifies ego with ‘I.’ So, as an Asian, I guess that, in regard
to this ‘lower’ consciousness, it was impossible to say ‘conscious,’ since the modern
Western ego does not comprehend this aspect. Thus this ‘lower’ consciousness can’t
help but be called the ‘unconscious.’
There is a most important point to be kept in mind regarding this descent of the
level of annihilating discrimination. It does not necessarily imply a lowering of the
power of conscious judgment, concentration, observation, etc. In the modern West,
this has not been understood. Because the West emphasized the ego so much, all
lowering of the level of consciousness was considered ‘abnormal’ or ‘pathological.’
Carl Jung is the person who made the greatest effort to correct such an idea. From
the beginning, he pointed out that regression not only has a pathological side, but
also has a constructive and creative role. His experience of ‘Confrontation with the
unconscious,’ described in his autobiography, is indeed such an example of the descent
of the level of consciousness with the full faculties of judgment, concentration, and
observation intact. Active imagination, which he developed, was considered to be one
of the powerful methods of constructively lowering the level of consciousness.
Jung has separated the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious as
strata deep in the mind. They represent, if expressed in the Buddhist way, the gradual
deepening of the level of consciousness. Jung made no mention of a level of Emptiness.
However, Jung’s statement, ‘The psyche is the world pivot’ (Jung 1960:217) may be
taken as representing in Western terms the level of the ultimate state of
non-discrimination or emptiness. I think the reason such a big gap has emerged
between Eastern and Jungian terminology for such consciousness is that Jung was
protecting his position as a psychologist while still trying to relate to this Emptiness.
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