The Play of
the Mind: Form, Emptiness, and Beyond
By
John Welwood
Form is
emptiness, emptiness itself is form; emptiness is no other than
form, form is no other than emptiness. -Heart
Sutra
In every crescendo of sensation, in every effort to recall, in
every progress towards the satisfaction of desire, this succession
of an emptiness and fullness that have reference to each other and
are one flesh is the essence of the phenomenon. -William
James
In the gap between thoughts nonconceptual wisdom shines
continuously. -Milarepa
Western philosophy has studied the mind mainly through conceptual
thought and rational analysis; as a result, it has granted
thinking, even "thinking about thinking," the highest status.
Modern depth psychology has gone beyond this traditional
understanding by giving greater importance to what eludes
thought--subconscious feelings, wishes, impulses, images. Yet
modern psychology's view of mind remains limited because, in
characteristic Western fashion, it focuses on the contents of mind,
while neglecting mind as an experiential
process.
William James (1890, 255) was an early critic of psychology's
tendency to overemphasize the contents of the mind, while ignoring
the flowing stream of consciousness itself--which for him was like
saying that
a river consists of nothing but pailsful, spoonsful, quartpotsful,
barrelsful, and other molded forms of water. Even were the pails
and the pots all actually standing in the stream, still between
them the free water would continue to flow.
In directing attention toward the flow of consciousness, the free
water that cannot be confined to its molded forms, James comes
close to the Buddhist understanding of everyday mind as a
mindstream, a continuous flow of moment-to-moment
experiencing.
Buddhist psychology goes one step further, however. Beyond the
static Western focus on contents of mind and the more dynamic view
of the mindstream as a flow of experiencing, it recognizes a still
larger dimension of mind--the presence of nonconceptual awareness,
or "nonthought," as it is sometimes called. In contrast to the
forms that consciousness takes--thought, feeling, perception--the
larger nature of consciousness has no shape or form. Therefore, it
is often described as "emptiness." If the contents of mind are like
pails and buckets floating in a stream, and the mindstream is like
the dynamic flowing of the water, pure awareness is like the water
itself in its essential wetness. Sometimes the water is still,
sometimes it is turbulent; yet it always remains as it is-wet,
fluid, watery. In the same way, pure awareness is never confined or
disrupted by any mind-state. Therefore, it is the source of
liberation and true equanimity.
When we start to observe the play of the mind, what we most readily
notice are the contents of consciousness--the ongoing, overlapping
sequence of perceptions, thoughts, feelings. As we develop a
subtler, finer, more sustained kind of witnessing, through a
discipline like meditation, we discover in addition to these
differentiated mind-moments another aspect of the mindstream that
usually remains hidden: inarticulate gaps or spaces appearing
between our discrete thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. These
spaces between the pailsful and bucketsful of water floating in the
stream are hard to see at first and impossible to remember because
they have no definite form or shape we can grasp. Yet if we do not
try to grasp them, these undifferentiated mind-moments can provide
a glimpse of the larger reality that lies beyond the mindstream:
the pure ground of nonconceptual awareness that encompasses and
also surpasses all the activities of mind.
Thus the play of the mind includes three elements: differentiated
and undifferentiated mind-moments, and the larger background
awareness in which the interplay between these two takes place. In
the Tibetan Mahamudra tradition, these three elements are known as
movement, stillness, and awareness. The alternation between
movement and stillness--differentiated and undifferentiated
mind-moments--makes up the flowing stream of consciousness that is
the foreground level of mind. And through the relative stillness of
the silent spaces between thoughts we find a doorway into the
essence of mind itself, the larger background awareness that is
present in both movement and stillness, without bias toward either.
This larger awareness is self-existing: it cannot be fabricated or
manufactured because it is always present, whether we notice it or
not.
In terms of the Buddhist teaching of the three kayas, we could say
that the contents of consciousness belong to the nirmanakaya, the
realm of manifest form. The pulsation of the mindstream, with its
alternation between movement and stillness, belongs to the
sambhogakaya, the realm of energetic flow. And the larger open
ground of awareness, first discovered in moments of stillness, is
the dharmakaya, the realm of pure being itself, eternally present,
spontaneous, and free of entrapment in any form
whatsoever.
Form and Emptiness in the Stream of
Consciousness
Our most common experience of nonthought or emptiness is the
appearance of little gaps between our thoughts--which are
continually occurring, though normally overlooked. For instance,
after speaking a sentence, there is a natural pause, marked by a
punctuation mark when written out, which allows a split-second
return to undifferentiated awareness. Or between the words of the
sentence itself, there may be halts and gaps (often covered
verbally by "hm" or "ah") that allow split-second attention to a
preverbal sense of what we wish to say.
As one of the first Western explorers of consciousness, William
James was particularly interested in these undifferentiated moments
in the mindstream--which he called the "transitive parts," in
contrast to the more substantial moments of formal thought and
perception. James (1890, 243-4) also understood the impossibility
of using focal attention to try to observe these diffuse
transitional spaces that occur between more substantive
mind-moments:
Now it is very difficult, introspectively, to see the transitive
parts for what they really are. If they are but flights to a
conclusion, stopping them to look at them before the conclusion is
reached is really annihilating them. . . . The attempt at
introspective analysis in these cases is in fact like seizing a
spinning top to catch its motion, or trying to turn up the gas
quickly enough to see how the darkness looks.
The difficulty of apprehending these undifferentiated moments
through focal attention has led Western psychology to disregard or
deny them as having any importance in the stream of consciousness,
an error that James (1890, 244) called the "psychologist's
fallacy":
If to hold fast and observe the transitive parts of thought's
stream be so hard, then the great blunder to which all schools are
liable must be the failure to register them, and the undue
emphasizing of the more substantive parts of the
stream.
The mind's tendency to hold onto solid forms is like a bird in
flight always looking for the next branch to land on. And this
narrow focus prevents us from appreciating what it is like to sail
through space, to experience what one Hasidic master called the
"between-stage"--a primal state of potentiality that gives birth to
new possibilities. Continually looking for a belief, attitude,
identity, or emotional reaction to hold onto for dear life, we fail
to recognize the interplay of form and emptiness in the
mindstream--out of which all creativity arises.
Beauty itself is a function of this interplay. Things stand out as
beautiful only in relation to the space surrounding them. The
loveliest antiques mean nothing in a cluttered room. A sudden clap
of thunder is awesome not just because of the sound, but because of
the silence it has interrupted, as James (1890, 240) points
out:
Into the awareness of the thunder itself the awareness of the
previous silence creeps and continues; for what we hear when the
thunder crashes is not thunder pure, but
thunder-breaking-upon-silence-and-contrasting-with-it. . . . The
feeling of the thunder is also a feeling of the silence as just
gone.
Similarly in music, the contour, meaning, and beauty of a melody
derive from the intervals between the notes. Recognizing this, the
great pianist Artur Schnabel once wrote, "The notes I handle no
better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes--ah,
that is where the art resides." A single tone by itself has little
meaning, and as soon as two tones are sounded they are instantly
related by the shape of the space or interval between them. The
interval of a third conveys a totally different feeling-quality
than does a fifth. Since any pair of tones the same interval apart
will sound rather similar, the sequences of intervals are what give
a melody its particular quality, rather than the particular tones
themselves.
Thus music provides an interesting analogy for the interplay
between form and emptiness within the larger ecology of mind. Form
is emptiness: the melody is actually a pattern of intervals between
the tones. Although a melody is usually thought of as a sequence of
notes, it is equally, if not more so, a sequence of spaces that the
tones simply serve to mark off. Emptiness is form: nonetheless,
this pattern of intervals does make up a definite, unique melodic
progression that can be sung and remembered. And the ground of both
the tones and the intervals is the larger silence that encompasses
the melody and allows it to stand out and be
heard.
Our usual addiction to the grasping tendency of mind causes us to
overlook the spaces around thoughts, the felt penumbra that gives
our experience its subtle beauty and meaning. Neglecting these
fluid spaces within the mindstream contributes to a general
tendency to over-identify with the contents of our mind and to
assume that we are the originator and custodian of them. The
troublesome equation "I = my thoughts about reality" creates a
narrowed self-sense, along with an anxiety about our thoughts as
territory we have to defend.
Absolute Emptiness: The Larger Ground of
Awareness
So far we have focused on gaps in the mindstream--spaces between
thoughts, moments of quiet--that represent a relative kind of
emptiness. These gaps are relatively formless in comparison to the
more graspable forms of thought, perception, or emotion. And the
stillness in these gaps is only relative because it is easily
disrupted or displaced by the next moment of activity that occurs
in the mindstream. This type of stillness is simply an experience
among experiences--what the Tibetans call nyam (temporary
experience).
Beyond the relative emptiness we discover in these gaps in the
mindstream there lies the much larger, absolute emptiness of
nonconceptual awareness, which Buddhism regards as the very essence
of mind. This nonconceptual awareness is an absolute stillness or
emptiness because its space and silence actually pervade, and thus
cannot be displaced by, whatever goes on in the mind. Meditation
practice can help us find this larger stillness in movement, this
larger silence within sound, this nonthought within the very
activity of thinking.
Without sustained and disciplined inner attention, it is almost
impossible to discover, enter, or abide in this absolute ground of
steady awareness. For as long as we skim along the surface of
consciousness, our moments of stillness are quickly disrupted by
the activity of thought, feeling, and perception. Meditation
practice provides a direct way to tune into this larger dimension
of nonconceptual awareness. As one Tibetan text (Trungpa and
Hookham 1974, 8) describes this discovery:
Sometimes in meditation there is a gap in normal consciousness, a
sudden complete openness. . . . It is a glimpse of reality, a
sudden flash which occurs at first infrequently, and then gradually
more and more often. It may not be a particularly shattering or
explosive experience at all, just a moment of great
simplicity.
Meditation is designed to help us move beyond the surface contents
of the mind. Underneath the mind's surface activity, the ocean of
awareness remains perfectly at rest, regardless of what is
happening on its surface. As long as we are caught up in the waves
of thought and feeling, they appear solid and overwhelming. But if
we can find the presence of awareness within our thoughts and
feelings, they lose their formal solidity and release their
fixations. In the words of Tibetan teacher Tarthang Tulku (1974,
9-10):
Stay in the the thoughts. Just be there. . . . You become the
center of the thought. But there is not really any center. . . .
Yet at the same time, there is . . . complete openness. . . . If we
can do this, any thought becomes meditation.
In this way, meditation reveals the absolute stillness within both
the mind's turbulence and its relative calm.
Here then is the deeper sense in which form is emptiness: The
essence of all thought and all experience is complete openness and
clarity. In this sense, Buddhist psychology provides an
understanding of mind that resembles the quantum physics view of
matter. In quantum field theories, "the classical contrast between
the solid particles and the space surrounding them is completely
overcome" (Capra 1975, 210). Just as subatomic particles are
intense condensations of a larger energy field, so thoughts are
momentary condensations of awareness. Just as matter and space are
but two aspects of a single unified field, so thought and the
spaces between thoughts are two aspects of the larger field of
awareness, which Zen master Suzuki (1970) described as "big mind."
If small mind is the ongoing grasping and fixating activity of
focal attention, big mind is the background of this whole
play--pure presence and nonconceptual awareness.
The following diagram illustrates the relationship between the
three aspects of mind discussed here:
" " " " "
In this figure, the dots are like differentiated mind-moments,
which stand out as separate events because of the spaces between
them. Although these spaces appear to be nothing in comparison to
the dots, they nonetheless provide the context that allows the dots
to stand out as what they are and that joins them together. The
spaces between the dots also provide entry points into the
background, the white space of the page, which represents the
larger ground of pure awareness in which the interplay of form and
emptiness takes place.
Big Mind
The big mind of pure awareness is a no-man's-land--a free, open
reality without reference points, property boundaries, or trail
markers. Although it cannot be grasped as an object by focal
attention, it is not an article of faith. Quite the contrary, in
the words of a Tibetan text, "The nothingness in question is
actually experienceable" (Guenther 1959, 54). Unfortunately, when
the untutored mind regards it as a mere blankness or nothingness,
the jewel-like radiance of this pure awareness becomes obscured. As
Dzogchen teacher Tenzin Wangyal (1997, 29) points
out:
The gap between two thoughtsis essence. But if in that gap there is
a lack of presence, it becomes ignorance and we experience only a
lack of awareness, almost an unconsciousness. If there is presence
in the gap, then we experience the dharmakaya [the
ultimate].
The essence of meditation could be described quite simply, in
Tenzin Wangyal's words, as "presence in the gap"--as an act of
nondual, unitive knowing that reveals the ground of being in what
at first appears to be nothing at all. As another Tibetan text
(Guenther 1956, 269) explains, "The foundation of sentient beings
is without roots. . . . And this rootlessness is the root of
enlightenment." Only in the groundless ground of being can the
dance of reality unfold in all its luminous
clarity.
References
Capra, Fritjof.
1975. The Tao of Physics. Berkeley, CA:
Shambhala.
Guenther,
Herbert V. 1956. "Tibetan Buddhism in Western Perspective: The
Concept of Mind in Buddhist Tantrism." Journal of Oriental Studies
3:261-77.
Guenther,
Herbert V. 1959. "The Philosophical Background of Buddhist
Tantrism." Journal of Oriental Studies 5:45-64.
James, William.
1890. The Principles of Psychology. New York:
Holt.
Suzuki, Daisetz
T. 1970. Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. New York: Walker,
Weatherhill.
Tarthang Tulku.
1974. "On Thoughts." Crystal Mirror 3:7-20.
Trungpa,
Chogyam, and M. Hookham, trans. 1974. "Maha Ati." Vajra
1:6-8.
Wangyal,
Tenzin. 1997. A-Khrid Teachings. Vol. 2. Berkeley, CA: privately
published.
[author's note:]
John Welwood, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and the associate
editor of the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology. He has been a
student of Tibetan Buddhism for thirty years and is the author of
many articles and seven books. This article is excerpted from his
latest book, Toward a Psychology of Awakening: Buddhism,
Psychotherapy, and the Path of Personal and Spiritual
Transformation (Shambhala, 2000). Copyright © John Welwood,
2000.