Question:
There’s a lot of Buddhist exegesis on subject-object but little on the
subject-subject relationship. Yet the latter is far more interesting to
contemplate. Our lives revolve around it.
My Response:
Apparently, there is a difference in
the use in language. What could a subject-subject "relationship" even be?
Without an object, there is no subject, and thus no "relationship,"
because there is no distance. If there is distance, then there is
objectification and relationship between subject-object, also known as person and environment.
The thought that the
object is also a subject, is a thought-reflection that creates a characterization
of the object thereby imagined as a subject from it's own perspective. But engaging in a object that is labelled "subject" does not make the object into a subject for relationship purposes. That is, we still don't know what the object is perceiving and we can never perceive through the conscousness of the other even if we call that other a "subject."
"Subject" means the sense of foundation
and centeredness to our awareness. "Subject" is another word for
"self-centered" awareness, or self-consciousness. The emergence of the subject depends on
the 6th level of thinking-consciousness (mano-vijnana) coordinating the 5
consciousnesses of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch into a coherency
pattern, as the palm of the hand coordinates the five fingers, then by the function of 7th consciousness (manas) that coherency is then directed to be reflected in
the mirror of the 8th consciousness (alaya-vijnana) to create the appearance of
a subject.
On realizing that this process is what generates the entire field of conscious awareness we can realize the one mind, and thereby we realize there is no self or subject that
is objectified within mind and that everything is a manifestation of mind. In this way we realize that our one mind is simultaneously subjectifying and objectifying to create the field of awareness polarized as self and object that we call consciousness that depends
on the perspective of the awareness that emerges. But once awareness emerges by the
self-awareness process, there is always distance between subject and object,
because awareness, like a whirlpool in a stream, always has a centering aspect
to it which is what we call "subject." That one whirlpool of self-awareness can recognize that other whirlpools of self-awareness have emerged, i.e., that I can recognize you, does not change the fact that "I" is the subject and "you" are the object within the polarized field of awareness.
I refer us to Case 62 in the Zen koan collection Record
of the Temple of Equanimity:
Raised:
Mihu directed a monk to ask
Yangshan, “People of the present time turn to the phenomenal in denial of
awakening.”
Shan said, “As to awakening, it is
not that there is none; the struggle is how to bear falling into the second
head.”
The monk returned and raised it to
appear to Mihu. Hu deeply agreed.
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No matter how awakened a person is, we always fall into the "second
head" of subject-object relationship. This "fall" is like falling in love or the angle falling from heaven. The unawakened person has "fallen" into the second head of the polarized field without awareness that the field is polarized, and so they don't have to struggle to bear it. . The awakened person also falls into the polarized field of the "second head" but has the awareness of doing so, and because of this must struggle how to bear the awareness without regressing into unawareness. This is the mystery of seeing every object as being simultaneously a subject in the one field that is neither mine nor yours, and engaging in every subject-object relationship as a subject-subject relationship where distance is an illusion of the field,
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