The Bifurcated Mind

 

Self-consciousness depends on and arises from the bifurcation function of consciousness. Without an "other" we can't have a "self" awareness. In Buddhism, this function is called the Seventh Consciousness, i.e. in Sanskrit "manas," the basic subconscious differentiation function that is at the crux of the "I, me, mine" fantasy created in the face of an environment of sensory data. This function is the polarizing function that makes every thought, sensation, intuition, and imagination have a polarity (a spin that creates the "north-south" poles of every thought moment). Manas, the 7th Consciousness, is often confused with mind, "citta," in the way that sometimes we use the word "mind" to mean our whole awareness of being, i.e., the totality of the psyche both conscious and unconscious, and at other times we use it for the limited thought function or perceptions on the surface of consciousness.

 

However, the polarizing function becomes the problem when it is literalized and fixated in a magnetic matrix of polarized bifurcations at all dimensions. This is the meaning of "dualism," the "ism" reflects the literal belief in the duality. Aristotle cemented this polarization in Western collective consciousness with his notion of the "dilemma" where a thing or statement about a thing is either true or false. The bifurcated so-called "opposites" become magnetized or polarized with each other across the categories, so that in the end we develop a world-mental-map that gives false moral positions such as joining the light-dark polarity with the good-bad polarity and we believe the delusion that the light is good and the dark is bad. Thus we push everything we don't want to acknowledge about ourselves into the area of the unconscious we call 'the shadow."And because the shadow is darkness we think it is bad or evil. To think of "darkness" as "bad" is a clear symptom of the problem. Healing, the ripening of seeds, and many other good things necessarily occur in the darkness.

 

Zen Buddhism--and every sincere practice of spiritual human development--points to the moon which is in the dark of night, not to the sun in the daylight. When we pass into and through the dark, then the Sun can burst through the ceiling of our knowing and burn us up completely to travel through the Dharmakaya's Crystal Palace to be reborn with the recognition that all the "opposites" are our own nature and mind making consciousness possible. Thus bifurcation is no longer fixated or polarized into magnetized matrix structures that we mistake for reality.

 

Or as Zen Master Huineng taught at the beginning of the 8th century: 

“First, [you] must raise the three sections of the Gate of the Dharma, [next] take up the functions of the 36 paired opposites arising and sinking, then leave both extremes.  In explaining everything, do not leave your own nature."

“If one can be free and use this Dharma of the 36 paired-opposites, then it is the Way that threads though the Dharma of every sutra, and entering and leaving are then free from both extremes.  In the active functioning of your own nature and in conversations with people, while outwardly in appearances, be free from appearances; while inwardly in emptiness, be free from emptiness.  If you wholly attach to appearances (i.e., the view of materialism), then your perverted views broaden. If you wholly grasp emptiness (i.e., the view of nihilism), then your ignorance broadens."

“If there is a person asking you about a meaning, and asks about existence, go to the paired opposite of nonexistence; if asking about nonexistence, go to the paired opposite of existence.  If one asks about the worldly, use the paired opposite of the saintly (the sage); if asking about the saintly (the sage) use the paired opposite of the worldly.  The mutual causation of the Way of dualities, gives birth to the meaning of the Middle Way.  So, for a single question, a single pair of opposites, and for other questions the single (pair) that accords with this fashion, then you do not lose the principle.  “Suppose there is a person who asks, ‘What is taken for and called darkness?’ Reply and say, ‘Light is the proximate cause and darkness is the contributory cause. When light is ended, then there is darkness.  By the means of light, darkness manifests; by the means of darkness, light manifests.  (Their) coming and going are mutually proximate causes and become the meaning of the Middle Way.’  Other questions are without exception like this.  You who are ranked among the descendants transmitting the Dharma, by relying on this teaching of turning around the characteristics you do not lose the taste of the lineage.” 

That is, the Zen/Chan lineage.