Very interesting! I’ve been curious about Zen but hadn’t heard of anything that would have anything like a gears-level model of it.
The model of three different kinds of nens matches my own experience. I think that in my “mechanistic model” post that you reference, this bit
Robot’s thought at time 1: It’s raining outside
Robot’s thought at time 2: Battery low
Robot’s thought at time 3: Technological unemployment protestors are outside
Robot’s thought at time 4: Battery low
Robot’s thought at time 5: I’m now recharging my battery
Robot’s thought at time 6: At time 1, there was the thought that [It’s raining outside]
would fit nicely into it. The thought at time 6 would be a third-level nen, and the rest first- or second-level nens depending on how exactly you interpret them.
That means that the content of your consciousness may be something like:
Time 1: The sight of a bird outside the window. [first-level nen]
Time 2: The thought “there’s a bird over there”. [second-level nen]
Time 3: The experience of typing on a keyboard. [first-level nen]
Time 4: The sound of a car outside. [first-level nen]
Time 5: A mental image of a car. [this could be first- or second-level I think]
Time 6: A sense of being someone who sees the bird and hears the car, while typing on a keyboard. [third-level nen]
… that is, normally you may experience there being a constant, permanent self which feels like what you really are. But in fact, during a large part of your conscious experience, that sense of self may simply not be there at all. Normally this might be impossible to detect due to what’s called the refrigerator light illusion: the light in a refrigerator turns on whenever you open the door, so it seems to you to always be on. Likewise, whenever you ask “do I experience a sense of self right now”, that question references and activates a self-schema, meaning that the answer is always “yes”. It is only by developing introspective awareness that records all mental content, without needing to make reference to a self, that you can come to notice the way in which your self constantly appears and disappears.
Rephrasing that quoted last paragraph a bit, it’s saying that much of our consciousness consists of first- or second-level nens, but that we assume there to be a durable self which witnesses all experience (i.e. that our consciousness is all third-level nens); and that the existence of the lower-level nens can be difficult to notice because the mental motion of asking “what am I experiencing right now” intrinsically invokes a third-level nen. (But if the mind is quick enough in doing something like noting practice, it might start to notice that the nen that was returned in response to that query is not actually the nen of which the question was asking, and that the mental objects that the “response nens” are referring to, keep slipping away just a little too soon to be observed...)
Very interesting! I’ve been curious about Zen but hadn’t heard of anything that would have anything like a gears-level model of it.
The model of three different kinds of nens matches my own experience. I think that in my “mechanistic model” post that you reference, this bit
would fit nicely into it. The thought at time 6 would be a third-level nen, and the rest first- or second-level nens depending on how exactly you interpret them.
Three characteristics: Impermanence also talks about nens, I believe:
Rephrasing that quoted last paragraph a bit, it’s saying that much of our consciousness consists of first- or second-level nens, but that we assume there to be a durable self which witnesses all experience (i.e. that our consciousness is all third-level nens); and that the existence of the lower-level nens can be difficult to notice because the mental motion of asking “what am I experiencing right now” intrinsically invokes a third-level nen. (But if the mind is quick enough in doing something like noting practice, it might start to notice that the nen that was returned in response to that query is not actually the nen of which the question was asking, and that the mental objects that the “response nens” are referring to, keep slipping away just a little too soon to be observed...)