THE UNVISIBLE

Suzuki tells us that the foundation of Zen Buddhism is the concept of the unconscious.

“Spatially, it is called ‘formless’, against all that can be subsumed under form; temporarily, it is ‘non-abiding’, as it moves on for ever, not being cut up into pieces called thoughts and as such detained and retained as something abiding;  psychologically it is ‘the unconscious’ in the sense that all of our conscious thoughts and feelings grow out of the Unconscious, which is Mind.”  p188.

This is not our first look at the unconscious.  Many pages ago we took a brief look at Jung’s unconscious, and suggested then that the unconscious, which certainly was the foundation of Jung’s psychological theories, was analogous to that which cannot be seen. And this is not our first inclusion of Zen:  see for example the page Life Is Not Like An Oil Painting or Two Wash.

So as a way of combining Zen and Jung, let’s advance a new Transparent Drawing term:  the Unvisible.  Since Representation is Dead, then it is not too much of a jump to declare that the unseen, the unvisible,  is a tennant of Transparent Drawing.  It is the unseen which forms the framework for what we see.  Just like it is the unconscious that forms the framework of our consciousness.  There is infinitely more unseen than there is seen.  Just as Jung considers our conscious thought as what bubbles up to the surface from the deep unconscious, what we see is also simply the surface.  So when we draw, our purpose is to draw the unseen.  We draw the unvisible.  We draw all knowledge.

“The Unconscious means to be conscious of the absolutely one; to be conscious of the absolutely one means to have all-knowledge, which is Prajna.”  p194

In the next few pages, we will explore the Zen concept of Prajna and it’s applicability to Transparent Drawing.

1.  Suzuki, D.T. Zen Buddhism, Selected Writings of D.T. Suzuki. Ed. William Barrett. Doubleday Anchor, New York. 1956. Print.