by Tang Huyen

There is consciousness of what happens, but no cutting up, no chunking and no bagging.

This means that the wholesome sense-field,
which is fully differentiated and not a
homogeneous blank, is cut up into bits and
pieces, and that some bits and pieces are
patched together (chunked) into a subject
(named), whilst some other bits and pieces
are patched together (chunked) into an
object (named). That is duality of subject
and object. It indicates the normal state of
the multiplicity of empirical units, like "I"
and others and tables and chairs of our daily
life.

Contrariwise, when the wholesome
sense-field, which is fully differentiated and
not a homogeneous blank, is not cut up into
bits and pieces, but is left intact, as it is, in
one piece, there are no bits and pieces that
can be patched together (chunked) into a
something of whatever name. For example
there are no bits and pieces that can be
patched together (chunked) into a subject
(bagged), and there are no bits and pieces
that can be patched together (chunked) into
an object (bagged). That is non-duality of
subject and object.

Non-duality of subject and object does not
mean that there are a subject here and an
object there, and that they are identical.
Non-duality of subject and object means
that thought doesn't cut up the wholesome
sense-field into bits and pieces and doesn't
patch some bits and pieces into a subject and
other bits and pieces into an object (chunking
and bagging).

Non-duality of subject and object means that
thought is inactive and there is no thought
around to cut up the wholesome sense-field
into bits and pieces and to chunk some bits
and pieces into something and to bag it,
like a subject and an object or whatever else
(God, the world, etc.). However consciousness
is fully active and cognises what is in its ken,
namely the wholesome sense-field (which is
not mentated as such, namely as a wholesome
sense-field, or as anything else, it is not
mentated at all). There is consciousness of
what happens, but no cutting up, no chunking
and no bagging.

Tang Huyen

Colophon

Posted to talk.religion.buddhism on October 9, 2005, in reply to a request for a simple explanation of non-duality of subject and object. Author: Tang Huyen. Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

This post is unusual in Tang Huyen's corpus for its stripped-down pedagogical mode: no canonical citations, no Western philosophy parallels, just a precise technical unpacking of terms. The "wholesome sense-field" (Tang Huyen's rendering of the undifferentiated phenomenal field prior to conceptual carving) is the key concept. "Chunking" is the operation of gathering bits and pieces into a labelled unit; "bagging" is the act of collecting and holding that unit. Together they constitute thought's operation on the world. Non-duality is not mystical unity — subject and object do not merge — but the simple absence of the chunking-and-bagging operation. Consciousness remains fully active. The sense-field remains fully differentiated. Nothing disappears. The only thing that stops is thought. The vocabulary of chunking and bagging appears throughout Tang Huyen's Usenet writings; this post is its definitive statement.

Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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