Responses to "Consciousness and Primordial Awareness"

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Okay thanks, we are back to a place that needs to be experienced and seen to really be understood, don't you think?
At this point I see "consciousness of" very clearly. Also, I am sometimes aware of something that I call "emptiness" that seems to be kind of behind the veil of all the "consciousness of" experiences. BUT, I am just too new at this stuff to sort out what the "emptiness" I'm talking about really is. So, I need more practice to say for myself whether there is a "primordial awareness." My gut says no but i am open to finding out that there is such a thing.
Funny, lately I've been thinking that my "original face" is actually that face that I see during vipassana, the image of my face that seems to be looking back at me looking back at me at times. that image THAT WON"T GO AWAY. but it probably isn't that, and is much more complicated and subtle.

edit: I just remembered why I don't get the primordia awareness thing: I do believe at this point that awareness or "consciousness of" or "consciousness" as I know it at this point is dependent upon my brain and my senses and that when there is no longer a Mike Monson brain and senses and body then all awareness that I am hip to will be gone as well. Other objects and molecules will continue to arise and pass (air, people, earth, fire, planets, suns, thoughts, energy, gravity all that stuff) but the ones that make my awareness will be gone. Stuff arises and passes, I arise and pass and experience some of this stuff and then the Mike Monson thingy passes for good. boom. I don't see any room for anything else. My best guess (and like I said i know i'm in for a lot of new learning and insight so this is just how it looks to me now) is that "emptiness" is just what it feels like to me when my mind is really quiet and I get a nice clear awareness of "no self"

"My point isn't to enumerate the ways in which phenomenal contents can arise, but rather to analyze and clarify the provided definition of "consciousness": "Consciousness arises when an object arises and makes contact with a particular sense organ.""

OK, I think I understand what you're pointing to, here. My description is too simple for your liking. Perhaps it could be refined. Regardless, the general idea holds true, I think, even if there are situations where it is difficult to determine both the source of an object and the sensitive instrument which receives it, resulting in the arising of momentary 'consciousness-of'.

Lots to ponder, here. I appreciate your comments.

"It doesn't seem necessary for there to be a sense organ involved."-brianm2

According to Buddhism, there are six senses:

Seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling, and... (drum roll, please...)

thinking.

Does this help?

Kenneth

The mind is without a doubt a sense organ. How else would you sense thoughts? Mental images? Memories?

"@cmarti: The mind is without a doubt a sense organ. How else would you sense thoughts? Mental images? Memories?
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Yes, the mind is a sense organ, and I think this is the sticking point that Brian is working with, since in the West we conventionally speak of five sense organs, but exclude thinking.

To simplify, the Buddhist system accounts for everything that can possibly be experienced by a human being; all that is experienced by a human being is processed by one sense organ or another. And in every instance of experiencing something, consciousness arises along with that which is known.

The question then becomes "what about awareness that is known by no one?" Many will attest that this seemingly unlikely scenario is in fact happening all the time. How can they possibly know this? And who or what is it that is apperceiving this? These are the questions that lead to awakening. When awakeness is recognized by awakeness, there need be no one there to see it.

Of course this doesn't make sense to the rational mind! If you could think your way to enlightenment, everyone would be a sage. Something else is required; each of us has to do the experiment and see what we come up with.

Kenneth

It seems to me that the "five senses" in their own operation are pretty direct (not to say unconstructed, just that they tend to present fairly simply sans deconstruction), while the "sixth sense"-- interior mental emotional phenomena-- tends to operate in a far more layered, commentarial way, as if it is performing many many operations which comment upon the other senses, and more basic interior objects such as memory traces. So in this sense for me, there is a de facto importance to the way in which the sixth consciousness presents somewhat differently than the others.
One of the thought constructs which I have found most useful in practice is that between consciousness-of and awareness as such, but it is also important to point out (it seems to me) that this distinction is itself an object of the sixth consciousness, as it tries to represent to itself or to another the significance of a past inisight into awareness as such-- which is inseperable from its luminous, vibrant field.
From the point of view of the latter, all phenomenal experiences are equally examples of its own luminosity, lighting up for itself, so they are not "other" than it.
The basic method of training in the Tibetan system seems to often be: first simplify the sixth consciousness, learning its limits and using it correctly to: A) become calm enough to "flash" into an insightful recognition of its deeper context (awareness), then to carefully and with a light phenomenological hand explore this new, deeper sense of "what is", which includes this insight into not just the function of mind but its nature as well, the awareness "beyond" the functions-- six or eight consciousnesses, five skandhas...
Along the way as you may, and later more and more often they say, one simply "drops" the sense that one is located in (or beyond) the sixfold sense field, and rests as the naked wholeness as it is.

"Of course this doesn't make sense to the rational mind! If you could think your way to enlightenment, everyone would be a sage. Something else is required; each of us has to do the experiment and see what we come up with."

I'm familiar with the notion of mind as 6th sensory modality, and I'm on board with that. Perhaps what is confusing is the term "sense organ", which does not seem to be being used in the normal sense of the term. What does it mean to for an object to make contact with a sense organ? This makes sense in colloquial usage, but in the context of this discussion, I really don't know what is meant by the phrase.

Is passing an electrical current through a patch of neural tissue an instance of an object arising and making contact with a sense organ? Normally we would not say that it is; but on this definition it must be, because it gives rise to visual consciousness; but then how do we widen the notions of "contact" and "sense organ" to accommodate that?

Likewise, if we cut the neural connection from the eye to the brain, then an object making contact with the sensory organ of the eye would not give rise to visual consciousness; so is the eye not the sensory organ we're speaking of after all? What is the sensory organ exactly, and does thinking of it as a sensory organ make sense at this point if it's not the eye but a patch of neural tissue? I'm not trying to be difficult; to me some of this is just genuinely not clear.

In any case, I don't want to belabor the point too much longer and hijack the thread as it's not the main point of the article. Thanks for the interesting article Jackson.

"The hard problem as it appears in consciousness studies is the reflection of the mind-body problem familiar to us from dualist philosophies. Physics, chemistry, and neuroscience provide accounts for the mechanism of consciousness but say nothing about the experience of consciousness itself. While physics can say little about conscious experience per se, it does offer a stunning refutation of a conventional scientific realism. I therefore begin by examining the place of objects and perceiving subjects in modern physics. In place of the conventional scientific worldview I offer an alternative which owes much to phenomenology and the Western contemplative tradition".-- from an essay by Arthur Zajonc, here--
www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/i_es/...on_consciousness.htm

"Is passing an electrical current through a patch of neural tissue an instance of an object arising and making contact with a sense organ? Normally we would not say that it is; but on this definition it must be, because it gives rise to visual consciousness; but then how do we widen the notions of "contact" and "sense organ" to accommodate that?"

Maybe we just have to accept the fact that we can experience thoughts, memories and other purely mental objects.

"The answer: because this awareness takes as its object the Unconditioned, as it is not other than the Unconditioned. Put simply, it knows itself. Consciousness may arise and pass, but this primordial awareness does not. As the unconditioned is naturally and spontaneously luminous, it was never born and will never die, and its self-awareness never goes out. It is your own true nature, your own original face. And this awareness can be recognized, and that in itself is awakening."

Yes! This "thing" we're talking about, primordial awareness, is sort of like what the term space-time is to physics. It's everything, and not just woven into the fabric of everything but the literal source of everything we experience. There is a sort of singularity that appears to spawn our subject and all objects.

"I'm familiar with the notion of mind as 6th sensory modality, and I'm on board with that. Perhaps what is confusing is the term "sense organ", which does not seem to be being used in the normal sense of the term. What does it mean to for an object to make contact with a sense organ? This makes sense in colloquial usage, but in the context of this discussion, I really don't know what is meant by the phrase."

I think that if you were to copy and paste the essay into a word processing program, and then do a "search and replace" to change all occurrences of the words "sense organ" to "sense modality," I'd still put my name on it; so long as we keep in mind that different types of sensory input are received by different sense modalities (hearing sense modality, smelling sense modality, etc.). I think that using the term "sense organ" makes it easier to picture what attempting to convey, though I do understand why you find it to be lacking in specificity.

Don't worry about hijacking the thread. I really do appreciate your input - no pun intended

~Jackson

"I therefore begin by examining the place of objects and perceiving subjects in modern physics."

Ah, that's a HUGE discussion. Physicists have been ignoring the implications of quantum theory for decades, but it points directly to some of what we're discussing here because it's quite clear from quantum theory and observed experimental results that the observer actually creates what is being observed..

I need to read that article!

"The basic method of training in the Tibetan system seems to often be: first simplify the sixth consciousness, learning its limits and using it correctly to: A) become calm enough to "flash" into an insightful recognition of its deeper context (awareness), then to carefully and with a light phenomenological hand explore this new, deeper sense of "what is", which includes this insight into not just the function of mind but its nature as well, the awareness "beyond" the functions-- six or eight consciousnesses, five skandhas...
Along the way as you may, and later more and more often they say, one simply "drops" the sense that one is located in (or beyond) the sixfold sense field, and rests as the naked wholeness as it is. "

Ooh, I like this...

Along the way as you may, and later more and more often they say, one simply "drops" the sense that one is located in (or beyond) the sixfold sense field, and rests as the naked wholeness as it is. "

(Sorry, Mike-- I'm gonna co-opt 'palabra' here!) palabra. palabrissima.

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"Is passing an electrical current through a patch of neural tissue an instance of an object arising and making contact with a sense organ? Normally we would not say that it is; but on this definition it must be, because it gives rise to visual consciousness; but then how do we widen the notions of "contact" and "sense organ" to accommodate that?"

Maybe we just have to accept the fact that we can experience thoughts, memories and other purely mental objects.

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Of course we have to accept that we experience only purely mental objects; I'm not disputing that. If anything, I'd say that *everything* we experience is a purely mental object, which is why for me it makes more sense to classify mental imagery as a phenomenon in the visual sense modality rather than the mental or cognitive sense modality. I think of the mental sense modality as any experience that does not manifest in one of the other five sensory modalities, which mostly seems to involve abstract cognitive feelings like feelings of knowing, understanding, familiarity, rightness/wrongness, etc.

Jackson, thanks for the clarification. I'm still a little unclear on "contact" but if I mentally replace "sense organ" with "sense modality" things start to make more sense.

We westerners seem to struggle over these definitions. I know I did. I once read a book by a neuroscientist (James Austin - Zen and the Brain) who was learning Zen from a Japanese master. The master told Austin that he was in for a rougher time than most students because of his inclination to classify everything and use concepts to the exclusion of just being with things.

"Jackson, thanks for the clarification. I'm still a little unclear on "contact" but if I mentally replace "sense organ" with "sense modality" things start to make more sense."

About contact...

Think of the sense modality as a microphone in a recording studio. In order for the microphone to register sound, sound waves must make "contact" with the instrument. This is also why, from where I am sitting, I cannot see the Eiffel Tower. Were my eyes (or seeing sense-modality) in close enough proximity for visual input of the Eiffel tower to make "contact" with it, seeing-consciousness would arise as a result.

Make sense?

Man, I knew I was going to miss a good discussion!

Anyway, thanks to Alex for helping clear up my questions:

"Awareness gives birth to consciousness within itself"

So, awareness is not separate from consciousness, and consciousness is not separate from awareness. Consciousness is exactly awareness. But in (pure) awareness, there is no consciousness. Something along those lines? : )

I guess my next question is how this fits in with the sense organs/modalities. Do they exist when there's no sense data? To use the microphone metaphor, is there any microphone when there's no sound waves? Or does the microphone arise out of primordial awareness in response (or at one with) the incoming sound waves?

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We westerners seem to struggle over these definitions. I know I did. I once read a book by a neuroscientist (James Austin - Zen and the Brain) who was learning Zen from a Japanese master. The master told Austin that he was in for a rougher time than most students because of his inclination to classify everything and use concepts to the exclusion of just being with things.

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When you're meditating, you want to just be with things. When you're having a discussion, you want to be clear on what you're talking about. If you allow yourself to be too lax in your understanding of things, you run the risk of misunderstanding without even knowing it. To borrow Kenneth's terminology, the position of conscious incompetence may seem overly confused and struggling, but it beats unconscious incompetence any day of the week, because it leads to actual competence (in this case, understanding what is really being said and talked about).

Not to say there is any incompetence here-- it's a more general kind of consideration for any communication. You will never unearth unconscious incompetence in a discussion without scrutinizing what is being said and drawing attention to potential ambiguities or points of miscommunication. (Or maybe you will, but only after wasting hours of talking without ever having been on the same page.) To the extent that a discussion is worth having at all, it is worth making that discussion be sufficiently clear and precise. This thread is about a discussion well worth having, and so we would only be shortchanging ourselves if we did not make it as clear and precise as possible.

"So, awareness is not separate from consciousness, and consciousness is not separate from awareness. Consciousness is exactly awareness. But in (pure) awareness, there is no consciousness. Something along those lines?"-IanReclus

Think of Awareness as a river. If you go upstream, to the source, it hasn't yet diverged into conditioned phenomena like consciousness and objects. But it's the same river whether you are talking about the source or the delta far downstream. Source and delta are arbitrary distinctions we make for the sake of convenience; although they can be distinguished, they can never be separated.

"Source and delta are arbitrary distinctions we make for the sake of convenience; although they can be distinguished, they can never be separated."

And in the end, its all just water! : )

Thank you for the wonderful analogy, Kenneth. It certainly helps settle the silt for me.

"About contact...

Think of the sense modality as a microphone in a recording studio. In order for the microphone to register sound, sound waves must make "contact" with the instrument. T"

So it seems like you are defining consciousness in a 3rd person way, in terms of the processes that result in the arising of a phenomenal content. But the 3rd person process invoked, an environmental stimulus exciting a sensory organ, seems outdated. For instance, we know of cases where visual phenomenology arises without visual input to the eyes, and likewise of cases where visual input to the eyes does not give rise to visual phenomenology. An updated version would replace "object contacts sensory organ" with something like "neural system X is activated". However, this reformulation calls into question the role of "object contact", as any source of neural stimulation is as good as another.

But perhaps more importantly, I am not sure why consciousness is being defined in this 3rd person way to start with. I think this is why I was more comfortable with "sensory modality" than "sensory organ", as the former term is more amenable to an interpretation in terms of direct subjective experience. Is there something special we get from defining consciousness in terms of a 3rd person process rather than in terms of experience? I get the sense that defining consciousness in this way may be important to what you are trying to say, but if so the nature of that importance is unclear to me. If it's not in fact particularly important, might one just as well define consciousness in 1st person terms as e.g. "the qualitative character of experience, e.g. as that which differentiates experience within (e.g. the experience of red vs. the experience of blue) or across (e.g. the experience of red vs. the experience of A-sharp) experiential modalities"?

Brian, how would using a first person perspective help you understand better? I'd like to understand your comments in that regard and I don't yet.

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We westerners seem to struggle over these definitions. I know I did. I once read a book by a neuroscientist (James Austin - Zen and the Brain) who was learning Zen from a Japanese master. The master told Austin that he was in for a rougher time than most students because of his inclination to classify everything and use concepts to the exclusion of just being with things.

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Wow man, I think you're on to something here. It really seems to me that we moderns are just as embedded in our current worldview as most mythic and magic- level peoples. And I find, in conversations, a lot of what seems to hold many of us back from the simplicity of our direct insights can be boiled down to our attatchments to modern worldveiws, whether scientistic of humanistic, which seem to rely more heavily- or maybe in a different way-- on abstract representations than pre-modern worldviews. I was hanging out with a local Geshe * the other day, and while he seemed quite intellectual, as you'd expect, there was also a certain earthy groundedness there. I'd love to chalk it up to meditation, but I've been told many times by folks who know a lot of Tibetans that there's a cultural thing there too, in terms of groundedness in the physical senses, which seems to allow greater openness to the "true nature" beyond the sixth sense modality. I suspect that if I could talk to an ancester a few hundred years ago in Ireland I'd notice something similar. There really seems to be a very closed-ended-ness to modernity, whether materialist or idealist in flavor.

* Geshe is something like a Tibetan Phd in Buddhist Philosophy, and is a big thing with the Dalai Lama's sect. They study for twenty or even thirty years to earn it!