Responses to "Consciousness and Primordial Awareness"

I have to credit James Austin, Jake. That really was his experience in Japan. I just think he is, indeed, on to something as I know from my own experience. It's what I had always done. I assumed, unconsciously (no pun intended), that I could think my way into certain things where concepts just don't work.

". 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."

That sure does sound reasonable; I can imagine people 100 yrs from now saying things like "I'm feeling very left prefrontal lobe today". Hehehe. But in any case, whether we use an ancient indian description, a modern materialist one, or any other, to try to "pin down" what it is we are speaking of, aren't we just exchanging contents in the sixth sense modality one for the other? WHether first or third person, a description or model is a phenomenal event in the sixth modality-- right? Would we all agree on that?
So perhaps we could go for as much clarity as we want on that level and still not really be open to awareness itself. Likewise, people of all ages, regardless of their culture's memetic descriptions of "how things work", have been able to come to first-hand certainty regarding the nature of primordial awareness.
So maybe it comes back to doubts we moderns have based on our sixth consciousness modality's memetic programming vis a vis materialist and idealist descriptions of "how things work"? In other words, maybe we intuit something incompatible between the pure awareness that is being pointed to and our assumptions about the material nature of conscious processes. I know I've struggled with such doubts, at any rate.

"
I have to credit James Austin, Jake. That really was his experience in Japan. I just think he is, indeed, on to something as I know from my own experience. It's what I had always done. I assumed, unconsciously (no pun intended), that I could think my way into certain things where concepts just don't work.

"

I hear you, man. I'm not sure if you can relate to this, but for me I was always pretty conscious of my intellectual drive towards privileging representations over direct experience, and perhaps because of some of the modern philosophy I was exposed to, I felt that drive as a sort of suffering. I would characterize my whole attitude towards life (from say fourteen to twenty nine, including practice, as one of being driven to comprehend- to have a total picture, so to speak. So there were almost two forces, warring within: the drive to total conceptual comprehension, and the direct and painful sense of the fundemental inadequacy of that modality in the domain of "true nature". That conflict was pretty undramatically resolved almost without my noticing as I began to intuit the "nature of mind" more confidently, from which point my motivation (to practice) began to shift-- from curiosity towards being of benefit to all-- after passing through a kind of nihilistic phase, following the collapse of my more intellectually acquisitive mode of existing. I still value clear thinking, perhaps moreso than before, but the fact seems to be that nothing within the sixfold field can "cause" insight into true nature, so there is a certain scope to what those functions can do!

"
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.

"

I guess because of simplicity. Giving an account in terms of causal processes introduces a lot of complications, and ultimately we need to refer back to the 1st person perspective anyway to get at what we're talking about. I'm not sure what talking about the causal processes adds to the discussion beyond complications. On the other hand, if there is something important about incorporating this notion of causal process in the context of the consciousness vs. awareness thing, it might be illuminating to pinpoint exactly what that is.

" On the other hand, if there is something important about incorporating this notion of causal process in the context of the consciousness vs. awareness thing, it might be illuminating to pinpoint exactly what that is."

Hmm, you may be onto something. To me, all "experiences" in the sensate field seem to suggest some kind of causality wherein one content leads to another in some way, while relaxing in natural awareness conveys a distinct sense of timelessness. It isn't quite that simple; there seems to be some nuance to it; there is still a time-like dimension presencing in the timeless state, but "causality" as a gloss on "time" seems less applicable "there". The typical sense that situations cause mental-emotional responses, and that the latter cause verbal-physical behaviors, is definitely "cut loose" in some sense. Each moment is unprecedented, in the natural state.
While 3rd person accounts of causal processes can be helpful in modeling events in the field, they don't seem to apply to this. For example, it is possible for me to conceive that resting in nondual wholeness may have no neural correlate at all, while it may be possible to "do" regardless of what is activated neurally. This directly challenges our materialist worldview, our modern way of glossing causality onto the time-like facet of Being.
I wonder what you'd say, Jackson?

Jake's right, primordial awareness isn't any more than... just this. It just is. And while that sounds silly, trite, weird, and even evasive, it can't be described otherwise. What presents is what presents. Part of me, a growing part, says I should just go with that because getting down into the nitty gritty of hte details doesn't get me anywhere that matters in a practice sense. Another part of me wants to understand the processes at work and how one thing leads to another thing in an infinite chain of causailty. Problem is, that chain truly is infinite. In fact, it's so complex that it becomes clear after a while that everything is related to everything else to some unspecified degree.

To me awareness is that which enables perception. It is an enormous container inside of which everything takes place. It has no stake in anything. It can be perceived in the tiny and in the infinite. It's a light that illuminates whatever it encounters. I have no idea how it works. I can't describe awareness in terms that include temporal causality. Awarenes is some form of absolute. Consiousness, on the other hand, seems to be based in the relative. It's manifest when "things" happen in sequence, in relation to each other. This is what Jackson is describing. It appears to be a causal string of events that starts outside the organism and works its way into perception, becomes an object that has a name, and so on.

So awareness includes consciousness as it includes everything. Human consciousness is able to perceive awareness and when that occurs we tend to get into these kinds of discussions because consciousness (mind) wants causality and, dammit, an explanation! When awareness manages to focus on itself -- that's what tends to cause us to wake up.

Just my rambling, off the cuff, humble take on this stuff. And... an explanation is not required of awakening.

YMMV

And... if we really want to get into the nature of primordial awareness we have to address the concepts we call space and time because those two things, while fundamental in the relative sense, are not necessary in the absolute. They are deep, deep, deep assumptions we make unconsciously that are, in terms of primordial awareness, more or less meaningless. So you then might ask, if space and time don't matter how in the hell can you have causality? Answer - in primordial awareness causality.... not so much.

And then if you say, "Chris, you must be an idiot! How could you possibly know that?" I would reply that I know it because I know it from practice. All I can do is urge you to find out for yourself. You have to validate this stuff through your own experience and practice. Meantime, you may consider me to be a fool. All I know is that there is something that is so simple, so basic, so woven into the fabric of everything that it IS everything, and everything is it.

<... opening a major can of worms.... sorry Jackson...>

hey Chris, thanks for the insightful words. I recognize that a lot of this is grounded in experience through practice. For my part, I don't want an explanation of awareness or a full analysis of it in terms of causality, etc. I've been focusing on clarifying the "consciousness" part of the equation, where there don't seem to be so many conceptual barriers-- there is not such a bottleneck in terms of practice insights, nor in terms of the application of concepts of things like causality, etc. Even here, I'm not after an explanation of consciousness itself, rather just a clarification of how the word "consciousness" is being used and what are the purposes and consequences of using the word in that particular way.

In other words, I don't want the blueprint of the house. I'm just curious what tools we're using to build it, why we chose those tools instead of others ones, and what using these particular tools entails for the construction of the house.

I think that's more or less what I do, Brian. So it's all good. I probably get inordinately focused on the practice side of things so your periodic admonishments are good for me

Brian, have you read much about the science being pursued in regard to consciousness? How about philosophers like Dennett? If not, you should. It's interesting stuff and no one, repeat, no one, can really figure it out.... yet.

Yes, I've read tons about it and know all about the stickiness of it. This is another reason I'm not looking for an explanation of consciousness, because I don't think there's a good one and perhaps there may never be. But this is also a good reason to pay careful attention to how we're using the word, because the slipperiness of the concept lends itself well to unnoticed miscommunication.

I think Dennett is a lot of nonsense to the extent that he denies there is really anything like subjective experience to begin with. In terms of philosophers I like what Dave Chalmers has to say. But that's a whole other discussion in itself.

Yep. So you have to have noticed that the definition of "consciousness" that is used in Buddhism is not that which is generally accepted among western scientists and philosophers. In the west the terms "awareness" and "consiousness" are often substitutes for each other. In Buddhism they are distinct. I tried to explain that in my rambling posts this morning but I probably missed the target. I went through a period of confusion over this. I'd read something from the Middle Length Discourses and be completely mystified by terms like "eye consciousness." WTF? Oddly enough, or maybe just as expected, my practice eventually cleared those mysteries up for me. (Insert here the stuff we talked about last week in regard ot the knot ot perception....)

Maybe it's sufficient, Brian, to say that "consciousness" is always "consciousness-of". It is momentary and seems to accompany a phenomenon. Husserl spoke of the "act phase" and the "object phase" of every phenomena, and the "act" is consciousness-of-X, while X is the object-phase. See? So there always seems to be a momentary consciousness-of with each momentary "that". Awareness doesn't seem to be quite like that, though. But like you said, you're trying to clarify the meaning of the term "consciousness" in this context. I suspect it is fair to say that regardless of our "theory" about how it "happens", consciousness is just always consciousness-of some "that", whether "that" is a chair or boundless space or a thoughtform.

Jackson,

Sorry, I didn't read through this loooong thread. I noticed in your essay you said that consciousness needs and object but primordial awareness is aware of itself. My initial thought was: sounds like turning awareness into an object. What do you think?

You might find the short article "Nisargadatta's Difference Between Consciousness & Awareness" interesting:

www.prahlad.org/disciples/premananda/ess...0AND%20AWARENESS.htm

"I think Dennett is a lot of nonsense to the extent that he denies there is really anything like subjective experience to begin with. In terms of philosophers I like what Dave Chalmers has to say. But that's a whole other discussion in itself. "

I totally agree. Let's say the scientific materialist view of non-duality is proven true through various experiments: namely, that there is no brain-mind divide (i.e. your brain tissue is your actual consciousness--"mind is brain, brain is mind," just as ultimately there is no real divide between mind/brain and body (neurons in the stomach, a distributed nervous system that extends from the crown of the head to the tips of the toes). This still cannot change the simple fact of "interior subjective experience"--a realm that, even if it is ultimately 100 percent embodied, is experienced as somehow being non-material. A more pressing question, to me, is whether we can really draw conclusions about the nature of reality based upon our interior experience. My friend the neurologist would say you can't trust your interior experience at all. He points to phenomena like deja vu, which seems mystical but apparently involves a simple memory glitch, or lab experiments that take advantage of certain hard-wired neurological timing quirks to convince people that they can psychically predict what a computer is going to do in a game of "rocks, paper, scissors." People beat the computer every time, but have no idea how they're doing it.
Seems to me that the advantage of maintaining a focus on "suffering and the end of suffering," rather than drawing conclusions about the nature of reality or consciousness, is that you can keep it simple and avoid having a stake one way or the other when it comes to these more fundamental questions...

I agree that there is subjective experience. I don't agree when folks start asserting that there is a real duality, meaning a true, permanent, non-corporeal entity such as a "soul."

"
I agree that there is subjective experience. I don't agree when folks start asserting that there is a real duality, meaning a true, permanent, non-corporeal entity such as a "soul."



"

Right. Cause such a thing (substantial soul) turns out to be another example of something people speak and think about all the time but can't actually find in their experience. It seems obvious to me that "matter" falls into the same category.
We may be veering off the topic of this thread a bit, but I think the underlying issue we're discussing now is how to reconcile dharma-truths with our cultural "truths" about brains, minds etc.
For my money, it seems clear that if we start a causal description with neural structures, we will never find anything in that chain which isn't "material". We'll find various chemical, electromagnetic, and kinetic factors interacting with physiological systems which process the "environmental" factors, then express respones physiologically through a physical "organism" which then effect the "environment".
Seems to me that once we take such a description seriously, in the way that say my traditional Catholic Aunt takes the notion of a "soul" seriously, we are bound to run into all sorts of problems. Such a description has a simple pragmatic scope of applicability; when we equate it with "reality" we are taking an unnecessary extra step.
Back to the topic of the thread, one thing I find interesting about resting in the natural state is that it tends to lead me to see all my descriptions as pertaining to the same Being, the same "is" of primordial reality. Consciousness on the other hand always wants to take a position relative to other positions, wants to invest the descriptions with more reality than they deserve. It wants to know reality as a described and defined object, rather than to Be It.

hi Jackson.
I find your article, the Nisargadatta article and this discussion interesting. My assessment of consciousness is based in experience that involves long term deep appreciation for hard Jhanas. The way I interpret consciousness begins at fifth jhana when the objective aspects of the other aggregates related to form fall entirely away, leaving only qualities of consciousness. In the formless Jhanas consciousness has only consciousness qualities as object and so the subjective and objective distinctions are very subtle and it is not particularly useful to see it in terms of a subjective and objective divide.

What I note as the formless Jhanas proceed reductively towards greater subtlety is, as with the form Jhanas, the gross qualities are most prominent and as these fall away the subtler qualities remain. The last quality of the last condition for the presence of consciousness is the only quality left in the eight Jhana or 'neither perception nor non-perception'. In this subtlest of Jhanas the only quality consciousness has is that it is still arising and passing as all conditions do. Apart from it's rarefied ongoing presence and the complete identity and inseparability of what could be called it's objective and subjective capacity, there are no qualitative distinctions to be made. When one adverts to the understanding that it therefore serves no end to cling to this, it too falls away and one naturally precipitates cessation. In adverting to cessation it seems reasonable to me to say that there is no consciousness in any conditional sense. It might be possible to say that there is consciousness of a kind but it could as easily be called not consciousness of a kind because cessation truly demonstrates the nature of no-conditions. I interpret this as the other side of the conditional coin, the unconditional source/destination for the emergent matrix of conditional experience in every consciously knowable sense.
cont

If I attempt to assign a place to the term 'primordial awareness' it is to the quality of consciousness directly and singly known in the eighth jhana. An aspect of this quality that is subtle and difficult to note is that its only viable purpose is to seek out a secondary object. In itself it can only serve as the basis for the eighth jhana or as the last step on the path of samatha jhana before cessation. Proceeding through the jhanas to cessation it is notable that it is the last quality of the last condition, the most subtle condition possible before crossing the threshold to no conditions. But when proceeding from cessation, in the other direction, one may easily note that it is the first necessary quality of the first necessary condition for the fabrication of further compounding. It is the further compounding of qualities of consciousness and qualities of form that together serve as the components of the immensely variable types of ongoing conditional experience.

I suppose my suggestion of what is being apprehended, in terms of an ongoing appreciation of 'primordial awareness' within the context of ever shifting compounded conditions is an awareness of that initial conditional quality that serves as the base for everything else that can then be considered by the consciousness in its aggregate conditionality as objective.

As I understand it, until this is further penetrated and understood to likewise be a quality and condition which has the 3 characteristics it can be clung to and thus serve as the ground for being and becoming. A similar identification with cessation, which is even subtler as it is unconditional, can also serve as a ground for being and becoming. As I understand it, when all qualities and conditions are rightly understood as not grounds for being and becoming, then ignorance has been fully overcome and clinging has no grounds for being and becoming which equates to nibbana here and now or liberation.

In light of the given observations, insights and understanding my reflections about primordial consciousness took the following form in my attempt revise your essay in keeping with that noted above.

All qualities of all conditions, all of these aggregate conditions and all compounded conditions have the three characteristics of anicca (impermanence), anattā (nonself), and dukkha (unsatisfactoriness/suffering).

The consciousness condition, like all other conditions arises and passes rapidly in and out of the unconditioned wherever it has grounds for ongoing being and becoming which has its basis in ignorance or the craving and clinging for contact with ongoing compounded conditional arising in any way or for any reason whatsoever. Consciousness is characterized by four fundamental qualities, persistence (primordial awareness or volition), nothingness (ignorance or the negation of additional specific or compounded qualities and conditions), unbounded qualitative objectification (the potentially infinite range of conscious objectification), and unbounded spacial objectification (the potentially infinite range in space for objective conscious contact). Each of these qualities provides consciousness with it's fundamental capacity to contact and thereby objectify forms in the shape of further compounded conditions such as thought objects, fabricated or compounded feelings, sensations, sense objects and the innumerable microcosmic and macrocosmic personal and transpersonal elementary compounded material or bodily forms.

cont.

When consciousness is conditioned and compounded by the fundamental qualities of consciousness together with the aggregate compounded conditions bound up with the body and the bodily senses and it is further conditioned by sense objects it can be momentarily referenced as specifically ear consciousness in relation to sensed sound, the sense of hearing and the related compound conditions involved in the inherent functioning of the body in that specific moment and the further conditional qualities inherent in the specific qualities and conditions pertaining to that which is heard. The same can be said of eye consciousness, taste consciousness, etc., etc.. What is noteworthy about this aggregated compounding of qualities and conditions is the great complexity and vast diversity of potential conscious experiences on the basis of relatively few limited fundamental conditions and the finite sets of the variable conditional qualities.

That is about as far as I could go with revising your essay because I have not found the practice of vipassana in concert with the practice of samatha jhana to be inadequate for the purpose of a detailed examination of the nature of consciousness in terms of the three characteristics, in terms of it's specific qualities and in terms of the conditional relations between consciousness and the other aggregates.

cont.

None of this has been intended as a refutation of your thesis. I offer all of the above as an account of the limited evidence I have gathered for the real potentials of penetrating insights into the consciousness aggregate. It is not a sophisticated theoretical argument and it very likely could have been better phrased or more accurately written, but it does serve as sufficient basis for me to suggest, in no uncertain terms, that consciousness, the qualities of consciousness and the capacities of conscious awareness are not indestructible, indeterminable or opaque to potentially exhaustive analysis and complete explication. As such I see no reason to suggest that consciousness need be viewed in any way differently than all other conditions in that it too can be known to display the three characteristics common to all conditions and is in that sense in no way primordial.

The sense in which consciousness might be said to be primordial or persistent or ongoing is that it is a fundamental quality of ignorant and deluded or confused consciousness to incline to the pursuit of dependently compounded experience. I would suggest that consciousness is compelled to do this out of ignorance due to the fact that it has failed to fully penetrate the nature of all conditions including the conditional nature of consciousness and the qualities of consciousness and as a result the fullness of dispassion for consciousness together with all other conditions cannot arise and full awakening to the truth and complete liberation is frustrated resulting in ongoing being and becoming. My basic conclusion is that consciousness is conditional and not primordial in the sense that you suggest but may be considered primordial in terms of maintaining qualities of ignorance and in terms of clinging to its own qualities as grounds for ongoing being and becoming.

I observe and therefore agree that consciousness of consciousness and it's various rarified qualities is perceptible apart from the other conditional aggregates and qualities of those aggregates and so I do not reject that consciousness can be variously emptied or purified. I agree that these fundamental qualities, purified of the diversity of forms which arise when consciousness is compounded together with the other aggregated conditions, will appear luminous, spacious, empty and profoundly awake. I agree that conscious is entirely capable of taking the consciousness condition exclusively as object and of further negating by degrees its inherent qualities to a specific subset of qualities or to a single specific quality of consciousness.

I disagree however that conscious or any of it's qualities are not subject to arising and passing by nature or that consciousness is not subject to cessation. I also do not think that consciousness, regardless of the degree that it is purified is equivalent to nibbana. Nibbana is specifically defined as the complete liberation from craving, aversion and clinging to dependently compounded conditions. Consciousness is also a condition and in all ways important to the meaning of nibbana characteristically the same as all other conditions.

cont.