I probably was not able to word my doubt clearly above; when speaking about consciousness I am not sure whether what is meant is what we are conscious of (say the words you’re reading now) or else the ‘spaciousness’, as some teachers call it, within which different objects of consciousness appear and disappear.
The objects of consciousness are indeed always changing, but consciousness itself is considered by some teachers to be always there. Though it would not seem to be a constant, since for example your awareness is enhance after meditation.
Hope this makes some sense…Would be interested in any comments…
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Hi Stef,
Yes, there are some teachers who talk about an unchanging, underlying awareness. That is not the understanding I get from most other teachers, or the suttas, but I do not have the experience to verify it one way or another, so to me it’s part of my investigation (to continue observing my awareness/consciousness/etc).
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thank you for your feedback. Yes like you say it does not seem to correspond to the suttas. However also considering consciousness in terms of the everchanging series of objects of consciousness is a bit puzzling since although we have the impression that at each instant we are conscious of a different object, it also feels as if the one being conscious does not constantly change.
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Like Bhante says, this thought and then this thought. But the first thought can’t know anything about the next one, and after a train of thoughts, the last one appears and calls himself “me”. Like the clown is occurring at the end, taking a bow and cheers for the whole circus performance. If there wasn’t this natural consciousness, how could there be an escape?
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Yes, I agree. And I think it is worth investigating. Perhaps these Forest Ajahns and others who talk about this background awareness are pointing us in a direction of discovery. Whether that background awareness is permanent or not is something that we need to investigate for ourselves, whatever our current opinion is.
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It is a path where the meditator’s vipassana is stronger than samatha, or where the meditator is no longer able to achieve jhana due to physical issues.
SN36.8
Mendicants, a mendicant should await their time mindful and aware. This is my instruction to you.
Also see SN47.35.
I said nothing of objects (and nor did the Buddha)! Consciousness changes with every moment. *That which we are aware of also changes, but that is not consciousness. Consciousness arises interdependently with its stimuli.
This is not how consciousness works, at least not according to the Suttas (or in my experience). It is the Upanishads that speak of an eternal underlying consciousness. The whole teaching of the conditionality of consciousness is explicitly to refute this idea.
https://suttacentral.net/mn38/en/sujato
“Absolutely, sir. As I understand the Buddha’s teachings, it is this very same consciousness that roams and transmigrates, not another.”
“Evaṁ byā kho ahaṁ, bhante, bhagavatā dhammaṁ desitaṁ ājānāmi yathā tadevidaṁ viññāṇaṁ sandhāvati saṁsarati, anaññan”ti.
“Sāti, what is that consciousness?”
“Katamaṁ taṁ, sāti, viññāṇan”ti?
“Sir, it is he who speaks and feels and experiences the results of good and bad deeds in all the different realms.”
“Yvāyaṁ, bhante, vado vedeyyo tatra tatra kalyāṇapāpakānaṁ kammānaṁ vipākaṁ paṭisaṁvedetī”ti.
“Silly man, who on earth have you ever known me to teach in that way?
“Kassa nu kho nāma tvaṁ, moghapurisa, mayā evaṁ dhammaṁ desitaṁ ājānāsi?
Haven’t I said in many ways that consciousness is dependently originated, since consciousness does not arise without a cause?
Nanu mayā, moghapurisa, anekapariyāyena paṭiccasamuppannaṁ viññāṇaṁ vuttaṁ, aññatra paccayā natthi viññāṇassa sambhavoti?
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According to SN 22.79 (= SA46), consciousness (viññāṇa) is a sort of becoming aware of objects:
“One distinguishes (vijānāti) that is why it is called consciousness. One distinguishes sour or bitter, acrid or sweet, alkaline or non-alkaline, saline or non-saline.”
It is certainly a conditioned phenomenon. Consciousness, being not real, arises by causal condition; having arisen it ceases completely by causal condition. It is a result of previous action, but there is no doer (i.e. empty of self). The same apply also to other sense spheres.
This is delusion of self speaking and forcing you to adopt that view as a method of coping with no self teaching in Buddhism. Eventually, as you learn more about no self, that view maybe easier to drop. It’s not easy to even intellectually come to terms with emptiness (of self). The delusion of self keeps on wanting to project a self onto something.
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According to SN 22.90 (= SA 262), Chanda accepts that all sankharas are impermanent and not-self; but considers nibbana is not characterised by impermancence and not-self, and thus there is somting, some metaphysical entity, for oneself to attain in the cessation of nibbana (the ending of suffring). If there is complete emptiness in nibbana, who then is the self? Or, what is meant by the self seeing (passati) the dhamma? Chanda, harbouring this doubt, goes to ask Ven. Ananda, who then tell him he heard the Buddha teach “the middle way” to Ven. Kaccayana (See pp. 34-5 in Choong Mun-keat’s The Notion of Emptiness in Early Buddhism) Pages 34-5 from Notion of Emptiness in Early Buddhism Choong Mun-keat.pdf (1.1 MB):
“This world, Kaccayana, usually depends on two extremes: existence and non-existence …” (See also SN 12.15 = SA 301).
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Becoming aware of phenomena, i.e. things that appear to the mind.
An “object” is, by definition, something that in some sense has an “objective” reality outside the mind. That’s why there is no word in the Suttas that corresponds with “object”. In the Suttas things exist in relation, not objectively.
When Buddhists use the word “object” in this sense, they are translating the word ārammaṇa, which did indeed take on the sense of “object” in later Buddhism; i.e. a sabhāvadhamma, a dabba (“substance”) that exists sarūpatāya (“from its own side”). But in the Suttas it means “basis, support”, and is never used in the sense of “mental object”.
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In Buddhism, as well as in other systems of liberating insight, we encounter a dilemma. If the supposed liberating insight is trivial then countless people would be liberated. They are not. Hence, the liberating insight is extremely hard to see.
If there was a path that is simply understood and transparent to be practiced (as for example the satipatthana sutta claims), we would have countless liberated ones, but we have not.
Yet, believers throw around concepts, recipes, and formulas like “Nibbana is this”, “You just have to understand that X”, “What you think is wrong, this is right”, etc.
It’s the inaccessibility of the original that makes it difficult, faith-followers and doubters are the natural result of it. This seems to be necessarily so because even gifted teachers don’t seem to be able to complete the teacher’s task (i.e. the Buddha’s).
My own conclusions: we can loosely discuss the implications of the texts, but there is a gap to the actual practice, and dogmatic text-adherence won’t get us there. So questions like @RickRepetti has are totally valid from my perspective.
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Mabe it\s so hard to see because it too simple … 
Or maybe it’s the end of the world, and it’s really the end, so one can’t go beyond the end, because then it wouldn’t be the end. And Buddha said something like “you have to reach the end of the world to end the suffering!”, and we call him “Loka Vidu”, a Knower of the world.
So it’s easy to see that consciousness arises with the senses, but it’s also quite obvious that there is always a constant knowing in all that arises and passes away. And this knowing stays the same.
Jhana or deep sleep, it’s still knowing, and only knowing knows that is known.
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The word knowing has several different meanings, and the way it’s meant when it comes to directly experiences, Buddha says this very clear, like in the Anapanasati sutta.
Know when you breath in, and know when you breath out. That’s not thinking, hearing, seeing, tasting, smelling or touching. Simply knowing breathing in and out. And Buddha didn’t tell us to fixate on a point, nose or belly, but “go” directly inward to basic awareness. Nothing supernatural in that.
Maybe not how Bhante Sujato would put it, but how I have come to directly understanding
I think bhante @sujato said that consciousness can be observed, so when you observe an object for example a breath you notice the impermanence of breath but you actually can go much further by noticing the consciousness that observes the object and how that consciousness dissolves
Furthermore you can observe the consciousness that observes that dissolving consciousness
You can do 3rd point of view or 4th point or 5 point of view observation or more
The point is you can keep observing the observers sometimes even at the same time like observing 2 observers at the same time and the unbelievable thing is there’s no ending to this it’s like when you observe yourself on a mirror only to realize that there is another mirror that you and your first mirror can see thus creating infinity “you” and you can actually see these infinity reflections
Source : My hundred of reading of meditators experiences
I don’t find it so interesting to observe the observer, because they are one and the same. But going directly to the subject, one can “observe” the dissolving of both, and then it’s real meditation. Why sit for hours in a controlled environment, when one can place oneself on the top of a meditation mountain in an instant?
Most meditation teachers actually advise us to do it the hardest way, for reasons unknown to me.
Excuse me for interrupting, but could y’all please stick to the topic - “how to reply to arguments against non-self” ?
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I think they are different if they are same then how can you observe the disolving observer ?
Furthermore buddha said that consciousness can only last a day unlike the body which can last many years so your consciousness yesterday is different from the current one
Arguments is a method of assessing ideas. Winning an argument implies that a certain idea survived contention by an opponent, at least for the time being. So, the quality of persistence seems integral to the method of arguments.
If the quality of persistence, as a criteria, is used to evaluate ideas of self and non-self, then what is it that makes them distinguishable apart from phrasing?
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