I think ‘conscious awareness’ is a bit different than attention which @stu’s question was about.
Furthermore, I wanted to bring your attention to three suttas which suggest that it might not be so simple.
AN 8.83, which says ‘manasikāra sambhavā sabbe dhammā’,
MN 28, which discusses ‘samannāhāra’ as the necessary condition of consciousness and contact (however, what it is is open to interpretation)
SN 47.42, similar to the first, in which the origins of the four satipatthanas are listed, and for the last satipatthana it is manasikāra.
Also one of the suttas you quoted says: ‘The meeting of the three is contact’. Why would the Buddha phrase it like this? I’m of the opinion it’s connected to the issue of manasikāra and samannāhāra mentioned above.
On the other hand, it seems incontrovertible to me that I do need something to be there in order to attend to it in the first place.
So I would say the truth lies somewhere in the middle, and clinging to either extreme might obstruct one’s practice and understanding. Come to think of it, this is actually pretty close to the atthita/natthita duality.
This is the bit I’m interested in. Can you give me a sutta reference? All I see so far (such as SN 12.44 - “Eye consciousness arises dependent on the eye and sights”) is that you need both both external and internal bases present for say, touch-consciousness to come about, not that touch consciousness comes about every time those two are present. Just like my mother and father both needed to be present for me arise, but I didn’t arise every time they were present together. (i.e. Children arise dependent on their mothers and fathers)
Let me try to tie this into some of my (admittedly very old) high school biology to see if I can get a grip on what you are suggesting. So, from a biological point of view, each receptor in each eye (that is excited enough to fire) fires and then rests. The more each receptor is excited by by the outside stimulus, the faster it fires until a maximum firing rate has been achieved (with a corresponding rest between each firing). So are you suggesting that for each firing of each receptor there is a (moment of) sense consciousness arising?
I not sure that I get what you are saying? I (this fathom long body) am clearly aware enough of the discomfort to actually move. If I really was unaware of it, I wouldn’t move would I? There’s “being aware”, and then there’s “being aware that you are aware”, (or more technically speaking: “being aware that you were aware”).
In SN35.23 we get:
1.2“Mendicants, I will teach you the all. 1.3Listen …
1.4And what is the all? 1.5It’s just the eye and sights, the ear and sounds, the nose and smells, the tongue and tastes, the body and touches, and the mind and thoughts. 1.6This is called the all.
1.7Mendicants, suppose someone was to say: 1.8‘I’ll reject this all and describe another all.’ They’d have no grounds for that, 1.9they’d be stumped by questions, and, in addition, they’d get frustrated. 1.10Why is that? 1.11Because they’re out of their element.”
Are you suggesting that sati is not included in the sense-base model?
Thanks for the suttas referenced.
I’m not sure how those can be interpreted to mean that sense consciousness and contact give rise to conscious awareness?
AN 8.83 seems to refer to the fact that “things are produced” when we give attention to them. Which I take to mean that we need to direct attention to things in order to bring them into conscious awareness. Which seems to support what I was trying to say above. It doesn’t mean in my opinion that things affect us and lead to craving only when we give attention to them or that they don’t as long as we don’t give attention to them.
MN 28 uses the term ‘samannāhāra’ which as you say is really open to interpretation and doesn’t specify wether this “engagement” needs to be conscious.
Again, multitasking is engagement in a lot of things at the same time but how much of that engagement is in our conscious awareness?
SN 47.42 uses the elusive word “dhamma”. Since as you suggest the sutta seems to speak of the satipatthanas we get into a bit of a rabbit hole as the dhamma section of the satipatthana sutta is different for every reciting lineage whose texts have reached us. I find the comparative work of Analayo to be extremely convincing, but that’s off topic.
To make matters simpler, we should use the satipatthana version of dhamma found in the Anapanasati sutta which lists dhammas as: impermanence, dispassion, cessation and letting go.
So with this reading the sutta seems to imply that we are only able to recognize these “dhammas” as long as our attention is engaged. I totally agree and that’s a huge part of the path. If contact automatically gave rise to conscious awareness there would be no need to train the mind to recognize these dhammas in my opinion.
I simply take it to mean that eye + sight + resulting sense consciousness is called contact.
This contact gives rise to feeling.
If contact automatically implied conscious awareness then we would always be aware of all our feelings. What’s the point of practicing the second satipatthana then?
I agree, it is extremely complicated and requires careful study of a huge amount of suttas.
That’s why I didn’t want to get into it in the first place
This depends wether external stimuli and internal sense organ are interpreted as “sufficient” conditions for the arising of sense consciousness or something else is needed. This is not specified in the suttas as far as i know.
I interpret the above to mean that eye and sights are sufficient conditions for the arising of eye consciousness. Why would the Buddha leave out another condition?
The Buddha doesn’t speak of receptors and moments, so I think it’s helpful to stick with the vocabulary in the suttas.
I am saying that from what I understand sense consciousness lasts as long as a stimulus impinges on the sense organ, that’s why it is said to be dependent on these two.
If that’s the case I applaud you
But for me and 99.9% of all people as far as I can tell that’s not the case.
I suggest you try an experiment and put a camera in front of your workplace so you can review all the times you moved, scratched an itch et. without realizing.
The fact that the pain might become so unbearable that the stimulus crosses your threshold of awareness is another story, but usually that’s not the case in my opinion.
Another example is eating:
Think about when people are eating while on their phones, totally immersed in facebook etc.
How are they finding the stimulus to lift the fork, put food in their mouth, swallow etc.?
Craving is driving the process. For craving to be there, contact needs to be there, so sense consciousness needs to be there. All this is happening without the stimulus being brought to their conscious sphere.
Actually it makes things worse as people seem to indulge more and eat faster when they are unmindful.
These are all distinctions that are not found in the suttas, alongside things like conscious vs unconscious, meta-consciousness etc…
I think we need to set aside all these ideas and just read what the suttas have to say, and I think the result is much clearer.
I’m not sure what you mean. Sati is not a sense sphere.
It seems clear to me that a huge part of the work needed on the Buddhist path is to intentionality bring awareness (sati) to what’s happening in our body, feelings, minds and reality, which is exactly what the practice of satipatthana is about.
If contact automatically brought things into the conscious sphere then what would be the point in practicing the satipatthanas? We would already automatically be aware of every sight, sound, smell, taste, touch and thought and their corresponding pleasurable, painful or neutral feelings.
This is clearly not the case, that’s why the work needs to be done.
I think the Buddha was so brilliant and had such penetrating insight and wisdom in how this works that expressing it in terms that the people of 2500 years ago could understand was a challenge. They didn’t know about neural connections, brain regions and didn’t have fMRI machines to see how things work. He saw firsthand how things arise and work together to create the tangle and he untangled the tangle. For example, in MN 19 the Buddha describes habituated neural pathways as “Whatever a mendicant frequently thinks about and considers becomes their heart’s inclination.”
The human mind is complex and doesn’t work on one cylinder. The Buddha separated our senses into six, an important distinction. Each sense contributes to the overall picture one has in the 5 aggregates of clinging, One sense may dominate more than another in each experience. We know that the visual cortex of the brain accounts for about 40% of sensory processing, so vision is a big part of where we get our sense impressions, but we don’t base all experience on just one sense impression.
The eye doesn’t have a mind and the mind doesn’t have an eye. The eye is a sense organ that captures photons and images and sends that data to the visual cortex to process it and move it to the matrix of brain paths that shapes what consciousness is aware of. Likewise, when a substance is contacted on the tongue, the organ’s receptors sends the signal to the gustatory cortex and contact is made.
NOTE: In the context of sense bases, I suspect that the sixth sense sphere, the mind, refers to the sense organ that generates thoughts, not the “mind” that refers to consciousness that evaluates all the data and comes to conclusions (the consciousness that needs namarupa to get it’s information). One can be in a serene state of mind and a random thought can make contact into awareness and one can be carried away just as if one saw a sight, heard a sound, smelled an odor, tasted a taste or felt a touch.
But being such a tangle, how could our consciousness take just a single sense impression and base all experience on just one thing?
Monks, these have the nature of birth, ageing, death, ceasing, and rebirth. Monks, all compounded things are as an illusion, a flame, ceasing in an instant; being not real they come (arise) and go (cease).
“Therefore, monks, with regard to all empty compounded things you should know, rejoice in, and be mindful of (awake to) this:
“All empty compounded things are empty of any permanent, eternal, lasting, unchanging nature; they are empty of self and of belonging to self”.
Perhaps the authors of the early Prajñāpāramitā texts were working with a similar sutra in mind?
Thanks for your input Giovanni. I suspect we are talking at cross purposes. Where you say:
I would say: Why would (How can) an organism scratch an itch if that organism isn’t aware that there is an itch to scratch? On some level awareness is there.
Ah. Well we’ve done the experiments now, we understand the mechanism better, and that theory turns out to be be false. So if the Buddha is really saying this, then it’s something that he got wrong.
We are still using the term awareness in different ways and in my opinion that’s what’s causing confusion.
I agree that there needs to be viññāṇa in order for an organism to respond to external stimuli. I do not think there needs to be manasikāra, sati or sampajañña (what I take to correspond to the modern conception of “conscious awareness”) in order for this to happen.
Since in an earlier post you suggested that “the production of ‘sense consciousness’ and the corresponding ‘contact’ is precisely what brings things into the conscious sphere (i.e. one’s awareness)” I am pointing out why I don’t think this is the case based on how I see these words being used in the suttas. I might be completely wrong, if so please correct me.
I am not familiar with the experiment you are talking about, and again I suspect this is again a matter of the definition for awareness.
Many studies point to the fact that stimuli are received and registered even without awareness and a quick google search will show this.
The experimental findings based on all four approaches lead to the same conclusion; namely, stimuli are perceived even when observers are unaware of the stimuli.
Yes. That’s right I think. I’m using awareness to mean any sense-consciousness and I think you are using it for (certain types of) mind-consciousness (manasikāra, sati, sampajañña) which is fair enough, but likely to lead to confusion.
Yes. Maybe. I was referring to the ‘adaptation of sensory receptors’ and the corresponding experiments in that area.
Absolutely, that’s why I advocate trying to use and understand the vocabulary in the suttas as much as possible before trying to “translate” into our modern ideas and conception.
This is a common misconception in my opinion.
As @Adutiya pointed out above, I believe mind-consciousness simply refers to that aggregate that registers and reacts to thoughts, just like eye-consciousness simply registers and reacts to sights, nothing more.
Manasikāra, sati, sampajañña etc. are not mind-consciousnesses.
Yes, this is an important aspect and I acknowledge it.
As MN 28 points out, there needs to be the possibility of engagement between the organ and the stimulus to result in sense consciousness i.e. one is not dead, one is not in a coma, not in jhana etc… and I would add that the organ needs to remain receptive to stimuli.
***EDIT: I did some brief research into sensory receptor adaptations and it seems that:
So, in my opinion, it would seem that it is correct to say that “sense consciousness lasts as long as a stimulus impinges on the sense organ”.***
But this is not 100% relevant to the issue of consciousness (viññāṇa) being present without attention (manasikāra) and the corresponding awareness (sati/sampajañña).
Did you look at the experiment I linked in my edit of the post above?
I suspect that this is something that we will have to disagree on. Given SN 35.23 (quoted above), for me, manasikāra, sati, and sampajañña need to fit into the sense-base model from an EBT perspective. If they are not (examples of) mind-consciousness, then what (sense-consciousness or otherwise) are they?
Yes. I have now Thanks. I think this bit is covered by our differing ways of using the term ‘awareness’.
manasikāra, sati, and sampajañña fit the sutta under the term mind (mano).
But they are not mind-consciousnesses. Mind-consciousness is just another aspect of mano, specifically manoviññāṇa.
(Any)viññāṇa, manasikāra, sati and sampajañña are all different aspects of mano, just like thumb, index and middle fingers are all parts of the hand but the thumb is not part of the index finger.
Anyway as conclusion, I will post a representation of how I think the process works including both the way I think the terms are used in the suttas and the modern conceptions of unconscious/conscious for clarity.
This has been an excellent discussion to read so far and it expanded and encompassed some issues that I had avoided including in my OP as reasons for asking the question. I hope I am not further side-tracking the discussion but one of the issues I was also thinking about (and maybe relevant to the discussion above between @anon72511327 and @stu) was Autonomic Nervous System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomic_nervous_system
These processes go on irrespective of attention or awareness (irrespective of the nuances in the definition). The mind cannot wait around to process them even when one’s attention and awareness is fixed on other things.
This idea of single sense-consciousness/contact processing at a time seems to be abhidhammic concept and the issue I had was that it becomes a necessity only if each such contact has to deposit its data to a single substratum in a serial fashion (with or without conscious awareness), which very much is a “self-like” mind construct. If there is to be no such construct (no self), there is no need or necessity for events to get processed one at a time.
I hope I am being clear in my description and making sense.
with much metta,
I agree, nicely put
In my opinion seeing how viññāṇa operates outside of one’s awareness leads to a strong insight into its not-self nature. That’s why sati is so important in this regard.
Yes, I think that some of the things that the Abhidhamma extrapolates out aren’t useful and can hook a person’s attention on something that doesn’t lead towards liberation from dukkha.
Your confusion lies within an assumption that -
if we know, we must have known via senses.
This is the underlying belief which locks us in the kama loka.
Keep it under consideration that our senses are not positive factor in knowing, senses are not enabler nor enforcer of knowing.
Keep open minded about the possibility that Senses are in effect a reduction of knowing qualities on its clarity, its scope and its purity.
That’s a nice diagram, but in where would you put vedanā (feeling) which seems to usually be associated with contact, as in 12.44 quoted above: SuttaCentral?
Lets narrow down the scope of this topic from a science perspective to a kammic relevant scope. That is what sutta is implicitly about.
speculating.
A given moment, at most a single foreground and a single background in our perception. That implies at most one sense consciousness arising. This single consciousness is momentary with a distinct start and end. It comes with perception which arises together but a longer life span. It is perception’s nature to persist a while before disbanding.
The background of what we aware, is never kamma concerning. The foreground carries potential to create kamma.
The process to move a background to afore, or suddenly a foreground appear, it is contact.
Contact is a mental event, not physical or semi-physical, although it is not always deliberate intended neither. Because of the same reason, the mind can be cultivated to stop contact - i.e. meditation facilitate transient suspension of contact. Fruition facilitates cessation of contact. If it is physical, it can not be suspended or stopped.
From another angel saying the same thing -
Not each form eye meet creates sense consciousness and contact. Most sense impingement is being ignored by our mind.
I would put feeling where contact is, and also craving. Sometimes the stimulus is strong enough to attract our manasikāra and we become “aware” of it, sometimes it is not so, like for example scratching an itch. Sometimes we do so knowingly, sometimes it just happens in the background while we do other things. That’s why sati, born of directing our manasikāra to our various contacts, is so important in understanding how the process works and do something to prevent it, in my opinion.
I’m not sure this is the case. Many different things are happening in the background and our bodies are reacting to different stimuli without us needing to direct our attention to them in order to elicit a reaction. These reactions in my opinion imply contact, which implies sense consciousness, regardless of manasikāra.
I agree individual sense consciousnesses have a distinct start and an end, but they are not momentary (as in mind-moment that lasts only an instant). In my opinion the suttas don’t support this interpretation. Like I said above I think an individual sense consciousness lasts as long as a stimulus impinges on the corresponding sense organ, which could be anything from a moment to much longer.
I’m not sure this is the case. In my opinion and interpretation it is manasikāra that brings things to the foreground, not contact. Again, our body and minds subconsciously react to external stimuli all the time. Only a small part of those stimuli are strong enough to attract our manasikāra and bring them to the foreground. Or we can intentionally direct our manasikāra to these various contacts to bring stimuli to the foreground, which is what the practice of satipatthana is about in my opinion.
Again, think of subconsciously scratching an itch: contact gives rise to feeling which gives rise to craving for relief, so we subconsciously scratch the itch. Yet this all happens while our manasikāra is directed elsewhere.
The mind can be cultivated to stop contact through directing our manasikāra and giving rise to sati that when strong enough becomes established. This is what interrupts engagement with the senses and therefore stops contact. But it’s only when sati becomes firmly established that this happens.
If we only needed to simply direct our attention to our breath (for example) in order to stop contact then mediation would be so much easier. But then a sound appears and we lose our focus. How? Because the contact from the sound attracts our manasikāra and we lose our sati. Not the other way around.
If contact were always a “foreground experience” we would need to direct our attention to the sound in order to be bothered by it. But that doesn’t seem to be what’s happening. The contact from the sound is “knocking at the door” of our manasikāra so to speak. It is only when our manasikāra is pulled by the contact that the sound comes to the foreground and we become aware of it, but the contact must have been happening before that, which to me implies that sense consciousness works in the background irrespective of where our manasikāra is directed to at the moment.
It is much more complex than that in my opinion.
Our mind “filters out” most unnecessary stimuli, but for this filtering out to happen our consciousness (viññāṇa) is engaging with the stimuli, and only then subsequent mental processes decide what to filter out.
If, however, what you mean is that most stimuli don’t reach our “foreground” (by attracting our manasikāra), I agree, but they are still being registered by our viññāṇa.
According to SN 35.23 that @stu quoted above it is impossible to know anything if not through the interaction between the six senses and their correspondent stimuli.
Please everyone, understand that I’m not insisting I’m right and only my interpretation is correct. I would love to be corrected if my interpretation is wrong. I have no interest in sticking with a potentially incorrect view. For the moment I’m not convinced by other interpretations, which seem to contradict our experience in my opinion.
That’s interesting. I find that the natural inclination of the unmindful mind is to wander around looking for things. (If it can’t find anything, it makes it up. ) It’s when this inclination of the mind to ‘go out looking’ is suppressed through things like nibbida that sound doesn’t penetrate meditation.
Thanks. I think this bit is covered by our differing ways of using the term ‘awareness’.
