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.