The end of a long process
of mental activity, not long perhaps as chronological time is involved,
but long in a line of experiences and consequences, there comes consciousness.
It begins, if one may speak of a beginning anywhere at all, with
a physical contact (phassa) with one of the six senses of perception
(salayatana). This produces a sensation (vedana) which is the experiencing
of a challenge. It is at this stage that the process tends to become
mental, when the sensation is perceived (sanna).
This perception is usually a way of seizing (perception from capere,
to grasp) of getting hold of the sensation for the sake of its effect,
pleasurable or unsatisfactory. This seizure takes place because
of the necessity of the self to continue the experience, for it
is in continuation of experience that the self attempts to survive
as an individual entity.
Without seizure there can be no continuation in memory and hence
no survival of self. It is at this stage that the long chain of
dependent origination can cease to become and continue, when sensations
are experienced as mere responses to stimuli. But, when sensations
are grasped at for the psychological survival of the experience,
they will be seen as pleasurable or not; and in that gratification
the self grows, establishes itself in memory, projects itself in
ideals, and the chain of dependent origination (paticca samuppada)
continues, when sensations become the source of desire (tanha) and
clinging (upadana) leading to the becoming (bhava) of self-consciousness
in which the 'I' continues.
In this process of conditioning (sankhara), the experience is no
longer experienced, but its memory compared with earlier gathered
experiences. Then when need has become greed. The stored or re-linking
consciousness (patisandhi vinnana) can bring its idealized image
up and project it for further action (bhava-kamma). This process
of recognition and registration completes the process of thought,
when out of decaying memory new thought and action are formulated
to reform and restart the cycle of consciousness in ignorance. Only
the perceiving of experiencing without thought of seizure can awaken
the intelligence which can break the perpetual chain of rebirth
of thought.
What is the difference between consciousness and awareness? Consciousness
is thought; and thought is the result of thinking, which is a process
of application of the mind with logic and memory, with volition
and determination, with judgement and selection, with prejudice
and ideals, with fear and hope.
Consciousness, in other words,
is the 'I' in action which is reaction, because all thinking is
the conditioned result of the entire past, not only of the individual
past, but the accumulation throughout the ages of the struggles
for survival, the interminal wars for emergence, the endless conflicts,
with the ideas of the mind controlling the weapons of the pen and
the sword. Consciousness is the past trying to become the future,
without understanding the past, without knowing the future. Thus,
consciousness or thinking is always in conflict; it cannot solve
any problem, because it does not try to understand.
But awareness is not thinking, is not the memory of the past, is
not desire, is not the longing for the future. It is just to be
open and receptive to whatever is or happens. There is no approach
to the present; the present is here already and we are facing it
directly without fear of the past, without hope of the future. Awareness
is seeing what is as it is, with openness and directness, without
expectation of results, without fear of consequences, without reflection
as to a self judging in prejudice. It is an immediate experiencing,
in which there is no reference to self, and hence no thought, consciousness,
reaction.
Unconditioned, there is no conflict, no opposition, no self. And
where there is no self, there is no problem. Can the self become
no-self ? Such question is obviously formulated in ignorance, for
it is still the self that wants to become its ideal. Only in stilling
all consciousness there can be awareness in which there is no striving
for attainment of an ideal. And consciousness
is still, when there is awareness of what 'is'. |
