[MD] awareness and consciousness

[MarshaV]

More…  

     "One of the standard definitions of cognitive awareness (vijnana) is that it arises as "the discrete discernment [of objects]".   Two important implications follow from this.  The first is articulated well enough in early Buddhism" that all conditioned phenomena appear impermanent and changing.  The second is brought out more clearly in the Abhidharma traditions: that cognitive awareness is not only conditionally arisen, but it arises as a function of discerned distinctions.  If we examine the implications of this definition, we can more deeply appreciate the nature of the Abhidharma project, the status of its dharma, and the entire series of theoretical problems that followed from this innovative mode of analysis.  

     "As we have seen, cognitive awareness arises when a stimulus appears within an appropriate sense domain, impinges upon the sense-faculties (or mind), and there is attention thereto.  Cognitive awareness would not arise without the occurrence of this stimulus, without some impingement upon the sense organs and faculty.  To speak of the arising of cognitive awareness is therefore to speak of an event, a momentary interaction between sense organ and their correlative stimuli.  To say that "everything is impermanent," then, is not so much a declaration about reality as it is, as a description of cognitive awareness as it arises.  Cognitive awareness is thus --- by definition --- temporal and processual.

     "It is also discriminative.  Gregory Bateson makes a suggestively analogous point:

          our sensory system … can only operate with _events_, which we call
          _changes_ … it is true that we think we can see the unchanging … the
          truth of the matter is that … the eyeball has continual tremor, called 
          _micronystagmus_.  The eyeball vibrates through a few second of arc and 
          thereby causes the optical image on the retina to move relative to the 
          rods and cones which are the sensitive end organs.  The end organs are
          thus in continual receipt of events that correspond to _outlines_ in the 
          visible world.  We _draw_ distinctions; that is, we pull them out.  Those 
          distinctions that remain undrawn are _not_.
                                           (Bateson, 1979: 107, emphasis in original)

Without an awareness of such distinctions, without such stimuli, there would be no discernment of discrete objects, or separate "things."  This is arguably already implied in the term vi-jnana, whose prefix, vi, imparts a sense of separation or division (cognate with Latin "dis"), suggesting a "discerning or differentiating awareness".  Cognitive awareness, in other words, necessarily arises as a function of discernment. …" 

   

Marsha 






On Apr 25, 2012, at 5:44 AM, MarshaV wrote:

> 
> Greetings,
> 
> I can tell this topic and associated books are going to require multiple readings.  I must admit this much detail makes me wail in agony so I present a paragraph to maybe peak someone else's interest. 
> 
>      "Abhidharma thus became, in Bhikkhu Bodhi's words, a "phenomenological psychology" whose "primary concern ... is to understand the nature of experience, and thus the reality on which it focuses is conscious reality, the world as given in experience".  But what does a "phenomenological psychology" mean?  And what is a "unit or constituent of experience"?  And how is all this related to vijnana, the central concept of this book?  ...". 
>       (Waldron, W.,'The 'Buddhist Unconscious': The Alaya-Vijnana in the 
>         Context of Indian Buddhist Thought', p.51)
> 
> 
> Marsha:
> "Conscious reality, the world as given in experience"?  Experience?  Value?  Consciousness?      There's  "Consciousness can be described as a process of defining Dynamic Quality." (LC).  And "‘Static quality’ refers to anything that can be conceptualised and is a synonym for the conditioned in Buddhist philosophy." (MoQ Textbook).  Gee, how can anyone help but be interested in learning more.
> 
> 
> Marsha


 
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