A Secular Understanding of Dependent Origination: #3 Consciousness
We come into the world ignorant of the things we do that end up causing dukkha in our lives, and in particular ignorant of the drive for existence of our sense-of-self: that’s step #1: ignorance, and step #2: sankhara. Sankhara is simultaneously that natural tendency to develop and protect our sense-of-self taken to extremes, and sankharas are the things we do that create and develop that identity. Sankhara, in that dual sense, represents the whole chain of dependent arising: it is the drive and the actions (including our thoughts); everything else is just details.
The third link in the chain addresses the beginning point of the sankhara process. It is usually translated as consciousness, which is a fair enough translation of its Pali term, “vinnana“. But given that it is a very specific kind of consciousness, I actually prefer the term “awareness” as being less confusing when describing what it does (as opposed to in translations).
Here’s Sariputta’s explanation of vinnana, from MN 9, as translated by Bhikkhus Nanamoli and Bodhi:
There are these six classes of consciousness: eye-consciousness, ear-consciousness, nose-consciousness, tongue-consciousness, body-consciousness, mind-consciousness.This is called consciousness.
We are back in “a field” again, which serves to nourish the events in the cycle being described, but pointing out the field doesn’t give us detail about what’s actually going on in that consciousnes that’s the issue. It is not every activation of “eye-consciousness” (for example) that is part of the problem, only sankhara-driven instances are.
What is made clear with this list is that this “consciousness” is something that comes in through the senses, and elsewhere we find the Buddha describing that this is something that arises with incoming data, develops, then passes away. This is why I prefer “awareness” as a translation, because we are talking about something that exists only when there is sense data to take note of. We may feel something — say a rumble of hunger in the belly — and then, even as awareness of the feeling fades, we think about it, and as we tell ourselves stories about the hunger, we may go on to thinking about what we should eat though the feeling that triggered the line of thought has long since vanished. Soon some other sensation will replace the hunger, and we’ll be off on another series of thoughts.
Note that describing the process as one that comes, grows, and fades has consciousness/awareness in the role of something that only exists while it is being fed — this is the very epitome of the concept of nourishment and existence that prevailed in the Buddha’s day. The potential for awareness is always there, but it isn’t active (it isn’t “real”) until it is being fed, until it finds what it is looking for.
But we need to remember that this awareness is of a very specific type. As with sankhara, when we look at the field of sense-awareness, not every event that arises is the awareness we’re talking about, but only the sort of sense-awareness that is grounded in sankhara, which is the driving force for this kind of awareness. This is awareness that is seeking whatever is out there that will best serve the needs of its own existence — the drive to protect our self, to know how everything in the world relates to us, to find advantage in it and be wary of disadvantage. Again, we are *not* talking about the most basic survival needs — how to get food, water, shelter — these things in their simplest forms are not the problem; they are not the problem because they are not the things we do that result in dukkha; they are not the problem because they don’t have as their source the beyond-necessity drives of sankhara. It’s when desires around preserving self get taken to extremes that they are sankhara-awareness. For example, the need for power can be seen as wanting to make sure one will always have enough of the basics to never be threatened with having too little, and therefore accumulating goods beyond bare necessities — which results, whether we realize it or not, in a disadvantage to others.
One thing the Buddha emphasizes about this kind of awareness is that it is interdependent with the next step — these are the only two steps described as being interdependent (that is, with each one being a cause of the other) — and it is because the very definition of awareness is of something that does not exist unless it is fed that it is bound up with the next step, because the next step is its food, as we will see in the next post.
Go To: Table of Contents for A Secular Understanding of Dependent Arising
Category: Articles
Everyone still with me? Away for the long weekend? Or is it that this was so confusing no one knows where to start to comment or question? Or maybe is it clear but unremarkable? Since this and the next post are the two that “lean on each other like two sheaves in the field” — one falls over without the other — I’m hoping for clarity here before we go to the next.
My thanks to all who have commented — or even read without comment — the series so far.
Still with you.
Well, now that I’m almost finished with your journal article (only 8 pages left!) it’s a lot easier to see where you are going; the whole Brahmanic creation myth thing really helps scaffold your take on the DO stages.
Yes! So everyone should go purchase a subscription, please, and read the paper! : )
It just seems to me that to get the reasoning behind seeing the structure the way I do, that incredible amount of wordage I put into the paper is necessary. Talking about how it plays out in practice — which I’m doing in this series — is something that isn’t included in the paper, and can be taken on as a separate subject altogether. But it sort of requires that readers here take on faith that I have good reason for seeing the practical aspects I’m presenting here the way I do. And I’d really rather not be taken on faith. So I encourage readers to go get that paper.
Whothehell:
“Plagerising the Buddha’s word is thieving”
First off, MN 9, which Linda is discussing, quotes Sariputta, not Gotama. Linda is not claiming Sariputta’s words as her own, which is the English definition of plagarism. Or did you mean to accuse Sariputta of plagarism?
“there is no such thing a secular Buddhism”
But there is. You see it in action right here. We strive to encorporate the Four Truths in our lives and cultivate the Eightfold Path as the canonical Gotama recommends — in THIS world, in THIS life, in THIS moment, the only one available to us for practice. To that extent, one could conceivably say, “There is no NON-secular Buddhism.”
“who gives a stuff what you think”
In the Pali texts Gotama frequently advises his followers to discuss the dharma — in fact, MN 9 is an example of just such a discussion. He did not want his followers to be blind, unquestioning believers in dogma, but to use his teachings as a springboard for exploring their lives. He established the sangha because he knew that practice is always practice with others, and that engaging in Right Speech with spiritual friends is a powerful way to integrate the dharma in our lives. That’s what Linda is doing here, out of compassion for us.
I am reading this series way slower than you are posting it & am appreciating the care you are taking with explaining dependent arising, dear Linda! I am working on consciousness/awareness now and am wondering if i “got it.” I have not yet read your article, though i’ll check out how i can get it here in the US.
Here’s how i am understanding your explanation of awareness. I’ll stick with your hunger example. The sensation of hunger per se is not what produces dukkha, it’s when i become aware of it by thinking “i am hungry” and then go on planning what i’ll eat – maybe even complaining that i don’t have strawberry jam on hand, or honey would be nice, and if that person would just call me, we could have lunch together and… What i am not quite sure i fully understand is the level of awareness required: Is it noticing the sensation, labeling it, adding the story – or all of this? If i notice the sensation and label it “hunger” and then go eat something without adding a story – i don’t think that would lead to dukkha – or does it?
Glad you’re enjoying it. Whatever pace works for you is great; I expect the posts will be available for a long while.
Awareness at this point in the sequence is not easy to pin down, because it is really describing what happens in a sort of multi-layered overview of causes and effects. A little later in the sequence (starting with contact) we get an actual step-by-step breakdown of what’s going on, and it might be easier to get a sense of the examples from that.
What I can say about it (in answer to your specific questions) is that, because it is driven by ignorance, it is defined as being more on the unconscious level than “awareness” might seem to indicate. If you imagine that there is a sort of Wizard of Oz within you, operating levers and hiding behind a curtain, trying to manipulate the world in a way that results in making it happiest, you could say that *it* is what’s aware. You aren’t conscious of what it’s doing — and that’s part of the problem. It is using you to its own ends.
What’s interesting about this (I think) is that the “cure” for the problem is a different sort of awareness — the awareness Buddhist practice fosters in us through meditation and mindfulness. We are replacing the subconscious/unconscious/Wizard of Oz’s awareness that drives events with a conscious choice to be aware — and we do this because we are (to some degree) no longer ignorant.
Using your example though, yes. At the point where you are simply responding to hunger and planning what to eat, there’s probably not a lot of “I” involved in it. *rumble of hunger* “hmmm there is bread and jam…” Things are probably just fine up to that point but if the Wizard became particularly set on that jam (“and I really LIKE jam”) the trouble begins there, in that the Wizard’s going to get angry if there is no jam.
It is usually easiest to see it through noticing that we are telling ourselves stories about the necessity of whatever we’re thinking about — the necessity to our happiness. It is also at its easiest to spot on this level of the bare sensual experience: we can pretty easily see how making something more important than it really is can lead into trouble; and so it’s really good to get in the habit of noticing this when it happens. But the dukkha we get out of these is usually little tiny dukkha. When the dukkha that results is bigger and more powerful, it is in the things that are harder to see, and the reason they are harder to see is because (in a lovely bit of Buddhist irony) because we are even *more* attached to them than we are to jam — the greater importance we attach to them makes us naturally a little more blind to the problem (this is ignorance feeding ignorance — we’ll meet this in the last post, on the Taints).
So for example when I’m late to work and driving fast while trying to get that important cup of coffee down without spilling it on me, and I fail to notice a yield sign, and cause someone else to swerve, and they lean on their horn, I’m going to get furious with THEM for being rude and “let them ruin my day” — because all the stories I’m telling are about all the good reasons I have for behaving the way I am (I am a good person, after all) so when things go badly, it can’t be *my* fault.
The more central to our sense of who we are, the harder it is to see that our self-justifications are just that, and the larger the problems that result. Wars are started from that kind of entrenchment.
As long as I’m not noticing the way I’m cutting myself slack and blaming others, dukkha can come bite me because I’m unaware, and unable to stop the process. When I replace the ignorantly-seeking awareness with conscious awareness, the whole situation goes better.