The aggregate of conciousness

Simplify

Is this the same as awareness?

Jeffrey

It could be. Words can point to different things for different people. Awareness could also be smirti or mindfulness.

Here is some good info

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skandha

Jeffrey

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skandha

::snip::

Eighteen Dhātus

The eighteen dhātus[ag] – the Six External Bases, the Six Internal Bases, and the Six Consciousnesses – function through the five aggregates. The eighteen dhātus can be arranged into six triads, where each triad is composed of a sense object, a sense organ, and sense consciousness. In regards to the aggregates:[23]

The first five sense organs (eye, ear, nose, tongue, body) are derivates of form.
The sixth sense organ (mind) is part of consciousness.
The first five sense objects (visible forms, sound, smell, taste, touch) are also derivatives of form.
The sixth sense object (mental object) includes form, feeling, perception and mental formations.
The six sense consciousness are the basis for consciousness.

::snip::

The Eighteen Dhātus

::snip::

Six Internal Bases (adhyātma-āyatana)

::snip::

(17) Mental Faculty (mano-indriya-āyatana)

::snip::


The indiryas are:

smirti (mindfulness -openness)

this one balances all of the others. It can never be out of balance... there can never be too much mindfulness-openness

virya - joyful energy
and
samadhi - concentration

These two are balanced. You can be like a statue in meditation (too much samadhi) or you can be spinning out into worlds in your head (like when you see pictures going to bed at night) and be in your own world.

prajna - insight/intelligence
and
sraddha - faith

Sraddha is not faith like a leap of faith. It means taking the realizations of the three marks and incorporating them into your life of dharma practice. You can be dull and repetitive saying mantras with no insight/sitting meditation. Or you can have huge intellectual understanding as you drink beer and eat nachos.


smirti -openness is what is needed and all five are fused so you cannot separate them.

Simplify

I'm thinking about this because of how if I concentrate on something (or something draws my attention), my awareness of other things dims and goes away

Like with meditating on the breath it seems even vision goes away even with eyes open

This seems to correlate with conciousnessIs contact with senses

Jeffrey

Yeah I don't know. What I posted about the indiryas suggests that your shamata is getting stronger. That raises the concentration / samadhi and possibly also the virya.. do you feel much energy or joy at the feeling of your breath? It can be a 'dulled out' strong shamata but it can be harmful, it depends. I'm not a meditation teacher of course, I am just wondering.

misecmisc1

consciousness in the 5 aggregates refer to the process of seeing, hearing etc depending on the sense organ. so it is something like plain awareness or bare awareness.

Jeffrey

Only part of consciousness is bare awareness. Otherwise we would not be able to make a grocery list even.

DairyLama

Jeffrey said:

Only part of consciousness is bare awareness. Otherwise we would not be able to make a grocery list even.

In terms of the aggregates consciousness is like bare awareness - the rest is perception, feeling and formations. Though it seems consciousness is analysed differently in different traditions, eg the Mahayana adding 7th and 8th types of consciousness to the traditional 6-fold list ( 5 senses + mind ).

Jeffrey

We are discussing what the fifth aggregate is. Thus we cannot say the fifth aggregate is feeling, perception, formations, because those are different aggregates,

The wiki link I gave has the answer(s). The indriyas are listed as one of the 18 dhatus and I gave an explanation of them: smirti (mindfulness) etc.. in my post ^^

DairyLama

Jeffrey said:

We are discussing what the fifth aggregate is. Thus we cannot say the fifth aggregate is feeling, perception, formations, because those are different aggregates,

The wiki link I gave has the answer(s). The indriyas are listed as one of the 18 dhatus and I gave an explanation of them: smirti (mindfulness) etc.. in my post ^^

Only 6 of the 18 dhatus are types of consciousness, and the indriyas are the 5 spiritual faculties, not types of consciousness.

Jeffrey

Are you getting that from the wikipedia article or somewhere else?

Jeffrey

Look at mapping of the paramathas on my link. The internal sense bases of which the indriyas are one are included in conscious-ness (vinnana)

Jeffrey

I wonder if the seed consciousness is where the wave function of thoughts are collapsing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrödinger's_cat

Jeffrey

Pedanticporpoise, you seem to know the Pali Canon sutras quite well which I found on the wiki link to be the source of the confusion.


1 In the Nikayas/Āgamas: cognizance,[5][m] that which discerns[6][n]
2 In the Abhidhamma: a series of rapidly changing interconnected discrete acts of cognizance.[o]
3 In some Mahayana sources: the base that supports all experience.[p]

The Mahayana source is using number three which is different from what you may have read in the Pali Canon.

Here is the citation for number 3:

^ While not necessarily contradicted by the Nikayas, this is a particularly Mahayana statement. For instance, Nhat Hanh (1999, pp. 180-1) states: "Consciousness here means store consciousness, which is at the base of everything we are, the ground of all of our mental formations." Similarly, Trungpa (2001, pp. 73-4) states that consciousness "is the finally developed state of being that contains all the previous elements.... [C]onsciousness constitutes an immediately available source of occupation for the momentum of the skandhas to feed on."

My teacher's root guru is not Trungpa but same lineage and probably same view on this.

Simplify

Yeah this is very confusing because the wiki article has two very different descriptions of what this is. Apparently the sutra pitaka says that consciousness arises from all the other skhandas while The abhidama says feeling perception and Formations arise from contact of form and conciousness

It seems strange that there could be such Different descriptions of a fundamental topic

DairyLama

Jeffrey said:

3 In some Mahayana sources: the base that supports all experience.[p]

The Mahayana source is using number three which is different from what you may have read in the Pali Canon.

Here is the citation for number 3:

^ While not necessarily contradicted by the Nikayas, this is a particularly Mahayana statement. For instance, Nhat Hanh (1999, pp. 180-1) states: "Consciousness here means store consciousness, which is at the base of everything we are, the ground of all of our mental formations." Similarly, Trungpa (2001, pp. 73-4) states that consciousness "is the finally developed state of being that contains all the previous elements.... [C]onsciousness constitutes an immediately available source of occupation for the momentum of the skandhas to feed on."

Yes, I think this refers to the 7th and 8th types of consciousness which were "added on" to the 6 in the suttas - it seems to get quite technical.