From: Paul Turner (paulj.turner@ntlworld.com)
Date: Sun Oct 26 2003 - 13:54:43 GMT
Hi Scott [and anyone else following this thread]
This excerpt from ZMM may help clarify my understanding of consciousness
in the MOQ:
"All the time we are aware of millions of things around us...these
changing shapes, these burning hills, the sound of the engine, the feel
of the throttle, each rock and weed and fence post and piece of debris
beside the road...aware of these things but not really conscious of them
unless there is something unusual or unless they reflect something we
are predisposed to see. We could not possibly be conscious of these
things and remember all of them because our mind would be so full of
useless details we would be unable to think. From all this AWARENESS we
must select, and what we select and call CONSCIOUSNESS is never the same
as the awareness because the PROCESS OF SELECTION mutates it. We take a
handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and
call that handful of sand the world.
Once we have the handful of sand, the world of which we are conscious, a
PROCESS OF DISCRIMINATION goes to work on it. This is the knife. We
divide the sand into parts. This and that. Here and there. Black and
white. Now and then. The discrimination is the division of the conscious
universe into parts." [ZMM p.82, My Caps]
In the passage above, I think "awareness" correlates with Quality, the
"process of selection" correlates with static patterns emerging from
ongoing Dynamic Quality and the "process of discrimination" correlates
with intellect. Consciousness is then the sum total of intellectual
patterns after they have been "pre-selected," described in terms of an
individual or as a level in its entirety.
To "see" or experience the "process of selection" directly and not hang
on to the results of this process as reality [and thus achieve
"awareness"] is what, I think, Buddha taught.
Now, I think you associate consciousness with "the process of selection"
or with "awareness." What do you think?
Paul
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