THE SIX SENSES AND BEYOND

When the Aggregates arise, decay and die, O bhikkhu, every moment you are born, decay, and die.”

Gautama Buddha

SHEATHS OF VEDANTA

Now let’s take a look at how the traditions of Vedanta and Theravada Buddhism view the body and mind.  Vedanta asserts that the true self is covered by sheaths. The outermost sheath or layer is the physical self. The problem occurs when we identify ourselves with the physical mass of skin, flesh, fat, bones, excrement, pus, urine, blood, mucus, and so on.

The physical self is nourished and comprised of that food that we eat, such as vegetables and fruit, which come from the element of the earth. Some people choose to also eat sentient life forms such as cows, pigs, sheep, chickens, fish, etc., so in essence, our physical bodies are made of the earth and the elements of water, fire, wind, and space.

This physical body is sustained by means of bio-electricity, or prana, the wind element. Prana is a vital life force that energizes the body and the mind. It pervades the entire physical organism. It’s one physical manifestation is the breath.

Another sheath is that of the mind. The mind is a storeroom of impressions, arising from the mental faculties of perception, comprehension, and cognition.

Then there is the ego; the sense of I-am-ness, as well as that part of the mind that decides, judges, and discriminates.

The final sheath is that which surrounds the true self. Like the darkness that is known in deep sleep, it might be described as the indescribable beginning-less ignorance. This sheath is the result of past deeds (karma). It is insentient. It is impure and can be likened to filling up a glass jar with heavy dark wine. This final sheath is known as the ‘seed body,’ or the ‘causal body,’ and is the substratum of all the other sheaths. It is difficult to penetrate if very impure. It can be correlated to Freud’s theory of the unconscious mind or Carl Jung’s ‘shadow self’ or ‘collective unconscious.’ Vedanta says that this is where the seeds of past action or karma reside waiting for the right time and set of circumstances to ripen; like a seed waiting to be planted in a pot of earth, given water and sunlight for it to sprout.

The problem with identifying with any of these sheaths is what causes one to be stuck. Once you can overcome seeing the mind body complex as who you are, then you will be one step closer to enlightenment in the Vedanta tradition and will see it for what it is.

HEAPS OF THERAVADA BUDDHISM

In Theravada Buddhism, this insight above is known as namarupa knowledge, its one of the  very first insight knowledge's but there are another 15 more so so just to get to first path. Its making the distinction with mind and matter, or subject and object, subject meaning awareness, objects everything else.

In the Buddhist tradition, the mind/body complex is described in a similar manner, except that it doesn’t use the word ‘self,’ nor does it identify with anything whatsoever. 

The Pali suttas (scriptures) describe five bundles or aggregates, a collection, or an assortment or heap of items that make up the sense of a physical and mental self, with real conventional boundaries.

1. The first bundle, known as ‘form,’ Rupa is the physical flesh, more or less the meat and potatoes that most people identify with as an individual sense of self. When this physical self gets afflicted or ill, transforms or dies, it creates pain, fear, and suffering.

2. The second bundle, ‘sensation’ or ‘feeling,’ vedana involves sensing an object as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. Most people personally identify with these feelings or sensations.

The problem with feeling is that most people repel anything that creates undesirable feelings or sensations and crave anything that generates pleasurable sensations or so-called positive feelings. Feelings create suffering through desire and aversion because the mind identifies them as ‘my’ feelings rather than simply observing the feelings that arise.

3. Perception, sañña the third bundle, registers whether an object is recognized or not—the sound of a bell, the shape of a tree, a thought, a feeling, or a sensation, both internal and external. The problem with perception is that objects are usually not seen for what they are.

4. Mental formations, sankharas the fourth bundle, are all types of mental habits, thoughts, ideas, opinions, views, prejudices, compulsions, proclivities, impulses, and volitions. These mental formations take hold of what is being perceived and form views about it. Again, the problem arises when these formations are identified with a ‘me, myself, and I.’ What results is a sense that one is one’s beliefs, ideas, views, and opinions, or that these belong to you, that you have a copyright or some kind of a trademark on these feelings. So if someone were to disagree with your views, you would probably take this as a personal offense. Then what makes this situation even worse if when someone then acts of on these ideas, thoughts. They create more karma based on a wrong mental formation, belief, impulse, proclivity or wrong view of some kind.

5. Consciousness Viññana is the fifth and final bundle. When the Buddha was asked, “Why do you call it 'consciousness’?” he answered, “Because it cognizes.” What does it cognize? “It cognizes what is sour, bitter, pungent, sweet, alkaline, non-alkaline, salty, and unsalty. Because it cognizes, it is called consciousness.” And what is consciousness? This is a bit more complicated, but he didn’t speak about it in the exact same way as in Vedanta, such as a pure absolute eternal and infinite consciousness as a witness, per se.

Buddha broke it down into six bodies of divided consciousness. In Theravada Buddhism, the abhidhamma or higher doctrine actually lists many more (121 altogether) also many more factors, 52 that arise with consciousness, seven universal factors, and they also speak of many more forms of consciousness, meaning, types of reactions in or on the mind screen; (awareness) produced by more than interaction with the six senses—sound, sight, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching.

The basic six types include:

1. Eye-consciousness

2. Ear-consciousness

3. Nose-consciousness.

4. Tongue-consciousness.

5. Body-consciousness.

6. Mind-consciousness.

All of these elements combined are what the Buddha termed ‘consciousness.’ The reason: imagine if you were blind, you could say that you were the witness or awareness of the blindness, the awareness of knowing that you have no eyes. However, you still wouldn’t have visual awareness of objects outside your mind. You would not be able to see apples or oranges, color, shape, or form. Your awareness, as long as you were manifesting in the physical body, would be limited to the other senses of hearing, touch, smell, and taste.

Together these bundles of sense consciousness make up an individual physical and conceptual and conventional sense of a self. This is broken into two levels, a conventional level and a ultimate supra mundane level.

For example on an ultimate level, a tree is not looked at as a "tree". The name, shape, and form are broken down into elements and parts, atoms, molecules, and subatomic particles. A tree also depends on other forms of matter and energy for its existence: water, sun, earth, and space.

On a conventional level, unless you are a dendrologist, you don’t say that the tree over there is comprised of the element of carbon, a degree of oxygen, and so on. You just call it a tree.

What we do is give this tree a generic name like ‘oak tree.’ We don’t give it a personal name like Jack or Jane Oak to distinguish it from other oak trees in its vicinity. But we do this with ourselves or our cats, dogs, goldfish, etc. Some people even do it with their boats. They write names on the side of the boat denoting it as a male or a female vessel like the Jolly Roger or Luna Sally. But if you were to break it down, you see that it is mostly comprised of dead wood, an earth element.

Understanding these levels and bundles can lead to an experiential insight about ‘dependent origination,’ which is the seeing how one thing depends on another for its existence—clearly seeing cause and effect and knowing why something is here in the first place.

The Buddha said,

When this is, that is
This arising, that arises
When this is not, that is not
This ceasing, that ceases.[1]

Take a candle for example. In order to produce a flame, a candle requires wax and a wick. If both of these components are present, then all that is needed is a spark to ignite the flame, and the wick will begin to burn and provide light. If either of these elements is absent, then the candle will not burn.

This also applies to birth. First there is birth, then aging, and finally death, and the samsara continues. In order to break this cycle, there has to be no more birth. For there to be no more birth, there has to be no more self, no more attachment or craving. The perceptions of the six senses that are generated in our brains/minds actually created the illusion of separation and individuation.

SIGHT

The eyes are burning with craving . . .

There are two kinds of ‘eye consciousness’: internal and external. There is also the condition of having one’s eyes open or having one’s eyes closed. There is also the element of how much light is inside a room.

The sense of sight appears to be a simple process, but the very act of seeing happens in a sequence, and if this sequence is broken in any way, one is blinded. First of all, there has to be a degree of light. Without light, vision will not happen.

But instead of talking about this traditionally as with just the Khandhas, the various sense and mind door process as microscopically and meticulously described in the abhidhamma and so on, lets look at it in terms of modern brain science, and not just describing the mental factors and the process of the mind (citta) to hopefully make this a little easier to digest.

The process of vision begins with light photons, electromagnetic waves of energy passing through the lens of the eye where an image is refracted upside down upon the retina at the back of the eye.) This is where the visual stimuli, an object such as a flower, a dog, wallpaper, or a person’s face, are turned into electrical signals. 

These electrical signals are then transmitted by neurons to a tiny region near the back of the brain known as the vision center. The occipital lobe of the cerebrum. If, in any way, the organs of the eyes or pathways are compromised, the images appearing on the retina will be distorted. Even if the eyes are repaired and the pathways are not, images inside the occipital lobe will still appear to be distorted.  This would be known as phassa or contact when the external object and the mind meet at the sense door/base.

I discovered this from personal experience with my own eye condition. The cornea was corrected in my left eye, but the neural pathway wasn’t and would not accept the correction, so the images were still distorted. For example, if you an artist this is interesting on a few levels because it can create a disconnect or an incongruity with what you conceive in your minds eye, and then what you present to the world as two different things.

This is why awareness is conditioned first by the physical body. Electrical signals flow through the occipital lobe and are simultaneously perceived by awareness/eye consciousness as an image of a flower, a dog, wallpaper, painting, or a person’s face.

At this point, a particular mind factor also perceives (sañña) and registers this object, labels it, and associates it through its memory banks as being pleasant or unpleasant (vedana) or even dangerous.

As a result of these feelings and emotions, reactions or views, judgments and opinions are formed (sankharas).

In essence, this sense or mental data is received, investigated and a determination is made as to what it means. The next stage of volition (cetana) is of the most importance because this is when karma is created by taking an action, and by thought, or by speech.

Finally, all of these though moments get registered and stored again in the subconscious memory banks along with all the other impressions. Now all this can happen in the blink of an eye and all these factors arise together as consciousness. 

This consciousness may appear to be like a blank empty canvas but its actually not, its comprised of individual cittas, or consciousnesses, like frames in a motion picture that creates an illusion of a seamless whole.

Sometimes if the projector breaks down for a single moment, you can get to experience this and figure out how the mind really works, moment to moment. Also that it doesn't belong to anyone . You don't own your mind for example, if you did own it your could completely control it, tell it what to do, the same applies with the physical body, this may sound a little strange but its true.

The abhidhamma  also says that when the inner reflective consciousness arises, the consciousness/mind is based on very subtle matter in the vicinity of the heart, not even in the brain. The heart incidentally also has brain cells.  The heart/brain has its own intrinsic nervous system.

On one level, the physiological act of seeing takes place in the mind at the back of this clump of grey brain matter in a tiny region that is in pitch black darkness, completely insulated from light like the interior of a cave.

When we say we see, we are not actually seeing anything outside of our minds. It may appear as if we are, but in reality what we are seeing or perceiving are electrical impulses or waves of energy reaching our eyes, which then get converted into electrical waves and signals in our brains. What we are observing are decoded electrical signals that end up as an image in our minds eye.

This part is a bit more complicated but every single image that we see throughout our lives is not only recorded on an ethereal level (mind creates matter), but also gets formed and manifested from this ethereal mind blueprint on to a biophysical level and made visible inside this tiny region in the back of our brains.

This center of vision is only a few centimeters in space. When you look out over the Grand Canyon or the vast Sahara Desert, the Grand Canyon or Sahara Desert is not out there in space, but rather in the few centimeters of space inside your mind’s eye. What we are seeing are sankharas or mental formations that are created moment to moment. Like a jigsaw puzzle, all the pieces fit together so rapidly you cant even see it happening, then it flashes and changes again to another one.

The same applies if you look into infinite space and see the countless stars, moon, sun, or any other objects. When you look up at the sun, the perception or the image of the sun is created inside the brain, which again is in absolute pitch black darkness. Although the brain and our minds have no original contact with the sun, the bright colorful world of objects that we see all happens in the complete darkness inside our brains.

There is one more element, one more twist. It may appear that all of this is happening inside your brain, but both are actually appearing and arising simultaneously as a mind, citta(s) or awareness (s).[2] 

For example, just the thought of your brain, or a generic brain happens in your mind. The mind and the brain are actually two different things but are interdependent and co exist.

The brain is actually inert, its insentient, (rupa) and the mind isn't or something you can see  or grasp, but its activity or waves of energy can be registered and recorded by electroencephalography, EEG machines as well as by cat scans and MRIs and other types of instruments.

However the mind is nama, or sentient consciousness.. The brain is dependant on consciousness and its universal mental factors otherwise its more or less like a dead piece of wood. Without consciousness and its factors there is no life, sentience or brain activity which is much more than simple biophysical neurochemistry.

This same process of perception also applies to our other senses such as hearing, touch, smell, and taste. These are all transmitted as bioelectrical signals to the back of our brain/mind screen where they are decoded and perceived in the relevant sequence.

TASTE

The tongue is burning with craving . . .

The same applies to the sense of taste. There are different types of chemical receptors on parts of the tongue that enable it to perceive sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. The taste receptors transform these perceptions into electrical signals that get transmitted to the parietal lobe in another part of the brain. The parietal lobe then reads and decodes these signals as different flavors. The parietal lobe is where the incoming stimuli, or data such as taste, as well as the temperature of the food, also the sense of touch on the tongue are integrated and processed automatically. For example, humans would not be able to to feel sensations of touch, if the parietal lobe was damaged, or if the tongue was missing.

Traditionally the mind factor that perceives all of the above is known as sañña, one of the seven universal factors of the mind.

So the taste you perceive when you eat an orange or anything that you like or dislike is simply your brain's/minds interpretation of electrical signals. And no matter what you do, your brain can never experience the outside object. It can never smell, see, or taste the orange itself. Here’s an example to prove this: if the nerves between your tongue and your brain were cut, no further signals would reach your brain, and you would completely lose your sense of taste. Then nothing  would appear on the mind screen. One is dependant on the other to form the picture in the minds eye that arises and quickly passes away.

TOUCH

The hands are burning with craving . . .

Our sense of touch is no different from our other senses. When we touch an object, be it another person, a loved one, a cat, or a dog, the electrical signals and information that help us discern the object are transmitted to the brains parietal lobe, by sensitive nerves on the skin. Contrary to what most people believe, we perceive sensations of touch not at our fingertips, our bodies, or our skin, but rather in our brain's tactile center.

This is when feeling enters the picture, (vedana) pleasant, unpleasant or neutral that we are touching an object is formed inside our brains and displayed on the screen of the mind. The brain decodes and assesses and constructs these external electrical stimulations via the skin receptors. We then think that we are externally feeling different sensations pertaining to objects such as heat or cold, hardness or softness.

In reality we can never know the original matter or external world outside our brains/minds, nor can we ever experience it other than the jungle of electrical signals and waves of energy that then become decoded inside our brains/minds.

No two people can ever experience the same object in the same way. Each person’s brain/minds will always interpret the identical external electrical signals or stimulations differently. This tells us that reality is simply an infinite sea of electrical signals and waves of energy. Our brains/minds are like receivers on television sets. We simply pick up the external signals and create an internal television with an added sense of touch, taste, and smell. Its a from of bio and cosmic electrickery,  a projecting and veiling of reality.

HEARING

The ears are burning with craving . . .

The sense of hearing happens when the auricle in the outer ear picks up sound vibrations or waves of energy and then directs these sound vibrations into the middle ear. Sounds speech, words, music. The middle ear transmits these sound vibrations to the inner ear by intensifying them like an amplifier. The inner ear then translates these vibrations into electrical signals and sends them to the temporal lobe in the brain for decoding which then appears in our mind’s eye.

The act of hearing takes place in the brain's auditory center. Keep in mind that the brain is completely soundproofed, insulated from sound and light by the skull, skin, and layers of flesh. Consequently, no matter how noisy it may be outside of the brain, it is always silent inside the brain. Even though you may be listening to a jumbo jet taking off, if a microphone were placed inside your brain to record the sound, it would record silence.

OFLACTORY

The nose is burning with craving . . .

Our perception of smell is created in a similar way. For example, volatile molecules emitted receptors in the delicate hairs of the olfactory epithelium, which transmit electrical signals to the olfactory center of the brain that are then perceived as the exquisite scent of a rose.

In reality, everything you smell, be it pleasant or unpleasant, is simply your brain's perception of the interactions of volatile molecules transformed into electrical signals. A flower, a particular food, or any other scent that you like or dislike is perceived entirely in the brain as an electrical signal or wave of energy. The molecules themselves never actually reach the brain.

Therefore, all the sensory experiences that you have had since the day you were born until the day you die are merely electrical signals interpreted through your sense organs and decoded in your brain, which then appear on the mind’s screen of awareness(s). You can never have a direct experience of the true nature of color, sound, or scent in the outside world, only an electrical sensory interpretation of it.

MIND

The mind is known as nama, or citta consciousness and what ever arises onto the mind screen without going through the sense doors, (the brains physical appendages) are known as sankharas, or mental formations as well as mental feelings. These are formed by ones past activity and karma, including ideas, views, concepts, opinions beliefs and more. If you ever wonder why a thought, or a feeling suddenly pops into your head, out of the blue, this is usually what it is.

This is where the Buddhism differs with Vedanta because the citta(s) or awareness always arises with an object and then passes way. Each citta, or split second slice of awareness is always changing from one moment to the next and there isn't exactly a substratum even though cittas arise so fast it may seem like there is the same way a strip of cinematic film is joined together in many frames per second. In reality there cant be such a thing as a "pure awareness" only an abstract or a conceptual one. Because for it to be "pure" there cant be anything arising in it. Even in deep sleep there is a subtle object that arises in awareness. If you practice yoga nidra, sleep yoga, or the jhanas you can experience this for yourself.

There are always seven mental factors of feeling, perceptions, mental formation's thoughts, and so on arising with awareness as a package deal.

In reality, this is why you cant isolate or disentangle awareness, (create a pure subject and a pure object) you can only do this in theory, conceptually or as an abstraction. One way you can know this is in the arupa jhanas because you see each factor fall away, then come back again. You see and know dependant origination. How for one factor to arise depends on another. Its sort of basic, simple when you know how to do this. You also know what happens when there are no factors there and what happens to this so called "eternal consciousness" and realize that any type of consciousness is always conditioned.

The problems with this mind or awareness is thoughts, ideas, views  can trigger feelings, or emotions, and because of these feelings, one often reacts to them in some negative way.  Anger, sadness, fear, remorse, greed, confusion and so on. Fear is created by the amygdala, the part of the brain that governs fight or flight response.

What exacerbates this problem is if thoughts are taken to be "my thoughts", or belong to you,  this can cause a lot of suffering. 

One way to get around this is to create a sense of detachment  by simply noting them as they arise, as thought, thought, thought. Feeling, feeling, feeling, pain, pain, pain, pleasure, pleasure, pleasure and so on.  If you do this long enough, you wont get dragged into them, or have them lead you around like a bull with a ring in its nose. You begin to see how the mind works, how things come and go and don't belong to any type of invisible person inside the brain or behind the curtain like in the Wizard of Oz.

SPACE

Space isn't one of the heaps, piles, but the perceptual sense of distance or the apparent empty space between you and any other object is only a sense of emptiness created in your brain. For example, imagine someone gazing up at the moon. This person assumes that the moon is millions of miles away, yet in reality the moon is within this person’s vision center at the back of his/her brain.

When you look across the room you automatically believe that you are in the room. In reality you are not inside the room. The room is inside you.

The same applies to your physical body. When you look at your body you believe that you are inside looking out at it, but the truth is you have never even seen your physical body nor have you touched it. All you have seen is an image that appears to be inside of you. In reality everything is happening inside of you.

The same applies to concepts such as size, shape, and positions such right, left, front, and back. That is, sound does not come to you from the right or from the left or from above. There is no direction from which sound comes. Sounds, shapes, and sizes happen in a tiny region inside the brain that appears in the mind’s eye.

PAIN

From the point of view of awareness, citta, pain is just another object. Pain happens in the mind, but appears as if it’s happening in the body, but its broken down into mind and body to make it easier to understand. When one experiences pain in a phantom limb, the pain is taking place in the mind alone. Often, pain is experienced when an emotion gets attached or is created by a thought, so that when you think of a particular part of your body, a thought arises with an emotion piggybacking it. This sometimes results in emotional and physical pain. This is why when people get physically ill, they often also become emotional, begin crying and shedding tears and so on. Others get angry or depressed, shout, groan or complain, more or less make sounds, or make exaggerated facial expressions, or bodily movements as a means to change this condition.

One way to learn this is in sitting meditation. Seeing how the pain in the knee, back, or neck has three segments of intensity,  the arising part, a middle part, (most intense) and the falling away part. If you examine these sensations very carefully without reacting, becoming emotional, moving, you will see pain has many various parts, sections, also degrees of intensity and qualities, stinging, heat, numbing, sharp, stabbing, fading, reducing and so on. There are times when this so called pain isn't there at all.  You can do the same thing with emotions as well. A feeling can also be investigated mathematically, even one moment can be broken down into 17 segments if you know how.

One way to experiment with this is by making a graph or recording the pain on a scale of 1 to 10, throughout the day, also measuring the length of time from the moment of its arising, the middle section and to its falling away with a stopwatch as a sort of consciousness laboratory experiment.

On a biophysical level, pain can be psychosomatic or caused by blockages in the meridian system. Many times energy gets stuck in the muscles and irritates the nerve endings. For instance, if the brain could sustain itself without a physical body, without even a face or skull, it could still be stimulated by electrical impulses. Placing electrodes into various parts of the brain can activate certain memories. Images and sounds can be created in the same way, as can tactile sensations and even the taste of food.

The point of all of this being that this world is created inside the mind. It doesn’t mean that nothing exists outside of the mind because it does, but not in the way that we see, hear, feel, or taste it. For example, the way a bat sees the world is not the same way that we see it. The dolphin sees the world in yet another way. They pick up other signals and are able to navigate the oceans using sonar.

The experience of the world is relative and no two people experience it in the same way but in approximate ways. Due to all the various factors that are arising in many types of consciousness and so there is much more than meets the eye.

Continue to Part 16