:: Buddhapadipa Thai Temple

If we think of events as a cycle which occurs in every mind moment, we start again with delusion or ignorance, or lack of knowledge. The thoughts and actions of a person are conditioned by imagination, beliefs, fears, expectations and failure to understand the law of cause and effect. These, together with accumulated character traits, are usually to a self. So long as any degree of belief in this self remains, there will be a tendency for intentions to lead a person to actions which will cause more attachment, aversion and delusion.

These volitional impulses condition consciousness. The word has, here, two meanings: there is the general awareness, which means that a person is awake and ready to respond to the senses, and there is the consciousness which is specific to each of the senses. For example, in seeing it is eye consciousness which arises, in hearing it is ear consciousness, in thinking it is mind consciousness. There is no “I” who hears, etc. But the various kinds of consciousness arise according to the conditions obtaining to the conditions obtaining at the time. It may seem that we can hear and see at the same time, but this is not so, the consciousness arises and ceases all the time, too fast for us to know it; so seeing may be interspersed with hearing but, because of the speed, it seems as if both kinds of consciousness arise at the same time. Sometimes we have the experience of one of the senses being, as it were, shut down because another one is attracting so much attention. Who has not looked at the page of a book and apparently read the text without understanding it, because the mind was concentrating on some sound. There must be sufficient interest for the mind to apprehend the phenomena which are occurring.

We tend to choose from the many stimuli which bombard us those which interest us, whether it be sights or sounds, etc. or mental objects, sometimes to an extreme degree. Hence the idea of the absent-minded professor who is so involved in his thoughts that he cannot attend to the mundane matters of daily life. Good or evil tendencies will be intensified by repeated intention, so that the body and mind will be affected. The stereotype professor is not portrayed as a strong athletic type, bounding vigorously along, but as someone bent and short-sighted from poring over books so much.

Some changes occur involuntarily as a result of mental states. When we are very angry or afraid certain chemicals flood the body, the heart beats faster, as the body prepares itself for action. These involuntary actions can accumulate effects so that the body is permanently altered. Since both body and mind function in line with consciousness and the volitions, habitual states of mind condition the character or personality so we may say, in conventional terms, that the person is creating himself (becoming) according to his wishes.
Though he may not be happy with the long-term result. For example, a greedy person may become a thief in order to satisfy his greed, but may not be pleased to identify himself with the concept of a criminal.
Consciousness here means awareness only; its ethical quality is determined by the volitional impulses connected with it. Apart from conditions there is no arising of consciousness, but there is the life-continuum form of what we might call sub-consciousness, which started at conception and is like the string on which the beads of cognitive consciousness are retained. This bhavanga consciousness is mentioned in the chapter on the birth process.

In the case of hearing, seeing, smelling, touching and tasting, both the body and the mind are involved in perception. When there is contact with the particular sense it is as if the sense door opens, but for awareness to arise the mind must also be engaged, as mentioned above. Contact with one of the sense stimuli, including thoughts or mind objects, will always cause pleasant, unpleasant or neutral feelings. This feeing should not be confused with emotion. It is one of the results of kamma and it influences our choices as human beings, often without our realising it. For instance, we are not attracted to the smell of decaying meat, since is harmful to us, but some animals delight in the smell and enjoy eating the meat.

Appetite grows by what it feeds on. So the enjoyment caused by the various sense experiences will create craving and grasping at these pleasures and the wish for life to continue in some form. Aversion also creates its wishes for extinction or change of some kind. The delusion that there is an independent being who can have these experiences cause the cycle of dukkha to revolve as the search for gratification continues.