Yes but there are multiple consciousness types happening every second and they are all overlapped. You virtually hear and see and think simultaneously in a concert symphony of types of consciousness.
I just remembered one more puzzle for the pundits that try to negate the brain having much to do with anything. The image on our retina is inversed and yet we percieve it as the right way up because of other sensory inputs. It is is pretty clear that what we think up and down and positional in our awareness if a construct made somehow in the brain. We have multiple functions going at once creating a grand illusion of self and things that belong to self.
Every living being has one mind (consciousness) only. One mind is one individual.
Two minds cannot be one individual. Conjoined twins are always two individuals, never one. This is true to all living beings and all species.
One mind knows one thing at a time, focuses on one thing at a time, and interact with one thing at a time.
But lifespan of the mind is extremely short. So, in a blink of an eye, the mind has lived several trillion times (or birth-death moments). That means the mind can detect an object millions of times among other objects, which the mind also detects. ‘Detect’ means comes into contact. That is why one seems to be conscious about the whole surroundings.
Mind is not the self. The self is a perceived reality. I.e., my body is my self - I eat, I walk, I talk, I see, I feel, etc. When one puts ‘I’ in something, one feels the self.
In Orthodox Theravāda, we do not hear and see at the same time; not even through both eyes at the same time. The next time you go to the eye doctor, you will know that both eyes see better than each eye singly tested. That is because your mind is seeing them using the data from both eyes. The same is true with IMAX 3D LED shutter glasses. The whole mechanics of the 3D vision is based on taking a left and right view separately! This reality at the eye doctor’s and at the IMAX theatre should confirm to you this truth.
In orthodox Theravāda, we believe in the heart center as the location where the mind-door process takes place. As for the “observer,” that cannot be spoken of. There is only eye-door consciousness for that vīthi and mind-door consciousness for that rūpārammaṇa. After that, there is a mind-door vīthi to process the dhammarammaṇa as paññatti to work with the concept from the previous rūpārammaṇa. It is five khandhas arising and passing. The observer is an illusion.
One can see with each eye or both eyes at the same time. The difference is scope of vision or the area visible. We don’t see the same thing two different times because of looking at it with two eyes. That ability of the two eyes to see at the same time is because the mind (cakkhu-vinnana) is just one.
Well if we open our minds we might find that things are much more complex than we are taught and not at all what you think your understand… Just have a watch of this and see if it explains what you can’t explain with the simplistic abhidhamma models. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXP7pPcU4SA
Also this one which also points to the brain as being very important.
It appears you don’t observe hearing and perception very much. You abilities to perceive a word is really amazing. It is a mental capability that has been learned. I watch young kids and I taught myself languages. Your mind can perceive a stick as a snake and then your intelligence corrects that. Your mind will perceive a pattern before you are aware of it. Young children can not speak or comprehend language for several years of training. I have trained myself to perceive impermanance, dukkha and not self in my body and mind. That is what vipassana is. I have used in this reply mind instead of brain. It doesn’t matter to me where it is located but it is pretty obvious that the brain is very very important. The functions of our minds are learned and we were not born with them. We have a physical base which has been programmed by experience. It is fascinating to me. And that we can scientifically observe process locations in the brain, but we cannot do that with vipassana and meditation. We can understand chemical structures in matter through scientific methods but we can’t do that with meditation. Science has extended our understanding into dimensions previously unknown. I combine both these forms of knowledge buddhism and science to make my life better. I don’t cling to a model and can accept that maybe there is a lot more that can be known if I look around and use different models and apply my intelligence to understanding them. The brain is an important organ this was not spoken about in our Buddhist texts. That is not a problem for me. I used that knowledge to enhance my own understanding of anatta.
take a very rough analogy of a computer. The Cpu is where the processing occurs but other parts of the computer might heat up while all the processing is going on. Someone who knows nothing about computers sees the heat at that place and concludes that is where all this computers ‘thinking’ is occuring.
Or there is an issue with the wiring and things start to go wrong. Fixing the wiring solves the problem so someone believes that the main part is that.
That is possible but we have the words of the Buddha in Rohitassa sutta:
However, avuso, without having reached the end of the world, there is no making an end to suffering, I say. Avuso, in this very fathom-long body endowed with perception and with mind that I make known the world, the arising of the world, the end of the world, and the way leading to the end of the world.
The Buddha didn’t need to understand the functions of the brain to understand this. I just like to know how stuff works and I look at the explanations and see which are more likely. It is more likely that the brain has a real function that is amazing and would not be known to the ancients.
There is also the function of kamma which is even more remarkable as the cause in much that occurs. In your health, longevity, wealth, beauty, happiness and strength and most importantly where you were born and even whom you meet. Essentially your luck in life. This is a big thing that no one really explains but seems real to me. It is really the greatest mystery. No one except the Buddha seems to be able to explain it.
That is how sota-vinnana functions. One’s concern is to know nama and rupa separately and there is no ‘I’ in hearing.
Yes, worse is to perceive anatta as atta. That has been so throughout samsara. And it will not end voluntarily. It must be corrected by yatha-bhuta-nana-dassana - knowing nama as nama and rupa as rupa, and anatta as anatta.
Perception (sanna) is the problem, as you stated previously: mind can perceive a stick as a snake.
Perceiving anicca is not the same as feeling or witnessing anicca — breathe in (start and end), breathe out (start and end) - belly rises (start and end), belly deflates (start and end). So, anicca (impermanence) occurs all the time, as something that starts will end (anyway).
So, you don’t have to perceive anicca, you just know it with direct experience.
And that way, you can also witness there is no ‘I’ in any process (as it starts and ends).
That is how all processes are simplified into start and end.
One needs some concentration, effort, vigour, analysis (Sammasana-ñāna).
Probably, that is correct. But the brain does not know. Vinnana does. Vinnana can observe the brain if there is contact (by means of sight, sound, touch, etc.). The brain cannot observe itself. Vinnana can observe itself, so it knows when it knows and it does not know when distracted.
It will end one day, too. How will science prepare you for that, though?
No scientific model is worthy of clinging, though. Or it would be unscientific.
But yatha-bhuta-nana-dassana does not change. Once you know anicca, you know it - you just do.
Yes, it can process information at a higher level.
Dvattiṁsākāra — The 32 Parts practice excludes some body parts because they are irrelevant or not good to focus. But the brain is there.
That “this” is about samudaya (craving) and magga (cutting off craving). Both are not in the brain or functions of the brain. So, they cannot be removed just by removing the brain or replacing it with new one (afterlife or life after life).
It might be easier to consider if we think of the body sense . This is located all over the body and thus the kāyaviññāṇa, body consciousness moments can arise all over. Take a painful feeling in the area of the foot - the kāyaviññāṇa arises exactly there, not in the brain,.
Nondualism (Mayavada) rejects pain being real (life being real) but the creation (imagination) of the truth (God - the Big Self).
That has very much influenced the Western science thinking of existence (singularity, Bbg Bangh Theory, the latter developments that followed), as the majority thinkers shared creationism as their cultural and religious backgrounds. They fall into two groups - eternalism (sassatavada) and annihilationism (uchedavada), as these two have existed like forever based on attavada (self-belief - I am - same to sakkayaditthi). They are different in names and wording only, but their cores are the same.
Yes please watch this video I listed above but a thumbnail did not appear. It is long and it has lots of interesting things in it. Basically everything we experience is in our brain as a construct there according to science. That makes sense to me. Everything you see hear touch smell taste and think is in your brain for neuroscientists and this model seems pretty sensible to me. I like the thought that consciousness is just electrical waves in our brain and neurons. Our senses make this wonderful simulation and overlaps and corrects through perception and learned memory. It is a wonderful system. I also liked in this the listing of all our various forms of brain activity in sleep, coma etc. Even psychedelics which I used a long time ago in my youth. But they do miss out on uttarimanussadhamma and the higher states in meditation.
But there is more to think about. But I will make another topic soon.
