Regarding the eye and its contact with rūpa, consider this scenario: I am profoundly concentrated on reading a text and require a bookmark from a drawer. Upon my initial glance, I perceive solely the colour, format, etc., of what we call “bookmark”. When I return to replace it, a pair of scissors is also present—the colours manifesting as the shape of scissors, its solidity, and so forth.
My query is thus: was the visual image of the scissors already present, merely lacking our attention, or was it entirely absent, even though rūpa was there? Furthermore, if rūpa was present, but not as the colour and shape of the scissors because we had not yet seen it, what precise rūpa would it be?
In synthesis, my question is this: do sounds, colours, and similar material forms exist entirely independently of the six consciousnesses?
Thanks all.
I believe that color, smell, and so on, as rupa of dhamma, are primarily the properties and qualities of matter—the ability to produce, in contact with the corresponding senses, corresponding perceptions experienced by us subjectively as color, smell, and so on. Matter also has the properties of warmth, movement, providing solid support, and so on. All these properties, in my view, are interdependent and correlate with one another. They can be objectively found in matter by seeing them as that very subjective experience of color, smell, solidity, or heat.
The rupa of sound is a set of properties (in air vibrations), the ability to give experience of the subjective qualia of sound through ear contact. Sound, as an air vibration, can influence not only the ear but also surrounding objects. It is an objective existence independent of the presence of the perceiver.
I present this inquiry as I sometimes observe a distinct error in Abhidhamma discussions: the reduction of colour to a mere mental factor (cetasika), rather than acknowledging it as a discrete, objectively existing material form (rūpa). I would like to confirm my understanding in this case: colours, etc., are objetive, are not mind or mental factors, right?
Materiality outside the body is produced by temperature and thus independent of any observation. For example when we are asleep the rupas that make up say the TV or refrigerator don’t disappear and then somehow magically reappear after we we wake up and see them.
I’m not sure what you were saying before this more simple question.
But yes, rūpa exists. It is not like the philosophy..
if a tree falls in the wood does it make a sound (saddārammaṇa) if nobody is there to hear it?
This above quote is not Abhidhamma . It does make a sound.
Form which includes color or sound, needs to be present for the appropriate sense door consciousness to occur in the five senses.
The mind can reproduce these replicas as mind objects.
Of course, you can watch the double slit experiment and doubt everything.
apica yadā rūpārammaṇaṃ cakkhussa āpāthaṃ āgacchati, tadā bhavaṅge dvikkhattuṃ uppajjitvā niruddhe kiriyāmanodhātu āvajjanakiccaṃ sādhayamānā uppajjitvā nirujjhati, tato cakkhuviññāṇaṃ dassanakiccaṃ, tato manodhātu sampaṭicchanakiccaṃ, tato vipākāhetukamanoviññāṇadhātu santīraṇakiccaṃ, tato kiriyāhetukamanoviññāṇadhātu voṭṭhabbanakiccaṃ sādhayamānā uppajjitvā nirujjhati, tadanantaraṃ javanaṃ javati.
Moreover, when a visual object comes into the range of the eye, then, after the bhavaṅga has arisen twice and ceased, the functional mind-element arises and ceases, performing the function of adverting. Then eye-consciousness performs the function of seeing, then the mind-element performs the function of receiving, then the resultant rootless mind-consciousness element performs the function of investigating, then the functional rootless mind-consciousness element arises and ceases, performing the function of determining. Immediately after that, impulsion occurs.
mahāniddesaaṭṭhakathā