Lightly edited transcript Filler words and caption errors removed by machine; the meaning is unchanged.
Delson answers an audience question on how awareness (vinnana) is perceived and how to investigate consciousness, including mano and citta. He says awareness is present with every experience and that the way to perceive it is mindfulness returning to the present moment and seeing what arises and passes away. He distinguishes attention, which intention directs like a spotlight, from awareness, which is the light, and describes citta as a mindset built from similar patterns of thought, emotion and ideas.
Key points
- Awareness (vinnana) is present with every experience, whether pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, internal or external.
- He points to MN 43: where there is feeling there is perception, and where there is perception there is consciousness.
- Attention is like a spotlight guided by intention, while awareness is the light; a change of attention gives rise to a new consciousness dependent on the new contact.
- Perceiving awareness is done by bringing mindfulness back into the moment and seeing what is arising and passing away.
- Mano is the faculty of mind, roughly the whole nervous system picking up what is going on, and citta is a mindset formed from similar patterns of thought, emotion and ideas.
- He says seeing this at an experiential level is something he associates with the awareness of an arahant.
Suttas in this talk
Each opens the sutta on SuttaCentral.
Themes
Transcript
Perceiving awareness and consciousness
We have a lot of questions in the chat, so we're going to start with one from Josh. Uh, you know, really easy stuff here. How is awareness or being perceived, any practices and/or instructions for investigating consciousness, specifically vinnana, the sixth sense consciousnesses, mano and/or citta? Okay, good question. How is awareness or being perceived? First of all, that question in itself assumes that awareness is being... Hang on, Delson. Um, so it's not a being. Like, how is awareness being perceived in the moment? Not a being, but... so we can just leave that word out. How is awareness? Okay, sorry about that. And citta is the... Of course, you know these are the three different words for consciousness, right, in the canon. So understood. Okay, so how is awareness perceived right now, right here?
Awareness is tied to every experience that is there. If you go back to Majjhima Nikaya 43, it says where there is feeling there is perception, where there is perception there is consciousness, or vinnana. So if you were to just come back here right now, in the present moment, so to speak, that in itself is the awareness of an experience. I've always talked about this, where when you're experiencing whatever it is, whatever it is, whatever it is, whatever it is, whether it's pleasant, unpleasant, neutral, whether it's internal or external, the awareness of it is always
there. So when you are experiencing, or you are perceiving the experience as neutral or pleasant or whatever it is, you are experiencing the vedana in that experience. The vedana in that experience is the awareness. That's the utility of the mind. That is the utility of the mind. The utility of consciousness is to be aware. Secondly, when we talk about attention, attention is the spotlight, like awareness is the light. So we have different kinds of understanding of consciousness. There is the sixth sense based consciousness, which is dependent upon the arising of
of nama-rupa. Intention or volition is what's guiding the attention, which is in some sense regulating the awareness into a particular focus or particular spotlight. So now, if I tell you to listen to my voice, all your attention is on my voice, and therefore your consciousness is being attended to, or is attending, the sound of my voice. If I tell you to attend to the sound of David's voice, the awareness that was dependent upon the ear consciousness making contact with my voice, the sound of my voice, disappears, and because of the attention going to the sound of David's voice, there's a new consciousness that arises, dependent upon the contact between your ears and the sound of David's voice. The perception of awareness is just done through mindfulness, coming back into the moment and seeing what is arising and passing away. That's the function of awareness, and that's how awareness is perceived.
Let me see if... okay. So, vinnana, mano and citta. Vinnana is the awareness, is the consciousness. Mano is the faculty of mind, right? We could say it's similar to the brain, but it's really the entire nervous system that picks up everything that's going on. And citta is the mind-set. The way I look at citta, this is my understanding of citta, is that it's a collection of similar kinds of patterns of thought, similar kinds of patterns of emotions, similar kinds of patterns of ideas that turn into a mind-set, and that's the way I see... I see... different types of times. I see.
I see. But at an experiential level, like seeing and knowing this for ourselves, to get to that level, yeah, you can only see that at the level of awareness of an arahant. That's the simple answer. Okay, let's move on. Thank you so much for this, Delson, and sorry for hogging so much time. Oh yeah, we have lots of questions in the chat.