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**Vezazvqw** · 01-07-2012, 11:03 PM

I think its worthwhile remembering that 'consciousness' usually means sense consciousness in the suttas... which I don't think is quite the same as the 'consciousness' some people talk about which is supposed to leave a body and float around after death.

Possibly the end of the sutta can give an answer to the question in the title of this discussion topic we're posting in:

"Now, what more do you want, friend Kotthita? When a monk has been freed from the classification of craving, there exists no cycle for describing him."

this quote is fine to illustrate my question; such a being freed from craving either has a radically transformed brain, from which the 6 conciousnesses, in the sense we think of it, don't arise, form doesn't arise, desire, craving, grasping, becoming, doesn't arise. So, the normal process for perceiving stimuli and processing it (feeling, discrimination) arises totally differently for such a being. Is this due to organic changes in the brain or something else. If something else then what, where, how.

Conciousness, for me, IN THIS CONTEXT, has nothing to do with after death; I am referring to live beings who have awareness of being alive, of existing. There are 6 types of consciousness; 5 relate to sense consciousness (taste, smell, touch, hearing, sight), and one relates to what's happening in the brain that arises as "sense of being awake/conscious". If that one is extinguished and a Buddha still functions perfectly then what allows a Buddha to function perfectly? Merely eliminating the other 5 is irrelevant. Otherwise we could remove all the relevant sense organs from someone and state "here is cessation of consciousness".

I don't think the Buddha was talking ending of taste, touch, etc. I do think that the Buddha was talking about all those things becoming completely unnecessary, up to and including what we ordinary beings think of as a sense of being alive and conscious. If that is unnecessary then what mental processes does a Buddha have that allows it to function (or are they not mental processes), and is it directly produced by brain activity (as set forth above).

If, by conciousness, the ignorance that holds mere awareness to constitute the self is what's being referred to then mere awareness in which absolutely no self is ever discerned (so it's clear, aware, impersonal in terms of affixing to a particular entity) may be what's being referred to when the Sutta speaks of cessation of concsiousness. Is that the sense one should get from it?

And if so is it still correct to state that this type of purely impersonal awareness is an emergent property of the Buddha's brain and nothing else (the the Buddha doesn't see this as "my" awareness in any way, shape or form), making it totally dependent on the Buddha's form heap (as the actual matter of the brain is clearly form, though mind (what emerges) is said to not be form, but rather mental stuff.

I guess what I'm trying to get to (very cumbersomely, by necessity, I think) is an understanding of whether the enlightened mind of a Buddha is still entirely mundane, in the sense that it's a kind of luminous clarity, free of concept of self and other, arising from a bunch of neurons firing in one specific place (the brain that's part of its body...the body we can see as Buddha's body) or whether enlightened mind of a Buddha is something else, something less separate from "other" mind...from the mind manifested by It seems that for you, it's simply (though not at all simple to achieve!) a brain working differently, manifesting as enlightened mind, free of suffering, etc.

And I have no problem with that, from the POV of neurobioliogy. It's a lot less "sexy" than what many imagine about a Buddha, but, if that's what it really is then I'd think that, eventually, we can develop different techniques that alter brain function in a fundamental way to produce the same or similar states. Certain drugs do that, to some extent right now, but they're unstable, ephemeral, and produce a variety of different results in different people.

01-07-2012, 11:03 PM	#14
Vezazvqw Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 540 Senior Member	I think its worthwhile remembering that 'consciousness' usually means sense consciousness in the suttas... which I don't think is quite the same as the 'consciousness' some people talk about which is supposed to leave a body and float around after death. Possibly the end of the sutta can give an answer to the question in the title of this discussion topic we're posting in: "Now, what more do you want, friend Kotthita? When a monk has been freed from the classification of craving, there exists no cycle for describing him." this quote is fine to illustrate my question; such a being freed from craving either has a radically transformed brain, from which the 6 conciousnesses, in the sense we think of it, don't arise, form doesn't arise, desire, craving, grasping, becoming, doesn't arise. So, the normal process for perceiving stimuli and processing it (feeling, discrimination) arises totally differently for such a being. Is this due to organic changes in the brain or something else. If something else then what, where, how. Conciousness, for me, IN THIS CONTEXT, has nothing to do with after death; I am referring to live beings who have awareness of being alive, of existing. There are 6 types of consciousness; 5 relate to sense consciousness (taste, smell, touch, hearing, sight), and one relates to what's happening in the brain that arises as "sense of being awake/conscious". If that one is extinguished and a Buddha still functions perfectly then what allows a Buddha to function perfectly? Merely eliminating the other 5 is irrelevant. Otherwise we could remove all the relevant sense organs from someone and state "here is cessation of consciousness". I don't think the Buddha was talking ending of taste, touch, etc. I do think that the Buddha was talking about all those things becoming completely unnecessary, up to and including what we ordinary beings think of as a sense of being alive and conscious. If that is unnecessary then what mental processes does a Buddha have that allows it to function (or are they not mental processes), and is it directly produced by brain activity (as set forth above). If, by conciousness, the ignorance that holds mere awareness to constitute the self is what's being referred to then mere awareness in which absolutely no self is ever discerned (so it's clear, aware, impersonal in terms of affixing to a particular entity) may be what's being referred to when the Sutta speaks of cessation of concsiousness. Is that the sense one should get from it? And if so is it still correct to state that this type of purely impersonal awareness is an emergent property of the Buddha's brain and nothing else (the the Buddha doesn't see this as "my" awareness in any way, shape or form), making it totally dependent on the Buddha's form heap (as the actual matter of the brain is clearly form, though mind (what emerges) is said to not be form, but rather mental stuff. I guess what I'm trying to get to (very cumbersomely, by necessity, I think) is an understanding of whether the enlightened mind of a Buddha is still entirely mundane, in the sense that it's a kind of luminous clarity, free of concept of self and other, arising from a bunch of neurons firing in one specific place (the brain that's part of its body...the body we can see as Buddha's body) or whether enlightened mind of a Buddha is something else, something less separate from "other" mind...from the mind manifested by It seems that for you, it's simply (though not at all simple to achieve!) a brain working differently, manifesting as enlightened mind, free of suffering, etc. And I have no problem with that, from the POV of neurobioliogy. It's a lot less "sexy" than what many imagine about a Buddha, but, if that's what it really is then I'd think that, eventually, we can develop different techniques that alter brain function in a fundamental way to produce the same or similar states. Certain drugs do that, to some extent right now, but they're unstable, ephemeral, and produce a variety of different results in different people.
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