Today's Middle Way mischief involved looking at conciousness, the last of the skandhas. I have had a growing sense that I was sort of passing the buck with the other skandha contemplations, the contemplation on form aside. There wasn't a strong sense, again the skandha of form aside, that I took the others to be a self. Naively, we tend to either identify with our body or our conciousness. When we're not absorbed in one, we're absorbed in the other. So, this contemplation was definitely "high stakes". In a very gut sort of way, I tend to take my underpinning awareness as "me". It seems to be always there, not really changing even though the objects do, and independent in the sense that nobody else seems to be in control. What does Khenpo think about this? Well, he suggests that we take a look at each moment of experience. Any moment of experience, which we sense as bounded by space and time, is defined by the object of experience and the thing experiencing. Since, in each moment, conciousness has a different object, these moments of conciousness must be distinct. Indeed, the moment of conciousness that has passed and the moment of conciousness that is to come do not exist so all we have then is this moment of awareness. How could these distinct momentary phenomena count as a self?
This argument, as presented, didn't really seem to hit home. I seem to strongly feel this conciousness through a stream of related experiences. But, how could these moments of conciousness be related at all? In order for there to be a relationship, they would have to at least overlap in some moment of time which is not the case unless they are the same moment of conciousness. What about the similarity of experience? Similarity doesn't point at anything real, since the moment we are comparing something to is already gone. The same can be said for the objects of the conciousness as well. Remember the flowering bush? Does this shake things up?
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