I would say these are all forms of peripheral, covert or tacit awareness, what some people call ‘bodily intelligence’.
For example in the case of blindsight different parts of the brain take over the functions of ‘seeing’ for the person who is conventionally blind.
Subliminal perceptions take place outside the field of conscious awareness - but they are still what we might call ‘unconsciously aware’ on behalf of the organism.
For example, one can notice the danger of a ball being thrown in one’s direction, or of oncoming traffic, or of stepping on a snake, before one is consciously aware of the actual danger.
I’ve mentioned before that I sometimes wake up a second before my alarm goes off so that I can stop the alarm! Such actions are an evolutionarily ancient form of physical intelligence that looks out for possible danger, opportunity, threat, etc.
Someone saying something doesn’t make it true, right? What Spira means by ‘awareness’ may be completely unsatisfactory or incomplete. We are trying to investigate for ourselves, aren’t we?
Does the quotation communicate the whole significance of awareness - both the lived reality of it, as well as other aspects that we have yet to touch on?
It sounds reasonable, but do you want us to just leave it at that?
It’s difficult to know with you Rick whether you are being flippant or serious.
Sounds good, I agree: Some form of awareness is required for experiencing. If absolutely no awareness is present the objects of experience, the qualia, could not be cognized/felt/noticed.
I offered the quote because I think Spira has a good handle on awareness and wondered if his view would be helpful for the discussion, spark some reflection, fill in gaps? I don’t mean to suggest that his view is The View, that’s not how I see views, even the most highly exalted views.
For myself, I find Spira’s articulation of awareness too personal and ‘smarmy’ (I can’t think of a better word right now). It’s too easy, too neatly packaged, too slick. He talks about Infinite Consciousness in a way that strikes me as being too bourgeois.
If we’re comparing different traditions, I’m more sympathetic to the Dzogchen and Chan language of the clear light void, luminous emptiness, etc. That is, they talk about awareness in a way that communicates something very universal, cosmic, impersonal - or like the impersonal Dao:
All things are born from it,
yet it doesn’t create them.
It pours itself into its work,
yet it makes no claim.
It nourishes infinite worlds,
yet it doesn’t hold on to them.
Since it is merged with all things
and hidden in their hearts,
it can be called humble.
Since all things vanish into it
and it alone endures,
it can be called great.
It isn’t aware of its greatness;
thus it is truly great.
“It isn’t aware of its greatness.” I like that way of phrasing it. K says something similar.
K talked about a “mind that is not the man-made mind” - it’s not very poetic, but it communicates something a bit more neutral, more impersonal than Infinite Consciousness - I take it to mean something like Aldous Huxley’s ‘Mind at Large’.
Our own more limited awareness can perhaps pick up aspects of this background ‘non-man-made mind’ when the brain is quiet, tranquil, still. This, I take it, is part of what we can discover through meditation.
The term “Unborn Mind” refers to a state of mind that is free from all conceptualizations, conditioning, and defilements. It is the mind in its pristine, unadulterated, and original state, unburdened by the illusions, attachments, and delusions that typically cloud human consciousness. In Bankei’s teaching, recognizing the Unborn Mind is a key to liberation and enlightenment. – GPT
Interestingly the unborn mind is often described: pristine primordial awareness.
Yes, I get that, but “bare attention” is often clothed with the brain’s conditioned response to what it is aware of before one knows it.
You say there’s a moment of awareness of one’s conditioning before it “takes over”, and if that’s true for you, you don’t have to act out your conditioned response. But most of us are not aware of reacting conditionally as we’re doing it because we’re barely aware of our conditioning to begin with.
So “bare awareness” may be real for you, but for most people, there’s only their conditioned response to what they’re aware of, and it’s usually clothed with their biases, beliefs, conclusions, etc.
Which is not to say that they cannot be aware of their conditioned response before acting it out, but that they’re not interested enough in their conditioning to be acutely attentive to what they’re doing.
This makes a lot of sense to me. What appears to be extremely unusual or even unique about K was how he was able to maintain this level of attention for most of the time throughout the day. He seemed to be able to flow along quite naturally and effortlessly being sharp and attentive to both the things going on around him and the things which were going on for him internally. That’s what I understand, at least.
Is the “problem” for the rest of us that we don’t see clearly, from moment to moment, how the presence of thought impacts so negatively on our level of attention? Do we just accept the presence of thought without really noticing it a lot of the time?
Yes, I like this. I have a soft spot for Bankei (and Dogen).
Zongmi (or Tsung-mi), a Chinese Chan predecessor, wrote something similar:
All sentient beings without exception have the empty, tranquil, true mind. From time without beginning, it is the intrinsically pure, effulgent, unobstructed, clear, and bright ever-present awareness.
I have a dim recollection that we discussed this matter a year ago, so I don’t know if I’m repeating myself: but simple, ordinary awareness is not a super power reserved for the elite. It requires not having any major ideals or expectations, not being strongly resistant, and having a little patience - that’s all.
As K often taught,
Awareness begins with outward things, being aware, being in contact with objects, with nature.
If one has no relationship with nature, no sensitivity of mind or body, no feeling for beauty at all - then one can forget awareness. There is no way of being aware of one’s conditioning if one lacks a simple sensitivity to nature.
If one has a simple sensitivity to nature then one doesn’t argue about whether or not simple, ordinary awareness is possible.
Hi james et al, an impressive amount of words have been devoted to research on this topic. In ‘Dutch’ there is no unambiguous translation that has to do with the suffix ‘ness’ that turns an adjective into a noun which does not occur in our semantic. What helped me at the time was to read it as ‘being aware’. Aware does have an unambiguous translation. Possibly this also gives confirmation that it is about a state of being and that of course always occurs in the present .
Clearly K was a special case - there’s no point comparing ourselves to him. The depth and breadth of the attention he had - going by his journals - was super-normal (if that is a word).
We can’t stop ourselves from thinking or reacting; we can’t - through an act of will - avoid getting caught up in mental and emotional drama of different kinds.
However, our superpower is that we can ‘catch ourselves’ in the moment of reaction.
Dev shared a quote recently in which K said
in that attention why shouldn’t there be inattention?
While we cannot sustain attention through conscious effort, we can always ‘catch ourselves’ in a moment of inattention. This may be a quality or capacity we all have that is worth considering.
In the thread so far we have discussed various aspects of awareness, but we haven’t looked much at this intimacy with ‘what is’ that you describe here; what we might call the existential character of awareness.
When K talks about awareness it is often in the context of being aware of both the beauty and the ugliness of life:
Wander by the seashore and let this meditative quality come upon you… Or when you wander among the hills, let everything tell you the beauty and the pain of life, so that you awaken to your own sorrow and to the ending of it.
Clearly there is unfathomable cruelty in the world (as we are seeing on the news right now), great suffering; just as there are flashes of great beauty, moments of real tenderness, compassion. Without any awareness of that or feeling for that, our human lives have little meaning.
So awareness also involves inherent vulnerability, risk. Openness to whatever ‘is’. There is no such thing as an abstract awareness.
Isn’t this “catching ourselves” an example of ‘minding what happens’? A judgement of how I should or should not be rather than what is? Why shouldn’t there be ‘inattention’ in attention?
Maybe the phrase ‘catching oneself’ miscommunicates. Noticing, detecting, without acting on what is noticed or detected.
A benign example: one is absorbed in watching a film. One becomes momentarily aware of the fact that one is absorbed in watching a film. There is no need to stop watching the film.
A different example: I notice the fact that I feel irritable. It is a fact. There is no action to stop the irritation, or a judgement about the irritation. If the irritation is intense, and I have leisure, I might sit down and observe it minutely. Otherwise I carry on with my activities (until I notice it again).
I remember K saying somewhere that one can’t be attentive all the time; that the brain has its own rhythm and sometimes just needs to be left alone (to relax, wind down, be inattentive).
So my understanding is that there is a healthy kind of inattention that can go on (with a very diffuse background attention monitoring it).
But, of course, if one becomes aware of one’s inattentiveness, then there is a quality of attention.
