Please summarize what you read. After summarizing, you can reflect on the following questions to guide the rest of your writing, but you should not just list and answer them. What did you find most interesting? Most confusing? What do you want to learn more about? Is there any information that you find dubious or that you are suspicious of? You do not need to explicitly answer these, rather, I'm interested in your summary, and ultimately your thoughts and insight on these readings.
Please list the main key words you used in your post.
Dorjee Chapter 5 explores consciousness. Consciousness is difficult to study but has recently been researched more since the 1990s. Although technology, like fMRIs may study activity in the brain, it cannot directly measure the experience, or what it feels like. Three layers of consciousness are explained. The first layer is the ordinary mind that we use every day. It is often chaotic with sensations, perceptions, thoughts, and memories. It helps us to make decisions, learn new skills, and function daily. The second layer, called ‘substrate consciousness’, is hidden from awareness unless attention abilities of mindfulness are refined, such as that in an experienced mediator’s mind. Once the ordinary mind calms, the substrate conscious can be examined. It includes subtle tendencies of behavior, mental habits, and tempers that influence the ordinary mind. The final layer, or prime awareness, has attributes of bliss and clarity. Unlike the substrate consciousness, the prime awareness is separable from the ‘I’.
There are 8 types of consciousness. The first 5 have to do with bodily senses—eye consciousness, ear consciousness, nose consciousness, tongue consciousness, and body consciousness. The 6th type is mind consciousness, which involves thinking, particularly afflictions that are building grounds in mind consciousness, such as anger and attachment. The 7th and 8th types are afflictive consciousness and substrate consciousness. They are considered ‘stable’ because they are continually present until enlightenment is achieved.
I think dream yoga is very interesting. When examining a dream, it compares dream states and what seems to be reality. The clear light is what is to be pristine awareness. This chapter compares the light seen toward the end of death to be the practitioner’s reaching of enlightenment.
Key terms: consciousness; ordinary mind; substrate consciousness; prime awareness; mind consciousness; afflictive consciousness; dream yoga; enlightenment
Chapter five, exploring consciousness. The first part of this Chapter or the first two pages, explained the neurological aspect of consciousness, it’s history, and many famous individuals view point on the subject. It then goes into a more interesting section named, “Buddhist approaches to introspection”. Although in western psychology introspection is believed to be a failure, it has played a large part in Buddhist teachings and in their realm of psychology. Conscious experience can be divided up into two categories; consciousness and meta-consciousness mental activity. The book explains it as finding the ability to redirect your attention. So when in conversation or a lecture, your mind will wonder onto something of a completely different topic and what is intended. When noticed, the individual should be able to focus his/her attention back to the specific attention based subject. Meta analysis can be even further divided into two other subcategories or as the book describes as shortcomings. The first is related to the measurement of time. The second is based on our inaccuracy of translation. The first shortcoming made a lot more sense to me than the second. All in all Buddhist practices of meditation and teachings have shown to reduce these main errors of introspection greatly. In relation to this, these teachings such as the Dzogchen teachings with such bases have been known to built what some refer to as a “second person”. This sounded pretty awesome and I was excited to learn more about what was meant by this. The book stated, “the method is described as a second person because it is based on knowledge gathered though personal introspective observation, but its tailored approach of teaching others.” So the experienced teacher is being referred to as the second person? This is confusing, and like a lot of interesting topics covered in many books, not explained enough.
Dzogchen’s three layers of consciousness was explained next. The first layer is to be considered as our daily mind. The one that we are aware of and rely on most. The second is described as “sub-straight consciousness”. This is said to be hidden from us unless we train our attention abilities of introspection and mindfulness. The third is to recognize our ultimate state of mental balance. From explaining the three layers of consciousness the chapter then goes into explaining the eight types of consciousness. Five come from our five senses, the other three from mind consciousness, substrate, and afflictive consciousness. From here the reader comes across an interesting section named, “the default mode network of the brain and meditation”. One word or phrase I’m not sure I had ever came across this whole time learning about mediation and reading these books is “limit” or “brain changes reaching their limits”. In one of the last sections, dreaming and dying, the reader is introduced to dream yoga. Dream yoga is an interesting term, let alone practice. I was pretty interested in learning about this, and am planning to look and research more into it. Dream yoga is a combination of night-time and day-time yoga with plenty of other cool aspects that would be too hard to explain properly without researching more into the practice.
consciousness is an interesting, complex, and most confusing aspect or term to try and figure out, understand, or fully make sense of. There are many aspects to the term. Many things we are unsure of and are still trying to figure out, things we may not ever figure out. Then as with plenty of other things there are things we believe to know about consciousness that we don’t actually know and have published though are insignificant. Not only the many terms, theory’s, subcategories, subdivisions, or shortcomings, or even layers there are to consciousness, I’m not sure if I believe that we will ever have this one term completely figured out.
Terms: consciousness, shortcomings, meta-analysis consciousness, introspection, mindfulness, limit, neurology, sub-straight consciousness, dream yoga
I found the discussion of conscious experience and attempting to measure it very fascinating. I have always viewed consciousness as our awareness and how we perceive things. I understand that everyone perceives stimuli differently however, I never considered measuring it. The problems with trying to measure consciousness as our book describes, is that attention can easily shift, describing the experience and being a part of research may affect the perception, and it can be difficult to describe an experience if we don’t quite understand it ourselves. One example I thought was very interesting that the book gives is the thought experiment suggested by Jackson (1982). In this thought experiment, Jackson describes a psychologist who knows everything about red (wave length, brain areas associated with color, ect.) but if he is blind, despite all of his knowledge the actual experience of red is missing from the psychologist’s understanding of the color. This reminded me of a student back in my high school who was blind. One of my teachers asked him questions about his experience, one being if he saw any colors. The student replied that he unsure since he has never actually seen/experienced colors therefore he did not truly understand what colors were. Another interesting aspect was an article I had to read for a class a few semesters ago. The article interviewed a man who had become blind at a young age (around 10) and just recently had eye surgery around age 60. One difficulty the man had was the concept of distance. It was difficult for him to be able to see something ten feet away and not be able to touch it. It is truly amazing how unique conscious perception can be.
Another aspect of this chapter I found interesting was the unconscious. Freud’s ice berg concept depicts 10% of our mind being conscious and the other 90% unconscious. The unconscious appears through our dreams, hypnosis, and more. One way psychologist have found the unconscious to influence the conscious is through subliminal messages. In an experiment, participants were shown the word “cat” on a screen for less than 40 ms. This word was not consciously noticed by the subjects but when asked about farm animals later they replied yes to the cat. In addition, when they were shown the word “dog” first then “cat” they responded faster. It’s amazing how the unconscious can influence how conscious thus how we feel, act, and think. This is something that I would like to learn more about, subliminal messaging and how it affects our consciousness and unconsciousness such as the Judaist Priest case. In this case parents argued that their sons committed suicide because the Judaist Priest songs held subliminal messages that influenced them to commit suicide. I don’t believe that subliminal messaging could force someone to do something however the unconscious can have a powerful influence over the mind which I would like to research more about.
One aspect I did not like about this chapter was how it negatively compares western psychology to Buddhism. The book argues that it is easier and more reliable to measure conscious experience on monks who have practiced meditation rather than normal individuals. This is due to their superb attention and focus. Although this may be true, I find it annoying how they put western psychology down. Every science has its flaws and it is unnecessary to argue so negatively against a certain science.
Terms: consciousness, unconsciousness, Buddhism, subliminal messaging, perception, attention, focus, meditation, reliability, stimuli, Western Psychology, Freud
Chapter 5 was about consciousness. It opened by giving a bit of background information on the study of consciousness. It is kind of difficult to study because there is more to consciousness than knowledge gained using third person methods. Conscious experiences can also be changed. That reminded me of an episode of Brain Games where a crowd witnessed a robbery and had to report to investigators what they saw. The show’s producers deliberately had two people say stuff that didn’t happen and strangely enough, the other people started to believe they remembered those wrong things happening; their conscious experience was changed. Buddhist practices studying consciousness have been developed using introspection. As I learned in History and Systems last semester and as stated in this chapter, introspection was not successful in Western psychology. The book then mentioned the three layers of consciousness. I expected the author to list the conscious, subconscious, and unconscious, but instead they are the ordinary mind, substrate consciousness, and prime awareness. The ordinary mind includes our thoughts, emotions, perceptions, and sensations and allows us to learn new skills and function in everyday life. The substrate level involves our unconscious behavior and tendencies. This layer seems a bit abstract to me. The last layer is pristine awareness which provides similar pleasant experiences that the substrate layer provides but is more metaphysical and looks past the concept of “I”.
Next the book talked about the eight types of consciousness according to Dzogchen. The first five deal with the five senses and are eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body consciousness. The sixth type in mind consciousness and involves thinking and emotions. All of these types of consciousness are unstable because they are dependent on ordinary consciousness and therefore are fleeting. The last two types, substrate and afflictive consciousness, are more stable because they are always present. The last topic this chapter covered was dreaming and dying which was confusing to me. Dream yoga was listed as a way to realize the nature of the mind and reality. Upon death, a person can achieve enlightenment.
Overall, I think this chapter was difficult to follow. It used new abstract ideas and terms which were hard to understand. I was lost for pretty much the entire section about dreaming and dying. I was skeptical of that section as well, especially when it mentioned the clear light of mind. I think the topic of consciousness is very interesting but I did not like this chapter of the book. One thing I would like to research further is altered states of consciousness. These can occur due to a number of causes including drugs but I would like to research it concerning neurological conditions. Epilepsy and certain seizures can be described as altered consciousness so I would like to find out what the state of consciousness is like when people with epilepsy experience seizures.
Terms: consciousness, Buddhist Dzogchen, introspection, ordinary mind, substrate consciousness, prime awareness, “I”, eight types of consciousness, dream yoga
Chapter 5 of Mind, Brain and the Path to Happiness was all about consciousness. I had very mixed feelings about this chapter. So far throughout the readings, I have encountered some fascinating scientific information in these books, dealing with the neuroscience of attention, emotions and meditation among other things. I have also read a lot of information that I wouldn't consider to be all that useful. Sometimes I feel like they site scientific studies, and then simplify things as much as possible to fit in with the Buddhist teachings that they try to get across. It kind of reminds me of the way a religious person alters their interpretation of scripture ever so slightly to accommodate some discovery that disproves one of their beliefs. The teachings of the religion, and of the Buddhist Theravada, have been around long before modern science. The long history of these teachings seem to me as if they are what make people trust them so much, as they have withstood the test of time. So when we have the ability to do experiments and objectively observe things, I feel like that is when someone will try to skew the results, or interpret them in a manner that supports their initial beliefs. That's not to say thats what the book is doing, but that is the skepticism that I have, unintentionally, while I am reading it.
In my Cognitive Psych class, we discussed consciousness a couple weeks ago, and as it is an interesting topic, I read somewhat extensively about it for further reading. Because of this, I probably had higher expectations for the chapter, but it would make sense that the book would try harder to appeal to those who haven't given the topic all that much thought. I thought they did a good job of touching on the default mode network (DMN) and liked the additional information of the Vanhaudenhuyse study examining the neural activity of people with varying levels of consciousness. I thought it was odd that they referred to the neural activity associated with consciousness to be one of the 'easy problems' as every other source I have read referred to the 'hard problem of consciousness' as the search for the neural correlate of the experience. Dorjee referred to the hard problem as the subjective unique differences in individual experiences of consciousness. Equally as interesting of a problem, no doubt, but I was a still a little off-put with the different terminology. It was interesting though, as this was one of the problems that I hadn't given as much thought.
I was displeased that their solution to the problem was introspection, because as I stated earlier, I felt they were simply trying to make their traditional methods relevant to the prevailing science. They gave a number of reasons why introspection would be a valid means of investigating consciousness, as people who are trained in meditation would be able to concentrate to a point where they could somehow overcome the problem of communicating experiences without altering them through expression. This made very little sense to me. I enjoyed the sections on lucid dreaming and dying, as they were very interesting, although not at all scientifically validated. I was very intrigued by the meditators who would meditate up to the time of their death and show no vitals, but not start showing the more conclusive signs of being dead for weeks on end. I hadn't heard about this before and I would love to know more about it.
Terms: Meditation, neuroscience, consciousness, hard problem, easy problem, Buddhist Theravada, DMN, introspection
Dorjee’s 5th chapter covers both western and Buddhist ideas of consciousness. Consciousness is understood as being aware and within western psychology we learn about different levels of consciousness very early on in our lives. As an example, dreams are explained to children as you being unconscious, yet you are still aware of yourself and are still alive. You recognize that the conscious you is the one who is awake and has the power to make decisions. The unconscious you is one that is reactive and that we do not control. One of the earlier western ideas of consciousness can be attributed to Freud and his 3 different kinds of consciousness. They were the id, the ego, and the super ego. In simple terms, these were what you wanted, your moral compass, and the mediator between the two. I currently see consciousness as a separation from a state of being. I see our consciousness as a part of our mind.
The book talks about the 8 different kinds of consciousness as defined by Buddhist study. Five of these different kinds of consciousness are relatable and even comparable to our five senses. The first of the consciousness’s are; eye consciousness, ear consciousness, nose consciousness, tongue consciousness, and body consciousness. I really quickly want to address a problem I currently see with just these five consciousness’s. First off, I wonder how Buddhists teachings deal with those who are blind or have some other disability that affects the five senses. Are those consciousness dead? Or are the muted? It doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense, it I am interested in learning more about the philosophical idea. In this case consciousness depends solely on outside stimuli. The book makes note that these consciousness give rise “to perception without conceptual association and [or] evaluation” (Dorjee p98). The sixth consciousness is that of thinking and what we would attribute the mind to. This is where thoughts are born and grow. Most meditation practices rely heavily on the training of the mind, or the sixth type of consciousness.
The next types of consciousness get a little deep and hard to follow. The sevenths type of consciousness is referred to as the self. This is the part of your mind that you identify with and that holds the weight of “I”. This form of the mind is constantly changing as the view of ourselves changes and how we experience the other forms of consciousness.
I enjoyed the readings on the perceptions of reality and its relationship to our consciousness. This includes the complexity of dreams and death when considering out consciousness. I have had the opportunity to experience a lucid dream before and I’m interested in seeing what research holds of the relationship of lucid dreaming and perceived reality. It’ll be interesting to see if there is a connection, and if there is, what future research could hold. I know that this topic is more of a philosophical idea rather than a research topic, but if there is research out there I intend to read it. If there isn’t, I’m sure I could make some interesting speculations.
Terms: consciousness, self, senses, Freud, Buddhist, lucid dream, philosophy
Chapter five was about our consciousness. It tied the Western approaches to consciousness and compared it to Buddhist teachings. Consciousness is a heavily researched area but it also causes a lot of disagreements. Psychology has taken on many different roles centered around the importance at that time of consciousness and how it was viewed. John Watson moved psychology away from introspection and more towards a behavioral approach. He didn’t feel that psychology should cover consciousness.
I particularly enjoyed the short section about the neuroscience of consciousness. Many interesting things have been found about how our brain operates associated with consciousness. They have found that the recognition of an object is directly related to a synchronous firing of different neural assemblies in the gamma-band range. They also used magnetic imaging to discover an area called the “default mode network” which includes the different areas of the brain that are active when a person is at rest. Studies have been done on patients that are in comas, limited levels of consciousness, or locked-in syndrome to get a better idea of their levels of consciousness in those states. Even with all the technology and tests that we have there is still so much about consciousness that we aren’t able to measure. If we have two people look at the same thing there is no way for us to measure their conscious experience. Even though they are experiencing the same input we can’t be sure they are having the same experience.
Interestingly, Buddhist practices have been built upon an introspection approach. In Buddhist tradition, attention is the prerequisite for being able to give reliable observations of our own mental processes which is what introspection requires. It makes sense to me that Buddhism would have its foundation in introspection because they focus so heavily on being conscious of our bodies and our feelings. It requires you to be focuses and attentive at all times. Having those qualities would make introspection so much easier because you would be better at reporting your experience with much more accuracy due to being able to focus better on the task at hand and not on other distractions.
The text talked about the three layers of consciousness. The first layer is the ordinary mind which includes things like our sensation and perception as well as our thoughts and memories. We rely on our ordinary mind for simple daily activities. The second layer is the substrate consciousness. Many people are unaware of this layer unless they practice focusing their attention, becoming mindful, and obtaining emotional balance. The third and last layer is pristine awareness. It requires that we recognize and also sustain our consciousness at the ultimate mental level.
In Buddhist Dzogchen tradition there are also eight types of consciousness. The first involve our five senses and are: eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body consciousness. The other three are mind, afflictive, and substrate consciousness. The mind consciousness involves our thinking. The afflictive consciousness contains our ideas of the “self” or “I” and causes negative feelings of anger, craving, and ignorance. It is the goal to overcome this type of consciousness but people that are not mindful and stay at the normal level of consciousness deal with this type all the time. Substrate consciousness is the base for the other seven types. It is split into two parts: retrieval and storage. Storage collects and stores our overall mental functioning patterns and retrieval allows our brains to remember and use those patterns to guide our behavior.
There was a lot of information in this chapter but I chose some of the sections that I thought were interesting or that tied in to previous subjects that I have researched. I think it would be interesting to research Buddhist introspection practices and possibly look at more differences between that and the Western history of introspection.
Terminology: introspection, consciousness, Buddhist, Dzogchen, substrate, retrieval, storage, afflictive, John Watson, gamma-band range, default mode network, attention, ordinary mind, pristine awareness, sensation, perception
This weeks reading was chapter 5 which focused on consciousness. The chapter started out pretty hard to understand for me, it talked about the history and the neurological side of what consciousness is. This beginning part of the chapter although confusing referenced and gave a lot of information on studies that had been done on consciousness thus far, but from a western psychology point of view. The Buddhist approach to consciousness starts with its three layers: ordinary mind, substrate consciousness, and pristine awareness. The first of the three layers is used the most in all our daily activities; it includes sensations, perceptions, thoughts, and memories. I found it interesting when the book mentioned a study that demonstrated how unconscious information can impact our decisions and behavior. The second layer was the substrate layer; it is hidden from our awareness unless we can settle our ordinary mind. The last of the layers was pristine awareness with is to have ultimate mental balance. The next section then explained how in Buddhism there are also eight types of consciousness. The first five are the five senses and then the next three are; mind consciousness, afflictive consciousness, and substrate consciousness. In the last part of the chapter the book discussed dreaming and dying. These sections were a bit hard for me to totally grasp and understand. I found it interesting that lucid dreaming is something that can be trained so that you can have more lucid dreaming. But when it came to the section on clear light I was pretty lost. I didn’t get a good understanding of what clear light actually is or what is experienced in clear light. I know that in western society the say that when you die your life flashes before your eyes and then you start to see a bright light. I didn’t know if that is the same thing as awareness of full consciousness or not. Something that I would like to look into more is lucid dreaming and what type of training is done to increase one’s lucid dreams.
Key terms: consciousness, ordinary mind, substrate, pristine awareness, 8 types of consciousness, lucid dreaming, and clear light
Chapter 5 focuses on consciousness. Consciousness can be difficult to study but it has gotten a lot more attention in recent years. Part of the reason that it can be so difficult to study is because it is a fairly subjective experience. There are things like fMRIs that can show us what areas of the brain are being used but they can’t describe what a person is feeling. I think this is very similar to research that is done on the concept of self. I just don’t particularly see how it can be very scientific when the term itself isn’t scientifically defined.
The chapter offers three layers of consciousness. The first layer is our everyday, ordinary mind. This includes the sensations that we receive perceptions, thoughts, and memories. We use the first layer of our consciousness to make decisions, remember things, learn new skills, and overall perform our daily tasks that are necessary for functioning. The second layer of consciousness (the substrate) is not in our everyday awareness unless we are practicing mindfulness. Utilizing attention abilities and meditation this layer of consciousness can be accessed. Things like tendencies of behavior, mental habits, and temperament can be found in this layer. These things influence our everyday behavior we just aren’t aware of it at all times. The final layer (prime) is associated with bliss and clarity. This layer is considered to be separate from the idea of self. For many meditators this is the ideal consciousness.
Along with the layers there are eight types of consciousness. The first five of them are the five senses: seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and feeling. The sixth types if mind consciousness with focuses on cognitions. The seventh and eighth type are afflictive and substrate respectively. I did not particularly understand what these types consist of but they are considered to be stable and present at all times.
This chapter discussed dreams to a certain extent but I tend to disbelieve that majority of arguments about dreams. I understand that lucid dreaming has its place in meditation but I don’t subscribe to the pseudoscientific idea that our dreams tap into our deeper consciousness.
Terms: Consciousness, fMRI, substrate consciousness, prime consciousness, mindfulness, meditation, the five senses, mind consciousness, cognitions, afflictive consciousness, dreams
Dorjee chapter 5 is all about consciousness. I found this chapter to be the most interesting yet. To me, it consciousness is the kind of the unknown of psychology. It’s what we can make horror movies about because you never really know… The first couple pages discussed how Western Psychology viewed consciousness and gave a bit of history. I was surprised to read, though I’m not sure why, that some psychologists like Watson who didn’t give consciousness much though and didn’t want to other with the research. It wasn’t until just recently that consciousness was given it’s day in research. Though there is still being research done, it is not an topic to record data on. When trying to verbalize an experience, part of the experience can be lost or altered due to the lack of appropriate words. Since Buddhists aren’t necessarily trying to explain consciousness but instead just embarrassing it, they have been able to get in more practice.
Buddhist see consciousness at two level sub categories: consciousness and meta-consciousness. This is similar to Freud’s example of our mind being like an ice berg. The part of our mind that we are aware of and use most often is just the tip above the water. The majority of our mind, the most powerful is unknown to us consciously. Not only are there two sub-categories but there are three layers of consciousness. The first layer is the most common; the tip of the ice berg. This is the layer we use on a day to day basis with our daily activities. The second layer is hidden from our awareness unless we practice to awaken it. This level is called the substrate consciousness and contains subtle tendencies of behavior, mental habits and temper. It contains the concept of the self or I. The third layer is the core of our mind. It is the pristine awareness. It is the ever present level of ultimate emotional balance.
Not only are there two sub categories and three layers but there are still eight types of consciousness. The first five types are similar to the five senses. They are eye, ear, nose, tongue and body consciousness. These first five types are our perceptions of our senses from an external stimulus. The sixth type involves thinking and goes further than the senses we perceive. These first six types are unstable because they come and go from our consciousness that is readily available. The last two types are the stable ones because they are always present. These are the foundations of our afflictions.
I truly enjoyed reading this chapter. There were numerous things I’ve considered doing more research on whether from a psychological aspect to a Buddhism one. I think I’m most interested in how psychology views consciousness.
Terms:Consciousness, western psychology, Watson, Buddhism, meta consciousness, sub categories, emotional balance, senses, external stimulus, afflictions
Chapter 5 explains the different layers and types of consciousness. It also explains how introspection could be used to as a tool to explain consciousness. According to Dorjee, introspection is the best tool for exploration of private conscious experience, only the individuals having the conscious experience can provide people with information regarding “what it feels like” for them to have the experience. The Buddhist approaches to the investigation of consciousness based on introspection can provide some novel insights. Buddhist psychology and Buddhist systems of teaching and practice have been developed almost exclusively using the method of introspection. The important difference between Buddhist and Western psychology clearly recognizes that refined and stabilized attention is the necessary prerequisite for reliable observation of mental processes using introspection. The category of conscious experience can be divided into two subcategories, conscious and meta-conscious mental activity. Mind wandering can be good example to demonstrate the difference. All of us have from time to time the experience of diverging into thoughts irrelevant to the topic of a conversation we are having with somebody.
The Dzogchen tradition distinguishes three main layers of consciousness. The first layer is the ordinary mind people rely on during most of their daily activities. It includes the sensations, perceptions, thoughts, memories and affect people are usually experiencing and can mostly become meta-conscious if people direct their attention towards the mind. The second layer of consciousness is called the “substrate consciousness.” It is mostly hidden from people’s awareness unless they refine their attention abilities of mindfulness and introspection, and also settle the ordinary mind through practices cultivating emotional balance. The stability and vigilance of attention coupled with emotional balance are needed because of the overabundance of mental activity at the ordinary level of consciousness. This layer of consciousness contains more subtle tendencies of behavior, mental habits and temper which influence the ordinary mind. The third layer of consciousness is the pristine awareness which is often described as the experimental recognition of our Buddha nature. It is the pure aspect of consciousness which is always present, even when people are completely consumed by the chaos of the ordinary mind. No matter how confused or unsettled the mind is, pristine awareness is not modified by the turmoil at the other two levels of consciousness.
In addition to the three layers of consciousness, Buddhist Dzogchen texts explain further subdivisions of the ordinary and substrate consciousness. These include eight types of consciousness: five types of consciousness which roughly correspond to the five senses, the mind consciousness, afflictive consciousness and substrate consciousness. The first types of consciousness are eye consciousness, ear consciousness, nose consciousness, tongue consciousness, and body consciousness. I thought this part of the chapter was really interesting because I had no idea that there were so many different kinds of consciousness. These types of consciousness create perceptions of the five senses when a certain type of consciousness meets an external stimulus it is sensitive to through the corresponding sense faculty. These sensory consciousnesses are not active during imagination or thought when people create mental activity without corresponding input from the outside world.
However, the sixth type of consciousness, which is the mind consciousness, involves thinking. This type of consciousness is not bound to sensations and perceptions immediately available to the first to the first five types of consciousness. The mind consciousness is the building ground of afflictions such as attachment and anger which arise from ignorant ways of thinking. The seventh type of consciousness is afflictive consciousness. It is the foundation of people’s afflictions; a subtle form of attachment to an independent self arises from this source. This clinging on to an “I” or “self” in the afflictive consciousness serves as a basic for the mind consciousness which builds up the coarse grasping at a notion of “self” and this in turn produces the afflictions of craving, anger, and ignorance in the form of negative thoughts and effect. The eight type of consciousness is the substrate consciousness. The substrate consciousness is sometimes described in terms of two functions, storage and retrieval of subtle imprints of mental and behavioral tendencies. The first function collects and stores overall patterns of mental functioning and behavior people accumulate over time. The second function enables the stored imprints to reappear again and guide our behavior. I learned a lot about consciousness so all in all this chapter was good. It’s really interesting to learn about consciousness in the Buddhist’s perspective.
Terms: consciousness, introspection, conscious mental activity, meta-conscious mental activity, pristine awareness, ordinary mind, mind consciousness, afflictive consciousness, substrate consciousness, eye consciousness, ear consciousness, nose consciousness, tongue consciousness, and body consciousness
The topic of chapter 5 focused on consciousness. The definition of consciousness is one that is debated and has changed over time. Both Dzogchen and psychology have a lot to say about it, but research on consciousness has often been criticized since it is a difficult subject to study as it relies on introspective research. The problems with introspective research are that any information about the consciousness could be modified by another process in the mind, reporting about consciousness can bias the experience, and the use of scales can be limiting towards responses. Some researchers claim that there are two types of consciousness. One is called raw phenomenality is basically the absence of meta-cognition where the person is experiencing changes without being reactive. Reflective consciousness includes the first dart and the second dart since it involves the emotion/change and a reaction/evaluation of it.
The approaches to consciousness from Western science and Dzogchen perspectives differ in many ways. For one, in Dzogchen, attention is considered a prerequisite for any introspection on consciousness to take place. With greater attention, they claim that more accurate introspective information can take place. In Buddhism, there are several kinds of consciousness. These include eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind, afflictive, and substrate consciousness. The substrate consciousness is allegedly responsible for patterns of our behavior because it stores and retrieves our behavioral tendencies.
In addition to the eight types, there are three layers of consciousness which include first the ordinary mind that helps us with daily tasks, the second is something we’re less aware of that (as mentioned earlier) harbors our behavioral tendencies and also our concept of “self”, the third and final layer is pristine awareness which can’t be accessed without great effort and is essentially our “Buddha nature”. Pristine awareness is the end result of meditation where the person feels connected with everything, the sense of self decreases, and extreme bliss is experienced. I found the idea that pristine awareness is always present to be interesting because it applies to everyone, even people who are terribly stressed and have scattered thoughts. I like the concept that within everyone is a state of calm that if they have the right exercises or practices, they can tap into.
I found the part on consciousness during the process of dying fascinating. Dorjee describes that the light many people talk about during near-death experiences is actually an opportunity to go into pristine awareness and that someone experience in this layer of consciousness during life can sustain this attention for quite some time while dying. The most interesting part is that experienced meditators can predict their death and remain in this pristine awareness for weeks while there body neither shows signs of being alive or decaying (although some observers report these meditators’ bodies shrink extensively during this experience!). For me, this raises the questions of how do people know when these meditators are no longer in pristine awareness? How do they know when they are officially dead and that consciousness no longer resides in the body?
Like with other aspects of Buddhist meditation, I found the study of consciousness hard to completely understand. For instance, there are eight types of consciousness and three layers, but research claims that there are only two types. The substrate consciousness appears to be both a type and a layer of consciousness. Also pristine awareness, which is a layer of consciousness also seems to be a type of enlightenment. It’s all quite confusing and overlapping. Even with this confusion though, I found the ideas in Dzogchen and the steps to attaining pure consciousness fascinating.
Terms: consciousness, Dzogchen, psychology, introspection, attention, raw phenomenality, reflective consciousness, first dart, second dart, substrate consciousness, pristine awareness, enlightenment
Chapter 5: Exploring Consciousness
Meditation research has one critical validation problem, and that is the lack of effective measurements of consciousness. Dorjee gives this problem the attention that it deserves throughout the theories of Noam Chomsky, and David Chalmers. Chomsky hypothesized that consciousness could be broken down into an algorithmic equation; Chalmers divided concerns about consciousness into two dichotomous categories, easy and hard. Recent evidence suggests that vigilance, cognitive arousal and sleep stages may be a link to consciousness. Default mode network (DMN) activation may also be able to relate to levels of consciousness. Consciousness can also be difficult to measure due to its highly individualistic. There is a classic argument within philosophy that argues color distinctions between people. Dorjee uses this same example to show that consciousness is a uniquely individualistic aspect. Dorjee also points out that consciousness can be altered by cognitive processes and attentional focuses.
Within Dzogchen there are three levels of introspective levels of consciousness; every day mindfulness is the typical level of consciousness. The more advanced stages become possible upon contemplative training. Bliss, non-con-ceptuatlity and clarity are the characteristic that comprise the highest form of consciousness, but to achieve these you must practice mindfulness frequently. Dream yoga is also a combination between Dzogchen practices and consciousness. Dream yoga, allows the practitioner to control their dreams, lucid dreaming, to examine the inner working of self, and self-consciousness. The final stage of conscious awareness mimics death, at allows the practitioner to see the “clear light of mind”. To reach this point you much become an enlightened meditator.
Consciousness has been a topic of distress within science for many years, because it is not easily validated. There have been many researchers who have tried to place their own hypothesis of consciousness into the canon of scientific theories. However, because of the nature of consciousness and the difficulty measuring it, these hypotheses cannot be tested. One famous example of this is Feud’s concept of self. Where he uses terms like the id, ego, and super ego, to help clarify the inner working of consciousness. Freud argued that most of our brain processes occur in our unconscious mind, leaving many of our life choices involuntary.
Terms: Id, Ego, Super Ego, Consciousness, Dzogchen, Dream Yoga, DMN
This chapter was all about exploring consciousness. Throughout history consciousness was referred to as being outside the area of phenomena which can be measured by scientific tools. Consciousness was related to the awareness of our sensations, feelings, perceptions, and thoughts. When examining neuroscience it has been found that conscious recognition of an object is associated with synchronous firing of neural assembles in the gamma- band ( which is a fancy term for brain waves frequency above 20Hz) The difficult part of the conscious experience is the phenomenological element of consciousness. There is no way for us to measure directly whether an experience “how it feels” is an element of consciousness. This is where we run into problems in the research on conscious experience. So, here is where Buddhist approaches exploring of the conscious based on introspection can bring in some sort of reasoning.
Using introspection the Buddhist belief on consciousness revolves around three levels. The main level we think of is the mind we experience most of the time until one furthers their mental training. After this is a level of individual experiences that influences our unconscious and behaviors. Then finally the purest level of conscious is complete awareness and clarity. The main goal of this training is to achieve this level of consciousness. Once one has achieved this goal they can experience what is known as an enlightened mind. It is separated into five different kinds of enlightenment. This part did rather confuse me, but what I got from it is there are different types of enlightenment which also bring out our awareness. These different kind come from the activities in our mind. So far for this book this was the chapter that was the most difficult and confusing for me.
Terms: consciousness, awareness, neuroscience, introspection, Buddhist, enlightenment, mental training.
This chapter explores consciousness, one of the least understood yet also most interesting aspects of psychology. Specifically, the chapter focuses on the goal of the Dzogchen method in developing consciousness. The mind we experience on an ordinary, general level until we progress further through Dzogchen training is the first level. The next level is a “substrate of individual experiences that holds imprints of our unconscious tendencies and behaviors.” Further through this level, bliss may arise, though there is still a level of an independent self. The final level, the ultimate goal of Dzogchen is pristine awareness, with bliss, clarity, etcetera, but no concept of self.
We’ve talked a lot in class how this bothers us. I admit that I have a bias from growing up in an individualistic, as opposed to collectivist, society. However, I disagree with Dzogchen’s goal of leaving the self behind. Granted, western society often places far too much emphasis on the self and can be rather selfish. And yes, I suppose that the perspective of losing a sense of identity will cause one to be happier, but because you won’t place value on yourself. I’m not sure it’s worth that. I’m just not confident this is the right pursuit, but perhaps some empirical evidence would convince me.
Also, the chapter talked about very experienced meditators can die in their meditation and their bodies won’t rot. They will stay in the same position as well, but the consciousness is no longer there. The author also discusses how when the meditators die, they see a light at the end of the tunnel. This is too close to sayings regarding life and death to make me confident it actually happened. Besides, I don’t quite understand how anyone could know that.
Essentially, I found the chapter boring and very invalidated. There was a lot of ought and should and not much why or how. Again, that is one of the biggest issues of studying consciousness because it is very difficult to develop a valid, reliable empirical measure. I’ll admit, my bias towards individualism and my frustration with the chapter may be causing me to critique this chapter more than the others.
Terms: consciousness, Dzogchen, pristine awareness, substrate consciousness, meditation, mindfulness