Seeing Through the Structure of Our Consciousness

Consciousness is one of those words that can have many definitions and meanings depending on the field from which it is approached.

In Buddhist theory, consciousness is one of the five components that constitute a human being, the other for are: body, feelings (senses), thoughts and unconscious. Consciousness is in itself a six-fold structure, with five layers associated to the five types of sensorial activity (sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch), and a sixth one dealing with conceptual thoughts.

In the Consciousness Only School (Skt. Yogacara), two more categories are added, the ego-centered sense of personality, and the store of the accumulated karmic seeds, usually referred as the eighth consciousness, which is the source of the other seven. This is the only one that remains after death, when it becomes a transitory consciousness in between rebirths. It should not be mistaken with the concept of soul since the eighth consciousness is not an essential entity but, like the others too, fluctuating and impermanent.

Only through deep contemplation of the structure of our consciousness, the incredibly subtle and fluid energy that congeals into objects of mind can be observed as it transforms almost instantaneously into something. This energy is clear, transparent, and surrounds all mental activity, to the point where thoughts can be contemplated as a stream of congealed clarity welling innocuously within a sea of clarity through patterns which results not only from biological constructions but also from ideas, beliefs, culture, religion, etc., all of which dye this creative energy accordingly. If the thought is very intense, it can even release some chemicals into the body that make it temporarily more 'real' and reveals clearly the total connection between body and mind.

Awakening or enlightenment is not only a psychological transformation, as many may think, but the absolute deconstruction of our entire being, even in its most elusive aspects; elusive not only in the sense of being hidden, but because of being so pervasive that we take them for granted.There is no any 'nirvana' to gain because, to start with, we never lost it.

Our attention must be re-educated to learn to let go or engage with the thoughts as well as to learn to rest on that which surrounds them, yet concurrently be aware that ultimately they are the same. An ordinary person lives constrained to the thought-side; geniuses of any field have each one of their feet on each side; sages live mostly on the undifferentiated side; and bodhisattvas have completely erased that distinction.

If it were not for delusion that makes us feel suffering so realistically, life would be at the worst a great joke, and at the best the awesome way in which it becomes the expression of our luminous original mind in a new and unique form in every moment.

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