I can't add to the content like Dave has. But I can render my perspective on the words in this article. Because I am
nothing but a critic, my perspective is critical. The first criticism is the synonymy between "layer" and
"level", of which I've complained before. Even if, when he says "level", he means to imply
something higher order like "layer", we (us dorks) need some sense of whether there's a hierarchy implied by
it ... and if so, is it a strict hierarchy. I thought he might address this when he started talking about how the
layers interact. But I don't think he did. Any sense of testable composition requires that.
My second criticism is the implicit difference between awareness and
consciousness. Although it might seem like I'm arguing about words, I'm
wondering if this construct assumes awareness is more primitive than
consciousness? And this criticism, for me, is a placeholder for many such
worries I have about whether or not this conception has a corresponding
*mechanism* ... or if it's simply a heuristic, meant not to be take literally,
but to be a useful fiction.
If it's meant to be at least a little bit literal, then the first constructive comment I
might make is to install a little plurality. E.g. there's not merely a single, unitary
"store", but many stores. I see this in myself. When I'm surrounded by too many
scientists yapping in detail in their domain, my store depletes and I want to go hang out
with some metalheads, quaff some beer, and drown out the Mind. While quaffing beer with
the metalheads, my capacity for detailed thought is replenished and I'm ready to hang out
with those dorks again. And vice versa in multifarious dimensions.
And that wandering constellation of stores evokes a worry about "the self" or
ego or whatever it is. It's more difficult to imagine a plurality of selves. But I think
of it in terms of the parallelism theorem, that even if I literally can't multitask, be
more than one self at a given time, I can swap between them at will, nearly instantly ...
caveat that there does seem to be a cost of swapping or an inertia of some kind.
Otherwise, though, it was a good read. Thanks for linking it and the
notification of his death.
On 1/24/22 12:30, Prof David West wrote:
Thich Nhat Hanh was Vietnamese and his teachings reflect the context of
Theravada rather than Mahayana Buddhism and a pedant would notice differences
and nuances that are important to scholarship, but not germane here.
The four levels of consciousness is quite useful and accurate as it is. Some
minor points of variance.
-- The sense consciousness is not restricted to the five (six or seven)
normally recognized senses, but the totality of our 'input nodes' which are
very numerous and offer a near 1-to-1 mapping to all the output sources and
human really can directly sense and send signals to the brain from a single
photon or a single quantum collapse.
-- The sense consciousness directly "feeds" the store consciousness and the store consciousness
is a "reflection" of the Universe and an "expression" of the Universe. It is also
singular, there is but one Store Consciousness - The Atman, to use Vedic terminology, or The Self.
-- Mind Consciousness is an "extract" of Store Consciousness arising from the influence
and action of Manas Consciousness. The compulsion to differentiate between Me and Thee (Me and
That) "forces" an attempt to carve out a portion of the Store Consciousness and plant a
flag of possession. Thence comes the atman, the self, or the ego-self.
-- Manas Consciousness is traceable to a specific brain region that becomes
'active' some months after birth and allows an infant to recognize its body as
separate and, eventually, the illusion that its Mind Consciousness is separate
from Store Consciousness. Meditation lessens activation and may deactivate,
temporarily, that area of the brain.
What I think I learned on the topic.
davewest
On Sun, Jan 23, 2022, at 11:08 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
/There is a Thich Nhat Hanh sized hole in the Universe/
begins my as-yet unwritten */Ode to Thich Nhat Hanh/ *who passed away at 95
<https://plumvillage.org/about/thich-nhat-hanh/thich-nhat-hanhs-health/thich-nhat-hanh-11-11-1926-01-22-2022/>
yesterday.
I would like to invite everyone's perspectives on his particular interpretation
of Buddhism's particular take on the nature of consciousness:
The Four Layers of Consciousness
<https://uplift.love/thich-nhat-hanh-the-four-layers-of-consciousness/>
given our never-ending discussions from a mostly different perspective:
DaveW's studies of Eastern Philosophies. Glen's talk of diachronic vs
episodic self. The general talk about Consciousness from a Western (esp.
Pearcean) perspective here. Monism/Dualism. The HARD problem. etc.
--
glen
Theorem 3. There exists a double master function.
.-- .- -. - / .- -.-. - .. --- -. ..--.. / -.-. --- -. .--- ..- --. .- - .
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