"Consciousness emerges as a phenomenon - an arising and passing episode of awareness - when a sense organ and a sense object make contact. This moment of contact consists of the cognizing of a sensory object (forms, sounds, smells, tastes or touches) or a mental object (thoughts, memories, plans, etc.) by means of a sensory organ (the eye, ear, nose, tongue or body) or by means of the mental organ (mind). Also coarising with this cognition is a momentary perception that identifies the object in light of past experience and stored recognition patterns, along with a momentary feeling tone that knows the object as pleasant, unpleasant or as carrying a feeling tone that is more neutral. When underlying tendencies of attachment, aversion or confusion are enacted, craving toward (or away from) the object also arises. Craving manifests either as wanting plesant feeling tones to persist (even as they inevitably pass away) or as wanting unpleasant sensations to go away (even as they continue to present as the sense door).
Grasping is an intentional stance taken by the active response mechanisms of the psychophysical organism. It takes the form of either 'attaching to' the object of the moment's experience or of 'resisting' the object of experience. Whether it manifests as holding on or pushing away, the attitude of grasping creates an artificial distancing of 'one's self' from what is happeing in the moment. It is this grasping response that causes the becoming of self, the momentary birth and death of self-identity that inevitably involves suffering.
[...] the liking or not liking of something is itself what creates the self, the person who likes or does not like what is happening this moment.
[...] grasping is not something done by the self; rather, self is something done by grasping.
[...] The self can only exist as a fleeting attitude toward experience, one in which 'the person who likes or does not like what is happening' is invented and defined.
[...] self as an event, self as a response - arises and passes away as relentlessly as everything else. A virtual self is born and dies as fast as our senses are capable of constructing and relinquishing experience. When this happens repetedly, the natural abilities of the mind to synthesize unity out of diversity and continuity out of discrete episodes of cognition conspire to create the ilusion of a stable entity. Just as a series of still photos presented at high speed will be resolved by the mind into a continuous visual narrative, so also a succession of discrete 'selves' will be identified in natural experience as the continuity of a single cohesive self. While each 'moment of selfing' is actually grounded in a unique combination of coarising sense organ, sense object, consciousness, perception, and feeling, and is constructed by a unique intentional response to each moment, the patterns of such response demonstrated by any individual are both regular and idiosyncratic enough to yield the experience of a unique self.
[...] the construction of personality - the fashioning of a self - only occurs when an attitude of possession or appropriation takes place. [...] When its moment passes away it is discarded, and another self is constructed to take temporary ownership of the next thing.
One has only to replace the grasping response, the reflex of holding on or pushing away, with an attitude of 'This is not mine, this is not me; this is not my self'.
[...] overcoming the propensity to create a self who suffers each moment calls for replacing the habitual response of grasping with equanimity."
Grasping is an intentional stance taken by the active response mechanisms of the psychophysical organism. It takes the form of either 'attaching to' the object of the moment's experience or of 'resisting' the object of experience. Whether it manifests as holding on or pushing away, the attitude of grasping creates an artificial distancing of 'one's self' from what is happeing in the moment. It is this grasping response that causes the becoming of self, the momentary birth and death of self-identity that inevitably involves suffering.
[...] the liking or not liking of something is itself what creates the self, the person who likes or does not like what is happening this moment.
[...] grasping is not something done by the self; rather, self is something done by grasping.
[...] The self can only exist as a fleeting attitude toward experience, one in which 'the person who likes or does not like what is happening' is invented and defined.
[...] self as an event, self as a response - arises and passes away as relentlessly as everything else. A virtual self is born and dies as fast as our senses are capable of constructing and relinquishing experience. When this happens repetedly, the natural abilities of the mind to synthesize unity out of diversity and continuity out of discrete episodes of cognition conspire to create the ilusion of a stable entity. Just as a series of still photos presented at high speed will be resolved by the mind into a continuous visual narrative, so also a succession of discrete 'selves' will be identified in natural experience as the continuity of a single cohesive self. While each 'moment of selfing' is actually grounded in a unique combination of coarising sense organ, sense object, consciousness, perception, and feeling, and is constructed by a unique intentional response to each moment, the patterns of such response demonstrated by any individual are both regular and idiosyncratic enough to yield the experience of a unique self.
[...] the construction of personality - the fashioning of a self - only occurs when an attitude of possession or appropriation takes place. [...] When its moment passes away it is discarded, and another self is constructed to take temporary ownership of the next thing.
One has only to replace the grasping response, the reflex of holding on or pushing away, with an attitude of 'This is not mine, this is not me; this is not my self'.
[...] overcoming the propensity to create a self who suffers each moment calls for replacing the habitual response of grasping with equanimity."
Untangling self
