What's AI doing? The Buddha on consciousness

Digital Engine) Feb. 11, 2024: Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly

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(Digital Engine) Feb. 11, 2024: Undetectable AI, Sam Altman, Atlas Robot, Apple AI. Visit Ground News to compare news coverage, spot media bias, and void algorithms. Try it today and get 40% off subscription at ground.news/digitalengine Sources Anthropic AI’s Sleeper Agents study anthropic.com/news/sleepe... arxiv.org/pdf/2401.05566.pdf

Did the Buddha say what "consciousness" is?

Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly

When one sees Dependent Origination, one sees

That's practically all he talked about. Buddhas teach to awaken others, to bring them out of delusion and suffering. The ultimate cause of all suffering is ignorance (avijja, avidya), delusion, wrong view, misguided perception.

Therefore, the problem becomes how to overcome these. It is a matter of dehypnotizing living beings so they can see what is real and what is not.

It is the unique teaching of Buddhism that all things are impersonal. And that of all impersonal things, the most important are the five that are clung to as a "self."

That there is a self is not something we ever question. We completely take that for granted, like we take our environment for granted, not even noticing it until something goes wrong ecologically.

You live in WATER, Dummy! Stop trying to fly!

In this regard, there is a wise saying: "I don't know who discovered water, but you can bet it wasn't a fish." Fish, being so close to it, would never notice and discover something so fundamental to their existence.

In the same way, living beings do not spontaneously start to notice that everything is impersonal, the key to enlightenment. It takes a supremely awakened teacher or samma sam buddha to do that. What is clung to as "self"?

1. Form (body)
2. Feelings (sensations)
3. Perceptions
4. Mental formations
5. Consciousness

Authors: Sayalay Susila and Dhr. Seven

It is this fifth one that most people, when pressed, would say the "real self," the "higher self," the "true self," the other four phenomena being important but dispensable. Of course, all five come together, functionally integrated and interdependent.

The key to enlightenment in this very life is twofold, knowing-and-seeing ultimate materiality and ultimate mentality. That is the key to insight. Without it we will not let go to what is not ours.

It is this very question at the root of the issue: What is consciousness? We must know it. But first the mind/heart is too weak, polluted, distorted, covered in a distorting film ("dust" or grime on the lens of the third eye, as it were).

So the first thing before anything is a path of purification. Buddhaghosa's famous manual of Buddhist meditation techniques adopted this title exactly because we must first clean the very instrument that is going to attempt to make sense of reality. For that, samma samadhi is needed, "right stillness."

That begins with serenity, tranquility, calm, and undistractedness, that is, the cognitive strength to focus, advert, apply attention to what we are attending to and disregard what is not useful to pursue (namely, the constant distractions we are bombarded with).

Only then can we hope to understand consciousness. It is essential to know and see it by direct experience. But that is not the only way to know it. We can also comprehend it intellectually, for all the good it will do us. Without direct penetration, it cannot be expected to have the proper impact for which the Buddha taught.

The Buddha is not a theoretician. He is supremely practical as to what is possible and what is not, what is profitable, suitable, skillful, worth pursuing because he knows the highest goal. He teaches for the sake of higher rebirth but, ultimately, for the overcoming of all rebirth.

Most people are not interested in that and so only pursue the Dharma for the lowly goal of being reborn in more fortunate circumstances. That is possible, that is doable, that is the highest most will reach for, so good enough.

Buddhist monastics really meditate.

But for the others really following the Buddha's advice, only enlightenment (seeing for themselves) will do. Since we are not doing that, that goal remains for people who become monastics even temporarily or who undertake meditation retreats with teachers who can teach that (and they do exist, though they are extremely rare. All may speak in these terms, with a fraction of a percentage of them actually being able to produce results).

Therefore, intellectually, consciousness is a stream of mind-moments (cittas) carrying out their function and perishing. It is important to be able to distinguish them.

Interestingly, although it is said that there are Five Aggregates clung to as self, there are actually eight. The first four are subsumed into the first one, form (rupa). The other four constitute "mind" (nama) or manas or vinnana or consciousness, awareness, knowing.

• Here's an interesting thing few seem to realize: Why are the Five Aggregates (Pancha Khandha) called "aggregates"? Is it because there are five of them? No. It is because there are an endless number of them lumped into five categories or "heaps." When one says "consciousness," one is not talking about one thing, one consciousness, but an endless stream of them. What are the "them" that constitute consciousness? They called cittas and cetasikas, mind-moments and the concomitants of consciousness. Similarly, when one speaks of "form," it is never one thing. Materiality consists of kalapas or countless perishing "particles" of various kinds, but all matter has four qualities. These, confusingly, are called the Four Great Elements (earth, wind, fire, water, an ancient categorization the Buddha employed in a much more detailed way, referring to solidity, fluidity, cohesion, temperature, etc. for at least a dozen qualities; see Four Elements Meditation for the practical upshot of how to distinguish them and, moreover, know-and-see them directly). They are actually four characteristics of matter in varying quantities. Most confusing on the list is this mysterious category of "mental formations." It is very nondescriptive because, in fact, Aggregates 2-5 are all mental formations. It is just that they are important enough to distinguish them separately. There are 50 mental formations, the most important of which are impulses or volitions, which sometimes gives the name to the entire grouping.
• About "consciousness": SN 25.3: Viññāṇa Sutta—Ven. Sujato (trans.) suttacentral.net

Did the Buddha define consciousness? That's practically all he did, as seen in the Abhidharma ("The Dharma in Ultimate Terms") literature. Did he know consciousness? Indeed. That's what made him the Buddha, "the Awakened One" capable of awakening others.

• So what is consciousness then? The Buddha compared it to a conjurer's magic trick. It's empty (impersonal).