Tiny Consciousness (2)

from e-Sangha

Imagine when we contemplate the impermanent nature of a dried leaf on the ground, we are deep in thought or simply see in the mind’s eye the change of young green leaf to an old leaf which fall down from a tree. That generates some kind of wisdom on impermanence. Now, during the process, the picture of the “yellow dried leaf” may ignite an old memory of “burning grass” when we were young. There arises a flash of burning smell, a consciousness of a memory in the form of smell. And there is an aversion to is memory. But if the aversion is brief, we return to contemplation again, and that aversion is gone. But because we are mindful, we are able to detect this subtle process in the mind. We can notice the long-gone brief memory of burning grass, and the aversion to it, and we know how the tiny aversion is on the smell, but not the leaf…..The consciousness can be seen doing meditation, when we are mindful enough.

However, what about when we are not so mindful or our attention not so fine? When we walk to work, we may see a taxi pulling to the nearby taxi stand. We need to get into the taxi badly because we have a meeting in half an hour. Yet we do not get in. We decided to wait because there is an aversion toward that taxi. We have this “hunch”, a gut feeling, that getting into that taxi is bad, that it may ruin the whole day. Yet we don’t know where that feeling comes from. Some people may even attribute this gut feeling to divine intervention.

In fact, the aversion to get into the taxi may simply be because when we see the taxi, we also see a tiny bellow/brown strain on its back door. Because we are not mindful, we do not remember “seeing” this color stain at all. However, that “mindless seeing” is important because the tint of color brings about an old memory of burning grass in the form of smell with aversion attached to it (as in the case above). We sense the aversion, but do not know that it comes from the tiny bit of long-gone memory of burning grass that is started by seeing the yellow/brownish color stain on the taxi door….And we blame this aversion on the taxi, and call the aversion a hunch. We may have several of these hunches and aversions during a day, and sometimes they lead endless and endless chains of citta streams.

IMO, for those who have extremely find mindfulness and wisdom (maha-sati, maha-panna), they can notice these cittas and stop the chains right from the start, 24/7. And as the chains are cut at the root, extremely fine mindfulness is further sharpened, and can lead to deeper or even lokutara wisdom. The result of this prevents unwholesome unconsciousness to take place.(warning – no reference)