What is consciousness
We have seen in our discussion on the Buddhist rejection of the self, that the person [ puggal ] consists of five aggregates, viz corporeality, feeling, perception, mental formation, and consciousness. Our attention in this chapter will be focused on the aggregate of consciousness [ vinnana ], which is one of the four non-material aggregates. As aforementioned, the five aggregates can be divided into two main groups, the material and the non-material. The aggregate of corporeality belongs to the material group called rupa [ form ]. The term rupa specifies the bodily constituent of the personality [ attabhava ]. The personality or attabhava, minus all mental and moral characteristic, is rupam. The remaining aggregates, i.e. feeling, perception, mental formation, and consciousness, belong to the non-material group called nama or name. The term nama is used to refer to all mental phenomena. Thus the aggregate of corporeality is also called " form " while the four non-material aggregates are called " name or nama "... Name and form taken together constitute the psycho-physical complex know as person or puggala.
The aggregate of consciousness is defined by Buddhaghosaaas " everything taken together that has the characteristic of cognition, it is a simple awareness of the presence of the object. It does not recognize the object, because that is the function of perception. "
In the Abhidhamma, it should be noted that the term nama is extended to include not only the four non material aggregates but also Nirvana. Here the non-material aggregates are considered into two terms, " citta " [consciousness ] and cetasika [psychic factor ]. The term citta is said to be a synonym for two other terms, namely vinnana [ consciousness ] and mana remaining non-material aggregates, viz feeling, perception, and mental formations. Citta and cetasika are two of the four ultimate categories [ paramattha ] with which the Abhidhamma is concerned besides the other two being rupa [ matter ] and Nirvana.
By THE BUDDHA'S Core Teachings
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