Identity and Experience_Hamilton_1996

The Vicfiinakkhandha 91
there is a further reason for suggesting that it is consciousness of that is of
greater importance. This is the Buddha's teaching that karma is volition.
The purpose of this teaching is precisely that one should be conscious of
the process of cyclic rebirth that is fuelled by one's volitions: the qualitative
causal dimension implicit in the Buddha's definition of karma requires
consciousness ofwhat one is willing. This association between consciousness
of and spiritual progress might also explain why there is no discussion of
peripheral awareness or involuntary reactions: they are not spiritually
relevant.
So having established that vin"fiina is impermanent, we see here that
descriptions of vin"n"ina in the Sutta Waka also suggest that it functions as a
process of being aware, and that a good translation of it is 'consciousness
of'. Another way of putting this point would be to say that while in the
Upani!ads consciousness is the very stuff of existence, in Buddhism
consciousness is not explained in terms of a metaphysical entity. The
Buddha's teaching is more concerned with how the human being operates
than with what he or she consists of, and vin"fiiyz refers to the process which
provides consciousness 645
3. VififiZna as a factor in cognition
As one might expect, vin"n"Zp42, awareness, is a key factor in the cognitive
process. This is indicated in the passage in the Majjhima JVZkya, to which I
have referred several times, which begins "Visual consciousness arises
because of eye and visible form".46 We discussed the passage in full in the
chapter on the san"n"&hndha. I need not repeat the Pali here, but in English
it continues:
Contact [occurs] when there is a combination of the three; feelings are
caused by contact; that which one feels, one apperceives; that which one
apperceives, one reasons about; that which one reasons about, one causes
to become manifold.
This passage represents our normal savnslZric experience and the way in
which we interpret it; it describes the sa~iricognitive process, in which
vififiipz is here seen to be a key factor. It appears at the beginning of the
sentence because it is a prerequisite to every stage in the cognitive process.
The sensory event, phassa, which gives rise to feeling, does not occur
simply because of the proximity, or, to give phassa its literal meaning,
because of the contact of eye and visible form: vin"n"a'yz has to be present at
the preliminary stage of the process. When phassa, the sensory event,
subsequently gives rise to feeling, this is then identified by safin"i. This is
then followed by discursive thought (reasoning, vitakka) and the process of
seeing things as manifold, as discussed above. It is the function of vin"n"iv
to enable us to be aware of each of these aspects of the cognitive process.