PACIFIC WORLD - The Institute of Buddhist Studies

362Pacific Worldriddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma” (Pinker, p. 60). On the otherhand, the forms that sentience takes as consciousness can, to some degree,be “explained” by the particular factors that support and maintain them.“Mind” I will use in the broad sense (more or less synonymously with“cognitive system”) to refer to both the conscious and unconscious aspectsof the personality/ego, encompassing “all those inner processes andconditions that shape and color consciousness, producing the uniquelandscapes of experience that characterize each moment of our lives”(Combs, Radiance, p. 23).14. See Hunt, p. 51.15. In Buddhist thought, human affective response includes a third, neutralcategory. I would argue that this is more a symptom of ordinary consciousnessthan indicative of a cognitively active category of associations. In otherwords, anything not labeled “good” or “bad” becomes neutral by default.An interesting (and existentially tragic) consequence of this is that most oflife becomes irrelevant.16. Following John Hick, “Reality” and “the Real” (with a capital “R”) areused to refer to reality as it is (Kant’s noumenal), as opposed to as it isexperienced from the perspective of ordinary consciousness.17. I use the term “energy” not in a scientific sense, but simply to refer to“whatever is” viewed without conceptual projections identifying it as aparticular thing imbued with substance.18. See Herbert V. Guenther, From Reductionism to Creativity: rDzogschenand the New Sciences of Mind (Boston: Shambhala, 1989), p. 203.19. Describing the world as “construction” is not meant to imply that it ismere projection or hallucination. As Daniel Dennett points out, the minddoes not have the information-processing capacity to generate an illusionas richly nuanced as the world of ordinary experience. Daniel ClementDennett, Consciousness Explained (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1991), p.7ff. In addition, pure solipsism is difficult to reconcile with the uncontrollable,unpredictable, and unpleasant aspects of life. Perception is radicallymisleading, but at the same time it is constrained by a noumenal Reality(“noumenal” from the perspective of ordinary consciousness). Perceptionprimarily functions to “skew” (through objectification, or reification) theexperience of that which is already given.20. Below I use “concept” or “construct” as inclusive categories for allthese terms.21. These more or less correspond to Kant’s categories. See Combs’ commentson L.R. Vanderrvert and the construction of our sense of “space/time” (Combs, Radiance, p. 66).22. “Perceptual duality” refers to the experience of a spatially localized