Awareness in Buddhist Meditation

36
covered by the term ‘physical sensation’ (kāya-vedanā). Apart from
physical sensation there is still its mental counterpart, when the
mind as the sixth sense experiences the mental sensation of thought
in its many forms of perception, ideation, consciousness, which will
be dealt with hereafter. Thus we shall adhere to the term ‘sensation’,
being the function of all the senses, whereas ‘feeling’ is taken as the
experience of touch only. Even contact is of as many kinds as there
are senses and sensations. In fact, there must be contact (phassa)
before a sensation (vedanā) can become a perception (saññā), an
idea (saṅkhāra) and a conscious thought (viññāṇa). About these
latter ones, again later, for here we are dealing with awareness of
sensation (vedanānupassanā).
A sensation (vedanā) then arises in the senses, when there is
a contact of the outer world with the inner senses. Such contact
(phassa) is of the nature of the sense-organ; and thus physical contact
need not be only that of touch. Sight, for instance, is not a
physical of a distant mountain with the eye-ball; but a reflection
is formed on the retina at the back of the eye-ball. It is then the
light penetrating the lens of the eye, and projecting a picture of
the object. This picture is received as in a photographic camera,
inverted while the light rays pass through the lens. This picture is
now received by the organ and passed on by the optical nerve to
that particular section of the brain, where it is perceived as a visible
object. Then the brain takes over and proceeds to construct an
image (now upside up) as a concept thereof.
Reception, perception and conception are then the stages
through which the sensation passes to become a thought, recognition,
memory, with all the nuances of attraction, repulsion, storing,
rejecting, appropriation, opposition, which from the structure and
function of the ‘I’-concept. Now, the awareness of this process of
reception in the senses becoming a sensation can take place only
in ‘bare attention’, seeing sensation ‘only as sensation’. What does
that mean?