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Meditation and unity of consciousness: a perspective
from Buddhist epistemology
Monima Chadha
Published online: 21 May 2013
#Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
Abstract The paper argues that empirical work on Buddhist meditation has an
impact on Buddhist epistemology, in particular their account of unity of conscious-
ness. I explain the Buddhist account of unity of consciousness and show how it
relates to contemporary philosophical accounts of unity of consciousness. The con-
temporary accounts of unity of consciousness are closely integrated with the discus-
sion of neural correlates of consciousness. The conclusion of the paper suggests a
new direction in the search for neural correlates of state consciousness or creature
consciousness.
Keywords Unity of consciousness .Buddhist model of mind .Neural correlates
of consciousness
Introduction
In the last decade, the sciences of the mind research have witnessed an exponential
rise in the empirical studies of Buddhist meditation. This growth of interest in
Buddhist meditation has been brought about by the integration of Buddhist mindful-
ness mediation into mainstream medicine and science. This engagement of mind
sciences with Buddhist philosophy is promising, but it must be understood that
meditation practices are nested in a wider sorteriological and psychological frame-
work in Buddhism. Recently, an issue of Contemporary Buddhism has been dedicat-
ed to understanding the interaction between contemporary science and practice of
Phenom Cogn Sci (2015) 14:111–127
DOI 10.1007/s11097-013-9316-0
I am grateful to anonymous referees of this journal for comments on an earlier version of this paper.
Present Address:
M. Chadha (*)
Department of Philosophy, School of Philosophical, Historical and International Studies, Arts Faculty,
Monash University, PO Box 11A, Wellington Road, Clayton, VIC 3800, Australia
e-mail: Monima.Chadha@monash.edu
Buddhist mindfulness meditation and ancient meditative practices that are tradition-
ally associated with a specific philosophical and epistemological orientation (edited
by Williams and Kabat-Zinn 2011). This is timely, but we can go further. The much
welcome scientific study of Buddhist meditation is likely to further our understanding
of Buddhist theory of mind and epistemology, and open up new ways in which it
might interact with contemporary conceptions of mind and consciousness. This paper
explores one such interaction between contemporary philosophy of mind and
Buddhist philosophy of mind, and how it might be informed by recent empirical
studies of Buddhist meditation. In addition, it gives the reader a glimpse into the
epistemological framework and theory of mind that underlies Buddhist meditation in
order to clarify some misconceptions of the practice.
The Buddhist practices of meditation are primarily designed to induce desired
changes in one’s cognitive and emotional states to enable spiritual progress. These
practices derive their importance from the central aim of Buddhist practice which is to
reduce and ultimately eliminate suffering. Almost all Buddhists share the belief that
mental afflictions, e.g. greed, hate, delusion, etc., are the root cause of suffering and
must be annihilated to eliminate suffering. The belief that elimination of mental
afflictions requires a psychological transformation which is aided by meditative
practices is also shared by all Buddhists. The differences among the various
Buddhist schools and traditions set in because there is a diversity of opinions among
the Buddhists as to the precise nature of afflictions to be eliminated, the desired
changes in one’s cognitive and emotional states, and the best method for
accomplishing spiritual progress. These differences follow from differences in the
various conceptions of mind and mental states espoused by different traditions within
Buddhism. There is, thus, no Buddhist theory of mind; rather Buddhism is a plural
tradition which encompasses many different schools and theories of the mind evolv-
ing over centuries. This paper discusses some ideas from Yo g ācāra
1
Buddhist theory
of mind in an attempt to show how it might help advance contemporary research into
consciousness. Furthermore, this also shows that Yo g ācāra theory of mind is not just
of historical but also of systematic interest; scholars of Indian thought, contemporary
philosophers, and scientists stand to benefit much from an engagement.
This paper focuses on the attempts of the early Yogācāra philosophers who
postulated a repository consciousness (ālaya-vijñāna), akin to what we might under-
stand as a continually evolving underlying sentience that accompanies the mental
stream that encompasses the entire life of an individual. Literally, ‘ālaya’means
‘home’,‘receptacle’or ‘store’, and thus ālaya-vijñāna is also sometimes referred to as
storehouse consciousness. Some interpreters, like Schmithausen, Waldron and
Powers, explain the Yogācāra notion as a subliminal mind that carries along in it
seeds of karmic potentials and latent dispositions. This interpretation, however, raises
serious questions for if it not a manifest awareness, how can it be said to be a form of
consciousness at all? In response to this question, Dreyfus argues that the mental
1
Yog ācāra is an important school within the Abhidharma traditions which arose in India at the beginning
of the third century BCE and which have many well-known Tibetan offshoots. Abhidharma traditions
represent the first attempts in Buddhism to develop systematic, analytically rigorous and terminologically
precise accounts of the content and character of experience, and a rigorous metaphysics of mind and mental
states. The Yog ācāra school emerged about the fourth century CE and is generally taken to represent the
mature Abhidharma view.
112 M. Chadha
processes within the purview of ālaya-vijñāna “… may be outside the ordinary forms
of awareness, but they are not in principle removed from phenomenological enquiry.
Hence, they can be thought of as being forms of awareness, rather than totally
unconscious”(2011, p. 143). According to Dreyfus, the Yogācāra notion of s ālaya-
vijñāna points to a basic level of awareness which is not typically identified as manifest
awareness, but it is wrong to think of it as completely non-conscious. He argues that in
the eyes of Yogācāra philosophers the separation between the conscious and the non-
conscious is a matter of degree. Thus, he translates ālaya-vijñāna as ‘basic conscious-
ness’rather than subliminal awareness. For Dreyfus, “The basic consciousness is the
baseline of consciousness, the passive level out of which more active and manifest forms
of awareness arise in accordance with the implicit preferential patterns that structure
emotionally and cognitively this most basic level of awareness”(2011, p. 144). For the
purposes of this paper, I follow Dreyfus’interpretation of ālaya-vijñāna and use the term
‘basic consciousness’as an adequate equivalent in English. In Section 2below, I briefly
chart the relevant Yogācāra reasons that led to the postulation of basic consciousness.
This discussion of the Yogācāra texts will give us an occasion to see why this interpre-
tation is to be preferred. It must be noted that Dreyfus’interpretation shows that the
Buddhist notion of ālaya-vijñāna is akin to the notion of ‘lived experience’in Western
phenomenology and an object of interest to neurophenomenologists. In a recent article,
Thompson et al. (2005)explainthenotionof‘lived experience’in the following way:
[A]ccording to phenomenology, lived experience comprises pre-reflective, pre-
cognitive, and affectively valenced mental states. These states are subjectively
lived through, and thus have an experiential or phenomenal character, but their
contents are not thematized. These states are also necessarily states of pre-
reflective self-awareness (they have first-personal givenness), otherwise they do
not qualify as conscious at all. Although not explicitly accessed in focal
attention, reflection, introspection, and verbal report, they are accessible in
principle: they are the kind of states that can become available to attention,
reflection, introspection, and verbal report. …Of particular concern to
neurophenomenology is the process whereby implicit, unthematized, and in-
transitively lived through aspects of experience can become thematized and
verbally described, and thereby made available in the form of intersubjective,
first-person data for neuroscientific research on consciousness.
2
This basic consciousness is first introduced as a theoretical posit (an unobservable
construct) to explain observable phenomenon, viz. the continuity of consciousness
through deep meditative states in which all conscious activity is said to have halted.
To justify that this explanation in terms of basic consciousness has theoretical merit
and is not just a specific solution to a specific problem, Yog ācāra philosophers argued
2
Neurophenomenology might seem to be the obvious research program to pursue for the project here. But I
hesitate to do so since I have some concerns about the methodology. Neurophenomenology begins with the
hypothesis that the conscious subject plays an unavoidable role in characterising the explanandum of
consciousness through first-person descriptive reports. Neurophenomenologists acknowledge that as a first
step in this programme there is a need to provide better descriptions or models of first-person data. They
claim that only phenomenological methods of Husserl and his followers can provide this. But it is unclear
how the method of deep phenomenology differs from careful introspection. This and other concerns about
the research program have been raised in T. J. Bayne (2004).
Meditation and unity of consciousness 113
that basic consciousness also solves the apparently unrelated problems of the conti-
nuity of karma, the unity of consciousness, memory, recollection, etc. Such kinds of
explanations have clearly played an important role in science. Paradigmatic examples
include Mendel’s genetic theory originally postulated genes to explain traits inherited
by offspring. However, now we know that genes can tell us about blood type, physical
characteristics, genetic disorders, diseases that we may develop later in life, our ancestral
lineage, lifespan, and more. Such evidence increases the initial credence we might give
to the original theory. This will be the aim of Section 2. However, first in Section 1,I
briefly explain the contemporary formulation of the ‘unity of consciousness’problem
and its significance in the search for neural correlates of consciousness. And last in
Section 3, I will show that a combination Yo g ācāra notion of basic consciousness and
neuroscientific research on Open Monitoring meditation may offer useful insights to
further the search for a philosophically coherent account of unity of consciousness and
the neural correlates of creature (or state) consciousness.
This project may sound implausible to some Buddhists since the Yogācāra (and the
Abhidharma more generally) are not interested in explaining the unity of conscious-
ness; rather, they are interested in explaining the dynamic processes of consciousness
and cognition. However, the Yogācāra (and the Abhidharma more generally) philos-
opher aims to explain (or explain away) the phenomenal aspects of experience, e.g.
how come the continuous flow of consciousness presents perceptually distinct objects
in experience, how can we explain memory and recollection, etc. The diachronic
unity of consciousness is explained away as an illusion, but the phenomenal syn-
chronic unity of experiences is explained by basic consciousness (see Proofs 2 and 6
discussed below in Section 2). This will define the scope of the problem for this
paper: how can we account for the phenomenal synchronic unity of consciousness?
3
Section 1: what is problem of unity of consciousness?
In recent years, the phenomenal synchronic unity of consciousness thesis has as-
sumed centre stage because of its close connection with a major focus of cognitive
neurosciences research: the search for neural correlates of consciousness (henceforth,
NCC). Bayne spells out the unity thesis thus: Necessarily, for any conscious subject
of experience (S) and any time (t), the simultaneous conscious states that Shas at t
will be subsumed by a single conscious state—the subject’s total conscious state
3
Given the scope of the problem, we can ignore the work of authors like Mary K. Colvin and Michael S.
Gazzinga, Thomas Nagel, Susan Hurley, Sydney Shoemaker, Barry Dainton, Michael Tye, etc. They are
interested in offering a generalised account of unity of consciousness which covers both the synchronic and
diachronic unity. The case of diachronic continuity, however, imposes more complex constraints, and these
additional constraints make it very hard, if not impossible, to give a successful account of unity that applies
to both cases. Gazzinga, for example, proposes left brain ‘interpreter’thesis (Gazzinga 2000), according to
which the language-rich left hemisphere has an interpretive capacity that tries to find coherent explanation
for events that occur in the world and for our emotional and behavioural reactions to those events. Though
the ‘interpreter’thesis grew out of research on split-brain patients, Gazzinga argues that the inclination to
seek coherent explanations is a general human tendency. This interpreter based in the left hemisphere is the
“glue that keeps our story unified and creates our sense of being as a coherent, rational agent (Gazzinga
2000, p. 1320)”. Such and other generalised accounts unity of consciousness are beyond the scope of this
paper.
114 M. Chadha
(Bayne 2010, p. 16). This instantaneous unity, according to Searle, is essential to and
is part of the definition of consciousness because we cannot make sense of the
qualitativeness and subjectivity of consciousness without this particular form of unity
(Searle 2000, p. 562). Simply put, the unity thesis is that all conscious experiences of
a subject at a given point in time are unified. As I am typing this paper on the
computer, I am conscious of my feet on the ground, my fingers tapping the keyboard,
words appearing on the screen, the temperature in my office, the noise in the corridor
and so in. All these conscious experiences are in my consciousness in the present.
Both Searle and Bayne favour a mereological definition of unity: Two states are
unified if they are subsumed by a larger conscious state (or part of a unified conscious
field in Searle’s terms). Furthermore, both Searle and Bayne hold that the phenomenal
unity thesis implies a structural constraint on theories of consciousness. In Bayne
words, “[C]onsciousness is fundamentally holistic: there are no mechanisms respon-
sible for phenomenal binding because the unity of consciousness is ensured by the
very mechanisms that generate consciousness in the first place”(2010, p. 247). Searle
suggests that holistic theory of consciousness is implicit in the hypothesis that we
have a unified field of consciousness (2000, p. 574), whereas Bayne is more cautious
and makes a plausible case against atomism (2010, see Ch. 10). Thus, atomistic
theories are ruled out as contenders for NCC because they cannot account for the fact
that phenomenal experiences are unified.
There are two methodological approaches to finding the NCC in the literature on
neuroscience: the content based approach is directed at finding the neural correlates
of conscious contents (faces, colours, etc.), and the state based approach is directed at
finding the neural correlates of a creature’s overall state of consciousness (being
awake, dreaming, etc.). Searle argues that the content-based approach is misguided
because it ignores the necessary conscious background that exists before particular
conscious states of seeing a face, for example, come into being. The content-based
approach can never get to consciousness itself. To do so, we need to conceive of
consciousness as a unified field, a kind of basal background awareness that goes on as
long as we are awake (Searle 2000, p. 573). Georges Dreyfus (2011) suggests that
Searle’s idea of a basal background awareness is very close to the Yo g ācāra concept
of basic consciousness in the sense that both views offer it as an explanation of the
phenomena of unity of consciousness. In the next section, I take this suggestion
further to investigate whether this theoretical posit in Yo gācāra philosophy can offer a
new insight in the search for a unified phenomenal field and its NCC.
Other philosophers and neuroscientists, however, do not share Searle’s enthusiasm
for the concept of basal background awareness because his conception suggests that
there is an empty field of background awareness which gets populated by particular
contents. Those with a phenomenological bent dismiss such an empty field out of
hand; for them pre-reflective awareness is just minimal self-consciousness in virtue of
which my experiences are given to me as mine. For example, Gallagher and Zahavi
note that, “[T]here is no pure or empty field of consciousness upon which the
concrete experiences subsequently make their entry. The field of experiencing is
nothing apart from the specific experiences”(Gallagher & Zahavi 2010). Others,
however, are more circumspect; they do not want to rule out empty phenomenal fields
as impossible, but they doubt that such a phenomenon exists (Hohwy 2009, p. 432).
Even if it were to exist, Bayne argues that it does not help with the problem of finding
Meditation and unity of consciousness 115
minimally sufficient NCCs (2007, p. 16). Bayne’s scepticism rests on the fact that the
“[m]ere activation of one’s phenomenal field does not suffice to make one conscious,
for there is nothing it is like to have a phenomenal field unless one’s phenomenal field
is modulated in a particular way”(2007, p. 16). Hohwy’s concern about the empty
conscious field stems from the worry that it does not lend itself easily to scientific
investigation. He writes, “[I] doubt an utterly empty conscious field even exists (the
best bet may be the kinds of states reported by master meditators); and even if it did
exist it seems an excessively difficult topic to investigate …” (Hohwy 2009, p. 432).
His suggestion that the best bet for an empty conscious field might be the kind of
states reported by master meditators needs further clarification and is one I will take
up in Section 3.
I am sympathetic to these concerns about the unified field, but I think the problem
arises because of Searle’s conceptualisation of the unified field as an empty conscious
field. Those who favour the state-based approach in experimental neuroscience work with
an alternative conceptualisation of this approach according to which the contribution of
content to the overall conscious state is kept constant across conditions, whilst the overall
conscious state is intervened on (e.g. vegetative state patients vs. controls). Hohwy (2009)
argues that this conceptualisation has problems: it can be over-inclusive and has oddly
contradictory findings (Hohwy 2009, p. 432). These methodological problems cannot be
overcome and so Hohwy suggests that further progress in the search for NCC requires that
something new be brought into the study of consciousness.
Such a new approach can come from the Yogācāra analysis of consciousness. At the
outset, it should be clear that even though the Yogācāra concept of basic consciousness
is introduced below in the context of a meditative state, it should not be confused with
pure consciousness events. The notion of pure consciousness event was first introduced
by Forman in the literature as a state of a subject who is awake, conscious but has no
object or content for consciousness—no thoughts, emotions, sensations or awareness of
any external phenomena (Forman 1986, p. 49). A pure consciousness event is typically
construed as a kind of mystical consciousness which allegedly consists of an “emptying
out by a subject of all experiential content and phenomenological qualities including
concepts, thoughts, sense perceptions and sensuous images”(Gellman 2011). The
Yogācāra notion of basic consciousness, as we shall see, should not be conceptualised
as an empty field at all. Rather, it provides a new model for a unified field of
consciousness that provides the cognitive backdrop to individual manifest states of
awareness. This is addressed next, in the context of Abhidharma concept of mind.
4
Section 2: the basic consciousness
The Buddhist analysis of experience reveals that what we perceive as a temporally
extended, uninterrupted flow of phenomena is, in fact, a rapidly occurring sequence
of causally connected events each with its particular discrete object: much the same
4
In discussing the mind within the Abhidharma context, it is important to note that Abhidharma is a plural
tradition that emerged in about the third century CE and include a large variety of Schools within this
tradition. So, there is no one view that can qualify as ‘the Abhidharma view of mind’. In this paper, I will be
attending to a mature Abhidharma view of the mental stream or mind, namely the Yo g ācāra view which
arose around the fourth century CE.
116 M. Chadha
way a rapidly projected sequence of juxtaposed discrete images is perceived as a
movie. In parallel to their account of experience, the Abhidharma traditions model the
mind as a causally interdependent series of manifest and unmanifest cognitive events
in a no-self mode.
5
A key thesis of Abhidharma philosophy of mind is that experience
is constituted by psychologically primitive processes that lie below the level of
intentionality. They hold that there are five universal factors that accompany every
conscious mental state, namely, contact (sparśa), attention (manasikāra), feeling
(vedanā), ideation (sa jñā) and volition (cetanā). Ganeri explains the interplay of
these states in the constitution of experience succinctly:
The great elegance and attraction of the [Abhidharma] theory lies in the fact that
simultaneously it recognises the irreducibility of the phenomenal character of
experience, it admits the joint contribution of sensation and conceptualisation in
the constitution of experience, it acknowledges that experience is, as it were,
saturated with affect, that appraisal is built into the fabric of experience, it
maintains that every experience has, as a basic ingredient, a capacity or
tendency to combine in various ways with various others, and it makes the
attention intrinsic to experience (Ganeri 2012, p. 127).
The canonical Abhidharma account of mind reduces it to fundamental atoms consti-
tuted by six kinds of awareness or consciousness (vijñānas). Five of these correspond to
the five sense organs (sight, touch, hearing, smell and taste) and the sixth is a mental
cognition (mano-vijñāna). This picture of consciousness is counterintuitive to many
ordinary facts of experience, e.g. phenomenal unity of experiences, sense of self, the
feeling of continuity, etc. In addition, there are also the systematic and exegetical
contexts within the Abhidharma philosophy of consciousness which demand the pos-
tulation of something more than these six kinds of consciousness: for example, a
connecting link between conscious awarenesses before and after deep meditation,
wherein all manifest conscious states are supposed to have come to a halt; the phenom-
enon of memory and recollection; the issue of karman and its fruition, etc.
(Schmithausen 1987,pp.4–6). The ancient Yog ācāra philosophers introduced basic
consciousness in response to these limitations. These theoretical reasons for the intro-
duction of basic consciousness are listed in the Proof portion of the Yog ācārabhūmi.
6
Asaṅga, the noted Yogācāra philosopher and author—or at least the compiler—of
Yogācārabhūmi
7
, expanded the list of original six conscious states by adding two
more kinds of consciousness to it: the basic or storehouse consciousness (ālaya-
vijñāna) and afflictive mentation or ego-consciousness (kliśa-manas). The first is a,
constant and neutral, baseline consciousness that serves as a repository of all basic
habits, tendencies and karmic latencies accumulated by the individual, providing
some degree of continuity to mental states. The second can be thought of as an innate
5
The no-self theory is the cornerstone of Buddhist philosophy.
6
Schmithausen (1987, pp. 3–6) lists 14 systematic and six exegetical reasons as having a decisive impact
on the introduction of basic consciousness.
7
Yog ācārabhūmi is recognised as the authoritative text for the Yogācāra tradition, but it was not written by
a single author. It is a compiled collection of works written over the centuries. The later sections of
Yog ācārabhūmi were written after the Sa dhinirmocana Sūtra. This explains why the discussion of ālaya-
vijñāna in this section has the Sūtra material sandwiched the material from the earlier and the later sections
of the Yog ācārabhūmi.
Meditation and unity of consciousness 117
sense of self arising from the apprehension of basic consciousness as being a self
(Dreyfus and Thompson 2007, p. 112). This self, however, is not an ontological
reality for Buddhists: it is merely a conceptual fabrication resulting from the
(mis)apprehension of basic consciousness.
Not all Buddhist philosophers are enthusiastic about these two new kinds of
consciousness, especially the basic consciousness that seems to allow a backdoor
entry to the idea of a continuing self. One critic describes it as a ‘conceptual
monstrosity’in the Buddhist scheme (Conze 1973, p. 133). But there are others
who characterise basic consciousness as “[t]he most comprehensive and systematic of
the many innovative ideas proffered within the intellectual milieu of fourth–sixth
centuries CE Buddhist India”(Waldron 2003, p. 92).
According to Schmithausen (1987, pp. 12, 18) the term ‘ālaya-vijñāna’is
introduced in what he calls the ‘initial passage’in the Basic Section of the
Yogācārabhūmi. In the initial passage basic consciousness is described as a
kind of unmanifest consciousness that persists within the material sense-
faculties during the highest meditative state (‘nirodha samāpatti’, literally
translated as the ‘attainment of extinction’, signifying the extinction of percep-
tion and feeling). Basic consciousness contains within it the seeds of the
forthcoming manifest conscious states that are bound to arise after a person’s
emergence from deep meditation. This highest meditative state is characterised
by temporary suspension of all consciousness and mental activity, but at the
same time it is distinguished from death in that the life-force is not exhausted,
the vital heat is not extinguished, the faculties are unimpaired and some
consciousness (citta) is retained in the body. The early Ābhidharmikas struggled
to explain this seeming contradiction in the characterisation of nirodha
samāpatti.TheYogācāra resolve this difficulty through the postulation of this
new kind of consciousness, the basic consciousness, distinguished from the six
manifest cognitive awarenesses (‘prav ti-vijñānas’—the ordinary perceptions and
mental cognition) excluded in the highest meditative state.
The initial passage mentioned above introduces basic consciousness as being
present in the material sense-faculties, situating it, therefore, in the body. The
Yogācāra, however, must go beyond this initial characterisation if indeed they
have to succeed in transforming the notion of “[t]he Seeds of mind lying
hidden in corporeal matter [the earlier Sautāntrika view] to a new form of
mind proper”(Schmithausen 1987, p. 30). Basic consciousness, as introduced in
the initial passage of Yogācārabhūmi, does not qualify as consciousness by any
Abhidharma standards, according to which the characteristic feature of con-
sciousness is its ability to cognize objects (vijñāna literally is ‘that which
makes known’). Vasubandhu (Abhidharmakosa, I: 30) categorically defines
consciousness as "the discrete cognition [of objects]". Furthermore, the
Ābhidharmikas also maintained that every mental state is the result of, and accom-
panied by, five mental factos (contact, feeling, ideation, volition and attention) men-
tioned above. This seems to be in conflict with the initial passage of Yog ācārabhūmi that
introduces basic consciousness for the explicit purpose of mental continuity through the
highest levels of meditative states, which are expressly stated to be without attention or
affect. Yogācāra philosophers address these concerns in the Sa dhinirmocana Sūtra and
later sections of Yo g ācārabhūmi.
118 M. Chadha
In the Saṃdhinirmocana Sūtra (V) basic consciousness is introduced as the “mind
with all the seeds”. Ordinary perceptions (e.g. seeing, hearing, etc.) depend on basic
consciousness in that it provides the substratum for the sense faculties and also fuels
them (Waldron 2003, p. 95). The Sūtra further indicates that basic consciousness is,
in turn, fuelled or seeded by the objects of ordinary perceptions and reflection. There
is, therefore, a two-way dynamic between basic consciousness and ordinary percep-
tions: basic consciousness insofar as it contains seeds or predispositions produces
conscious states (sometimes in association with sense faculties and their objects) say,
of seeing a mango, which, in turn, accumulate further seeds, say, desire for a mango,
into it. Thus, the Sūtra presents a dynamic model of the mind, wherein conscious
perceptions and other mental dispositions are tied together in a continuous feedback
cycle (Waldron 2003, pp. 96–97). There are two points that need to be emphasised in
the development of the concept Sūtra (V). First, it is postulated as consciousness
encompassing the entire life of an individual entering the mother’s womb at the time
of conception and leaving the body at death. Thus, it continues not just through the
highest meditative states where there is no manifest mental activity but also through
other so-called unconscious states like deep sleep, swoon, moments before death, and
perhaps even the minimally conscious and vegetative states. And, second, basic
consciousness is connected to our sense of embodiment and described as pervading
the entire body, rather than being present just in the sense faculties as originally
hypothesised in the initial passage. This is not just to suggest that basic consciousness
is housed in the body in which the seeds (simply dispositions) of forthcoming mental
states lie dormant during highest meditative states and other unconscious states.
Rather, the point is that there is subtle awareness of one’s embodied existence.
Dreyfus (2011) suggests that mental states within the scope of basic consciousness
can be thought of as forms of hidden awareness, rather than totally unconscious
states. Dreyfus makes the point by using an example. When one is walking, one has
an implicit awareness of one’s body, even though it is passive and inchoate. But if one
loses balance and starts falling, suddenly one is explicitly aware of one’s own body as
falling and tries to regain one’s balance. Before this time, one is not completely
unaware of one’s body. Rather, as Dreyfus puts it, “I had a subliminal awareness that
encompassed my whole body, a sense of its aliveness, its occupation of a certain
space, its movements, its relation to its immediate environment, etc. It is out of this
dim, and yet patterned, space of awareness that my falling is apprehended. I am
surprised because I had a sense that my body was on firm ground and yet I am
suddenly falling. This is when my sense of the body emerges from a subliminal level
of awareness in sharp focus. This background awareness, which is described by some
phenomenologists as operative orientation, seems to be not unlike the Yogācāra idea
of a basic consciousness, a subliminal and yet structured space of awareness that
contains all the predispositions, and provides the cognitive backdrop to more man-
ifest forms of awareness”(Dreyfus 2011, pp. 144–145). Dreyfus recommends that the
right way to think about Buddhist notions of consciousness is in terms of degrees of
awareness or consciousness rather than the simple conscious/unconscious distinction.
The sense of embodied existence is beyond the ken of ordinary awareness, but it is
not beyond awareness in not so ordinary circumstances.
The Saṃdhinirmocana Sūtra also addresses the question about the object of basic
consciousness. According the Sūtra (VIII 37.1) basic consciousness arises “… subtle
Meditation and unity of consciousness 119
external objects: it arises as a perception of an indiscernible, stable surrounding
world”(Waldron 2008, p. 120).
8
In other words, basic consciousness is a continuing
background awareness of one’s immediate environment. This not only provides a
much needed object for basic consciousness to qualify as a consciousness but also
marks a major departure from the traditional Buddhist model of conscious awareness,
according to which ordinary perceptions occur sequentially depending on nothing
more than the contact between the sense faculty and its object. Since the awareness of
the surrounding world is always present, it must occur simultaneously with other
ordinary perceptions which, as we have noted above, in turn, depend on and are
supported by basic consciousness. Once this ‘single awareness at each moment’
requirement was abandoned, the Yog ācāras accepted multiple awarenesses, and
indeed that all six kinds of manifest awarenesses could be simultaneously present.
In the later developments of Yog ācārabhūmi, in the Proof Portion and the Prav tti
Portion of its Ālaya Treatise, basic consciousness is posited as perceiving two
objects: one outward and the other inward. In the Proof Portion, ordinary perceptions
are stated to be inevitably accompanied by a perception of one’s immediate environ-
ment and also by a continuous perception of one’s own body (the basis of personal
existence or the sense of ‘I’). In the Prav tti Portion, the notion of ‘basis of personal
existence’is cashed out in terms of background awareness of more than just the
material body; it also includes the awareness of the predispositions (cognitive and
affective conditionings persisting from the past). In fact, in this portion of the text the
perception of the surrounding world is secondary: a by-product of the primary
consciousness of the body. This is illustrated in an analogy of the flame (of a lamp)
which arises inwardly on the basis of wick (body) and fat (predispositions) to
illuminate its own basis, but also at the same time illuminates the surrounding
external space. Similarly, basic consciousness reflexively illuminates its own basis
(body and predispositions) and the surrounding world. The suggestion that the body
is the primary object of basic consciousness seems natural if we think back to the idea
suggested in Sūtra (V) that the material body and the predispositions are appropriated
by, and sustain the development of, basic consciousness.
Basic consciousness is said to arise with its own characteristic objects—the
internal and the surrounding environment—as well as omnipresent mental factors
(attention, appraisal, etc.), much like ordinary perceptions. The Prav tti Portion
explains that basic consciousness is accompanied by an indifferent affect; feelings
which are neither painful nor pleasant. However, other factors like attention are said
to be ‘undiscerned’or imperceptible ‘even for the wise’(Waldron 2003, p. 109). A
particularly illuminating analogy is offered in the texts: just as a glow-worm flying by
the day, though not lacking in luminosity, is yet not visible because of the light of the
sun, so also the omnipresent mental factors accompany basic consciousness and even
though may not present themselves distinctly, they are, nevertheless, always present.
This suggests that it is erroneous to interpret basic consciousness as the unconscious
mind and draw parallels with Freudian and Jungian psychology (Jiang 2004). For this
8
The Sūtra in the original reads “asa vidita-sthira-bhājana-vijñapti”.The term ‘asa vidita’is translated by
Waldron as ‘indiscernible’, but it also translated as unrecognisable, imperceptible or as difficult to perceive.
The point is that there is continuous (stable) perception of the surrounding world. And since it is always
there, it is often missed. So it is ordinarily indiscernible and thus difficult to perceive, but in special
circumstances as in OM meditation, it can be perceived.
120 M. Chadha
reason, I favour the interpretation by Dreyfus (2011), who suggests that mental states
within the scope of basic consciousness can be thought of as forms of background
awareness, rather than totally unconscious states.
The Proof Portion lists six proofs which are basically concerned with two sets of
problems: (a) the problem of explaining the immediate succession of divergent states
of mind (e.g. equanimity followed by anger) and (b) the simultaneous occurrence of
various ordinary perceptions and mental processes. I will focus on the second set
since it is directly related to unity of consciousness issues in contemporary philoso-
phy of mind. Proof 3 claims that if ordinary perceptions (e.g. seeing blue) and
concomitant mental awareness (e.g. ‘that is blue’) do not arise simultaneously, the
latter would lack the clarity (and vividness) that is present in immediate awareness.
The marked difference in the phenomenology of immediate perceptions and memory
experiences could not be explained unless the visual sensation of blue and resulting
mental awareness, ‘that is blue’occur simultaneously, rather than successively. The
claim about clarity (of mental awareness) is explained by simultaneity of awareness
(the sensation of blue and the awareness that ‘that is blue’). But why does simulta-
neity of ordinary awareness require the postulation of a distinct form of basic
consciousness? The answer becomes obvious if we combine this argument in Proof
3with insights from Proofs 2 and 6which cite the example of phenomenally unified
multi-sensory experiences. Our ordinary experience involves simultaneous awareness
of many objects at the same time: seeing a steaming hot cup of coffee, smelling the
aroma of the coffee, lifting the cup in one’s hands and sensing the warmth on their
skin, desiring to drink the coffee, etc. These perceptions and cognitive awarenesses
arise in dependence on diverse sense faculties, their appropriate objects and attention.
The phenomenological sense that there is a single subject simultaneously undergoing
clear, though different, experiences at the same time cannot be explained without
postulating a form of consciousness that underlies and supports these multiple
experiences. And, insofar as basic consciousness appropriates the entire body and
underlies and supports the sense faculties, it provides the common substratum and
thus the source of phenomenal unity. The text argues that phenomenal synchronic
unity of experiences cannot be explained without postulating basic consciousness.
This completes my explication of the early Yogācāra concept of basic conscious-
ness and its relation to the body, self-awareness and other manifest cognitive aware-
nesses. It should be clear, however, that in dealing with this topic I have no pretension
of providing an exhaustive account of basic consciousness or a complete account of
the process of evolution of this concept in Abhidharma literature. To sum up, basic
consciousness can be thought of as a background awareness of one’s own body
including the predispositions (cognitive and emotional predispositions from the past).
Such awareness is always present in the backdrop of every explicit conscious
awareness. As Dreyfus puts it, “[T]he basic consciousness is the baseline of
consciousness, the passive level out of which the more active and manifest
forms of awareness arise in accordance with the implicit preferential patterns
that structure emotionally and cognitively this most basic level of awareness”
(Dreyfus 2011, p. 144). Basic consciousness is, like everything else in the
Ābhidharmic universe, a series of moments; it continues as a homogenous
perception as its object is always present and does not change. This is the
reason why it goes unnoticed.
Meditation and unity of consciousness 121
Recall that basic consciousness is best thought of as background awareness—subtle
but indistinct perception—of cognitive and emotional factors and bodily states that
modulate the phenomenal field. These factors play a role in the generation of ordinary
conscious awarenesses and thus meet Bayne’s criteria that the unity of consciousness is
ensured by the processes that generate consciousness in the first place. A mere descrip-
tion of this kind is unlikely to satisfy a philosopher with a scientific bent of mind—that
there is such a conscious field modulated by a subject’s bodily states and cognitive and
emotional dispositions from the past is far from a notion that can be investigated
scientifically. However, recent research in neuroscience of meditation suggests ways
to scientifically delineate basic consciousness.
Section 3: scientific investigation of basic consciousness
In Section 2, I argued that ālaya-vijñāna or basic consciousness can be thought of as
background awareness of cognitive and emotional factors and bodily states that
modulate the phenomenal field. The question I want to address in this section is:
Can basic consciousness or be investigated scientifically? Buddhist scholars and
neuroscientists have made joint efforts to find an operational definition of Open
Monitoring meditative practices, sometimes also called mindfulness meditation for
the scientific investigation: Open Monitoring meditation is the non-reactive monitor-
ing of the stream of experience, primarily as a means to recognise the nature of
cognitive and emotional patterns that work automatically behind the scenes to
interpret sensory data (Lutz, Dunne, & Davidson 2007; Lutz et al. 2008). A scientific
study of these factors may be a useful first step for exploring the Buddhist idea of
ālaya-vijñāna or basic consciousness. It must, however, be noted at the outset that the
primary aim of the scientific studies of meditation is to study the positive effects of
meditation on mental health and well-being. Nevertheless, the theoretical underpin-
nings of the Open Monitoring style meditation suggest that it might be instrumental in
delineating basic consciousness or the unified field of consciousness.
OM meditation practice, like all other forms of meditation, begins with Focused
Attention (FA) training to calm the mind and reduce distractions. In the transition
from the FA to the OM state, the ‘effortful’selection of an object as the primary focus
is gradually replaced by the ‘effortless’sustaining of an awareness without any
explicit focus. However, OM meditation should not be understood to be objectless
meditation, it is not contemplation of an empty field. The idea is to cultivate
awareness of the subjective character of experience and for that to happen one must
be having experiences. A central aim of OM practices is to gain a clear reflexive
awareness of the usually implicit features of one’s mental life: a sense of body, the
emotional tone, and the active cognitive schema. The awareness of these implicit
features enables one to transform one’s cognitive and emotional habits resulting in a
decrease in the forms of reactivity that create mental distress (Lutz et al. 2008,p.
164). OM meditation is thought to enhance meta-cognitive monitoring coupled with
an increase in the awareness of automatic cognitive and emotional interpretations,
thereby providing opportunities for cognitive flexibility and reappraisal resulting in
enduring changes in mental function, i.e. the developments of certain traits. For
example, intensive practice of OM meditation can be expected to reduce the
122 M. Chadha
propensity to ‘get stuck’on a target object and indulge in elaborate stimulus pro-
cessing and conceptual activity (Bishop et al. 2004; Chambers et al. 2009; Slagter et
al. 2011).
It must be noted that although the primary aim of the empirical studies of
meditation is to study the positive effects of meditation on mental health and well-
being, given the theoretical underpinnings of the OM style meditation, some of the
studies might be relevant for delineating basic consciousness. Basic consciousness
can be thought of as presenting a new conception of a unified phenomenal field
insofar as it is the repository of bodily representations and cognitive and emotional
patterns as the background factors that modulate the phenomenal field. OM medita-
tive states are aimed at gaining a clear awareness of the cognitive and emotional
factors that implicitly influence every conscious experience. These factors, together
with bodily representations, are precisely the primary objects of basic consciousness.
Thus, OM meditation can be instrumental in honing in onto the objects of basic
consciousness.
There is no scientific theory of meditation yet; the science of OM meditation, in
particular, is still in its infancy. However, it is an active area of research which aims to
address some of the following questions: which neural regions and circuits are
involved in OM meditation?, can we train the brain to be more Mindful?, can we
regulate our emotional and cognitive responses in OM?, and, what are the Neural
Correlates of OM Meditation? Below, I briefly sketch the tentative answers to these
questions given in the neuroscience literature. The answers to first and the last
question on this list are particularly relevant to our investigation.
OM meditation involves heightened awareness of the subjective features of an
experience at a given moment, such as its emotional tone. It is expected that OM
meditation engages processes involved in interoception (perception of internal bodily
responses). These processes rely on homeostatic meta-representations in the anterior
insula, somatosensory cortex and anterior cingulate cortices (Craig 2009). In a recent
study, Farb et al. (2007) found that participants who attended an 8-week OM-style
meditation course showed greater activity in this neural circuitry during a monitoring
state compared with a group of controls. In another study, a group of participants that
had undergone mindfulness training showed greater activation of the right insula
when being presented with sad movie clips (Farb et al. 2010). Another study by Grant
et al. (2011) using fMRI and a thermal pain paradigm showed that practitioners of
Zen and mindfulness meditation, in contrast to controls, reduce activity in executive,
evaluative and emotion areas during pain (prefrontal cortex, amygdala and hippo-
campus); meditators with the most experience showed the largest activation reduc-
tions. Also, simultaneously, meditators more robustly activated primary pain
processing regions (anterior cingulate cortex, thalamus and insula). These results
suggest a functional decoupling of the cognitive-evaluative and sensory-
discriminative dimensions of pain, possibly allowing practitioners to view painful
stimuli more neutrally.
The second question—Can we train the brain to be more Mindful?—is of partic-
ular interest to neuroscientists concerned with understanding the phenomenon of
neuroplasticity. OM style of meditation is associated with changes in brain’s physical
structure and cognitive functions both during meditation and during performance of
tasks that do not require meditation. A group of scientists at Harvard has shown that
Meditation and unity of consciousness 123
brain regions—the prefrontal cortex and right anterior insula—associated with atten-
tion, interoception and sensory processing are thicker in meditation participants than
matched controls (Lazar et al. 2005). Between-group differences in prefrontal cortical
thickness were most pronounced in older participants, suggesting that meditation
might offset age-related cortical thinning. Another cross-sectional study com-
paring grey-matter morphometry of the brains of experienced meditators and
controls showed that meditators had greater grey-matter concentration in the
right anterior insula (Hölzel et al. 2008). More recently, Luders and his team
have shown that OM-style meditation results in larger gyrification within the
left precentral gyrus, right fusiform gyrus, right cuneus, as well as in the left
and right anterior dorsal insula, which represent the global significance maxi-
mum (Luders et al. 2012).
Regarding the third question, OM-style meditation also encourages cognitive and
emotional flexibility by disengaging from elaborate processing of emotionally
charged data. Following participation in a mindfulness-based stress reduction course,
social anxiety patients presented with negative self-beliefs showed a quicker decrease
of activation in the amygdala as compared to earlier pre-course responses (Goldin and
Gross 2010). Slagter et al. (2007) found that OM meditation results in a decrease in
elaborate stimulus processing (the propensity to ‘get stuck’on an object) in a
longitudinal study measuring the performance of practitioners in attentional blink
task. Attentional blink phenomenon illustrates that the information processing capac-
ity of the brain is limited: when two targets T1 and T2, embedded in a rapid stream of
events, are presented in close temporal proximity, the second target is not often seen;
the blink is a result of competition between T1 and T2 for limited attentional
resources. The study found that after 3 months of intensive OM meditation there
was a reduction in the brain resource allocation to T1 which was associated with
improved detection of T2. These results provide support for the idea that one effect of
intensive training in OM meditation results in the development of efficient mecha-
nisms to enable cognitive flexibility in response to task demands. The researchers
also anticipate a similar improvement in the capacity to disengage from aversive
emotional stimuli to enable greater emotional flexibility.
Regarding the last question—on the neural correlates of meditation, various
studies show that the left fronto-parietal areas are selectively active in mindfulness-
based meditation and thus are plausibly involved in conscious access to sensory and
mental contents arising in the present moment. Furthermore, the evidence of the
involvement of the left fronto-parietal areas in OM meditation is consistent with
models emphasising a differentiation between consciousness and attention processes
(Raffone et al. 2007). Specifically, in the case of OM meditation they add “it suggests
that the form of reflective awareness in the present moment in mindfulness-based
meditation (Vipassana) may be regarded as higher-order access consciousness of
perceptual and thought contents, also including the metacognitive awareness of
mental operations subserving the emergence of those contents”(Raffone et al.
2007, p. 244) . The mental operations subserving the emergence are exactly the
cognitive and emotional factors that provide the background for perceptual and
thought contents. In addition, Raffone et al. note that they found de-activation in
the medial–orbitofrontal cortex [the region involved in encoding of reward (hedonic)
values] in mindfulness meditation which can be related to unselective open
124 M. Chadha
acceptance of arising mental content. The point is that such control of emotional
factors requires access to these factors in the first place. My suggestion is that OM
meditation practice can provide such access to expert meditators. Recently, Manna et
al. (2010) have shown that expert meditators control cognitive engagement in con-
scious processing of sensory-related thought and emotion contents by massive self-
regulation of fronto-parietal and insular areas in the left hemisphere. Their study also
suggests that a functional reorganization of brain activity patterns for focused atten-
tion and cognitive monitoring takes place with mental practice, and that meditation-
related neuroplasticity is crucially associated with a functional reorganization of
activity patterns in prefrontal cortex and in the insula. In the discussion of OM
meditation states, they specifically add, “Our evidence suggests that the monks might
control cognitive engagement and ‘broadcasting’in brain networks for conscious
access to sensory-related, thought and emotion contents, by massive self-regulation
of fronto-parietal and insular areas in the left hemisphere, in a meditation state-
dependent fashion”(Manna et al. 2010, p. 54).
The above discussion suggests that there is greater activation and long-term
change in the anterior insular cortex (AIC) and the prefrontal cortex in meditators
compared to controls. There is ample evidence in the neuroscience literature to
suggest that conscious perception is systematically associated with surges of activity
in the prefrontal cortex (Dehaene et al. 2006). The AIC has been considered as a hub
for autonomic, affective and cognitive integration (Damasio 2006/1994). In a recent
review, Craig has argued that the AIC is involved in the meta-representation of
interoception in the brain. This, in turn, points to the AIC’s involvement in all
subjective feelings which indicate a fundamental role for the AIC in conscious
awareness, as well as its potential as a neural correlate for consciousness (Craig
2009). This brief survey of the neuroscientific literature shows that OM-style med-
itation is correlated with increased activation and long-term changes of the prefrontal
cortex and anterior insular cortex. Thus, it is likely that these areas of the brain
support the awareness of the basic consciousness or awareness of cognitive and
emotional factors and bodily states that are in the background of every conscious
awareness. In line with Craig’s suggestion, I believe it is worth investigating further
whether the insula and prefrontal cortex are potential candidates for the neural
correlates of a unified, though modulated, phenomenal field.
To sum up, the Buddhist explanation for unity of consciousness in terms of
basic consciousness meets the structural constraints on a theory of conscious-
ness and the neuroscientific studies of OM meditation show that such a notion
can be investigated scientifically. Basic consciousness explains unity of con-
sciousness and functions as a background condition of conscious content. It
explains what it is like to be a conscious subject in terms of being a repository
of cognitive and emotional patterns that modulate the phenomenal field. Since
basic consciousness is delineated in OM-style meditation which is correlated
with activation of the insula and prefrontal cortex, I propose that the latter are
likely potential candidates for creature or state consciousness, as opposed to
content consciousness. In addition to this hypothesis, the paper offers an
argument to refute the belief held by some neuroscientists and philosophers
that the deepest states of Buddhist meditation involve contemplation of an
empty field.
Meditation and unity of consciousness 125
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