Mental Consciousness

"Viññana" (consciousness) is a word you often encounter in Buddhist teaching. You'll hear it in various contexts — eye-consciousness, ear-consciousness, nose-consciousness, tongue-consciousness, body-consciousness, and mental consciousness (mano-viññana).

How the Five Sense-Consciousnesses Form

Eye-consciousness refers to what is taken in through the eye organ. When light falls on the physical eye, an image forms on the retina — this is only raw data at a basic level. This data, through the optic nerve, generates a sensation in the brain. After that, the process of the mind's sense-bases takes place — this process is called the eye-base (cakkhāyatana). It is through this process of sense-bases that other functions of the mind combine, and perception (through interpretation) occurs. What is gained through this is called eye-consciousness. Ear, nose, tongue, and body consciousness are built in a similar way. For an arahant, this process of sense-bases does not occur — only the functioning of the sense-organs themselves remains.

Mental Consciousness — A Hidden Mechanism

Mental consciousness is a far more complex activity. It is something like the hidden character of a mafia boss — concealed, and not easy to see. It is a certain root activity that influences every nature, every pattern, and every habit present within the mind. The knowing of mental formations arising from causes such as memory and thought is also part of this same activity. It is within the sense-base called mano that the other sense-bases operate as well.

The natures present within a mind extend across a vast range. These natures form differently within each individual. They may be well-developed natures, or they may be disordered or distorted ones. Compared with the other sense faculties, only a certain limited proportion of the mind is given to a human being by nature itself — that is something influenced by genetic factors. For the remaining portion, the mind has the potential to be built up through experience. But that building happens relative to experience. If it is built through recognising the science of the mind, a developed mental nature forms through it. In psychology, this facet is called cognition. Cognitive development is something that should be handled with great care, especially during childhood. Psychology takes very careful account of many scientific factors under the heading of child development, and continues to discover new findings through ongoing research. Where the mind has not developed this way, various disordered processes and cognitive distortions can develop. Through this, a corresponding nature arises in the mind. Let's consider a few examples.

How Distortion Takes Root

Some people's mental nature is such that they simply cannot see anything good in the events of their lives. Such people's minds oscillate largely along a negative axis that has developed and taken hold. For example, imagine an employee receiving feedback from a client about a year's worth of work. The client praises the person's efficiency and also mentions areas they should develop further. But because of this mental nature, the person behaves as though only the parts requiring development were negative. They don't feel any joy about the positive feedback received on their efficiency. They interpret what was said about areas to improve as something purely negative. Anyone can develop such a distorted nature over time.

There is another kind of activity within the mind: natural laws (dhammata). What results from these natural laws is a "product" — a dhamma. Conclusions formed based on the consciousness that arises through perception are what we call dhamma.

Through this, mano-viññana is nourished, and mano-viññana's influence, in turn, becomes woven into how these dhamma get constructed. For example, when we recognise someone, sense a sound or a form, or undergo some experience — when this natural process is at work, it too is subject to the influence of mano-viññana. If you were raised in a Buddhist devotional tradition from childhood, the reverence you feel upon seeing a monk is, in large part, likely something arising due to this mano-viññana. Likewise, mano-viññana surges powerfully when one witnesses an ordained person doing something considered unbecoming of the robe. Through such incidents, mano-viññana is nourished — and the next time something similar occurs, that influence of mano-viññana also plays its part in shaping how that event gets constructed.

Take another example: suppose someone eats unusually often. It may appear to us, from outside, that they eat simply because they're hungry — but the behaviour surfacing may actually be caused by a tension that has built up as a problem within mano-viññana. Mano-viññana itself never shows up openly; it always surfaces through some other channel.

Habits and the Physiology Behind Them

Another thing that forms this way is habit. Doing the same thing repeatedly turns it into a habit. One is drawn to repeat the same action because of the pleasure or enjoyment it provides. Lack of mindfulness also contributes to this. When mindfulness is present, action driven purely by habit becomes impossible. These activities are also directly connected to the physical structuring (physiology) of the brain — neural pathways become connected in a particular pattern. That is the early stage in which a habit begins to form. As the number of repetitions increases, that same neural connection intensifies further, moving toward an automatic quality. Even a habit still requires some stimulus to activate. Once the signal for that stimulus is received, the habit begins to run. From that, a certain pleasurable enjoyment is gained. Through this, mano-viññana is nourished again. The next time that stimulus signal arrives, mano-viññana empowers the habit's activation. Once a habit reaches a fully automatic stage, it can run without being touched by reasoning, intelligence, or mindfulness.

Something originally quite complex can, once it becomes a habit, be carried out without mindfulness or reasoning at all. Driving, parking a car alongside another in one smooth motion, exercising, dancing, brushing teeth — these are all examples of tasks that can be carried out this way. Behind the construction of any habit, natural law, or nature, stands this one factor: mano-viññana. And through all of these, mano-viññana is, in turn, continually nourished. This mano-viññana also contributes to the consciousness that builds up across samsara. And at the same time, it is continually nourished by that samsaric consciousness.