THE SOURCE OF SUFFERING

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The important question, however, is why the human creature SUFFERS at all.

To examine this, let's return to the external world and the human sense organs. Actually what is "out there" is not known by the human creature at all. What really happens is that various properties of those things impinge upon the sense organs, stimulating activity so that messages are sent to the brain.

We can say that the sentient human being, SATTVA, is really his eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and his thinking mind which attempts to interpret what is "out there."

These are called the "sense doors." The organs, when active, result in various cognitive operations with impressions upon the SCREEN OF CONSCIOUSNESS, which we call EXPERIENCES.

There are then six SENSE BASES and six SENSE CONSCIOUSNESSES, which are sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, and thinking mind.

In addition to these, however there are two other consciousnesses. An ever-present UNCONSCIOUS, ALAYA VIJNANA, and the second, an ever-present IDENTITY-AFFLICTED CONSCIOUSNESS, KLISTA MANAS.

If there was no IDENTITY CONSCIOUSNESS, then there would be perception which would consist of visual observations, sounds, smells, tastes, touch, and various residual impressions of those events. However, there would be no cognized FORM, that is, no name and no recognition. Furthermore there would be neither right and wrong, nor appropriate and inappropriate. There would be SENSATIONS (SPARSA), EMOTIONS (VEDANA), ATTENTION (MANASIKARA), VOLITION which is a stirring of the mind in the form of reactions, and COGNITION (SAMJA), which would produce the sensation of "it's there," without there being any knowledge about what that thing was.

In the face of all these EXPERIENCES the human creature would be completely EQUANIMOUS, but clearly, despite the SENSATIONS, EMOTIONS, and the THINKING, there would be no HAPPINESS or SUFFERING. The human creature would be able to operate perfectly within the environment just as every other animal does, but would not know what anything was or be able to understand any of the relationships between itself, a cause and an event, although it would be able to delimit all objects and react to them correctly.

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