The meaning of Awakening
To awaken is to awaken from “the dream of existence.” This means, we are normally dreaming and not fully awake. We are dreaming that we exist and the world exists. The fact, however, is that we have only become conscious of a “world” and a “self,” though we don’t even know how we became conscious. We simply rose from a state of unconsciousness to a state of consciousness.
We are only organisms like all other organisms, plant or animal. Any organism works like a machine, based on the same natural laws, especially determinism. Determinism means, that all natural occurrences in the world are determined by the presence of the necessary conditions. This principle is what the Buddha called paticca samuppada. “Conditions being present they come into being, conditions being absent they cease to be.”
We are all natural organisms having five senses. These senses are stimulated by the environment to which the organism reacts. This is what we call perception. Seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling the touch are perceptions (viññana). The data perceived is carried to the brain through nerves like telephone wires. It is the brain that puts everything together and gives meaning to what was perceived by forming concepts. This is how we become conscious of a world. The Buddha knew this and modern scientists know this.
Becoming conscious is a natural process which goes on deterministically but unconsciously. This is why we do not know how we became conscious, even though we know that we are conscious. This “not knowing how” is what the Buddha called avijja. It is not mere ignorance but unconsciousness. Ignorance means, not knowing something we can normally perceive. Unconsciousness means not knowing how we perceive, what we normally perceive, even after we have been told how.
How can we become conscious of how we perceive? This is an important question. Perception can be seen from an objective point of view, or from a subjective point of view. Our former description was from an objective point of view. To see it from a subjective point of view, we need to have what is called satipatthana, which means “introspection” (sati = attention + upatthana = place within), though commonly translated as “mindfulness.”
This introspection results in upekkha, which means “apperception” (upa = within + ikkhati = see), commonly mistranslated as “indifference.” “Apperception” is an important word used in Western philosophy, which means awareness of the mental process of perception. In other words, apperception is subjectively seeing how one perceives, rather than objectively seeing what one perceives, which is perception. Through this process of “apperception” therefore, one is able to observe the process of perception as an “impersonal process” going on deterministically, rather than as an “action” of a “self” within. The act of perception is seen “deterministically” rather than in terms of “free will.” This means one has “depersonalized” the process of perception. One does not think, “I perceive,” instead one thinks, “perception is taking place.” This is how one “awakens” from the “dream of existence,” through a “paradigm shift” from the “notion of personal existence,” to an “awareness of impersonal experience.” This awakening or paradigm shift results in freedom (vimutti) from birth, aging, and death. Through the awakening, we “cease to exist” as a “self” in a “world.” When we have ceased to exist, how can we die, or be born, or age? Our problem has been this “delusion of self” created by emotion and not by reason. Now reason is re-examining this delusion.