Spiny Norman wrote: ↑Tue Oct 24, 2017 8:29 amSure, it's all wind property, but it seems the distinction between between internal and external is valid, based on where the wind property is actually felt - is it felt as pressure on your skin ( external ), or as the movement of your chest/abdomen ( internal )?pegembara wrote: ↑Tue Oct 24, 2017 3:27 amThat would be felt as "external" only if one has a mental image of being embodied. Likewise for "internal" winds. Without that image there is no inner or outer or maybe it's all "inner". It's all experienced here as simply wind property.Spiny Norman wrote: ↑Mon Oct 23, 2017 8:56 am
I could, for example, stand by the sea with my eyes closed, and feel the light pressure of wind on my face - but only if the wind is actually blowing!
In any case the internal/external distinction is made in the suttas, and presumably there is a reason for that. There is also the distinction between internal and external sense bases, materiality/mentality, and the distinction between the form aggregate and the formless aggregates, and so on.
Point is that skin is a mental image built up through thinking. If one stop putting names to things like skin, chest or abdomen the distinction of ext/internal goes away. Just wind property and not "Wind on my face". or even "Where am I feeling this wind?"
Even space is conceptualised as internal/external until one reaches pure consciousness. Consciousness as int/external makes no sense.
"And what is the space property? The space property may be either internal or external. What is the internal space property? Anything internal, belonging to oneself, that's space, spatial, & sustained: the holes of the ears, the nostrils, the mouth, the [passage] whereby what is eaten, drunk, consumed, & tasted gets swallowed, and where it collects, and whereby it is excreted from below, or anything else internal, within oneself, that's space, spatial, & sustained: This is called the internal space property.
"There remains only consciousness: pure & bright. What does one cognize with that consciousness? One cognizes 'pleasure.' One cognizes 'pain.' One cognizes 'neither pleasure nor pain.'