robertk wrote:Why try to relate Rupa to what science says. The Buddha and arahats knew more about rupa than anything science will ever know.
BUT rupa can be translated as materiality. It is what is touched or smelt or seen or heard. And it is also those extremely subtle rupas such as eye base , ear base, nose base, the kammajarupa (conditioned by kamma), that are where the various types of mentality must arise.
THis is all according to Theravada but I have no texts to show you, sorry. Anyway I didn't just make this stuff up.
The idea of Alex that all 'experiences' arise in the brain can be shown to be patently false right now. Feel your toes in your shoes. Obviously the body-door consciousness is arising right in the area of the toe: as the body door is all over the body (unlike eye door which , as I said , is only situated in the center of the physical eye).
The fact that scientists, and even some buddhists, believe that all consciousness arises in the brain is a vivid demonstration of the deeply rooted nature of wrongview:
So intense is wrongview that it goes against even obvious direct experiential truths . Vipallasa, hallucination.
You only feel your toes because your nervous system sends signals to your brain telling it that the toes are there. You have have eye-consciousness when light hits the eye and then that information is processed by the brain in 3 dimensions. All consciousness arises in the brain. Without the brain there is no consciousness in the body or the eyes,ears,nose, tongue, intellect. Eye consciousness occurs in the brain and is dependent on the brain. Be real, seriously. There is a reason people die when they get shot in the head. There is also a reason paraplegics can't feel their legs. Are you aware that there are people with toes that can't feel them. That is because there brain is cut off from receiving signals from those areas.
The suttas don't say that the eye-consciousness has to arise at the eye, it just says that is dependent on the eye, form, and contact. It just so happens that the consciousness then arises in the brain due to those 3 things
The abhidhamma may be a different story, but I don't see the suttas saying the eye-consciousness necessarily arises in the eye
"I don't envision a single thing that, when developed & cultivated, leads to such great benefit as the mind. The mind, when developed & cultivated, leads to great benefit."
"I don't envision a single thing that, when undeveloped & uncultivated, brings about such suffering & stress as the mind. The mind, when undeveloped & uncultivated, brings about suffering & stress."