Consciousness

Do you ever wonder who or what you are? Do you really believe "Cogito, ergo sum"? Maybe it's not so simple--this is from a sermon on consciousness by Ajaan Lee Dhammadharo, a Thai monk, tape recorded in 1960 just before he died. He brings up some interesting, earthy, Buddhist things to consider if you think you know who or what you are. Or it could be called "A Thai Forest Monk's Theory of Disease."

"You may have up to three kinds of consciousness inside your body. The first is your own consciousness, which entered your mother's womb at the time of your conception, without any other consciousnesses mixing in with it. There were lots of other consciousnesses around it at the time, but they all died out before they could take birth. You can't count how many there are at a time like that, but in the fight to take birth, only one of them has the merit to make it, and the rest all fall away in huge numbers by the wayside. So when we make it into a human womb at the time of conception, we can chalk it up to our merit that we've been able to establish a foothold for ourselves in the human world.

Once our consciousness gets established like this, it begins to develop. The body develops. As it develops, other consciousnesses start infiltrating without our realizing it. If you want to see a really clear example, look at the human body after it takes birth. Sometimes a worm two feet long can come out of your intestines. What does that come from, if not from a consciousness? Or how about germs? Some diseases are actually caused by little animals in your body that cause swellings and tumors. As the traditional doctors used to say, there are eight families and twelve clans of disease-causing animals in our body. What do they come from? From consciousness, that's what. If there were no consciousness, how could there be animals? Animals arise from consciousness. And some of them you can clearly see, as they come crawling in huge numbers out of wounds, out your ears and eyes, nose, teeth, anus, whole swarms of them. So what are they? They're a form of consciousness.

There's yet another group of consciousnesses: the ones who have come to collect old karma debts. They're the germs that eat away at our flesh — at our nose, our ears — to ruin our looks. They eat away at our lower lip, exposing our teeth, making us embarrassed and ashamed. Sometimes they eat away at one of our ears, or eat away at our nose all the way up to the forehead. . . . these are karma debt collectors. In the past we made life miserable for them, so this time around they're ganging up to make us squirm. The one's that are really easy to see are the worms that help eat the food in our intestines. In the past we probably ate their flesh and skin, so this time around they're going to eat ours. They eat, eat, eat — eat everything. "Whatever you've got, you bastard, I'm going to eat it all." That's what they say. How are we ever going to get rid of them? They eat our outsides where we can see them, so we chase them away and they go running inside, to eat in our stomach and intestines. That's when it really gets bad: we can't even see them, and they're even harder to get rid of. So they keep making us squirm as they keep eating, eating away: eating in our intestines, eating in our stomach, eating our kidneys, our liver, our lungs, eating in our blood vessels, eating our body hairs, eating everything all over the place. They eat outside and turn into skin diseases. They eat inside as worms and germs. And they themselves get into fights — after all, there are lots of different gangs in there. Even just the worms have 108 clans. So when there are so many of them, they're bound to quarrel, creating a ruckus in our home. How can we ever hope to withstand them? Sometimes we fall in with them without realizing it. How can that happen? Because there are so many of them that we can't resist.

These living beings in our body: Sometimes they get angry and get into fights. Sometimes they run into one another on the street and start biting and hitting each other, so that we itch in front and itch in back — scritch scritch, scratch scratch: The worms have gotten into a gang war. They cruise around in our body the way we do outside. The blood vessels are like roads, so there are little animals cruising down the blood vessels. This one comes this way, that one comes that, they meet each other and start talking. Sometimes they have real conversations that know no end, so they spend the night there, eating right there and excreting right there until a swelling starts: That's a little shack for the beings, the consciousnesses in our body. This is how things keep happening.

Our body is like a world. Just as the world has oceans, mountains, trees, vines, land, so it is with the body. Each blood vessel is a road for living beings. They travel down our blood vessels, down our breath channels. Some vessels get closed off, like a dead end road. Others stay open. When they're open, the blood flows, the breath flows, like the water in rivers and streams. When they flow, boats can travel along them. When there are boats, there are beings in the boats. Sometimes the boats crash into each other. That's why we have aches and pains in our legs and arms and along our breath channels. So go ahead: keep rubbing them and massaging them — it's all an affair of the consciousnesses inhabiting our bodies. Some of them live in our eye sockets, some live in our earholes, some in our nostrils, some in our mouth, our throat, our gums. They're just like people, only we can't understand their language. They have jobs and careers, families and homes, and places to vacation all over our body. These consciousnesses in our bodies sometimes get into battles and wars, just like red ants and black ants. It's the same in our body, so where are we going to go to escape from it all? The beings in our eyes lay claim to our eyes as their home. The ones in our ears claim our ears as their home. The ones in our blood vessels claim those as their home. Sometimes their claims overlap, so they get into feuds. As the texts say, there are feelings that arise from consciousness. This is why there are so many things that can happen to the body. Some kinds of consciousness give rise to disease, some are just waiting their chance. For instance, some kinds of consciousness without bodies hang around our blood vessels waiting for wounds and boils to develop. That's their chance to take on bodies as worms and germs. As for the ones who don't yet have bodies, they travel around as chills and thrills and itches and aches all over our body. It's all an affair of consciousnesses." (translated by Thanissaro Bikkhu)

If you want to read the whole thing, it's here: Consciousness