These evidence pages are the fastest way to verify how the transcript corpus talks about awareness without changing the authored glossary entry below.
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These descriptions attempt to explain concepts that cannot be captured by language alone. While comprehending them intellectually through language may be necessary, it is not sufficient. To appreciate them fully, we must also experience them directly, firsthand, through practice. See also theory vs. practice.
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Awareness is the condition whereby all phenomena take place. It is that which is witness¹ to the coming and going of all appearances. We can try to characterize or describe awareness by its non-duality, innateness, stability, unpredictability, and intelligibility.
Awareness is the single field where all appearances are known. These appearances are not separate entities that are brought into existence or perceived by an independent field of perception. Instead, they are manifestations of the field itself, inseparable from it.
Consider the interconnected functions and regions of the brain, all working together to create a cohesive experience of consciousness. In this biological system, there's no distinct separation between areas responsible for perception and the perceived experience itself. The activity of neurons, synapses, and various brain regions form a unified process, giving rise to the seamless experience of reality.
Similarly, in the realm of awareness, the perceiving and the perceived are one continuous process. There's no underlying separation between the perceiving field and what is perceived.
Awareness exists prior to phenomena like thoughts and concepts². It is the 'backdrop' in which they manifest, and therefore cannot be perfectly captured or fully described by appearances alone. It is the medium through which all perception and understanding occur.
Consider a theatre stage, and how it exists prior to the start of the play, and continues to exist long after the final bow. In this same way, awareness exists independently of all the transient phenomena that get played upon it. And just like the stage doesn't dictate the plot or influence the characters,
Despite the various types and intensities of our appearances, awareness is unchanging. It allows all phenomena to arise and pass away without any interference or judgment.
It is like the screen on which a movie is projected or the sky in which clouds come and go. Just as the screen and sky remain unaffected by the images or clouds passing through it, so too does awareness remain unchanged by the flow of thoughts, sensations, experiences, and other phenomena that become known to it.