IN GENERAL, mind or consciousness refers to inner experience. This includes feelings that are pleasant or painful, states of mind that are happy or miserable, emotional experiences such as fear of danger, anger toward those who inflict harm, affectionate attachment to close relatives, and compassion when observing suffering sentient beings. It includes sense consciousness—such as a visual consciousness that sees a vase filled with beautiful flowers, or an auditory consciousness that hears the sounds of music or singing. It also includes cognitions that remember previous experiences, as in “I remember this” or “I thought this,” and cognitions that consider reasons and think “If this is the case, then that must also be the case,” and so on. Whatever position one holds—that the mind is material or immaterial—in general what we call consciousness is known to exist based on experience, so it does not necessarily need to be proved through reasoning. Nevertheless, there are many types of subtle mental states that must be proved through reasoning.
Someone may ask, “What is the difference between consciousness and physical things?” In general, matter and consciousness are differentiated by whether they are obstructive, established as clear and aware in nature, merely experiential in nature, and capable of knowing objects. Many earlier Buddhist masters identify the essential nature of consciousness as the opposite of obstructive physical things: lacking obstructivity, consciousness has the quality of clarity (in that external and internal things can appear to it), it has the quality of knowing its object, and it has the nature
