Reflections on Being

It is so easy to write the word 'being'. And yet there is so much wrapped up in this short arrangement of letters. On one level it is one of the most complex ideas around. On another it is the simplest. We are 'being' all the time we are alive. What could be easier than that? It is as we dig deeper and start to describe it that the mystery begins. Consider the difference between being a plant and being a person. How would you describe that difference? The plant comes in to existence, grows, responds to the environment, reproduces, lives and dies. It is certainly aware but how much consciousness does it have? We know it is aware because it responds to light and dark, to hot and cold and to wet and dry. Is this response just a reflex or is there some consciousness involved? How would you distinguish between a reflex and a conscious response? Most people will opt for the reflex idea but will have difficulty explaining why this is so. At the other extreme we have human awareness and consciousness. People will generally say they have volition and a conscious filter where choice takes place after awareness. We believe that we choose our responses to the world. But do we? There is now evidence in neuroscience to show us that prior to the conscious decision to take an action the choice has already been made in the preconscious processes of the brain. Some neuroscientists now believe that consciousness is nothing more than a post event rationalisation of what took place. Its use is to create a memory for use by our internal cognitive reflex responses in some future situation. An extreme position on human beings is that they are a stimulus reflex response organism in just the same way a plant is. The difference is the level of sophistication of the machinery doing the pre reflex work. Or perhaps a plant has more consciousness than we think. It could be that enlightenment in meditation is when we achieve the level of awareness of a plant. Being is so simple if we let ourselves just be. What do you think?