“Contacted, one feels. Contacted, one intends. Contacted, one perceives. These phenomena are both wavering & fluctuating—inconstant, changeable, of a nature to become otherwise. [Similarly with the ear, nose, tongue, body, and intellect.]” — SN 35:93 (emphasis added)
This alternating pattern between consciousness and intention can be
explained in two ways. First, the general complexity of the causal principle underlying dependent co-arising—with present causes interacting with past causes to shape the present moment—opens the door to many feedback loops of just this sort. Consciousness and feeling, for example, alternate in just this way, as do consciousness and perception. Second, the specific interaction of consciousness and intention here helps to explain the nested quality of becoming, in which one state of becoming can start within another one, which is nested in yet another one, much like a set of nested boxes or Russian dolls. For example, the seed of consciousness that led to one’s birth on this physical plane of becoming is what has made possible one’s experience of this world through the six senses. Based on intentions interacting with that experience, other moments of consciousness have been conditioned, which serve as seeds for purely mental states of becoming within this lifetime: dreams, plans, and worlds of the imagination. Within those states of becoming, the mind produces further intentions and encounters another level of sensory experience, which conditions further moments of consciousness, and so on—dreams within dreams, stories within stories.
And, from the Buddha’s point of view, instability within instability and—for the most part—suffering compounded by suffering.
