Start with the body, the mind, and the senses, and consider the deeply enigmatic question, “From where does each get its content?”

When you go directly to the body, you discover that it’s only a sensation. To speak of “sensation,” however, is already to apply rupa as in namarupa. That is, the “raw feel” of the vibration is already a “partial cooking up” of something, of some content it has already received. And when the mind goes further and laels the sensation “pain,” then there is nama, or concept: even more “cooking up” of this received content.

Consider that the sensation, as appearance, is already formed. Note, after a searching examination, that the sensation must receive its content from somewhere, that is, from something. What is that something if the body (= sensation) cannot “manufacture” its content on its own? In other words, what is that on account of which the sensation has any content (i.e., that in virtue of which X can be taken as a sensation) in the first place?

The same puzzle can be felt in the case of the senses. Take the process of seeing. Seeing cannot supply its own content; seeing is receptive. Some content, then, must be “lent” to the process of seeing in order for seeing to appear. Where does this content come from?

The mind, likewise, is nothing but thought. Thought is a shape: a mental picture of an elephant, a memory, a bit of imagined discourse, etc. Whence the content that makes possible thinking at all? What is “that stuff” out of which each thought is made?

A searching inquiry will reveal that only Presence, or Reality or Existence (sat in Sanskrit), can be that support or substratum for all appearances. And that support or substratum can, metaphorically speaking, be said to “lend its content” to each objective experience–to perceiving, to sensing, and to thinking–so that each experience can appear. Each appearance is a borrowing of content that is instantaneously shaped or formed. Only the shaping or forming is “the job” of the instrument. We’re wondering, in this line of inquiry, about that borrowed something–that is, about Presence.

And what is the very nature of Presence? And who is conscious of Presence? Dive deep and find out.