Consciousness is the fifth of the five aggregates. Consciousness investigates, compares, discriminates and integrates all the information from the incoming stimuli, resulting in a decision expressed outwardly as words or action.

Consciousness also refers to the faculty of the mind, located in the right pre-frontal cortex, which, together with the thinking mind and the intellect, constitutes the ordinary person’s mind, or worldly mind, or false mind. It is focused on the present as it is involved with comparing and differentiating.

Refer to the texts “The Five Aggregates and the Sutta on the No-Self” and “The Three Aspects of Knowing” for more details.

P: viññāṇa, S: vijñāna, V: thức, ý thức