Consciousness

Then, bhikkhus, it occurred to me: "By what is consciousness conditioned?" Through embodied attention, there occurred for me a breakthrough in understanding: "When there is name-form, consciousness comes to be; consciousness has name-form as its condition. When consciousness turns back, it goes back no further than name-form."

---The Buddha---

Touch, feeling, perception, intention, attention: this is nama (name). The four great elements and the forms derived from those elements: this is rupa (form) So name and form together are namarupa.

---The Buddha---

The first quote is found in Samyutta Nikaya 12:2, Bodhi (2000), p. 535.

The second quote is found in Samyutta Nikaya 12:65, Bodhi (2000), pp.601-2. Cf. Digha Nikaya 14, Walshe (1995), p. 211.

Later schools of Buddhism, and other traditions, understood the four great elements as Earth, Water, Fire, and Air.

The Buddha understood the four elements phenomenologically as the tactile sensations of heaviness (earth), wetness (water), warmth (fire), and movement (air).

Note: Phenomenology is the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view. The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, its being directed toward something, as it is an experience of or about some object.