Editing Consciousness (section)

===Distinguishing consciousness from its contents===
[[Sam Harris]] observes: "At the level of your experience, you are not a body of cells, organelles, and atoms; you are consciousness and its ever-changing contents".<ref>Harris, S. (12 October 2011). The mystery of consciousness. ''Sam Harris.'' https://www.samharris.org/blog/the-mystery-of-consciousness {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230423061921/https://www.samharris.org/blog/the-mystery-of-consciousness|date=2023-04-23}}</ref> Seen in this way, consciousness is a subjectively experienced, ever-present field in which things (the contents of consciousness) come and go.

Christopher Tricker argues that this field of consciousness is symbolized by the mythical bird that opens the Daoist classic the [[Zhuangzi (book)|''Zhuangzi.'']] This bird's name is Of a Flock ([[Peng (mythology)|''peng'' 鵬]]), yet its back is countless thousands of miles across and its wings are like clouds arcing across the heavens. "Like Of a Flock, whose wings arc across the heavens, the wings of your consciousness span to the horizon. At the same time, the wings of every other being's consciousness span to the horizon. You are of a flock, one bird among kin."<ref>Tricker, C. (2022). [https://thecicadaandthebird.com The cicada and the bird. The usefulness of a useless philosophy. Chuang Tzu's ancient wisdom translated for modern life.] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230421032929/https://thecicadaandthebird.com/|date=2023-04-21}} Page 52. [https://books.google.com/books?id=YnCaEAAAQBAJ (Google Books)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230608153319/https://books.google.com/books?id=YnCaEAAAQBAJ|date=2023-06-08}}</ref>