Awareness...

It's all about "awareness", isn't it? When talking about awareness, it's difficult to make sure everyone is on the same page. Zen Buddhism has a very precise definition of awareness. A quick search on the net will result in thousands of pages attempting  to clarify this point.

But really, what is awareness? One point of view is: awareness is what you get when all the sensory inputs are integrated and processed by the brain. The senses are the 5 body senses (touch, smell, vision, taste and hearing) and the mind. Buddhism in general consider the mind or consciousness to be another sense. So, we perceive reality through those senses, after the brain processes the information coming from the sense organ. The brain then organise this information into concepts and symbols, store them in memory, and then plays with it. Awareness is this entire process. When you focus your attention on an object, you assign more brain resources to the signals your senses are generating about that object. Thus you become more "aware" of it. During this process, all the signals your senses are generating about the other objects outside the focus of attention are more or less ignored, thus you are "unaware" of them. All of reality is still present to the senses, but awareness follows the focus of attention, like a flashlight in a darkened room, all objects outside the lighted area are dimmed and out of focus, but are still present. this restriction of awareness to the focus of attention is referred to as "everyday mind", or normal consciousness.