Buddhist teachings are that our experience of consciousness (not to be confused with the nature of consciousness itself) in other words, what we experience through our senses, that experience arises where awareness and objects of awareness meet.
For example, some wood has been cut into shapes and fastened together by a furniture maker. You see that construction through the sense organs and visual awareness, and identify it as a chair. That is your experience: “I see a chair”. But the object has no essential “chair-ness” to it. In that regard, “chair” is a projection of your own mind. Further, you might perceive it as a comfy chair, an uncomfortable chair, whatever. If the furniture maker manufactured Chinese Buddhist shrine cabinets and you had never seen one, you might recognize it as some type of furniture, but that would be the extent of it.
The same thing pertains to the body. It is also a projection of your own thoughts and interpretations. Buddhism would refer to that as illusion. Because of our human condition, it is easy to see some aspects of this illusion are just that. For example, I might think I am ugly. But someone else might think I am handsome. People with anorexia perceive themselves as overweight even when they look like walking skeletons.
On the other hand, some aspects of this illusion are practically unavoidable: if You punch me in the stomach, I will feel pain. But a shaolin trained monk might not feel pain. If you stab me in the heart, I will bleed and my body will “die” meaning that the physical properties will no longer replicate themselves.
But the very most subtle level of awareness, which has associated itself with this body, continues to ‘replicate’ itself, meaning that each moment of awareness gives rise to another moment of awareness. It isn’t a solid “thing” but rather a continuous process, like a fire burning, or a breeze blowing, or water flowing.
The mind has no identifying characteristics on its own. It’s like a mirror in that way. You can only see what is reflected in it. But awareness, or mind, has certain qualities. It is limitless, just as a mirror can reflect anything, even the sun 93,000,000 miles away. Mind is also ‘luminous’ meaning it perceives. ‘luminous’ refers to how a bright light or lamp brought into a dark room immediately illuminates everything in that room. That isn’t to say that your mind is sending out light rays like flashlight. It means that it is aware of the world around it. Many things without brains or sensory organs intentionally interact with entities outside of themselves: sperm swim to eggs, white blood cells attack bacteria, and so on.
Mind is also constant. For example, if you look at a banana today, and then look at the same banana a month from now, the banana will be old and rotten, but your awareness of the banana did not age at all. It is the same. It is the same as it was the first time you ever saw a banana. This is, by the way, another argument for how consciousness is not a product of the body. The body ages and dies. Consciousness and memory can be affected by things like dementia, or, as you say, alcohol. But what is affected, mind itself, is not produced by the water, fat, salt, and amino acids from which the brain is composed.
