  The Abhidharma analysis of the proper basis for the arising of  cognition reveals another important aspect of the Buddhist cognitive  model: cognition follows the sense rather than the object (see AKBh  ad I 28ab). This is obvious, for instance, in the specific  terminology used to describe conscious cognitive activity: thus, a  consciousness which accompanies seeing is designated as “visual consciousness” (cakṣurvijñāna) rather  than “consciousness of the visible”  (rūpavijñāna). Seeing or having conscious  visual experiences is the result of being endowed with a visual  system even as the seeming transparency of the experience of seeing  might suggest that visual awareness is of the object itself.