  As this passage illustrates, a specific type of consciousness  accompanies each of the sensory modalities, in this case the  experience of visual awareness. No one element in this nexus of  interactions has causal priority. Rather, these associations between  perception and thinking are due to the habitual tendency of the mind  towards conceptual proliferation, for as the Buddha declares in his  discourses, the perceptual experience of ordinary people is replete  with mistaken apprehensions. Note that while sense, object, and  conscious apprehension come together as a consequence of past  habituations and other conditioning factors, the ensuing cognitive  awareness appears to both sustain and be sustained by these factors.