If a living being is not self aware than can he experience suffering or pleasure?
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Dogs don't forget pain. You only have to look at a dog that has been continuously beaten and then cringes or tries to bite anyone who tries to pet it. Yes it has become an automatic reaction but there must be some kind of memory there about humans not being trustworthy.
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It is hard to say unless you are an animal or bacteria. In general observation, it appears animals such as dogs enjoy the sex and they feel the pain. According to Buddhist teaching animals possess five aggregate same as the human.
Interesting video to watch. In this video, it is explained in plain English that any living and breathing organism has consciousness and how we interpret pain and pleasure.
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More primitive life forms, such as worms or fish, have a nervous system, therefore their nervous system experiences physical pain. Dogs are probably more complex and have emotions such as lust, love, emotional attachment; that makes them experience emotional sorrow & unhappiness.
However. as we can directly experience, h*m* sapiens (people) have the egoistic attachment (upadana) of self-identity (sakkaya ditthi), which is born from thought conception. This upadana of sakkaya ditthi is the 'suffering' ('dukkha') Buddhism seeks to eliminate.
I think it is a fair assumption worms & fish cannot create the upadana of sakkaya ditthi; and probably also dogs.
Bhikkhu, ‘I am’ is a conceiving; ‘I am this’ is a conceiving; ‘I shall be’ is a conceiving; ‘I shall not be’ is a conceiving; ‘I shall be possessed of form’ is a conceiving; ‘I shall be formless’ is a conceiving; ‘I shall be percipient’ is a conceiving; ‘I shall be non-percipient’ is a conceiving; ‘I shall be neither-percipient-nor-non-percipient’ is a conceiving. Conceiving is a disease, conceiving is a tumour, conceiving is a dart. By overcoming all conceivings, bhikkhu, one is called a sage at peace. MN 140
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In all 31 planes of existence there is attachment to life except for the plane for Unconscious Beings (asaññasatta). So a dog feels pain thus like us.
Also any being in any plane are self aware except for enlightened beings who do not have self conceiving.
Also we all lose some notion of suffering otherwise hence why 1st Noble Truth is not readily comprehensible.
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I think that (according to Buddhism) humans, animals, ghosts, and residents of hell all belong to the same kind of category: all "sentient", all composed of the five skandhas, and all subject to suffering.
Since all belong to the same continuum (i.e. samsara), I expect that they all "lose memory" and that their "suffering finishes" in much the same way.
I don't consider a dog as like a bacterium, by the way: IMO a bacterium is more like a plant than an animal. I think different schools of Buddhism differ on whether plants are "sentient" and have any "consciousness".
don't they just forget or loose the momory of their suffering after it is finished?
Isn't that more-or-less true (or untrue) of people too?
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Its very clear that dogs are conscious and feel the same pain as humans do and the suffering is the same suffering
If by self aware you mean mindful- than most people arent mindful 99.9999% of the time --- many many monks if good ones are not mindful most of the time
About bacteria i cant say much
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