What is the Mind?

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--- On Tue, 17/11/09, Swami Sadasivananda <sadasivananda wrote:

 

 

WHAT IS THE MIND?

“Mind precedes its objects. They are mind-governed and mind-made.†(Dhammapada 1)

What is the mind? The language of Buddha, as well as Pali, in which his complete teachings are set down, was based on Sanskrit, so we can get some understanding by looking at the Sanskrit terms from which the Pali was derived. Sanskrit and Pali have the same word for mind: mana. Mana comes from the root verb man, which means “to think.†However, mind takes in more territory than the intellect; it includes the senses and the emotions, because it is in response to feelings and sensory impressions that thoughts arise in the attempt to label and understand them. Evolved minds have the capacity to think abstractly and to determine what shall be experienced by the senses or the feelings.. That is, in lesser evolved minds these impressions precede thought, but in higher evolved minds thought becomes dominant and not only precedes those

impressions but also determines them. Undoubtedly this is progress, but like everything in relative existence it has a down side, and that is the capacity of the mind to “create reality†rather than simply respond to it or classify it. Perception is not a matter of exact and undistorted experience. Perception itself is learned and is therefore extremely subjective. We learn perception–it is not just a faculty. In other words, the senses do not perceive; it is the mind alone that perceives even though it uses the impressions of the senses as its “raw material†for those perceptions. Objectivity in human beings is virtually impossible. We might even hazard the speculation that objectivity is impossible outside of enlightenment. All of the foregoing might worry us greatly–indeed, the insight into this truth about the nature of the mind may well be the seed of paranoia, for it is well-known that the

Eastern description of the enlightened mind and personality is closely akin to what modern psychiatry calls paranoid schizophrenia. Some might say they are identical, but they would be wrong, for the enlightened respond to their vision with positive behavior, peacefulness of mind, and lovingkindness towards others. The mentally ill, on the other hand, respond with anxiety, fear, hostility, and mistrust of others. The sage has profound self-understanding, whereas the paranoid schizophrenic has almost no self-realization at all. More than one psychiatric nurse has told me that they often took their problems to the paranoic schizophrenics in their charge, who gave them remarkably insightful and wise advice. But regarding themselves, those same patients were just plain crazy and without a clue. This is a terrible and cruel dichotomy. The understanding to be gained from all this is that our life experiences are a

training film, an exercise in the development of consciousness with the mind as its main instrument. We are to look and learn. The question of “Is it real?†is almost irrelevant, “Is it comprehensible?†being more vital. There is a sense in which the individual alone exists and all that he experiences is but the shifting patterns of the movies of the mind–but for a purpose: insight that leads to freedom from the need of any more movies. Then the liberated can rest in the truth of his own self.-- Spiritual Teachings of the Masters from the East and West web site: http://www.spiritual-teaching.com