You are on page 1of 3

1

What is the Mind?


By Gen Jangsem I was recently listening to a radio talk show in which a psychotherapist was saying that 90% of our illness starts in the mind. The interviewer asked him to define what he meant by mind, and he replied that he meant 'soul'. However, he did not offer any more explanation. It seems that in western science, religious thought and our modern culture there is a great deal of confusion about the mind. What exactly is the mind? What is the nature of consciousness? What is this ethereal thing that determines our experiences and reality? Buddha's teachings can help us to gain both an intellectual understanding and personal experience of the nature of mind. In Kadampa Buddhism mind is defined as that which is clarity and cognizing. Clarity carries the meaning that the mind is non-physical, it does not possess any physical characteristics whatsoever. You cannot see it with your eyes, touch it with your hands, smell it, taste it nor hear it. It is immaterial and insubstantial. In his latest book, Transform Your Life, renowned Buddhist teacher Geshe Kelsang Gyatso writes, "Some people think that the mind is the brain or some other part or function of the body, but this is incorrect. The brain is a physical object that can be seen with the eyes and that can be photographed or operated on in surgery. The mind, on the other hand, is not a physical object. It cannot be seen with the eyes, nor can it be photographed or repaired by surgery. The brain therefore is not the mind but simply part of the body." We can clearly see that there is a relationship between the mind and the brain, but this should not lead us to infer that they are one and the same thing. For example, there is a relationship between a driver and her car - when she brakes the car stops and so forth, but we would not infer from this relationship that they are the same entity. When the car stops she can get out! Western science has observed that there is a relationship between brain activity and cognitive processes, but it is a false inference to then say cognition is the brain or a by-product of purely physical processes. This has not been proved and never will be because the mind is a different entity to the body. As Geshe Kelsang says,

2 "There is nothing within the body that can be identified as being our mind because our body and mind are different entities. For example, sometimes when our body is relaxed and immobile our mind can be very busy, darting from one object to another. This indicates that our body and mind are not the same entity. In Buddhist scriptures our body is compared to a guesthouse and our mind to a guest dwelling within it. When we die our mind leaves our body and goes to the next life, just like a guest leaving a guest house and going somewhere else." Being a different entity to the body the mind has its own causes that are not physical. We can see how our present body exists within its own continuum, each moment of body giving rise to the next moment of body, our body of today coming from our body of yesterday and so forth. If we trace this back eventually we come to the sperm and ovum of our parents as the substantial cause of our body. The mind also exists in a continuum, each moment of mind giving rise to the next moment of mind, the mind we have today coming from yesterday's mind and so forth. If we trace our mind back through our life, childhood and birth we once again come to the germ cells in our mother's womb but these cannot be the cause of consciousness because they are physical and the mind is non-physical. So where did our mental continuum come from? It came from our previous life. When we died in our last life, our mind left our previous physical form and entered what is known as the intermediate state or bardo in Tibetan. From this dreamlike state our mind entered the fertilized ovum in our mother's womb and we were conceived. Both a mental continuum and a physical continuum had to come together to create a new human being. Similarly, when this present physical form dies our mental continuum does not die with it. It leaves like a bird leaving its nest and is blown by the winds of our karma to our next incarnation. To understand this process of death, intermediate state and rebirth it is very helpful to consider sleeping, dreaming and waking. When we are awake we have a gross mind with all our sense faculties. We are fully aware of this world and perform many different functions within it. As we fall asleep our gross minds including our senses draw inwards and this world disappears. But this does not mean that our mind stops. Our mind merely absorbs into a more subtle state until we reach the deepest and most subtle level of mind, the clear light mind.

3 Unfortunately, we have no mindfulness at these subtle levels of mind so we cannot remember them. However, advanced meditators can follow this dissolution of consciousness and meditate with the blissful mind of clear light. Indeed, it is this very subtle mind that when completely purified transforms into the omniscient mind of an enlightened being. From the clear light of sleep our mind becomes more gross and we enter the dream state within which we have many fleeting experiences. Eventually as our mind becomes more gross still we wake up and once again become aware of our ordinary world. Falling asleep is analogous to dying, because as we die our gross minds and our sense awarenesss draw inwards and the world of this life disappears. Our mind becomes increasingly subtle until we experience the clear light of death. Now, instead of arising into the dream state, we enter the intermediate state and experience many different visions and hallucinations. After a while our karma ripens sufficiently and our mind enters into a new form. Gradually we 'wake up' in our new body and become aware of our new world. Thus an understanding of the nature of mind helps us to understand reincarnation. Our mind is a formless continuum, a stream of consciousness that dips from gross to subtle levels as it moves from life to life. We have had many lives in the past and will have many lives in the future. As my teacher Geshe Kelsang says in Transform Your Life, "If we understand clearly the nature of our mind we shall definitely realize that the continuum of our mind does not cease when we die, and there will be no basis for doubting the existence of our future lives. If we realize the existence of our future lives we shall naturally be concerned for our welfare and happiness in those lives, and we shall use this present life to make the appropriate preparations. This will prevent us from wasting our precious human life on the preoccupations of this life alone. Therefore, a correct understanding of the mind is absolutely essential

You might also like