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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 nonphysical; it does not possess any physical characteristics whatsoever. You cannot see it with your eyes, touch it with your hands, smell it, taste it, or 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." Clearly, 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. For example, there is a relationship between a driver and her car — when she brakes, the car stops, and so forth — but one 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 that cognition is the brain or a byproduct of purely physical processes. This has not been proved, and never will be, because the mind is a different entity from the body. As Geshe Kelsang says, "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 guest house 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 from the body, the mind has its own causes that are not physical. You can see how your present body exists within its own continuum, each moment of body giving rise to the next moment of body, your body of today coming from your body of yesterday, and so forth. If you trace this back, eventually you come to the sperm and ovum of your parents as the substantial causes of your body. The mind also exists in a continuum, each moment of mind giving rise to the next moment of mind, the mind you have today coming from yesterday’s mind, and so forth. If you trace your mind back through your life, childhood, and birth, you once again come to the germ cells in your mother’s womb, but these cannot be the cause of consciousness because they are physical and the mind is nonphysical. So where did your mental continuum come from? It came from your previous life. When you died in your last life, your mind left your previous physical form and entered what is known as the intermediate state, or bardo, in Tibetan. From this dreamlike state, your mind entered the fertilized ovum in your mother’s womb and you 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, the mental continuum does not die with it. It leaves like a bird leaving its nest, and is blown by the winds of your karma to your next incarnation. To understand this process of death, intermediate state, and rebirth, it is very helpful to consider sleeping, dreaming, and waking. When you are awake, you have a gross mind with all your sense faculties. You are fully aware of this world and perform many different functions within it. As you fall asleep, your gross mind, including your senses, draws inward and this world disappears, but this does not mean that your mind stops. It merely absorbs into a more subtle state until you reach the deepest and most subtle level of mind, the clear light mind. 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, your mind becomes more gross, and you enter the dream state within which you have many fleeting experiences. Eventually, as our mind becomes still more gross, you wake up and once again become aware of your ordinary world. Falling asleep is analogous to dying, because as we die our gross minds and our sense awarenesses draw inward and the world of this life disappears. The mind becomes increasingly subtle until one experiences the clear light of death. Now, instead of arising into the dream state, one enters the intermediate state and experiences many different visions and hallucinations. After a while, karma ripens sufficiently and the mind enters into a new form. Gradually we "wake up" in our new bodies and become aware of our new worlds. Thus an understanding of the nature of mind helps one understand reincarnation. The 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." Gen Jangsem is a Kadampa Buddhist monk and a close disciple of Venerable Geshe Kelsang Gyatso. He teaches introductory and in-depth classes at the Vajralama Buddhist Center in Seattle. For more information, visit <http://www.vajralama.org/> or phone (206) 526-9565. |
I was recently listening
to a radio talk show on which a psychotherapist was saying that
ninety percent of illness starts in the mind. The interviewer
asked him to define what he meant by "mind," and the
therapist replied that he meant "soul." However, he
did not offer any more explanation. It seems that in Western
science, religious thought, and modern culture, there is a great
deal of confusion about the mind. What exactly is it? What is
the nature of consciousness? What is this ethereal thing that
determines our experiences and reality?