Where is your Mind?

[Meitou]

First of all the Dharma is in the mind, not merely the brain , or the human spirit. 'Mind' with a capital letter, if you like. It is vast and fathomless, pure and clear, altogether empty and charged with possibilities. It is the unknown , the unnameable, from which and as which all beings come forth.

Robert Aitken, Mind of Clover.

The world we live in is the world we create based on how our mind encounters the myriad dharmas. We cannot prevent our mind from creating our world as it does but it is possible to realize that the world of our creation does not reflect true reality.

Shohaku Okumura, Realizing Genjokoan.

Since I first became involved in Buddhism I've been fascinated by the nature of mind.
My question is really simple. This amazing, vast thing we call Mind , which is empty and clear but also contains the Dharma, creates my world and everything in it and from which all beings come forth, where is it? Is it the same as awareness? Where did it come from?

That's actually three questions but still, all quite simple.

Gassho
Meitou
satwithyoualltodaylah

[Rich]

where is it? It's right here
Is it the same as awareness? Yah, but has no name
Where did it come from? Don't know
[emoji4][emoji41]

SAT today

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk

[Mp]

Hey Meitou,

The mind is everywhere and yet nowhere at the same time. If we speak of the mind as in perception(s), then it is moment by moment, experience by experience. If we think of the mind as in "mindfulness", I feel this is when we turn the light around and shine inward. I personally feel that mindfulness and awareness are two different things and yet the same as they come from the same root. I feel that mindfulness is when we pay attention to what is happening within us, where awareness is when we are paying attention to what is happening around us - regardless of which, each can provoke a response within us.

But like all things, there is no inside/outside or mindfulness/awareness ... there is just this. This moment holds all of it, nothing lacking, nothing needed to be added or taken away. =)

Gassho
Shingen

Sat/LAH

[Meitou]

Hey Meitou,

The mind is everywhere and yet nowhere at the same time. If we speak of the mind as in perception(s), then it is moment by moment, experience by experience. If we think of the mind as in "mindfulness", I feel this is when we turn the light around and shine inward. I personally feel that mindfulness and awareness are two different things and yet the same as they come from the same root. I feel that mindfulness is when we pay attention to what is happening within us, where awareness is when we are paying attention to what is happening around us - regardless of which, each can provoke a response within us.

But like all things, there is no inside/outside or mindfulness/awareness ... there is just this. This moment holds all of it, nothing lacking, nothing needed to be added or taken away. =)

Gassho
Shingen

Sat/LAH

I like to think of awareness as an app always running in the background and everything taking place within it, sometimes in the foreground, sometimes receding. Perhaps when I say awareness I really mean what I think mind is. I agree, mindfulness and awareness, subtly different.
Rich, I don't know either, but I like to think about it


Gassho
Meitou
satwithyoualltoday.

[Byokan]

Since I first became involved in Buddhism I've been fascinated by the nature of mind.
My question is really simple. This amazing, vast thing we call Mind , which is empty and clear but also contains the Dharma, creates my world and everything in it and from which all beings come forth, where is it? Is it the same as awareness? Where did it come from?

That's actually three questions but still, all quite simple.

Gassho
Meitou
satwithyoualltodaylah

Good questions.

Deep bows
Byokan
sat + lah

[Seiryu]

"where is it? Is it the same as awareness? Where did it come from? "

The human... Plaque by a question...a question that by it's very asking—maybe a semantic phenomenon (who knows)—pre assumes an answer...is that not the very nature of a question? That in the asking we long for a response, a return...a play of catch? Not that fun if we were to play alone....
What is this plaque of a question?
"Why?"
“Where?”
“When?”
“Who?”
What?”

Each one, within the very nature of its presentation, assumes an answer.
“Where” assumes location. Distinct points in space and time, division between “where” “we” find “ourselves” currently and “another” point in space-time.

“Why” assumes reasons, logic, systems, rationality. An assumption that maybe (just maybe) there is an “order” to this “thing” we call “The Universe” that maybe “we” just do not currently “understand.”

“When” assumes time. (YIKES). A point, a “moment” (perhaps) somehow other than this “moment” (huh??)

“Who” assumes identity (oh boy, here we go) A “person” (ugh language is hard), “ a thing” a “someone” that “exists”. An “I” that is someone in existence alongside a “you” (or not)

“What” assumes “thingness” (or that the fact that we can response at all….)

Yet, “what” (here we go again) “would” “Happen” if instead of asking, instead of being weighed down by questions, no matter how seemingly fascinating they are….”we” “were” to simply throw them away…? (question mark)

“Would” anything “happen?”

[Jishin]

IMG_0070.JPG

[emoji3]

Gasho, Jishin, _/st\_

[Meian]

[ATTACH]5338[/ATTACH]

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Gasho, Jishin, _/st\_

[Horin]

Isnt mind all what is? form and emptiness?
Gassho, ben
stlah

[Meitou]

[ATTACH]5338[/ATTACH]

[emoji3]

Gasho, Jishin, _/st\_

Meitou
Satwithyoualltoday lah

[Jakuden]

You are in good company Meitou!! From the Gateless Gate:

41. Bodhidharma Pacifies the Mind
Bodhidharma sits facing the wall. His future successor stands in the snow and presents his severed arm to Bodhidharma. He cries: "My mind is not pacified. Master, pacify my mind."

Bodhidharma says: "If you bring me that mind, I will pacify it for you."

The successor says: "When I search my mind I cannot hold it."

Bodhidharma says: "Then your mind is pacified already."

Gassho,
Jakuden
SatToday/LAH

[Jundo]

One of our most cherished Zen Koans is this one ...

Bodhidharma sat facing the wall.

Huike stood in the snow, crying, “My mind has no peace! I beg you, master, please pacify my mind!”

“Bring your mind here and I will pacify it for you,” replied Bodhidharma.

“I have searched for my mind, and I cannot take hold of it,” said the Second Patriarch.

“Now your mind is pacified,” said Bodhidharma.

One way to understand this story is by noting that our lack of peace, our fear and general disappointment with life comes from our sense of being a separate "I" with a separate "mind," both looking and judging a world that seems to stand apart, creating a sense of conflict. When we drop that separate "I" and feeling of a separate "it" to "get hold of," poof, all the division and disappointment vanishes too. It takes two to have friction. No two, no friction. Thus, one way to read this is that peace and wholeness arises when we drop the separate pieces, when there is no "I" to take hold of some separate "it," and our sense of being a "self" and our sentience and the world are all undivided. (It is very much the same as the other Bodhidharma Koan we recently discussed, in which he responded to the emperor's query "who are you?" and answered ""I" don't know." He really "Knows" who "he" and all things are when he drops into wholeness the separation of his "I" and something outside it to know.)

https://www.treeleaf.org/forums/showthread.php?16458-don-t-know-mind&p=229429&highlight=bodhidharma+emperor#post229429

Some mystics and eastern philosophers, including many Zen folks, speak of some "cosmic consciousness." I heard one very nice description yesterday that was interesting: That the human brain is actually like your personal "smart phone," and the "cosmic consciousness" is like the wifi signal. You see, the "smart phone" carries your personal data, people and files that are your "separate" identity, but the wifi signal it is tapped into brings all of our "smart phones" to life. The wifi signal is a sea of swarming data about all things, and your personal phone picks and chooses out of the wifi ether your personal information which creates your sense of a personal identity. According to this model, the brain is not the source of consciousness and self-awareness, but is like the smart phone which reduces and "picks and chooses" from the whole swarming field to create its experience of individuality.

I don't know if it is true or not, but it is a nice image. (I heard it on a podcast on my smartphone picked out of the actual wifi youtube universe. Also, when I say "I don't know" ... I just mean "I really just don't know," not ""I" don't know". )

I also recently mentioned a physicist's paper that posits that the universe is one big multiple personality disorder ...

Scientific American: Could Multiple Personality Disorder Explain Life, the Universe and Everything?

A new paper argues that the condition now known as “Dissociative Identity Disorder” might help us understand the fundamental nature of reality

...

And here is where dissociation comes in. We know empirically from DID that consciousness can give rise to many operationally distinct centers of concurrent experience, each with its own personality and sense of identity. Therefore, if something analogous to DID happens at a universal level, the one universal consciousness could, as a result, give rise to many alters with private inner lives like yours and ours. As such, we may all be alters—dissociated personalities—of universal consciousness.

Moreover, as we’ve seen earlier, there is something dissociative processes look like in the brain of a patient with DID. So, if some form of universal-level DID happens, the alters of universal consciousness must also have an extrinsic appearance. We posit that this appearance is life itself: metabolizing organisms are simply what universal-level dissociative processes look like.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com...?sf192035709=1

I don't know about that either, but another book that I recently read makes a pretty interesting case for something like that, and that we are all John Malcovich ...

First, there is an underlying fundamental conscious element to the universe that is more closely tied to matter than we recognize, such that it would be false to say only that consciousness arises from the matter of the brain alone. He gives good reasons (such as the quantum mechanical research and more) that scientists are inching toward such a conclusion. He points to the brain as a mechanism that actually limits this consciousness to a particular sense of "self" and "I". In other words (get ready!) ... you are you and I am you and all things are you, but experienced looking out of different eyes. Heck, the mountains and waters are you too. You feel like "you," but so do I (feel like you when I feel like "I").
https://www.treeleaf.org/forums/show...l=1#post227711

I (you) don't know here too.

However, I do know one way in which, irrefutably, you and your mind are the world, your mind helps create much of the world and, in turn, the world and your mind create much of "you." I have spoken of this before as the "feedback loop" whereby your self and "mind" are not only what is going on between your ears. In Buddhist philosophy, the concept of "inside" and "outside" the "self" is not a clear border. Inside and outside are totally dependent on each other and one cycle, whole and interflowing, so you really do not stop at the borders of the skin. "I" will reprint the whole long thing here:

Consider, for a moment, how we usually look at and experience a tree. There seems in our mind to be something outside us which we usually call a “tree,” light reflects off of its surface and into our eyes, the light is translated into an electo-chemical signal that is transmitted into the brain where we experience a lovely image which is a representation of that tree outside. We promptly recognize this and label it as “a tree.” Then, we may react to the tree in some way, perhaps admiring its beauty, or proceeding to sit under it, or maybe even to cut it down. As part of this process, we include a sense that “I” am looking at the “tree outside me,” and that there is separation between us. That is good, because otherwise you could not function in life if you did not know the difference between yourself and the trees.

But is that the only way to look at it? Buddhists, and many neuro-scientists these days, might point out that there is also a kind of feedback loop at work here, in which the cycle of tree, light, eye, brain and response might be judged one whole thing, one single mutually integrated phenomenon. For example, you have your sense of “you” inside you precisely because there are trees to see which you deem outside you. Seeing the tree and experiencing it gives you something to experience, not to mention sit under. In turn, your mind gives definition, and imposes characteristics on much of the world. For example, while the “tree” is likely a certain group of atoms which happens to reflect from it photons of a certain frequency of vibration, it is your brain which then interprets those photons as “green tree,” and even may add additional value judgments based on your own relative position and preferences, such as “tall green tree” (based on some inner comparison to your relative size) or “beautiful green tree” based on your tastes and sense of symmetry. In that way, while the atoms and vibrating photons may exist apart from you, in a very real sense the experience of a world of “beautiful tall green trees” only exists because there is you, and other human beings, to experience and mentally define things so. I doubt that a lady bug, for example, experiences those atoms in quite the same way and, if her brain is capable of thinking anything at all, it is probably not much more than as a surface to crawl on. Thus, there is the old question, “If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound.” Well, the answer is that some event may make vibrations in the air, but without some sentient ear to hear it and interpret the same as a subjective experience, there can be no “sound.”

In this way, there is a wonderful loop by which we human beings do very much create “beautiful green trees” out of our own thoughts (although something is likely out there), and in turn, the world “out there” lets you draw a line of inner experiences which you define as your “me in here.” You create the world in part, and that world lets you create your sense of “you” in part.

However, you do not need to draw the border of separation quite where it is, at the edge of your skin or the top of your head. You can also come to define yourself, in a very real sense, as the whole feedback loop itself.

As I summed it up elsewhere ...

As I sometimes point out, it means that "mind" is not simply something between your ears (in the sense that, in Buddhist terms, when "you" see a "tree outside" with your eyes and register an image of "tree" with your brain, Buddhists might consider the whole loop ... outside tree/eyes/inside experience of tree ... as "mind", not just the part inside the head. Add to that the sun in the sky, the wind, every atom that lets there be "trees" and "eyes" and "yous" in the first place ... and those are also thrown into "mind" too as all necessary prior parts of the whole process of being and seeing trees. )

All of that, the kitchen sink, the whole universe and whatever is beyond that led to you being here ... is you ... is "Buddha" and "Buddha Mind"

Also ...

The human brain creates a hard sense of self/other in the prefrontal cortex and parietal lobe in connection with many other regions of the brain such as the visual cortex (in my limited understanding). In other words, data pours in through the senses, and the brain creates its own inner model of reality in which your "me" ends about at the border of the skin. Roughly, what is beyond the border is not yourself, what is within the border is your "me". The human mind also likes to separate and categorize, e.g., that a "chair" is not a "table" or a "tablecloth" (although it can also redraw borders to see the whole thing as a single "whole" of "dining set" for example.)

In Zazen, those hard borders between "self" and the outside "other" that is not myself may seem to soften, perhaps fully drop away, so that all becomes experienced as an interflowing whole. It can happen all at once, in a big booming Kensho or subtly and softly like borders becoming gently translucent or crystal clear. Likewise for all the separate things of the world, which now can be perceived as an interflowing whole.

Even a lot of of physicists these days point out that we are star dust, atoms formed in stars, that have somehow come together and are able to look out at the rest of the world, more atoms formed in stars ... i.e., the universe suddenly conscious and looking out at itself ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xaj407ofjNE

That seems right to me. But what do "I" know?

In any case, whatever "mind" is or is not ... whether there is a "cosmic consciousness" or not ... use your mind well, live gently. Just mind the gap.

Gassho, J

SatTodayLah

[Oheso]

gassho, Sensei, thank you for this teaching. I’ve been able to relate to the idea that “I” and the whole of sentient experience is the universe looking at and experiencing itself. There’s no part involved that isn’t “the universe”. A poster on another Buddhist forum relates that he used to think the body was something the mind dragged around to experience the world with, but now feels “the mind is more like a flowering expression of the body, which is in turn an expression of our true body.”
thanks Anders! (Definitely an attraction to “beautiful” Ideas going on here, I’m so lovely!)

so where is the mind and where does it come from and go? Yes. Isn’t what we call awareness the very sentience in “sentient beings”? Isn’t Mind/Awareness a chicken/egg thing?


gassho, O

sat today

[Eishuu]

Another way of approaching the what/where is the mind issue is to look at plants. Do they have a 'mind'? They certainly have a level of awareness. Is that 'mind'? Does algae have 'mind'? Is mind like a dimmer switch that gets brighter the more complex the organism? If awareness arose with the first life, then that is maybe where 'mind' started. But we don't know that. Maybe consciousness is everywhere and in all things. I really like the cosmic consciousness idea. That makes a lot of sense to me. If we can experience mind without self then is that cosmic consciousness?

Our mind is different to animals' minds in degree (and in kind?) because we developed language during the Upper Paleolithic, which allows us to think in concepts (what my husband calls 'the mad ramblings of the left hemisphere', with all its labels).

Do we need to know where mind came from and how it operates? It's part of conditioned coproduction but I have no idea exactly how it arose. When I was little the brain and mind seemed so far apart, and the brain was a big grey mysterious blob. Now scientists know about neural networks, and we know the brain runs on electrical signals, and that there 86 billion neurons in the human brain....that all seems much closer to what the 'mind' might be to me: an amazingly complex network of electrical signals with different bits talking to each other and processing information, a system that has become self-aware.

As to location, maybe the question actually shows us that our models of space and location are actually not accurate. It's here...everything is here. Maybe it is everything. Ramble over

Brilliant questions Meitou and fascinating discussion. It's pretty much scrambled my brain!

Gassho
Eishuu
ST/LAH

[Meitou]

So many interesting comments here, so much to think about, thank you everyone. So much of what you say Jundo resonates for me. I loved the idea of a cosmic consciousness. And this....

As I sometimes point out, it means that "mind" is not simply something between your ears (in the sense that, in Buddhist terms, when "you" see a "tree outside" with your eyes and register an image of "tree" with your brain, Buddhists might consider the whole loop ... outside tree/eyes/inside experience of tree ... as "mind", not just the part inside the head. Add to that the sun in the sky, the wind, every atom that lets there be "trees" and "eyes" and "yous" in the first place ... and those are also thrown into "mind" too as all necessary prior parts of the whole process of being and seeing trees. )

All of that, the kitchen sink, the whole universe and whatever is beyond that led to you being here ... is you ... is "Buddha" and "Buddha Mind"

And this too......

The human brain creates a hard sense of self/other in the prefrontal cortex and parietal lobe in connection with many other regions of the brain such as the visual cortex (in my limited understanding). In other words, data pours in through the senses, and the brain creates its own inner model of reality in which your "me" ends about at the border of the skin. Roughly, what is beyond the border is not yourself, what is within the border is your "me". The human mind also likes to separate and categorize, e.g., that a "chair" is not a "table" or a "tablecloth" (although it can also redraw borders to see the whole thing as a single "whole" of "dining set" for example

In Zazen, those hard borders between "self" and the outside "other" that is not myself may seem to soften, perhaps fully drop away, so that all becomes experienced as an interflowing whole. It can happen all at once, in a big booming Kensho or subtly and softly like borders becoming gently translucent or crystal clear. Likewise for all the separate things of the world, which now can be perceived as an interflowing whole.

Is it the mind that likes to name and categorize, or is it the brain? Naming is one of the great examples of differentiating between self and other - knowing more than one language is quite useful in that respect in that it highlights how much we hang on naming. What is undeniably 'orange' to me will make no sense to someone who doesn't speak English, that's quite an odd thought to play with, it can bring on a bit of a 'rug pulled out from under me' moment.

These concepts, along with the two quotes in my OP, really align with how I (small deluded karmic 'i') think about mind, at least in this moment - because within my linear time frame, many other ideas, flowering from this discussion, and from shikantaza, will undoubtedly blossom. Sitting facing a white wall, there can be glimpses and recognition of oneness with the interflowing whole, pouring out and being poured into. Reflecting on nature of mind is something I can never be bored with because the questions and answers are always changing, always different.

Gassho
Meitou
satwithyoualltodaylah

As a footnote, I had a very sad moment reading the reference to DID, a not so well known and extremely complex condition. I had a FB friend who suffered, and I mean suffered, with DID. It haunted her every waking moment and informed every single thing she did. She traveled every path, conventional and unconventional in terms of therapy, she was supported by many people in her search. She battled daily with thoughts of suicide, and tragically a couple of years ago she could no longer outrun those thoughts and took her own life. She was a US veteran, a psychotherapist, a deeply loved wife. I'll be sitting and dedicating to Maggie Grace this evening.