What is mind ?
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Just to share some of my opinions:- Before mind, comes consciousness, a inherently quality we have a living being, short of being in a coma, or a plant. But let us just focus in human consciousness What is mind? To put it succinctly, it is consciousness craving activity, now. With consciousness, we experience, we relate with past experience, construct memories with or without labelling according to attachment to "I", our mind. Just look around, everybody seems to be doing something to occuppy themselves. How many times you actually have encountered someone with a meditative gaze in our midst anywhere? We project thoughts in a train of apparent line of thoughts, some with emotional labels which we indulged in, seemingly enjoying the familiarity. We also sprung spontaneous thoughts seemingly without relation to previous line of thoughts. Sometimes, alternate string of thoughts can also be triggered by any single association, words,thoughts, smell, taste or sight. This stream of thoughts can liken to a train of carriages, with a single link, our consciousness. What consciousness we have is all in the present, the rest is memories and experiences we have collated. Everything is cumulated to present, even projections of future is at present, and what becomes the past are memories. We confuse our consciousness with our experience of sight, sounds, sensations our body and our memories and thoughts that we differentiate between body and mind. Consciousness is an awareness of our living processes. We fear death because we fear losing this consciousness. We do not simply let our consciousness rest. Consciousness of thoughts and body, the craving of this consciousness as we presently have is identified or labelled as self. Self also seems to have a flavor of familiarity, owing the consciousness having savouring the experiences and within memory, our "I" perspective. Consciousness is simply means a process of a living being. But what if body dies, does self dies too? Meaning, does this consciousness of ours cease to exist? We constantly crave consciousness and activity, and losing it! What can we do about it ? Hence borns the soul. The soul we perceived as ours, are created in our own likeness. But soul is fragile, just as life is, it needs to ally itself to a all powerful, eternal higher consciousness. Hence Brahman, God , Creator, Higher Consciousness is born. We project this higher consciousness outside of us, failing to recognise we are the creator, augmenting previous incarnations we inherit of god to our own. Just we cannot see our consciousness we cannot see God. God cannot die, by association, our soul is also immortal. This is what I think is the deluded mind. Our consciousness is dependant on neccessary conditions being present. Very often we associate our consciousness with ourselves before being born into our body as being an entity, a soul which is consciousness that moves into a body. However, we are very mistaken for these are seed or stored consciousness which in a combination with our stored propensity/ genetic makeup/traits that we received for our parents, our forebears and their experiences. This is what we call karmic affinities. Make no mistake, seed consciousness is an intrinsic part of us, indivisivable. Consciousness of past lives are seed memories we have an affinity to, we own them just as much as they own us, for they affect our behaviour. They are us. If from the perspective of us going to future birth, we consider them cling or residual consciousness/memories. It can be both habitual or intense memories which we are still unable to let go at point of death.This a gross aspect of our seed consciousness. We often mistaken this consciousness to be in the form of our likeness, an identity we have built up during our lifetime. The longer time after death, the less the consolidated aspects of previous lives as separate entity remains, until only previous memories becomes dormant. Just as we can have a cheerful or melancholic personality, it depends on conditions being in place, past and present. Nothing is cast in stone, we can be born a happy bugger and then later turn into a pain in the ass later on. Just as we imagine as to having (seed) consciousness/ memory/ personality entering a body, we can also perceive our brain receiving a seed memory. Seed consciousness, or memories are can be compared to either radio waves, or memory in our computer. Without a conscious entity with the same wave length or binary decoding hardware and operating system, the seed consciousness do not mean much by itself. When we let go of this activity craving mind, we let go of our continued, constructed existence. We uncling to our self view, our suffering. But we must also be aware of self view influence in us and others, its arising and it's affliction on us. As is, we keep vigilance Knowing is only one thing, it is simply acknowledgement. However, we must honestly feel weary of this mind view, with finding living like this unsatisfactory, the familiarity of mind view with continue. We must craving of mind activity to rest.
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amitofu
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Hi Weychin
i can't write that lengthy... to me, mind is the aggregates... aggregates is mind.. Dependent on internal and external phenomena give rise to this, and when one of component ceases that cease... that's mind to me. And i also fail to be mindful sometimes... blur lol -
Greetings Weychin,
From the macro to the micro, reality is the conditional appearance of cascading non-chained empty form; non-arising, non-ceasing, non-material, non-temporal.
When this is, that is, when this is emptiness, that is form, when this is form, that is consciousness, when this is consciousness, that is mind, when this is mind, that is being, when this is being, that is self. When this isn't, that isn't.
Consciousness reflects itself, itself is the mind. Mind cognizes itself, itself is the world. World see's itself, itself is form. Form is empty of itself, itself is just non-self. No more, no less. just pppfff... -
In another thread it says there is no time. So what is memories? Still past?
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KiAlso thank you 2009novice and Eezy Isempty for kind inputs. We put in with sincerity, our thoughts in own context in an attempt to clarify our views.nd thanks to all for having patience for reading this post. My intention is to allow ourselves to focus on consciousness due it's ubiquity. We can always experience it if we allow ourselves the time. Unless we lose it tomorrow.
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Originally posted by libido:
In another thread it says there is no time. So what is memories? Still past?
To be honest I am not able understand your context, but putting memories of the past in the bottom scenario, maybe it can be of use to you :-Let's say you have someone taken a picture or recording of an event which you have partcipated, and you yourself have also memories of the event. As you watch the replay, you would have realised the emphasis you have of that event does not concur with that recording. Perhaps a recording of a happy couple since then divorced. Or yourself in the faddist clothing and hairstyle of that period?
Same event but perspective and emphasis have changed. If you have never seen that recording until now, is this the first time you have the experience of seeing it? We files our memories in some kind of context, pleasant, neutral , negative or some other aspects, so we also kind of recontruct the events or persons. Each we recall our memory , it changes in time. Perhaps we loved someone, and yet hated that someone for hurting ourselves, but overtime our memories changes of that person, maybe we found someone we love even more, perhaps because they love you better.
Alternatively, have you heard of the Rashomon effect?
Another problem is our memories may have stayed the same, but times, places and people have changed. Perhaps you have relatives whom have visited Singapore 10/20 years ago and remark how things have changed? Or maybe a childhood cousin you have seen for years.
So is it the same memories we are still recounting now, the same memories?
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Greeting libido,
In response to your query, "In another thread it says there is no time. So what is memories? Still past?"
I offer the following, taken from personal meditative experience.
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There is a stage of meditation when one see's thoughts when they appear in awareness. Think of this awareness as effortlessly observing a polished object with a ripple-less mind.
The thought appears fully formed and flavoured with feeling (e.g. pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral).
There is no 'I', 'Me' and 'Mine', in the observation.
There is no 'this and that'.
There is no 'arising and passing-away'.
There is only the 'appearance' of a thought.If the desire arises to explore the thought, the quieted mind reaches in to touch the thought ever so lightly. Think of this light touch as fully reaching out with one's arm to touch an object with the tip of a finger.
Immediately, the thought 'objectifies' and contains meaning.
There is 'this and that'.
There is 'arising and passing-away'.
There is 'time and space'.However, because the quieted mind is touching the thought at a distance so to speak, the thought remains more or less stable, permitting the mind to explore it with awareness. Such that when the mind looks to where the thought arose and ceased, it only perceives motion - no absolute beginning or ending of the thought can be found. Think of a rainbow, though the rainbow appears to exist, and seems to have a beginning and end, when one looks closer it can't be found. What one thought was the beginning and end is just an illusion, what I call a 'pppfff'.
Now when the mind touches a thought a little too hard, the 'I', 'Me', and 'Mine' appropriates the 'feeling' of the thought, and a process of conditional cascading thoughts tumbles out, each thought separate and distinct from the last.
Now if one's awareness is astute the mind immediately withdraws and the process of cascading thoughts ends, and one resumes observing with awareness. This process from beginning to end will have occurred in an instant, but many conditional thoughts will have transpired.
Each thought separate, and distinct in appearance, resulting in the conditional cascading of non-chained empty thought, non-arising, non-ceasing, and non-temporal.
In the mind encumbered with 'I', 'Me' and 'Mine', this process of conditional cascading non-chained empty thought condenses into the illusion we call 'memory', .
It is the strength of the 'I', 'Me' and 'Mine', taking ownership of a process of conditional cascading thoughts that in turn determines the strength memory(s). The strength of the memory is further disseminate by subsequent conditional thoughts - and ono and on it goes...
With Metta,
Eezy -
Hello eezy, thanks for sharing, let me take sometime to look at your explanation.
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Meaning it is all illusions?
Karma and rebirth, past lives? Or can some pole tell what will happen in future lives of a person?
Or it is something we cannot conceptualize?
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Originally posted by libido:
In another thread it says there is no time. So what is memories? Still past?
i think memories are just part of consciousness
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Greetings libido,
From a conventional level in terms of life, universe, and everything, Mara is reality, one can speak confidently and knowingly of consciousness, mind, karma, rebirth, past lives, future lives minus the predicting thing. Although some people are very good at discerning patterns -- the billionaire Warren Buffet comes to mind.
Let's call this the pole of Samsara. We can see it is full of things, all having to do with the 'I', 'Me', and 'Mine'. That is to say everything is fenced in by greed, lust, and delusion. Freedom is just an illusion of the self, because people are fenced in by the 'self'.
Let's call the opposite end the pole of Nibbana.
From an absolute level in terms of life, universe, and everything, Mara is an illusion and the world and all in it, me, you, and the whole shebang are empty of thingness. That is to say pppfff... Freedom is finally absolute and real -- there is no 'I', 'Me', and 'Mine'.
Some where's between these two poles people begin to wake up in stages. An insight yawn here, an insight stretch there, and the occasional mental fart to move it along.
Between the pole of Samsara and the point of the first insight yawn of awakening all ideas about Nibbana are conceptual. Everything so to speak has to have meaning in relation to the 'self'. Complexities abound, awakening takes on the aura of an attainment a nebulous cosmic realization covered in layers of conceptualizations. Simply put, 'what is in it for 'me'.
But, there is no 'me'. 'Me', is just a fabrication of Samsara -- of my karma, genetics, intelligence, and station in life. When 'I' die it's "when this isn't, then that isn't. That is it's over for 'me', and rebirth kicks in with new consciousness, mind, karma, genetics, intelligence, and station in life, an another 'Me' completely. As an aside, when 'I' search for who 'I' was in past lives 'I' can't find 'Me' because I'm looking for someone who didn't exist in the past! I know it's all very confusing but, that's Samsara for you.
Further, the reason 'I' can't predict my future is because 'I' am projecting a 'Me', who doesn't exist. The nearest thing 'I' can do is discern patterns of events -- for instance if 'I' bite my cat, there is a good chance it will scratch 'Me' in return.
Back to awakening, as I mentioned above awakening is not an attainment -- it's a profoundly simple, non-conceptual, non-attainment incremental letting go of the 'self'. You don't realize awakening -- awakening realizes you -- you have no choice in the matter...
'To be continued...'
I have to go to work...
With Metta,
Eezy