Buddhism is generally attributed to the great reformer philosopher Siddhartha Gautama who probably lived during 623-543 B.C. Buddha was more concerned with the miseries that afflicted common people and he gave up his throne and went in search of a solution to all the miseries of mankind.
The early form of the religion that got formulated sometime during 300 B.C., i.e. two centuries after the death of Buddha, was called ‘Teravada’ Buddhism – a word that simply meant – ‘the path of the elders’.
Most of what I am going to talk in this episode pertains to this early form of Buddhism which is believed to be based on the preaching of Buddha as recorded in the Tipitakas.
Buddhists like our modern scientists, did not believe in the concept of soul. According to them, a person is just body and Mind. But unlike the modern scientists, Buddhists did not map the Mind to brain.
They did not consider Mind to be part of the body at all. Their view was that the Mind is a non material entity that generally exists in conjunction with a material body but is capable of existing as an independent entity as well.
Buddhists considered everything to be impermanent – anicca. That means even the body as well as the Mind are not permanent entities. They keep perishing every moment only to be replaced by new ones.
Buddhists called the Mind as Citta. These minds come into existence, remain for a moment, and finally disappear, only to be replaced by another mind. There are 89 types of minds, each coming into existence on specific occasions and have a definite role to play.
All our actions such as sense perception, physical movements, and so on are all handled by specific minds in coordination with the bodies that are also dynamically produced.
A mind or Citta has some information at any time. This information is called Cetasika. These Cetasika can be feelings, emotions, desires and so on. Before a mind disappears, it passes on some of its information to the newly formed mind that succeeds it. This way, a continuity is maintained.
Buddhists don’t admit any agency to the act of performing any sense perception or action, nor to any feeling or emotion. There is nobody who gets aware of whatever is happening, there is nobody who wills something. It is just the content of the mind that keeps changing depending on the situation.
In other words, mind is ‘awareness’ and not something ‘that is aware of’ as we generally tend to think. There is no subject but only objects, body and mind, both of which operate in almost a mechanistic way.
However, Buddhists believe that it is possible to alter the way the sequence of minds that get formed. Even their content can be changed. Who is the one who can do that? That is the question that begs an answer.
But let us take it that the minds and their contents can be altered. Now there are three questions.
- Why should one change the contents of a mind?
- Why should one wish to change the sequence in which the minds appear and disappear?
- If such changes are indeed possible, how does one go about doing it?
The main premise of Buddhism is that
- Life is full of miseries – birth, ill health, aging, death and finally rebirth.
- This sequence of miseries is driven by Kamma or Karma.
- This Karma is recorded in certain kinds of mind and gets carried forward.
- It is possible to change the way the minds are formed by means of meditative practices.
Buddhists’ interest in knowing about the Mind is mainly in achieving a cessation to the formation of minds and hence liberation from the endless cycle of births and deaths.
With no offense meant to Buddhists, I see lot of inconsistencies in this Buddhist way of thinking. I feel that unknowingly the Buddhists have misunderstood Buddha and come up with an ideology that does not take us anywhere. You can see my book “Buddha’s soul” to know more on these views.
A series revolving around Mind – Science of Mind, Philosophy of Mind, Notions of reality, Mind modulation, Domains beyond Mind, and so on. © Dr. King 2019
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