Dharmachari Seven, Wisdom Quarterly (originally composed Sept. 7, 2008, updated March 4, 2012 inspired by Kalyani) dedicated to Gina Marie Guarnieri
(n-s-d.com)According to the Buddhist theory of mind (in Abhidharma or Buddhist Psychology), there are eight factors that together comprise a human being:
The first four are collectively known as "body." These are the Four Great Elements or qualities of materiality, the maha-bhuta (dhatu, elements). They are most frequently referred to as the aggregate of "form" (the rupa in namarupa, "mind and form").
- (1) form:
- Earth (solidity, hardness, softness)
- Fire (temperature, ripeness, heat, cold)
- Water (cohesion, liquidity, flowing)
- Wind (motion, distension, support)
At a subatomic level, the Abhidharma speaks of "particles of perception" (kalapas) or units that together build up to form the various qualities of matter. All materiality is characterized by degrees of these qualities.
(LiveScience.com)
(LiveScience.com)The second four are collectively known as "mind." These are the four great processes spoken of together as mentality and mental concomitants (cittas and cetasikas). They are frequently referred to as "self" or "soul," that part of the person beyond the body (the nama, literally "name" ). These are the aggregates (groups, heaps):
- (2) Feelings (sensations)
- (3) Perceptions (six sense-organ contact)
- (4) Mental formations (represented by, but not limited to, volition)
- (5) consciousness (reflexive awareness)
The Abhidharma (the Collection of "Higher Teachings" in Buddhism) uses a finer magnification that resolves at the level of mind-moments (cittas). These are discrete units of mentality that together with mental-concomitants build up to form the various processes of awareness.
Materiality, the physical, is concretely found in particles, whereas mentality, the metaphysical, comes down to moments (in the process of awareness, the cittas and associated cetasikas). This union or distinction is dealt with for simplicity as the Five Aggregates (khandha) and more subtly as name-and-form (namarupa).
Brain vs. Mind
Brain (materiality) and mind (mentality) are interdependent, and for the most part they do not occur separately. The exception to this is in four very strange worlds collectively called the Immaterial Sphere.
- [It is important to mention here that what we commonly call materiality or matter is not limited to what we see and touch; there are far more subtle forms of matter. There are 31 Planes of Existence, divided into Three Spheres. We live in the sensual (kama), which is the gross material. The next higher sphere is called the fine-material (rupa), shining worlds of "light" inhabited by devas and brahmas. Humans can visit these worlds because they are still physical. But an even more rarefied sphere exists beyond that, the immaterial (arupa). Matter we would not recognize exists in the fine-material sphere interdependent with mind. But there is no corresponding materiality in the immaterial sphere.*]
This apparent inseparability of mind and body may not be obvious because the Abhidharma analyzes them as if they were separable.
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The purpose of this analysis (this "taking apart") is to demonstrate their conditioned (component, dependent) nature. It may also not be obvious because form (body) need not be gross, as it is in the Sensual Sphere. It can be fine material (subtle and luminous as with beings existing in higher planes that are not perceptible with the ordinary eye but come into view through the mind's eye, the dibba cakkhu).
The brain is not the mind and is likely not even the "seat of consciousness." In fact, rightly speaking, the entire body is conscious. But the seat, never specified by the Buddha, seems clearly to be in the heart. An enlightened teacher has assured us it is in the blood as it passes through the heart. These are not speculations; they are directly visible to meditators who master the meditative absorptions (jhanas). This accounts for the apparent anomaly that people remain themselves even after a heart replacement while sometimes taking on the habits or characteristics of the heart donor.
It is difficult to demarcate where the brain ends and body begins. The Central and Peripheral Nervous Systems (which could also reasonably be called parts of the "brain") enervate every region of the body and can literally be seen in the shape of the human body (Bodyworlds). They actually look like this:
(bryanedwards.coml)
We make the artificial distinction "brain" as simply the lump at the end of the rest of the brain, its arms and channels without which it is neither surviving nor doing anything with the body. The body has memory; the heart and gut have neurons, possibly more neurons than the brain since most serotonin is not found in the brain case but in the colon.
One might even go so far as to argue that the brain cannot operate, and therefore normal human consciousness (or the epiphenomenal mind) cannot function, in the absence of blood -- that is, without nutriment (glucose) and oxygen. Glucose is not considered the brain, and neither are the lungs. Yet without them (or artificial replacements outside of the body), there is no brain function. This is only to say that we are commonly drawing artificial distinctions without realizing it:
The body is interconnected and interdependent, and it supports ordinary mentality. Mentality, in turn, governs the body. Anyone can practice telekinesis, mentally moving something physical: Just blink, or raise your arm. What moved it? Of course, what we are fascinated with is how someone might remotely move objects. So we forget the miraculous everyday movement of proximate objects.
(connellychiro)At a finer resolution, the nervous system looks like this (Figure 2.5). However, Western science is not doing much to spread the news that there are many "neurons" in the heart and intestinal tract (giving a whole new literal meaning to the express "gut feeling" and intuition). In fact, it seems to have successfully suppressed this information or any discussion of its implications, particularly for the cause and treatment of depression.
Depression: Mind or Body?
If depression is caused by insufficient amounts of serotonin and other neurotransmitters, the answer is certainly not to make more and more reuse of the few remaining by inhibiting their reuptake. (This is what SSRIs are purported to do).
Want to become clinically depressed? Have a portion of your intestinal tract cut out, or get it not to work by clogging it with white flour, white rice, plaque, toxic accumulations of undigested, unpassed, and putrefying food matter.
Why then treat the brain with toxic synthetic compounds when clearing the gut would do so much more to restore stasis? The answer is because it is profitable to do so. Thank you, filthy rich pharmaceutical industry that "cures" nothing but aims to "treat" everything for symptom relief.
The other causes and conditions for "depression" are cognitive labelling, dysfunctional thinking, undealt with childhood trauma and/or molestation, emotional turmoil, grief (lack of successful grieving), and the source of almost all medical problems: "stress," one of many translations for the Buddhist term dukkha.
(sinoemedica)It's the Heart
In ancient times in almost every culture, the heart was regarded as the "seat of consciousness," not the brain. Certainly, it is the heart early in utero that begins to beat before the quadrants or components of what will come to be the brain are formed. Metaphorically, of course, there has never been any question where are knowing and emotional experience emanates from.
Yet, "mind" (feeling + perception + formations + consciousness) is already present. In the absence of a working "brain," there is already mind. Researchers scramble and they there are rudimentary proto-structures doing the work.
However, in the absence of the subconscious-stream (see bhavanga-sota), and without the force of karma to sustain one in this form, human life is not possible. (No life is possible anywhere, but let us speak only of the kinds of beings we care about most).
Therefore, a physical basis is not enough. Neither is the nonphysical or metaphysical (beyond-physical). They are both important and interdependent. They co-arise and co-exist.
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It is important to note that at the moment of death, consciousness seems to become independent of the brain (and body). Unfortunately, this does not happen.
The "spirit" (gandhaba, gandharva) departs. However, that is only what seems to happen. ANd much like the rest of life, what "seems" is not what actually "is." Immediately at death, by force of karma, there is a spontaneously-arisen (opapātika) "body" that supports consciousness. Consciousness is never really without its physical support (again except in the strange Immaterial Sphere,* which are planes of existence far higher than most "heavenly" worlds posited in Buddhism).
This may be the rebirth or a transitional form. One goes immediately and without intermission from this life to the next life.
- But Tibetan Buddhism talks about an intermediate plane, the Bardo. That's fine and wonderful and in no way contradicted here. A subtle body is the rebirth. And that will pass after 49 days to another body, gross or subtle, as Tibetan Bon-and-Buddhist masters describe. Surely 49 is a general number not a hard and fixed period of time.
Who can believe it?
The Buddha's message is NOT "believe." It is "come and see." Why? It is possible in meditation to attain and literally see the many fine-material planes and even the four immaterial planes now while embodied as a human living on a sensual plane.
Siddhartha Gautama did so before becoming a buddha (supremely-enlightened) under the Indian yogis and meditation adepts Alara Kalama and Uddaka Ramaputra, who had reached the highest states short of Buddhist cosmology, insight, and liberation.
- Here "Buddhism" refers not to historical Buddhism, which only came into existence after Siddhartha broke through and rediscovered the path but to prehistorical Buddhism, the timeless Dharma rediscovered many times by many samma-sam-buddhas and pacceka buddhas, teachers and privately supremely enlightened ones.
We can do it. There is no reason to "believe" in the 31 Planes of Existence. One can check. (See a qualified meditation master who teaches both jhanas and vipassana practice, such as Ven. Pa Auk Sayadaw and his many accomplished students who have gone on to become teachers, a small but growing number of whom are Americans.
(mogokmonle)Samsara
The system of rebirth is ongoing and functions as a closed loop. The flowchart diagramming this process is encapsulated in the fundamental Buddhist teaching of Dependent Origination (paticca-samuppada). "When this is, that comes to be. With the ceasing of this, that ceases" is a brief way of explaining an otherwise complicated set of codependent or interdependent factors.
No originating or prime cause is stipulated, only the necessary and sufficient conditions for sustaining the process: In the past, on account of ignorance, there was karma (the performance of deeds with the tendency to ripen in a result).
One can and should check the truth of this statement during insight meditation practice AFTER gaining and establishing oneself in a necessary and sufficient amount of concentration (serenity, which technically does not have to reach the level of absorption, jhana, for it can sometimes squeeze by on momentary or access concentration, but the firmest foundation is mastering the first four meditative absorptions). The significance of this statement is that Dependent Origination is not a theory, not something to study for intellectual satisfaction about the origin of the world or human life. It is an insight meditation practice. One can see it, one can check it. To do anything less is a waste of one of the most important things the Buddha ever taught.
- Once after teaching Dependent Origination, Ananda foolishly said to the Buddha, "It seems clear to me!" "Do not say so, Ananda, do not say so," the Buddha admonished. "This teaching, this truth, this dharma is subtle and deep and seems so. It is on account of NOT seeing it, not penetrating it, not understanding it that you and I and all living beings have undergone this unending series of rebirths, this continued wandering on, hastening form one existence to another, ensnared by greed, provoked by aversion, blinded by delusion, disappointed and suffering in search of pleasure and satisfaction."
On account of karma, there is rebirth. And on account of rebirth, the "entire mass of suffering" comes to be. Because one factor is dependent on the others, it is possible to dismantle the dependent-chain and bring ignorance and suffering to complete extinction.
Because this was the Buddha's goal -- called nirvana or "the complete end of suffering" -- rather than psychology or physics for their own sake, no ultimate ontological resolution is to be found in Buddhism. The Dharma is not for speculation but for practice.
Enlightenment is preferable and possible to speculating or even finding an answer to why things exist or seem to. With enlightenment, the pursuit of all these questions is possible. One can know and see for oneself and thereby come to understand that such questions are not ultimately important, and they do not pertain to full liberation from ignorance and the complete end of suffering.
If they did, the Buddha said, he would have taught them and explained them. Instead, out of all that he knew, he limited himself to teaching only two things, suffering (dukkha) and the end of suffering (nirvana).
*NOTE: The four immaterial planes that comprise the Immaterial Sphere (arupa-loka) are mind-only: the base of unbounded space, unbounded consciousness, no-thingness, and neither-perception-nor-non-perception. These may correspond to a material basis in some form, somewhere. But it is not generally spoken of and is not taken up as a matter of speculation here, except to say there is such a thing as mind-created matter which may, one monk has suggested to us, account for subtle material in the immaterial worlds. The existence of this sphere is a very important and a potentially fruitful line of inquiry because it suggests that mind precedes matter, but matter does not precede mind. They are not equal, nor are they hopelessly interdependent and inseparable, and "mind" is NOT epiphenomenal, that is, simply the result of material processes.
- Buddhist Dictionary (technical Buddhist terms)
- Function of Life-Continuum (bhavanga) Nina Van Gorkom
- Practical Dependent Origination (Buddhadasa)
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