Mind(Buddhism)

Understanding the nature of the mind and successfully cultivating it are central concerns of the Buddhist teachings. Hence, the mind is investigated and analyzed in various ways in the Buddhist texts.

Mind in Buddhism

The importance given to the mind in Buddhist thought is reflected in a discourse that records an encounter between the Buddha and a Jain ascetic ([1], Vol. I, p. 372). The discourse reports that, while the Jain upheld the self-evident position at first sight that bodily action is weightier than verbal or mental action, the Buddha countered that for him mental action was the weightiest type of action. Behind this position stands the importance given to volition in Buddhist thought as the central driving force behind any action manifesting at the mental, verbal, or physical level.
The same primacy given to the mind has also found a poetic expression in the twin stanzas that open the Dhammapada collection, according to which mind is the forerunner of all things ([2], 1–2). The whole world is in fact led by mind, which is the one thing that has everything else under its control ([3], Vol. I, p. 39).
The complexity of the analysis of the mind undertaken in the early Buddhist texts is also reflected in the use of different terms to refer to the mind. Three such Pāli terms are citta, mano, and viññāṇa. Although at times these three occur together as near synonyms ([4], Vol. I, p. 21), taken on their own each of them conveys a slightly different nuance.
Citta stands for the mind as the center of subjective experience, in particular in the sense of signifying the activity of the will and what could perhaps best be gathered under the header of emotion. Mano represents mind as a mode of action distinct from verbal and bodily action and as the sixth of the senses, where – besides the five physical senses of eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body – it covers the activity of thought and reflection. Viññāṇa refers to being conscious by way of any of the senses and denotes the stream of consciousness that sustains personal continuity during a single life and through subsequent rebirths. Viññāṇa is also part of the analysis of an individual into five aggregates, khandha. While the first of these five stands for the physical body, the remaining four represent different aspects of the mind. These are, besides viññāṇa as consciousness, feeling, perception, and volitional formations.
The perspective consistently adopted in early Buddhism in regard to each of these manifestations of the mind is that, even though the existence of the mind as a process is never questioned, to presume that any unchanging substance or self can be found within the mind is considered a thoroughly mistaken notion. What is commonly referred to as “mind,” then, should be understood with wisdom as being merely a conditioned and impermanent process of mental events. From an early Buddhist perspective, the existence of such a mental flux is all that is required to account for continuity throughout life and from one life to another, for the margin of personal freedom to take decisions amid a complex set of conditionings of the mind, and for the karmic retribution that is inexorably linked to the ethical quality of any such decision taken.
The quality of this mental flux thus depends on one’s own past volitional activities. One important principle here is that what one frequently thinks about will in turn lead to a corresponding inclination of the mind ([1], Vol. I, p. 115). Hence, the degree to which one’s mind is at present under the influence of defilements reflects of one’s own past interests and concerns. While the mind might naturally be undefiled and even luminous ([5], Vol. I, p. 10), only too often its actual condition is one of being overcome by various detrimental influences.
This situation is the reason Buddhist teachings give considerable importance to mental cultivation, bhāvanā. The prevalence of such concern in the early Buddhist teachings has found its expression in various categories that identify mental states or factors that are either detrimental to one’s mental well-being or else beneficial for mental culture.
Certain detrimental influences on the mind are subsumed under the heading of the “influxes” or “taints,” āsava. Usually occurring as a set of three, with sometimes the influx of views, diṭṭhāsava, added as a fourth, the standard listing speaks of the influxes of sensuality, of (desire for continued) existence, and of ignorance, respectively, kāmāsava, bhavāsava, and avijjāsava.
Another set of injurious factors are the anusayas, “underlying tendencies” that lurk in the mind and cause the arising of unwholesome mental states. A standard set of seven such anusayas covers sensual desire, irritation, views, doubt, conceit, lust for existence, and ignorance.
In the context of meditation practice proper, the five hindrances, nīvaraṇa, are identified as particularly harmful. These are sensual desire, ill will, sloth-and-torpor, restlessness-and-worry, and doubt, which “hinder” and obstruct the development of deep concentration and insight.
Beneficial mental qualities that stand in opposition to the five hindrances are the seven factors of awakening, bojjhaṅga. These comprise mindfulness, investigation of phenomena, energy, joy, tranquility, concentration, and equanimity. Another beneficial set comes under the topic of the faculties, indriya, or the powers, bala, which comprise confidence or faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom.
The basic distinction that underlies these categories, a distinction that runs like a red thread through the whole of the early Buddhist teachings on the nature of the mind, is the differentiation between what is wholesome or skillful, kusala, and what is unwholesome or unskillful. The injunction to remove the unwholesome and develop what is wholesome in a way provides a succinct summary of what cultivation of the mind in early Buddhism is concerned with. For achieving this aim, the development of the two complementary mental qualities of tranquility, samatha, and insight, vipassanā, is particularly called for.
With the development of Abhidharma thought, the analysis of the mind in the Buddhist traditions becomes more detailed and a range of mental states and mental factors are identified. As part of this development, the impermanent nature of the mind is given special emphasis, leading to the theory of momentariness. This somewhat radical conception of the impermanent nature of the mind, which proposes that each mind moment disappears as soon as it has appeared, would then have stimulated further developments in order to account for mental continuity. In the southern Buddhist tradition this was achieved through the concept of the bhavaṅga, the subliminal consciousness, whereas within some of the northern Buddhist traditions the concept of the ālaya-vijñāṇa, the store consciousness, can be seen to fulfill a similar function. Perhaps in opposition to what was perceived as a tendency toward substantialism among some Abhidharma philosophers, eventually the notion arose that reality in its ultimate sense is “mind only.”
The early Buddhist position, however, consistently maintains a middle position according to which, even though mind is of prime importance, reality is not grounded in mind alone. Similarly, while mind is seen as nothing apart from or above an ever-changing process of mental flux, the early Buddhist conception of the mind does allow for continuity throughout the cycle of rebirths, for the effect of mental conditioning on decision making, and for karmic retribution, without needing to introduce additional concepts for this purpose.
Concern with the mind in early Buddhism is, in fact, above all pragmatic, in the sense of having the prescriptive function of showing the path to the liberation of the mind, without attempting an exhaustive descriptive treatment of the mind in all its possible modes, functions, and manifestations. This pragmatic concern is summed up succinctly in a verse in the following manner:
Not doing any evil,
Undertaking what is wholesome,
Cleansing one’s own mind,
This is the teaching of Buddhas ([2], 183).

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