Mind, Thoughts, and Acquisition

Western science, in many contexts, defines the mind simply as the functioning of the brain: taking in data through the senses, encoding it, interpreting it, perceiving it, storing and retrieving it as memory, using language and comprehension, exercising intelligence, analysing, communicating, questioning and solving problems, making judgements, maintaining balance and coordination — a whole range of functions the brain is said to carry out. Within that framework, the brain can be described as the physical medium, and the mind as its functioning.

Brain, Mind, and the Limits of Science

Buddha-Dhamma, by contrast, sees the activity of mind present throughout the entire body — even within a single cell. From the day a being comes into existence, the mind evolves according to the consciousness that is building up and according to karma; following mind, karma and consciousness, the brain itself takes shape accordingly. Western science tends to explain this through factors such as genetics. According to the nature of the brain and the body, the mind then goes on to function. What might be called the 'program' running in a being's present life is exactly this mind, built up from all these varied factors — and the experiences gained from birth onward heavily influence how that program takes shape. It is this programmed mind that constructs the world we each experience; whatever data reaches the mind gets interpreted according to the program the mind has already built up.

So what, then, are thoughts, and what is the mind (citta) itself? This is something many people confuse today. Nervous-system research has worked out fairly clearly how data reaches the mind from the five senses — eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body. But how do thoughts themselves reach the mind? That is something that cannot be uncovered within a purely physical, chemical, and biological framework, because every field of scientific knowledge — physics, chemistry, biology — is built upon certain limits and assumptions. Those theories are always put forward within a particular frame of reference, and even psychology is bound by such limits. So, so long as one remains within these limits, some doctrines of the universe may simply never receive a foundation from knowledge systems labelled 'scientific' — but that does not mean those doctrines are not operating.

Those who are heavily shaped by scientific knowledge systems — and who, through studying them, have developed refined ways of thinking — describe such doctrines by fixing them onto certain foundations, according to their own preference, and confirm such matters through various experiments before presenting them. But that does not mean other doctrines do not exist; it only means those doctrines have not been scientifically proven. In truth, science has managed to sweep away a great deal that was merely conceptual, held onto through blind faith as primitive belief — and that is a genuinely good trend, one that has contributed significantly to society's wholesome progress.

Even so, there is no need to remain fixed only on what has been proven scientifically up to today — those same matters may well be challenged again tomorrow; that is exactly how science has advanced this far. One should hold an open and balanced attitude about this. Does being 'scientific' really mean clinging firmly to what has been proven so far and rejecting everything else? It is hard to imagine scientists and researchers themselves behaving that way — if they did, science would have no path forward. At the same time, ideas that have been politicised under the name of 'science,' and generalisations passed off as 'religion and philosophy,' are constantly being released into society. That is not a fault of science, or of genuine philosophy, but something done — knowingly or not — by those who popularise science or philosophy according to their own leanings. Unless this is seen with real openness, both one's outer and inner reality end up shaped by it. Some who study science hold to science alone, purely out of personal preference, and argue from there; if they admit that is simply their own preference, there is still some openness in that. But whoever believes 'this alone is true, everything else is empty,' may well be mistaken.

Idam eva saccam, moghamannam — Gautama Buddha said something very like this in the Cankī Sutta, precisely to discourage taking whatever one currently understands as the whole truth. Otherwise, the middle way is lost right there.

Where Do Thoughts Actually Come From?

Today, psychology is a highly advanced field of knowledge — one that helps people enormously in maintaining and developing their mental health. Through it, a great deal of research has been carried out on the mind and human behaviour, many theories have been proposed, and through them, real service has been rendered: resolving mental difficulties, preventing mental illness, sustaining a wholesome state of mind, guiding what should be attended to from childhood onward, and much more besides, across many sub-fields. Through this, many beliefs and superstitions have also been challenged. Psychology works hard to prevent people basing their whole life on matters not perceptible to the ordinary mind — karma, gods, spirit-forces — and thereby falling prey to superstitious views that close off the paths to physical, economic, and social progress. That is genuinely praiseworthy.

That said, within psychology one does not find a clear account of how the thing we call 'thoughts' actually arises. Even as thoughts arise, it may be possible, as science advances, to identify changes in the brain's bio-chemical processes at the same time — but from that alone, one cannot say whether the thought arose first and caused the chemical reaction, or whether the chemical process came first and caused the thought.

Among the concepts of Buddha-Dhamma one hears about today, there can be a great many differing opinions on precisely this point.

The feeling that 'the mind is running' is a common life experience for many people. Yet there are also those who argue that no such thing as 'a mind' really exists at all. How, then, do we come to feel that a mind exists, that it 'runs'? That feeling, too, comes through the mind, or through the brain's functioning — but how did the mind come to have that very nature in the first place? What is the root of thoughts? Where do they begin? Are they things that happen according to one's own will? Do psychology, Buddha-Dhamma, or any other philosophy actually hold answers to these questions?

Within scientific knowledge systems, 'the mind' is generally described as something intangible, not something that can be grasped directly — and mind and citta are, in most cases, not even recognised as two separate things. But for someone who develops mindfulness deeply within a spiritual practice, direct experience regarding this becomes possible. Someone who has cultivated bringing mindfulness inward can, over time, come to see how extremely subtle matters of Dhamma arrive one after another, within a certain span, and coalesce into a self-appropriated intention. One stream by which the mind creates matters, following this Dhamma, is exactly what we call 'thoughts.' But even seeing those thoughts, or knowing where they come from, lies beyond the reach of ordinary mindfulness — a question mark remains there.

One who has developed jhana can halt the arrival of thoughts at each level and move into other planes of mind. What happens there is a change in the level of sensation at which the mind grasps thoughts; once that sensory level changes, the thinking and examining, or the Dhamma arising from thoughts, changes correspondingly too. Even so, it is difficult to say with confidence that there are 'no thoughts' at such a time. Even a sleeping person stops sensing thoughts — does that mean no thoughts exist during sleep? That, too, cannot really be said.

The Mind as a Monitor: Why Citta Outruns Thought

The relief gained by changing the nature of the mind — through mentally-constructed views and various meditation techniques that alter how thoughts are sensed — is, at bottom, something occurring purely on the basis of brain function. Through it, the opportunity to recognise or eliminate dependent origination or upadana, acquisition, can end up closed off. This is not the same as the relief gained from drugs or intoxicants; that relief is short-lived, whereas the relief many people gain from such mental techniques can last a good deal longer — that is really the only difference.

Many people who have sincerely engaged in spiritual exploration come to know, from experience, that changing mental function in this way does not actually exhaust the underlying mental effluents that cause thoughts to arise again and again and that give rise to planes of mind. If a person practises such a discipline for a time, feels a real relief from it, and comes to feel strongly that lust, hatred, and delusion are no longer present within them, an honest examination of that feeling will end up challenging it. To examine it properly, such disciplines have to be set aside for a period and tested within ordinary life experience, without suppressing whatever feelings arise.

A being is fundamentally built from the four-fold noble energy: Buddha-energy, universal energy, karma-energy, and citta-energy. It is primarily citta-energy and karma-energy that give rise to the acquisitions — form, feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness. There, because the velocity of citta is far greater than the velocity of the mind, the mind simply cannot grasp the acquisition itself. Seen this way, the mind is rather like a computer monitor: what it constructs and hands over to you is only a projected image, and not all citta-velocities are captured within that image. So the mind only ever hands you thoughts within a certain limited range — much like a film, recorded earlier, being screened only now. That film was created through karma and citta-velocities, but it is only screened once certain circumstances and a setting have come together to match it. Exactly where or when such 'films' become matters of Dhamma within the mind, reaching the point of being perceived, cannot be stated with any precision — much as starlight, travelling for years across space, only now forms an image of a star on your eyes, or as the sound of a lightning strike from a moment earlier only now reaches your ears.

Reaching Upadana Requires More Than the Ordinary Mind

You may feel that the five acquisitions exist purely as mental phenomena, but at the level of thoughts, what you actually feel is the film already made earlier by upadana. Through thoughts, the mind keeps building various stories, and simply watching them arise and pass away, however closely, does not by itself bring about spiritual transformation — that is exactly why it does not.

Another important point: while you are watching this 'film,' further films are already being created. Can you set an intention and simply stop that from happening? No — because the velocity of citta outpaces the mind.

Thoughts are formed out of citta-velocities; when certain thoughts touch the mind, the resulting phenomena are what appear to you as 'thoughts.' We are caught, in effect, in an illusion-like nature by the small portion that reaches us as thoughts — we have no way of knowing how many thoughts arise and pass without ever being caught by the mind at all. What we hold onto as 'thoughts' is simply a sensory nature perceptible to the mind, and an extremely limited range at that.

So, considering all of this, it becomes clear that reality cannot be understood through the mind alone — meaning, here, explorations, philosophies, and mental exercises that are primarily mind-based. How, then, can truth be understood? For that, one has to take refuge in the buddhi, the wisdom-faculty, within oneself. Through the arising-and-passing knowledge attainable within that inner faculty, citta-velocity can, to some extent, be grasped. Saying 'Buddham saranam gacchami' means exactly this — bringing things within the range of that wisdom-faculty.

But the film constructed by upadana is not visible even to this wisdom-faculty. To grasp upadana itself requires the knowledge-power of full awakening — a wisdom of a far higher order. Giving a meditation subject correctly requires deep knowledge of this kind, arrived at by seeing the upadana that arose before, so that the way the future 'film' will form can, to some degree, be foreseen. The meditation subject is shaped by observing exactly how that film was made. What are called suttas are, in this sense, meditation subjects crafted individually for each person — not merely mental solutions.

As the meditation subject given this way is developed, the film keeps running, but the practice itself develops too, and upadana ceases. Bringing upadana within range of this knowledge-vision requires a certain readiness within the practitioner — a suitable state to be brought to — and for that, both mindfulness and sincerity are required.

Within insight meditation, what happens is the destruction of the mental planes a person has built up over time. All thirty-one such planes exist within your mind—