How to know your own mind

Before we get into the meditation on the mind, we need some idea of what our mind actually is. And – strangely enough, given its importance – it’s not all that obvious. As Venerable Geshe Kelsang says:

If someone were to ask us what the nature of our mind is and how it functions, we would probably not be able to give a precise answer. ~ How to Transform Your Life

Luckily he’s given some really clear explanations based on the Mahamudra scriptures and his own meditative experience, which we can look at in a moment. But the only surefire way to uncover the real nature of our own mind is by experience.

Carrying on from this article on Mahamudra: The unshakeable peace of concentration. 

So, if you have a moment, let’s try a couple of thought experiments …

(First off, to get into a peaceful state in your heart, you can if you like do a few minutes of relaxing via some breathing meditation or turning the mind to wood.)

Thought experiment # 1

Within this peaceful state, please bring to mind your mother. Normally we focus on the object of that thought or awareness, our mother; now we shift our attention to the awareness itself.

Ask yourself, “What is this thought of my mother? Where is it? Can I point to it? Can I touch it? Can I see it? Is it physical? Does it have color and shape, weight and size? Or is it non-physical – empty of form, with no color or shape or weight or size? Is this thought of my mother part of my mind – within my mind – or outside of my mind?

Thought experiment # 2

Please develop this thought: “May everyone be peaceful and happy.” Spread your mind over countless living beings: “May they be happy. How wonderful it would be if they are happy!” Even imagine they are happy.

Now shift your attention from the objects of your love – these countless beings – to the mind of love itself that wishes others to be happy. This is a bit like shifting your attention from the objects reflected in a mirror to the reflective medium of the mirror itself. Ask yourself, “What is this love? Where is it? Does it have color and shape, weight and size? Is this mind or awareness physical or non-physical? Is it inside my mind or outside my mind?”

Back to the first thought experiment

Did the awareness of your mother seem physical? Was it made of atoms or molecules, possessing shape, size, and color? Did it have a location? Could you see it with your eyes? Could you touch it? Could you sit on it? Could you repair it with surgery? Could you take a photograph of it? (Have you ever seen a photograph of a thought?)

When I do this thought experiment, the consciousness of my mother does not feel like anything physical at all. Thought seems to exist in a different dimension altogether — a formless dimension beyond the physical, without shape, color, location, spatial boundaries, or tactile properties. It is invisible, yet utterly necessary for the appearance of my mother. It is immaterial, but it matters a great deal – for where is this mother I am perceiving without an awareness perceiving her?

And this is not just thoughts of my mother, of course – this happens if I shift my perspective from the object of any awareness to the awareness itself.

Back to the second thought experiment

What about when you developed universal love? Did you in fact just develop love for all living beings?! If so, congratulations!!! – for not only is this an excellent way to start the day, but it proves that you have the potential for universal love.

(And, if you did, here’s a quick but important aside: Sometimes we believe that we can only love a few people, that any more than 100 friends on social media is phony, that Buddha’s talk about universal love is a nice idea but pie in the sky. However, in the space of approximately 30 seconds, upon simply being asked to wish for everyone to be happy, and with no further instruction, you managed to do that! Sure, it may not have been a deep or stable wish. It may have been really fuzzy. But you still did it, even without any training. Imagine what would happen, therefore, if you did train for months and years in the methods for developing universal love? Of course we could develop a spontaneous experience of it, a love that never leaves us. Just as all the previous Bodhisattvas and Buddhas have done.)

Countless living beings were the object of that love. But the love itself – wishing all those living beings to be happy – did that seem physical or non-physical? Again, could you see it with the eyes? Our mind, as it were, reached countless living beings, did it not? If you try to point at that mind of love, where is it? What is it? How big is it? How small is it? What shape or color is it? What space does it take up?

Mind and matter

There is a huge difference between matter and non-matter, such as between the body and the mind. The body has got a certain color, shape, and size. It is molecularly constructed. It is geographically limited and obstructed by other matter – it cannot simply teleport to China or walk through walls. The mind, however, can travel anywhere through time and space without restrictions. In our dreams, we visit all sorts of fantastical places while our body remains stationary on the bed. As Venerable Geshe Kelsang says, if we think of the moon, our mind is on the moon.

If the mind is not the brain, nor any other part of the body, what is it? It is a formless continuum that functions to perceive and understand objects. Because the mind is formless, or non-physical, by nature, it is not obstructed by physical objects. Thus, it is impossible for our body to go to the moon without traveling in a spaceship, but our mind can reach the moon in an instant just by thinking about it. ~ How to Transform Your Life

Once upon a time, man walked on the moon and that was an enormous accomplishment (though I don’t understand why we only did it the once. Wasn’t the whole point that we would keep doing it?). Anyway, once upon a time people almost miraculously walked around on that distant planet for a few minutes. Whoaaaahhhh!!!! But our mental awareness can go to the moon right now just by thinking about it. We could all decide to meet up on the moon together and jump around on it. We can eat cheese and have fun, all without a spaceship or loads of money. And, if not with our waking mental awareness, perhaps we will all meet on the moon tonight in our dreams.

Our mind really has got so much potential. We can go anywhere. As we purify our mind, our mind can even go to pure worlds. For example, in the Tantric practice called the yoga of inconceivability, we train in transferring our purified mind to Vajrayogini’s Pure Land of Keajra. Our ordinary gross mind can go to the moon, but a pure mind can go to a Pure Land, which is exactly what our mind will do when we purify it.

Our mind can go anywhere and is so much more versatile than our chunky body. Our body only can do so much, can’t it? Even if we spend 10 hours a day at the gym, this can only take us so far, and also depends on whether we have any muscles to begin with. Not everybody can become an Olympic athlete, but everybody can attain enlightenment. The mind is limitless.

Our mind is obstructed by other things, simply put the obstructions to liberation (delusions) and the obstructions to omniscience (the imprints of those delusions). Story for another day. Only our deepest level of mind – the very subtle mind or clear light mind – is a perfect, non-dualistic, stainless awareness that perceives reality directly and non-dualistically. All our other levels of mind are mistaken or stained in some way or another. But these mental obstructions are entirely different to our physical obstructions.

In our materialistic world, we don’t normally think about these differences between our mind and our body, or how significant they are. We don’t learn about this at school – in fact we usually learn the reductionist view that the mind is the brain (check out this article: Buddha & the brain). Therefore, we are arguably pretty uneducated and even superstitious in this area of consciousness and what it actually is and does. It just hasn’t been a priority, which might explain why we are not that great at knowing how to develop happy states of mind and get rid of unhappy ones.

We have been raised, we might say indoctrinated, in a scientific materialist perspective on reality in which physical matter is the basis of the universe. There are experts in that paradigm who have come up with extraordinary inventions such as the smartphone that are – at least to me – completely incomprehensible, and what Geshe Kelsang used to call “modern day miracle powers”. It is almost unbelievable what we carry around with us – you want to listen to any song from any artist at any time at the click of a button? No problem. You want to video chat with someone 4,000 miles away in real time? Easy. I have an App that lets me listen in on thousands of radio stations all over the world, in all their different languages (it’s pretty cool, actually). But mastering this technology, for all of its benefits and fun factor, is not making the human race happier, much less any of the other poor species trying to share this planet with us. Some of our “cleverer” inventions could end up destroying the world.

Until the discoveries of quantum physics in the 1920s, classical physics would have it that mind – whatever that is and it’s unclear – arises from matter: first there was matter, then there was consciousness knowing it. The Buddhist paradigm is the opposite – mind is the basis of reality, not vice versa. And in fact there is no matter without mind.

People are constantly trying to work out who or what created matter. A more interesting question is who is creating your world right now? There’s not a whole lot I can do about the Big Bang. I cannot go back in time and say, “Don’t eat the apple!” or stuff like that. But I can do something if I understand the answer to “Who is creating the world right now?” Who would that be? Who’s creating your world right now?

That would be you. That would be you and your mind, is that true? Each one of us is abiding in our mind’s version of ourself, our screen, our room, our city, and anyone around us. We have an assumption that, for example, there is a Denver, and then there’s all the subjective versions of Denver. That seems a reasonable assumption until we realize that no one has ever seen the non-subjective version of Denver, the objectively existing Denver. We might say, “Well, I have a photo of it right here!” But the moment someone sees that photo, what version are they apprehending? See what I’m saying?

This is both Buddhism 101 and our final graduation! The point is that everything we really need to know comes out of this because it is teaching us that if we change our mind we change our world because the world is a creation of our mind. (I’ve written loads more about this on this blog, and an excellent chapter to read (slowly!) is Ultimate Bodhichitta in this free ebook How to Transform Your Life.)

Point being, we really need to get to know our mind. I mean, what a failure, and I’m not accusing anybody here, but what a failure of our overall education that we have not been exposed to this essential, life-affirming subject. And we need to get to know our own mind not just intellectually or biologically or whatever, but experientially. For once we understand its nature and function – what it is and what it does – we will understand a whole mess of things about ourselves and our existential situation that are really, really important and will rock our world.

To be continued! Questions and comments are very welcome.