What is mind?

[Phil Vinson (Soldier of Vague Misanthropy)]

In one of Ken's recent "Then and Now" podcasts, he says this: "Saving all sentient beings means waking up every aspect of our mind."

I mentioned this to a friend, who replied, "Yeah, but what is mind?"

Indeed.

In "Wake Up to Your Life," Ken describes the process of seeking an answer to this question. He reports that asking "What is mind" is an arduous, sometimes agonizing journey that can have a peaceful conclusion. His description of the process seems to be similar to working with the Zen koan: "What is Mu?" Mumon says asking that question is like "swallowing a hot iron ball that you can't get rid of." Is it the same question?

Perhaps it is the ultimate question of Buddhist practice, and maybe it has no answer. Maybe the answer is in letting go of the question. Maybe not.

What do you think? What is mind? When is one ready to tackle this question? Haven't we saved all sentient beings when we have answered the question?

Phil

[Mark Johnson]

"What is mind?" I guess my honest answer is: I don't know. My poetic answer would be "anything/everything is mind." I can really appreciate the Zen point of view of "showing" what mind is instead of talking about it. I think in the Zen sense mind would be the play between experience and a response. An "awakened mind" would be the play between experience and an appropriate response.

I think "saving all sentient beings" is another metaphor. It doesn't mean much in a way. I mean, really, "save" them from what? Suffering? No-one needs to be saved in any ultimate sense. Yeah, the world could be a better place, but that's only relative (not to make light of the terrible suffering within the world). Besides when push comes to shove I can't save anyone but myself. So I have a hard time taking this literally.

In Ken's words, "saving all sentient beings" as a metaphor for walking up make sense as an expression of "mind" in that "mind" is the ____________ that "knows" (can't say "thing" since sunyata tells us there is no thing in any ultimate sense).

Someone once said, can't remember who, that the space between your thoughts is where one really exists. Which leads me to say that "sunyata is mind" but that's really no answer, so we're back where we started.

Great question!

[Sister Logchain of the Short Path]

For me, saving all sentient beings is an open-ended commitment to an unknowable, fathomless and endless undertaking; so I experience it as a complete and unreserved willingness to do what I can that 'seems right', as an instalment on what may eventually turn out to 'be right'. Accepting that on the one hand I can't do it, but that on the other hand there is no alternative to doing it, except not doing it, which I am unwilling to choose.

So it all hinges on commitment, and commitment is all or nothing, there is no middle ground: no partial commitment, no commitment with reservations or provisos. Just commit. Nothing else will save all sentient beings. What saving all sentient beings means hardly matters in terms of my understanding of it; it's enough to know that it involves my commitment.

The first time I acted on Ken's suggestion to ask myself "What is mind" it seemed to me that I did indeed catch an infinitesimally small glimpse of 'something' before it was obscured by first fear, then confusion and then (un)certainty. Trying to capture or recreate that glimpse is pointless, as is trying to describe it. I think Ken invites me to "rest" in it. These words like "glimpse" and "rest" are helpful, but they are concepts that carry so many jostling connotations from everyday life that they seem less than valid at times. So I "try to catch a glimpse" or I "try to rest in what is" and experience the inauthenticity of trying, and rest in that, or "try to". But practice makes perfect, and there is no alternative to going on. It's like the last phrase in one of Samuel Beckett's plays: "I can't go on. I'll go on". Who can recall which play? I heard them on BBC radio aged 18, and was transfixed.

[George Czeck (geo)]

Hi phil,

i cant wait to get to that place in the then and now classes, i'm just starting to hear these podcasts.

i'd like to say what mind is, is a readiness to experience anything at all.so what's that like? words like unstoppable clarity come to mind. i have been listening to teachings for a while and metaphors like the mirror or a crystal tend to work for me more than a sunlit sky because i start to look for a sun, a source which i cant find, which if i did would be great because then i can say once and for all "see there i am!"-we know mind's not solid like that...yet like a steady sun in the sky there's this presence that i do attach to and say it's me which although i cant find i nevertheless experience. there's this body in it's flowing changing movements, there's my thought stream gathering like like storm clouds or whisps in the wind, there are these strong waves of emotional energy rising to touch or topple some point...colors, smells, tastes, textures...what is there that is not experienced by mind, what are experiences anyway? isnt there a steady backlight that illuminates and makes everything possible in mind's stagelike space?
honestly i am still overwhelmed by that comment "saving all sentient beings means waking up every aspect of our mind". i just had the good fortune to hear the 17tth karmapa speak about awakening mind and he said something like the compassion of a buddha is not that of seeing oneself as a compassionate being and the other as a miserable suffering being you need to help, but rather as one helping oneself, the needs of the other are really seen as our needs and our needs are the needs that others have too, also he said it's like referring to parts in one's body, there's no duality or separateness there. no narrow window of "i, my and mine" through which to squeeze our perception so as to look at others out there somewhere.
waking up all the aspects of ourselves-to what?
i guess that makes me think of the then and and now class on the presciousness of human life, and having a chance to practice and wake up to ourselves
and what this mind is that we all have; space and creator of both suffering and happiness. my intangible accomplice in everything.

in gratitude
geo

[Phil Vinson (Soldier of Vague Misanthropy)]

Thanks, geo, Sister Logchain, and Mark for the excellent replies. This site is certainly becoming a place for serious practice. I'm indebted to your thoughtful comments.

-pv