Karma For Today's Traveler 10: Mental Equilibrium

Explore the Buddhist concept of cause and effect, the dazzling processor we call mind, and the fantastic creative power of human intention in this book written by Theravada Buddhist monk, Phra Bhasakorn Bhavilai and David Freyer. In part 10, we move from the external world equilibrium into the internal world of the mind, exploring what mental equilibrium consists of.

Transcript

Mental Equilibrium Now that we've discussed protecting ourselves and maintaining a benevolent equilibrium with our external world,

I would like to discuss our internal world.

This is the world of our true power source,

Our intention.

Here,

We are going to talk about the heart of karma,

Our intentions and our perceptions,

Our use of our free will,

And the framework in which all this occurs.

Again,

We can use the metaphor of floating in a pool of water.

This time,

The pool represents our mental world.

Every thought,

Intention we have,

Sends out waves in this pool.

All of these waves taken together,

Along with echoes of our old waves,

Form our mental environment.

If we fill our mental environment with angry waves,

Then that is where our mind lives,

Seeing angry waves everywhere.

Similarly,

If we use our mind wisely and compassionately,

We will find our pool becoming clearer and more beautiful.

The vista we see will be something to behold.

Our mental environment is up to us.

Our world equilibrium is actually a relatively minor issue when compared with our mental equilibrium.

The state of our world equilibrium makes us more or less comfortable as we live out our lives.

But it is our mental activity,

Our volition,

Perception and intention,

The way we use our mind,

That paints our world.

The way we use our mind literally creates our heavens and hells and issues us the tickets to journey there.

There are three possible scenarios.

Intention leading to action.

No intention leading to action.

And intention leading to no action.

We have two occasions of intention,

With and without action.

When intention leads to action,

The world is affected.

And when intention doesn't lead to action,

The world is not affected.

Yet on both occasions,

The mind is affected by its own processes.

Our mind affects itself.

Every thought in our mind creates new mental conditions.

Each new mental condition feeds back into the process of creating new thoughts.

Thus,

Our mind is creating while simultaneously receiving feedback from its own previous creation.

The Processing Mind The mind is a truly miraculous processor.

Every moment that our mind exists within this body,

It perceives different categories of things through the different physical sensory organs.

It sees forms with the eyes,

Hears sounds with the ears,

Smells smells with the nose,

Tastes tastes with the tongue,

And feels the touch and pull of the world by bodily contact.

Through these five sensory gates,

We have all come to know beauty,

Ugliness,

Colour,

Light,

And darkness.

The sound of footsteps in our mother's voice,

Silence,

Speech,

And melody.

The smell of smoke,

Farts,

Rotting carcasses,

Freshly baked bread,

And flowers.

The taste of milk,

Chilies,

And bile.

The bite of a cold wind,

The heat of the sun,

And the warmth of a hand.

The softness of a baby's cheek,

And the roughness of a cat's tongue.

The lightness of a feather,

And the weight of our own body.

This is all the mind's data.

This is how our mind touches our environment.

Through these different sensory gates,

The mind contacts the world.

The mind gathers and collates data.

The mind gives value to the data.

And the mind remembers.

For example,

The eye sees a new model of a car that the mind's past data tells it is a beautiful and desirable car.

The mind records and collates.

One day later,

With just a glimpse from a freeway overpass,

From a brief visual input,

The mind can recognise the same model car again,

Distinguishing it from the river of other uninteresting cars that pass below.

Thus,

Our amazing minds are able to recognise new input as fitting or matching old input and categories within the existing database.

Let's use the word perception for this process of reaching back to old data to compare and match with new input.

Perception is the process of using previous memories or data input involving one or more sensory organs as criteria for deciding whether some new input is interesting or boring,

Good or bad,

Whether it will bring happiness or suffering.

The Creating Mind The process of perception itself can also be recorded as new data.

This new data is then sorted and categorised into the database.

The model car we glimpsed from the overpass is exiting the freeway towards a wealthy neighbourhood.

Our mind imagines ourselves driving that car and we imagine the feel of the leather seats and the tightness of the steering and the new car smell and the quiet coolness of the expensive interior.

We see ourselves pulling into the perfect driveway of our perfect home on an evening of leisure and joy.

All this data,

Mental data,

Is also recorded and sorted.

These are objects that come to mind from the mind.

These mental perceptions are the result of our thinking,

Reprocessing,

Imagining,

Pondering and concocting.

We Thai people love our food so I call this process mental cooking.

There are many ways to cook but we should cook well with good,

Pure ingredients because our mind eats everything we cook.

The Deciding Mind How does the mind make a decision?

According to Buddhist doctrine,

The mind uses whatever is remembered,

Whatever has been decided,

Valued or qualified in the past as the basis for making a new decision.

It goes like this.

The eye sees that new car.

From the past data input,

Which involves both external and mental cooking,

The mind remembers that this is a car,

A car that I like,

A car that I want,

A car of high status,

A car that will make me happy.

The mind quickly decides,

Good picture,

Good car.

This subliminally fast action is the act of perception.

Similarly,

The ear hears the rattle and clunk that my present car makes.

From past data input,

The mind remembers that this is the sound of wearing out,

Aging,

Breaking down,

Of low status.

The mind quickly decides,

Bad sound,

And quite possibly,

Bad car.

All of this data,

The form,

Meaning the sight and sound,

And the judgment,

Good and bad,

Are kept as new data in the mind.

And so it goes,

Thought after thought.

The Buddhist teachings say that the activity of the mind is digital,

Not analog.

The mind processes information in discrete units.

Each unit has three phases,

Arising,

Existing,

And ceasing.

The arising,

Existing,

And ceasing of the mind occurs at a very high frequency.

The Buddhist teachings from 2,

500 years ago stated that in the time it takes to snap your fingers,

The mind cycles one trillion times.

So if we assume that it takes a quarter second to snap your fingers,

We have a frequency in the ballpark of four trillion cycles per second.

That's a four with twelve zeros.

Thus,

To us,

Our mind appears smooth and continuous,

Much as the flickering light from a fluorescent bulb or the images on a movie screen appear like a steady stream.

The Buddhist teachings say the mind is not a smooth continuum.

The mind arises,

Exists,

And ceases very,

Very quickly.

As long as we are alive in this body,

The mind will be active at some level,

Arising at the moment of perception,

Existing,

Ceasing,

Arising again.

Sometimes the mind perceives new data from an external source.

Other times it takes its own activity as the thing that it perceives following itself along the links of its own chain.

Other times,

Such as deep sleep,

The mind is quiet,

And moments come and go without perception.

Yet,

On an even deeper level,

Below our perception,

The mind is still active.

All of these moments are recorded.

The new moments come on top of the old ones,

Layer after layer.

In the dimension of the mind,

Space is not a problem.

There is room for all memories.

Despite what overworked students may say,

The mind is never full.

The mental fatigue students sometimes feel is due to a lack of mental power.

The power of perception may be limited by ability,

Lack of training,

Or lack of exercise,

But consciousness itself is unlimited.

You've probably read reports or seen movies where a person who couldn't consciously recall anything of value about some important event that they witnessed was hypnotized to help them remember.

Then,

In that different state of consciousness,

They were able to remember details that their conscious mind never even registered in the first place.

Now,

I know.

There are many times in the real world where people think they remember something,

But in fact,

It is merely an expression of something else in their mind or feelings.

Of course,

Nature works like that too.

That's it.

Buddhist teachings say that all the mind touches is recorded.

All that the mind touches is recorded.

Anything that travels through the gates of our physical sensory organs to reach our mind is recorded.