What is Mind?

What happens when we turn the mind around to look at itself? What do we find? In this talk, Zuisei looks to both neuroscience and the dharma to point us directly toward our own mind so that we may discover for ourselves its clear and boundless nature. When we get quiet and turn inward, we stop chasing thoughts and let the waves of our mind settle, resting in the vastness of awareness itself.

This talk draws on readings from neuroscientist Antonio Damaso, the Chinese Zen ancestors Yangshan and Fayan, the Vajrayana master Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, and more.

This talk was given by Zuisei Goddard. Scroll below for audio, video and transcript.

Transcript

This transcript is based on Zuisei's talk notes and may differ slightly from the final talk.

What is Mind

Tonight I want to talk about mind. Those of you who are joining us tonight—the sangha has been studying the lamrim, the Stages of the Path. Which is really a Vajrayana framework; it’s not specifically Zen, but we’re not biased in our practice. We’ll study anything that will help, anything that’s consistent with the path and with our wish for liberation.

Last week I asked everyone to listen to a guided meditation on the Nature of Mind, and tonight I want to speak parallel to it, as it were. But first I want to point out the miracle that it is that mind can use mind to look at mind, which is what this meditation requires. And why is this special? Because with the power of thought, we can direct mind, which is formless—it has no shape, no substance, no color, no size. We can direct it, we can point it, not only in the direction of the world, so it can understand everything it perceives, which is miracle enough—the tangible interacting with the intangible—but we can also direct mind to turn around and look at itself, and by extension, at the one who is looking.

So, to start us off, let me make a distinction between mind and brain and mind and consciousness. I’ve been reading, in addition to our text on Guided Buddhist Meditations, a book on self and consciousness, and in it, the author, who’s a neuroscientist, makes a distinction among these three.

The brain, he says, is physical, it is matter in the form of gray matter and white matter and neurons and axons and synapses and electrical and chemical signals traveling from the body to the brain and back to the body. We can see it, we can touch it, we can manipulate it to some extent to understand how it works.

Mind is the flow of images that the brain generates to make sense of the world. So mind creates a representation of this cup so I can perceive it and know it as cup. But it’s not just visual images; it’s also sounds and smells, and sensations—all the input that comes through the senses and that we perceive and engage.

Consciousness, according to Damasio—the author of this book—is the awareness of me-ness, it’s the awareness of self. I’m the one looking at this cup. I know it is mine, I remember where and when I bought it. I have all sorts of good associations with respect to this cup. “Self comes to mind,” to borrow Damasio’s phrase, through the perception of this cup. So, consciousness, here, is self awareness.

But, I can have a brain, and I can have mind, and not be conscious. If I’m in a dreamless sleep, for example, or under anesthesia, I can lack a brain, and mind, and consciousness, and still be alive, like a bacteria. But the opposite, Damasio argues, isn’t possible—we can’t be conscious without a mind and its images or the brain that produces them.

I don’t know, though. Botanists are trying to figure out whether plants are conscious, or at least intelligent. They don’t have brains—not brains that we recognize, at least, yet they can recognize their kin, the presence of a predator and its type. They may be able to count and perhaps smell or “see” in some waySo are they conscious? We don't know. But for humans, at least, brain leads to mind leads to consciousness. And this is where things get interesting. From the perspective of Zen, everything in the whole world is mind, is indivisible from mind. Trees and pebbles and rocks and buildings are all inextricable from mind, which is vast, limitless, without beginning or end. Whaaaat?!

There’s a koan in which Yanshan, who was a student of Guishan, asked a monk who’d just arrived at his monastery, “Where are you coming from?”
The monk said, “From Yu province.” Wrong! He’s already missed the question: Where are you coming from? Where are you now? Where is your mind?
But Yangshan lets it go and he says, “Do you think of that place?” He’s not asking about memory, he’s not asking the monk if he’s nostalgic—then what is he asking?

The monk says, “I always think of it.”
There’s the opening. “The thinker is the mind and the thought-of is the environment,” says Yangshan. “That’s where you find mountains, rivers, buildings, towers, halls, people, and animals.”
But is that so? The mind is here and the environment is over there.

In another koan, Fayan is leaving a monastery when he sees a rock by the gate. He points to it and says to the monks accompanying him, “Is this monk inside or outside your mind?”
One monk says, “Inside.”
Fayan turns to him and says, “Why are you carrying such a heavy rock in your mind?”
Why are you carrying such a heavy thought, such a heavy idea, such a heavy belief? Years you’ve been lugging it around, aren’t you tired of it? Put it down, put it down.
Yangshan says, “Reverse your thought to think of the thinking mind—do you see all those many things there?”

Mountains, rivers, and the great earth—when you look at the thinking mind, where are they? When you look at the mind directly, where is your anger, your jealousy, your sadness, your fear? Looking directly at the mind is what the meditation we’ve been practicing is asking us to do. To let go of our attention on the content of mind—the cities and shopping malls and arcades and crowds of people and ideas all jostling for space and attention, and to turn to the thing that’s perceiving them, the subject of perception.

It’s like when I ask, what is breath? I’m not really asking about breath? Not its explanation. I’m asking that you turn around and look at the one who’s breathing, at the one who’s asking the question. Who is that? Where is that? And when you get there, what happens to the breath? What happens to Mu when you turn and look at the one who’s asking, What is it?

So, Yangshan says, Turn around and look at the mind, are all those things in there?
And the monk says, “When I get here, I don’t see anything at all.”
Yangshan says, “Well, sort of.” He says, “That’s okay for the level of faith, but it’s not enough for the level of person.”
You see a little, you understand the teachings, and there’s more. There’s another side. What is that?

[…]

Thubten Chodron says the mind is clear because (a) it’s formless, and (b) because it can reflect objects like a mirror, like a still lake. And, the mind is also aware. That’s how it can perceive and make sense of all the images in it—all the sights and sounds and smells and sensations. Otherwise it would just be a jumble in there; a cacophony without order, without melody.

This is, in fact, one of the images used to describe how the brain works—like an orchestra. You have the string section, the percussion section and the wind section, and depending on the different combinations of instruments playing, you get different sounds: anger or joy or sadness or fear or excitement, pleasure or pain. No one instrument is responsible for a feeling or a response, but it’s the different combinations among the instruments depending on the piece they’re playing that create different responses, different musical pieces.

Neuroscientists are calling this “the entangled brain.” When they tried to reduce it to single processes: this part of the brain is responsible for this emotion, this response, they found it’s more complex than that. In one situation, this part and that part light up. In another situation that part and that other one light up. Intimately connected to the environment

Now, any orchestra needs a conductor who’s there to keep the order. They’re there to keep the rhythm and the pace. They indicate where there should be a pause and for how long. And all of it helps to make sense of all that sound. But, the conductor doesn’t create the orchestra. Mind isn’t in charge of the environment, can’t control the environment, does not really have dominion over the fish of the sea, and the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

No. It’s the orchestra that makes the conductor. No orchestra, no conductor. No environment, no mind, no self, no I. Do you understand?

The opposite is also true: environment, mind, self—I—all deeply intertwined. So, what is mind, then? Huike said, I’ve looked and looked, and I can’t find it. Yanshan is saying, That’s okay, but it’s not the full thing. So how do you respond?

[…] […]

This meditation on the Nature of Mind—we can really apply it to any experience. In a moment of anger, we can stop and ask ourselves, Who is angry? Try it next time a strong emotion arises, and see what happens. Who is angry? Who is feeling insecure? Who is anxious? Who is hooked on this or that thing?

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche once said, “When you run after your thoughts, you are like a dog chasing a stick: every time a stick is thrown, you run after it. Instead, be like a lion who, rather than chasing after the stick, turns to face the thrower. One only throws a stick at a lion once.”

It isn’t a putdown, to be like a dog. This is how most of us are most of the time. A thought appears and we set off after it. Ah, there’s another one, we drop the first one and chase after that. We chase and chase and chase and then drop at the end of the day, exhausted, wondering why our minds feel so full, our bodies so restless, our hearts so unsettled. All we have to do is put that stick down. The problem is the sticks look so yummy. They’re so enticing, so believable, so… real. Which means we have to want more than just that fleeting satisfaction.

Some part of us has to be willing to say, I’m tired of chasing after that stick. I’m tired of always being out of breath, of never being able to rest. Some part of us has to want to rest, deeply. Rest our minds, rest our bodies, rest our whole being. Doesn’t that sound nice? And so, instead of chasing after the stick, we go straight to the source. Do that once—really do it—and you won’t have to do it again.

In practicing shikantaza, in looking directly at mind, we sometimes let the thoughts flow and watch the unchanging nature behind them. Sometimes we cut the flow of thoughts, and look at awareness itself. And how do we cut the flow of thoughts? By looking at them directly—but not by trying to stop them.

If our mind is the ocean, we don’t jump on a boat and whack each wave to make it go down. If we’re patient enough, a wave will appear, persist for a moment, and pass. We don’t have to fight our thoughts, you realize. Waves are just waves, thoughts are just thoughts, they can’t harm us. Instead, we just look at them without getting involved.

Phakchok Rinpoche, a contemporary Tibetan teacher, has a nice analogy for this: He says, Say you go to the beach, you have your beach chair, your umbrella, your snacks, and you get settled in a nice, flat spot where you can look out at the ocean. And as you’re sitting there, you notice in one corner a few teenagers playing volleyball. Over on this side, a family is having a barbecue. Over there, a young couple is going for a stroll, holding hands. And you see all this, but you don’t get involved in any of it. You don’t jump up and suddenly start flipping hot dogs for the family. You don’t push aside a volleyball player so you can have your turn at the net. And you certainly don’t knock down one of the young lovers and take the other in your arms!

You just watch. You just sit there, and enjoy the scenery, and you mind your own business. You mind your own mind.

This is how to work with the mind. We look at the thoughts, and we don’t get involved with them, we just let them be. It’s like watching a river, we just let it flow. And when we do this, the thoughts disappear, they pass, like waves. Or, we can look at the space between thoughts. Just sitting, we look directly at awareness itself.

And whether we’re looking at the thoughts themselves or at the space between them, the most important thing is to learn to rest. Again, we don’t have to stop the flow. We don’t have to open up space. All we have to do is trust that if we let go enough, the flow reveals the stillness running through it. Space opens up of itself.

If this sounds hard, it’s because it is. Particularly if you’re a doer, I certainly was—I had to make things happen, if it was the last thing I did. That was my attitude. And my practice felt that way. It was effortful, it was exhausting. It took me a long time to trust that practice would happen on its own if I got out of the way.

I think it’s because all my life I had worked very hard whenever I wanted something. So it was the only way I knew how to work. You put your head down and you push as hard as you can, and eventually, something yields—except it didn’t work here. And that was incredibly frustrating. I just didn’t understand why, couldn’t accept that, practice wouldn’t bend to my will. Until I saw that some of it was my sincere wish to be free. And a lot of it was my sincere wish to be seen. To be recognized for my hard work, to be admired and respected.

When I saw this I understood: Oh, it’s your effort that’s stopping you. Not the effort per se, but all the me-making that came out of it. Look at me, look how much I sit, look how hard I practice, look what a good student I am. All of it just creating more waves. All of it, stick after stick after stick. So I had to learn to not do. I had to learn to not make my effort, my practice, about me. My achievement, my reward. It was a tough lesson. And it was a wonderful lesson, a very freeing lesson. My self still doesn’t like it sometimes, But then we have a talk, and we sit down quietly, and it settles down.

[…]

Lady Peldarbum said to the great yogi Milarepa:

When I meditated on the ocean,
My mind was very comfortable.
When I meditated on the waves,
My mind was troubled.
Please, teach me to meditate on the waves!

And the teacher responded:

The waves are the movement of the ocean.
Leave them to calm themselves in its vastness.

Yes.

Explore further

01 : Mind and Reality: Two Monks Roll Up the Blinds with Zuisei Goddard

02 : Shikantaza: Open Awareness with Zuisei Goddard

03 : Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain by Antonio Damasio

What is Mind?, a dharma talk by Zen Buddhist teacher Zuisei Goddard.