Understanding the Mind: A Buddhist Lens

The subject of mind in Buddhism is extensive. A significant portion of the Buddhist Canon revolves around the inquiry into what the mind is and how to skillfully use it to reduce suffering, attain awakening, freedom, and enlightenment. It's a substantial question, and in this discussion, I aim to provide some perspectives, not exhaustively, but by sharing ideas that I find helpful within the Buddhist framework.

The first thing I was reflecting on is this question of why Buddhism has so much content, categorization, and discussion on the mind. One of the key themes you can see again and again in the Dharma is this discussion that the mind is primary. What that means is that all other actions follow from the mind. 

So, the theory here is that any actions of our physical body as well as our speech first start as an idea, a thought, a memory, maybe even a habitual pattern that's stored in this thing called mind. This initial idea that's put forth is meant as a reflection. It's also meant to empower us. When we recognize that we have agency in working with our mind, it then follows that we have agency in what we do with our body and speech. So, this is one of the reasons it's primary in Buddhism.

The mind is categorized differently based on context, practice, or specific aspects. While the mind has relative and absolute natures, we will focus more on the former—exploring how we can engage with the mind's basic qualities to cultivate more agency and awareness.

Within the relative aspects of mind, Tibetan Buddhism distinguishes between destructive qualities (klesha or afflictive emotions) and beneficial qualities (loving-kindness, compassion, awareness). By classifying these qualities, we gain insights into our minds, learning to think and act more skillfully. 

To delve into the relative aspects of mind a little deeper, one simple classification is understanding the mind in terms of thinking, knowing, awareness, and clarity.

We probably know thinking quite well, as it's what many of us engage in the majority of our days. Some of this thinking is conscious and deliberate, but most is uncontrolled, and sometimes unwanted. Overthinking can cause problems, but we also need to use critical thinking to make decisions, and we can even train to use our thinking mind in beneficial ways. Thinking itself is not good or bad, but when we are caught in uncontrolled rumination we often suffer. 

The next quality is knowing, and knowing is more of a raw experience. You could imagine a flower, for instance, or a cup, and you don't have to think when you initially see that with your eyes. You don't have to think, 'Oh, that's a cup' or 'That's a flower.' We just know it. So, this is more of a raw quality of the mind that just knows. It's a natural quality where once we have the habit pattern to know a certain object or thing or phenomenon, the mind just knows it. We don't have to think to know.

Then, after knowing, we have this quality of mind we call awareness. Awareness is the main subject of Buddhist meditation. It's what we cultivate. It's what we train in and strengthen in meditation. Awareness is something we were born with, just like knowing and thinking. Every sentient being has an ability to be aware, but normally, we don't train it. Normally, we are caught in our thinking mind. We're knowing objects, but we're not necessarily aware that we're knowing. 

So, awareness here has a quality of double knowing, that we can be aware that we're knowing something, we can be aware that we're thinking something. Another word I like to use to describe awareness is a sense of watchfulness. Not just watching; watching is something a little bit disconnected, where watchfulness is connected. It's like we're knowing; we're in the experience, but we're also watchful of it at the same time.

This watchfulness or this sense of awareness of what we're knowing or thinking or experiencing is this natural quality of mind we try to recognize in meditation. We try to cultivate it or sustain it, and then over time, we can strengthen it and learn to abide more in this quality of awareness. So, that's the third quality of mind. 

Now, where does everything come out of, and this really gets more to this question of what is mind? From a Buddhist perspective, we could say everything comes out of this sense of clear knowing or clarity. 

Clarity here doesn't mean the clarity of awareness or the clarity of knowing or the clarity of thinking. It actually refers to the mind itself being clear and luminous in nature, just like a light turned on in a room. 

Once it's turned on, everything in the room becomes illuminated. So if a light's turned off and it's really dark, but there's a dresser, a bed, paintings on the wall, other kinds of objects in the room, when the light's off, we're not going to even know there are objects in the room.

The clear nature of mind is like a light that's actually on 24/7, whether we're awake, whether we're sleeping, etc. And this light illuminates all perceptions and experiences. It's actually this light of mind, this clear or clarity aspect of mind that knowing, awareness, and thinking arise from, as well as all other states of mind.

Clarity itself is not necessarily a beneficial or destructive thing; it's just there. Just as water can take on different colors if we pour purple or blue food coloring into it, so does this clarity aspect of mind. Why is this important? This is important because when we're developing a meditative awareness practice, we learn to train in awareness, and then over time, the thinking mind is able to settle, and we're able to access or know or be aware of this clarity aspect of mind and simply rest awareness there.

This is incredibly important because it's a more subtle aspect of mind. It's where everything arises from in the relative mind. When we start to familiarize with it or get to know it, we have another place to abide. As I said earlier, most of us are just caught in the thinking mind, and that causes us a lot of confusion and overwhelm at times. 

So, in meditation, we learn to be aware of clarity and to rest there. It's not only really helpful for everyday living and interaction, but from a Buddhist perspective, from there, we can also develop beneficial qualities of mind, as I said earlier, compassion, loving-kindness, patience, qualities of trust that are trusting in things that are going to bring more awakening and benefit for ourselves and others.

Generally, once we have a sense of awareness and clarity, it allows us not only to abide in the present moment with less obstruction or projection from the thinking mind, but also, like I said, we can then cultivate beneficial qualities of mind easier because we don't have extra layers of delusion and judgment manipulating our reactions. 

This brings me to one of the main benefits of training in awareness and accessing and abiding in this clarity aspect of mind. When we meditate and train in awareness, we start to see that our emotions and thoughts are not fundamentally who we are. When the mind is untrained, we take our thoughts and emotions to be fundamental aspects of our being, when in fact, they're just appearing.

Ultimately, we are trying to see that the mind (and its contents) doesn’t abide anywhere, and then based on that, thoughts, emotions, perceptions also don't abide anywhere. Now, this doesn't mean they don't exist; it just means that we can have a deeper experience of the fluidity of thoughts, the fluidity of emotions, that there is no basis that they're arising from, there's no basis that they abide in, and there's no basis that they go to when they dissolve, and this brings genuine freedom from a Buddhist perspective.

If we really take that to its ultimate realization, we can attain what's called Awakening or Buddhahood. So, this is important because when we start to relate to the relative aspect of mind, we're developing more clarity, less projection. But ultimately it is within the experiential discovery that while the mind appears, it is totally unfindable, that we start to access and embody genuine freedom. So much fluidity can arise when we see that although everything comes from mind, mind is also not a singular, independent, or permanent thing. 

And of course, for most of us, this isn't just a singular event. It's something we need to develop and train in. So initially it feels as if thoughts, emotions, and mind is self, and then the more we work with these kinds of practices, and the more we work with the mind in meditation, we start to have some fluidity, some flexibility, and then we can grow that. 

The exploration of the mind in Buddhism offers a transformative journey from recognizing the mind's centrality to cultivating awareness and understanding its relative and absolute aspects. As we engage with these teachings, we embark on a path of self-discovery and liberation, discovering the profound interplay between mind and freedom. These reflections, rooted in open questioning and practical application, serve as a guide towards tasting the essence of true freedom within the vast landscapes of the mind.