Reply To: Y2Q19) Mind as the creator (1)

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#3079
Rik vanKeulen
Keymaster

Trying to kick-off with two examples, but I hope we can come with more examples. Mind as the creator (whether we follow yogachara or not) is, I believe, one of the key aspects of Buddhist philosophy. If we don’t get convinced about this, we could well continue chasing happiness in external objects.

1) What we call music by a rock band or orchestra, is on a CD a digitally encoded file: ones and zeros, stored as a series of pits in the disc’s reflective material. A laser detects the pits, generates an electric current, and that creates vibrations in the speaker. Then the air vibrates. In our ear organ, the stereocilia, little hairs in our ears, pass on the message to our nervous system, after which many different parts in the brain are ‘switched on’ and consciousness perceives sound. This creates a appearance of sound in our ear consciousness, of which our mental consciousness then states: the music of this rock band, of that orchestra. We are 100% convinced it is the real music from the CD. Pretty funny to consider that we can get so attached to music: but where is the music, in the CD, in electric current, in the vibrations, in our nervous system???? Should we conclude hearing music, is just the creation of the mind? (One of my friends writes music blogs, so I told him to write about the above. Later he told it was one of his least popular blogs…… it was just too much to accept for the music loving audience of his blogs….). And while writing, I looked at the fridge in front of me: realising the same counts for my visual perception, for every perception going on at this moment…..

2) This happened at Maratika cave – a cave linked to Guru Rinpoche – in Nepal. I was doing some meditation in the ‘meditators corner’. 4 others were also regular visitors, each doing their own thing. We would come to the cave in the morning, do our meditation, for lunch go out, each to their own place, and after lunch come back and do our afternoon sessions. Nepal as a big lunch, called Dahl Bhat. So we were all struggling against sleepiness in the first half of the afternoon session and often one of us would dose off. I am a big favour of ‘double salty liquorish’ which I had brought from the Netherlands, and that would keep me awake after lunch. At a certain moment, seeing people struggling with sleep, I offered this liquorish, warning them that it was a very salty sweet. Within seconds, they looked terrible shocked looking for a place to spit it out, not really something you would do in such a holy pilgrimage place. I quickly told them, this is the medicine which will keep them awake after lunch. Their faces suddenly lightened up: this was exactly what they needed. After that my fellow meditators looked forward to ‘double salty liquorish’ after every lunch! Just the change in concept – from very salty sweet to medicine to keep one awake – changed the appearance of this liquorish in their mind completely. So what is in a liquorish, can’t be much, it rather seems a creation of the mind.