The Mind

The mind, hard to control,
Flighty—alighting where it wishes—
One does well to tame.
The disciplined mind brings happiness. . . .

Far-ranging, solitary,
Incorporeal and hidden
Is the mind.
Those who restrain it
Will be freed from Mara’s bonds.

For those who are unsteady of mind,
Who do not know true Dharma,
And whose serenity wavers,
Wisdom does not mature.

For one who is awake,
Whose mind isn’t overflowing,
Whose heart isn’t afflicted
And who had abandoned both merit and demerit,
Fear does not exist. (Buddha 11-2)

What is the human mind, really? One might ask the same question by asking after the nature of human consciousness. This is a mystery in itself, and worthy of its own contemplation. However, in the context of the Buddhist interpretation, one would to well to think of the conscious mind as nothing more than attention.

The conception of mind as attention runs parallel with the Jungian notion of ego consciousness as the eye of the human psyche. Like a spotlight, the conscious mind illuminates whatever thing to which it attends. Another way to think about it is telescopic focus. To become conscious of something is the same as bringing that thing to one’s attention or into focus. The easiest and most universal example of this is self-consciousness—one becomes hyper aware of one’s self and cannot drawn one’s attention away from one’s own inadequacies, vulnerabilities, and uncomfortable physiological responses to said weaknesses.

Thus should one understand the Buddha when he describes the mind as “hard to control” and “alighting where it wishes.” He is describing the nature of an uncultivated attention, an undisciplined mind which misplaces its focus. And that is where the real significance of Buddha’s wisdom lies: where one places one’s focus is a confession of revealed preference; it is an objective measure of one’s hierarchy of values.

That is why one ought to tame his own mind. As Nietzsche claimed in Beyond Good and Evil, “Fettered heart, free spirit.” It is through a deliberate cultivation of discipline that one restructures his values, and it is through such revaluation that one adjusts to the twists and turns inevitable along the course of life. This is how one achieves freedom and self-mastery through slavery, by becoming one’s own slave voluntarily—a contradiction, because a slave must be taken or else he is but a contracted servant. Therefore, when one disciplines oneself, one undergoes a transmutative process. He restrains and confines where he will allow his mind to attend and thereby reorients his aim. His values change in accord with his new locus of focus, and he beings to pursue those new values whether he intends to or not.

Why does this process of self-submission and redirection constitute freedom? Was the mind not free before when it landed on what it wished?

The truth is that the mind had little say in the matter. Where the uncultivated mind attends is determined almost entirely by external forces. Truly, it does not “wish,” for it does not possess a strong enough will. It has yet to become even a camel with the capacity to carry a load. Instead, the undisciplined mind is dominated by anxiety, sensory stimuli, narcotic fog, or ideological ghosts. It is deluded, captivated by the illusions of Mara. It is the mind of the men who believe in the transcendent reality of the shadows on the wall.

But for the man who turns his attention inward, who attends to himself despite the discomforts inevitably involved, he becomes aware of his own ignorance and limitations. He becomes concerned with his own character flaws—for those are what now pain him. His value hierarchy comes to place self-development and self-betterment closer and closer to the top. And as his values change in this way, he actions fall in accordance. He begins to develop. He begins to better himself, to relieve himself of those pains which he actually has control over—those which are a product of his orientation toward himself and the world. The relief of that pain is no different that the escape from Mara. Likewise, it is not different than the fulfillment of one’s duty and potential—the fulfillment of one’s Dharma. For such a man, external factors such as merit or demerit, fame or dishonor, wealthy or poverty, and life or death cease to be of primary concern. Fate becomes as Yamamoto described in the Hagakure:

If by setting one’s heart right every morning and evening, one is able to live as though his body were already dead, he gains freedom in the Way. His whole life will be without blame, and he will succeed in his calling. (Yamamoto)

Buddha Siddhartha Gautama. The Dhammapada; Teachings of the Buddha, translated by Gil Fronsdal, Shambala Publications Inc, 2008.

Yamamoto, Tsunetomo. Hagakure.