understanding the mind

The teachings of Gautam Buddha focused on ending suffering. And by suffering we mean psychological suffering; the psychological anguish which we normally feel when life is not going the way we would like it to. Looking into this, Gautam Buddha realised that our own mind creates this suffering. So most of his teachings were really focused on understanding our mind. A psychology you could say.

By watching our own mind, seeing its patterns of behaviour, we can begin to transcend those patterns, break those patterns, go beyond them. And eventually, if we are lucky, we can see the root cause of our suffering, our psychological suffering and it can end. So Gautam Buddha taught much about how the mind works. In fact, things happening in the mind; thoughts arising, ideas, concepts, hopes, fears; to Gautam Buddha, these were objects, mind objects. Just as there are physical objects in the outside world: trees, cars, houses, so there are objects in the mind: ideas, thoughts, fears, hopes, desires, and these arise and pass away in time.

So Gautam Buddha began to treat the mind in the same way that we look at the outside world. This can be a bit difficult for us in the West these days, for in the West we have become wedded to the idea of objectivity, of observing things objectively and agreeing upon them. If you and I both see a tree and agree that it is a tree, then it becomes an objective fact. But if I alone see the tree, it is a subjective reality, my own experience. And of course things in my own mind – ideas arising, patterns of thought – these can only be known subjectively, by myself.

In the West, this has caused the fundamental difficulty for psychologists. Behavioural psychology tries to be objective, but it can only observe the psychology indirectly, by people’s behaviour. Whereas most psychologists are trying to understand what is going on in someone’s mind more directly, but that can only be done by comparison. If I think a certain way, then I can assume that you think with the same pattern, but I can’t know that for certain. It is not an objective fact, it is a guess, based on my subjective reality.

So Gautam Buddha’s teachings of the mind are essentially urging us to study our own mind, and it will be a subjective study, in the sense that we can only know this for ourself: what our own mind is doing, the tricks it is playing, the mayhem it is causing.

But Gautam Buddha’s great contribution was to show us very clearly that all our troubles are created by our own mind, and if we really want to live a life free of troubles, then we have to understand our own mind, watch it closely, and allow it to change its patterns of behaviour so that it does not cause this chaos, this mayhem. So, let us follow Gautam Buddha’s teachings, and watch our own mind at play. If we can do this in a non-judgmental way, we too can start to break those unhelpful patterns of thought which are causing our suffering, we too can find peace.