The System Of The Mind - Understanding it to thrive
The three pillars of the mind, unhealthy vs. healthy roots, and understanding the system to influence it
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Speak or act with a deluded mind and sorrow will follow you As the wheel follows the ox who draws the cart. Speak or act with a clear mind and happiness will follow you as closely as your shadow, unshakable. - Dhammpada
Buddhism is a psychology with very practical guidelines that can teach us how to build a healthier mind. Today I want to dive into the colorings of consciousness - i.e. how our mental states shape our experiences and what we can do to work with those mental states.
Buddhist psychology helps us understand how we experience the world by breaking it down into a three-part system that encompasses the whole of our human experience. They are:
Sense impressions
Sense Consciousnesses
Mental States
The Sense Impressions
Sense impressions are how we receive our information from the world. The list is relatively short and is shared across all humans:
Sights
Sounds
Tastes
Smells
Touch & bodily sensations
Thoughts and feelings
Next Buddhism defines "sense consciousness" as the second building block to how we experience the world.
Our Sense Consciousness
Sense consciousness is the moment of awareness or "knowing" that arises with each sense-impression. For example, when we see something there is a moment of awareness that happens when we register that information (i.e. we are aware that we are seeing a bird).
Sense consciousness might sound obvious and a bit redundant with sense impression, but as we practice mindfulness - sense consciousness becomes more clearly a distinct concept from sense-impression.
Have you ever had a moment where you're walking or driving somewhere and all of a sudden it feels like you "woke up" somewhere else. That entire time your senses were receiving information - seeing cars on the road, hearing birds in the sky, smelling the croissants from the bakery, but our sense consciousness for sight, smell, and the sound was muted or overpowered by us being caught up in our own thinking.
Mindfulness helps us expand and deepen our sense consciousness so each moment brings a cacophony of sounds, a landscape of sights, and deepens our ability to experience moments by turning up our awareness of them.
Our Mental States
Consciousness is colored by the states that visit it - Buddha
To complete our picture of our world we have mental states, which are qualities of mind that interpret how we receive and experience information. So if we break it down into an example there are:
Sense Impressions - Our eyes register a bird in the sky
Sense Consciousness - We are aware that we are looking at a bird and we're paying attention to it in flight
Mental States - How our minds interpret this information - Are we delighted to see the bird? Are we curious to see where it goes? Are we upset because the bird will eat the food from our table? How do we interpret this information?
We can spend a lot of time on our sense consciousness as well as our mental states to cultivate a richer and more enjoyable life experience.
Richness - To fully experience moments and maximize our awareness of the information registered by our sense impressions
Enjoyable - Cultivating healthy states of mind vs. unhealthy states of mind
We've talked a lot about richness of life experience in other newsletters when we've focused on presence and mindfulness. Today I wanted to dive a little deeper into states of mind.
Buddhist psychology makes mental health quite simple. If we want to be healthy and happy we need to focus on cultivating healthy states of mind and as a result, inhibit unhealthy states of mind. This runs counter to many (not all) therapeutic practices, which often focus on unpacking life events that have produced healthy states of mind.
While many of those practices can be extremely helpful the big difference is we often spend time thinking about the experiences themselves vs. observing our mental states at arm’s length and seeing them as something we can influence and train over time. Much the same way we can work out to get stronger, we can train healthier mental states to develop our brain fitness.
So what states of mind are unhealthy and healthy?
Unhealthy States of Mind - The Three Core Areas of Suffering
Buddhism identifies three areas that are at the root of all negative mental states and consequentially suffering. Buddhist psychology tells us the negative emotional and behavioral patterns have their roots in three core areas:
Grasping
Aversion
Delusion
What is grasping?
Grasping means holding on to or hanging tight to what is in our lives. Here are a few examples of how grasping shows up:
Amazing weekend - You had an incredible weekend with friends but it’s coming to an end. You find yourself sad or frustrated that this is the case, which leads to you being more quiet than usual or not enjoying the moment as much.
Your Kids Get Older - Your kids have gotten a little older and now they're obsessed with hanging out with their friends so you guys hang out less on the weekend. You get sad and potentially frustrated by this reality so you, in turn, retreat inward.
What is aversion?
Aversion means to avoid or to push things away. This can be both physical - not getting out of bed and being lazy. Or it can be mental - not thinking about a topic that brings us anxiety. Here are a few examples of how aversion shows up:
You're Anxious About Money - You worry a lot about money and as a result, you avoid looking at your bank account or your credit card statement.
You're Scared To Try Something New - You're afraid of failure so you avoid situations where you're asked to do new things because you don't want to look dumb.
What is delusion?
Delusion means to not see things for what they truly are or to not see the truth of things. In Buddhism delusion is explained differently from our traditional understanding of the term. Here are a few examples of how delusion shows up:
We Want A Nice House - When we crave material things because we think those nice things will bring us happiness.
We Cling To Identities We've Held For A Long Time - When a person is getting older and they do all kinds of crazy stuff (go bungee jumping, make crazy investments, or party a ton) because doing those things will mean they're not actually aging (big leap here as I've never actually gotten older so sorry if I missed the mark).
Delusion is about avoiding the truth of things.
What do unhealthy states lead to?
These three core areas of suffering, in Buddhism, are believed to lead to all of our other unhealthy states of mind including:
Worry
Envy
Rigidity
Agitation
Greed
Self-Centeredness
Hate
Avarice
Shamelessness
Dullness
Closed-Mindedness
Confusion
Misperception
Recklessness
and other negative mental states. On the other hand, we have healthy states of mind, which are found in three core areas.
Healthy States of Mind - The Three Core Areas of Thriving
Buddhism also identifies three areas that are at the root of all other healthy mental states and consequentially thriving. Buddhist psychology tells us the healthy emotional and behavioral patterns have their roots in three core areas:
Loving-Kindness - This is the state of having compassion towards all life.
Generosity - This is the state of giving (i.e. material, spiritual, and wisdom)
Wisdom - Realizing or perceiving the true nature of reality; seeing things as they are, not as they appear.
Healthy states of mind lead to a variety of positive and healthy emotions, including:
Mindfulness
Confidence
Graciousness
Humility
Joy
Insight
Flexibility
Clarity
Equanimity
Adaptability
Kindness
and many other positive and healthy emotions. Now that we've got a vision for how we experience the world as well as the three unhealthy and the three healthy roots, how do we work with our mental states to cultivate a healthier mind?
Mindfulness can help us unlock our ability to thrive
Mindfulness is awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgementally - Jon Kabat-Zin
I find this system of psychology extremely empowering because it breaks mental fitness down into discrete, easy-to-understand, and workable parts. We know a few things:
We experience the world through our senses
How much we experience depends on how much attention we pay
Our experiences are colored by the mental states we are in when we receive this information
There are three core areas that lead to unhealthy mental states - grasping, aversion, and delusion
There are three core areas that lead to healthy mental states - loving-kindness, generosity, and wisdom
The way we can start strengthening our ability to thrive is by paying attention and practicing mindfulness. We can do this by paying attention to our mental states at any given moment. What we do when we pay attention is:
Recognize our current mental state
Investigate our mental state - what caused it, when did it happen, what's at the root of why I'm feeling this way
Don't judge our mental state - practice compassion and understanding with ourselves.
As we practice mindfulness more regularly we'll start to notice a few things:
Mental states come and go like the weather - They are passing and fleeting
Mental states are not who we are - they are things we have - i.e. we can observe them without getting caught up in them and letting them define our experience
Mental states can be influenced - As we create an arms-length separation between our consciousness and our mental states we can start to intentionally practice loving-kindness, generosity, and develop wisdom.
We can cultivate our mind to thrive
To become your own psychologist you don’t have to learn some big philosophy. All you have to do is examine your own mind every day. - Lama Yeshe
What I love about this system of psychology is it’s extremely easy to understand and practical. It gives us a roadmap to understand our experience in the world as humans as well as what leads us to have positive experiences vs. deeply negative ones.
I think understanding the system behind our experience in the world makes it easier to wrap our heads around how to train our minds and influence our ability to thrive.
Until next time,
Alvaro
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