A First Look at Abhidhamma (4):
Separation of the Brain and the Mind



This chapter deviates from the classical Abhidhamma as will be elaborated throughout the passage.  Readers are encouraged to exercise free inquiry.


Psychology Concepts: The Past and the Present

The Abhidhamma was compiled as early as 477 BC.  During those times, little was known about the brain.  Thus the mental world was discussed in terms of an abstract ‘soul’ concept.  Every human was thought to possess a soul which does all the thinking and has all the personalities and mental abilities of the person.  In cultures such as India and China, beliefs of rebirth or reincarnation was prevalent.  It was believed that these souls will be reborn into new bodies (be it form or formless), thus one’s mental world continues even after death, and is identical regardless of the bodies.

The contemporary main stream science looks at psychology in a different way.  It completely throws out the possibility of a soul, and believes that the entire mental world exists within the brain.  Thus one’s reception of sight, sound, smells, taste and touch is completely experienced by the brain.  Since each person has a different brain, thus each person sees, hears, smells, tastes and touches differently.  For example some have better sight ability than others do, not only because of the eye organ, but also because of the different ability of the brain.  Some people identify things faster than others do.  Some people seem to capture more details than others do.  The same goes for hearing, smell, taste and touch. 

Psychologists also believe that greed, anger and ignorance is brain dependent.  There was a famous story about how someone’s brain was damaged in a mining accident.  An iron rod shot through his skull, removing a large part of his brain tissue.  The man survived, but he became a very hot-tempered person.  There is also another branch of psychology that believes that hormones are the determinants of emotions.  There are depressants to reduce the hyper-activity of children and stimulants that lifts the mood of depressed people.  People also notice the huge swings in emotions during menopause, when the amount of hormones in one’s body changes drastically.  Animals have different brain constructs, hence animal psychology is expected to be very different from that of human.


A Unified Theory

I believe in a unified theory between the soul and the brain.  This theory unifies both stands by separating the brain from the mind.

In classical Abhidhamma, the mind is called the citta.  The citta is a sequence of mental phenomena that experiences mental objects.  These mental phenomena arise and fall quickly every moment.  This sequence of mental phenomena is continuous and uncontrollable.  It solely depends on one’s habit energies and the prevailing conditions.  Now we know enough of the brain functions to differentiate it from the citta.

The mental world is made up of the brain and the citta.  The brain portion is body specific, while the citta portion is not body specific.  In the perspective of reincarnation, when one dies, one’s citta leaves one body and is reborn into another.  Thus one’s citta portion continues through rebirths but the brain portion does not continue.

I roughly draw the line between the brain portion and the citta portion by its need for language.  Language is a learned skill.  Hence it is not preserved through reincarnation.  Therefore roughly speaking (which I shall elaborate later) any thoughts in our mind that uses language lies in the brain portion, while others that do not use language lies in the citta portion.  This is only a rough guide.

For example the brain portion includes memory (the brain is very adept in that), the ability to analyze, imaginations and day dreaming, and most importantly the control of the body.  The citta portion includes emotions, experiences and mental formations.  The citta portion also includes memory but in a very different way from that of the brain.  The brain stores memory in neuron cells, while the citta stores memory through habit energies.

A few examples below illustrate the separation of the brain from the citta.

When one sees a flower and feels happy, this is what may happen:

1) The eye organ picks up the flower sight and sends signals to the mind.  The citta happens to pay attention to the sight, and thus experiences the flower.  This experience triggers other citta in the mind, some of which has the happy feeling.  Note that this very simple sequence involves no thinking.

2) After the mind experiences the flower, the mind pays attention to the brain.  The brain does a memory search and identifies the sight as of a flower.  The brain tells the mind it is a flower.  Note that the name ‘flower’ is a concept.  The mind has a habit energy of liking the concept of ‘flower’.  This triggers the citta that has the happy feeling.

3) After the brain outputs the concept of ‘flower’, it further links other memories of happy experiences with flower.  These memories get re-enacted in one’s mind.  The re-enactment triggers the citta that has the happy feeling.

4) After the brain outputs the concept of ‘flower’, it analyzes the flower and recognizes that it is prettier than many other flowers.  Thus the concept of ‘pretty’ is involved.  The mind has a habit energy of liking the concept of ‘pretty’.  This triggers the citta that has the happy feeling.

5) After the brain analyzes the flower, it remembers the learned concept of ‘The world is beautiful’.  Thus another concept, the concept of ‘beautiful’ is involved.  The mind has a habit energy of liking the concept of ‘beautiful’.  This triggers the citta that has the happy feeling.

6) After the brain analyzes the flower, it remembers the learned concept of ‘I am happy’.  The brain then recalls the experience of happiness.  The mind receives the memory of the experience called happiness, and triggers the citta that has the happy feeling.

There are infinitely many more possible permutations.  Essentially it shows that the brain has a support function of ‘processing’.  The citta is the one that experiences.

Thus when we close our eyes, and our thoughts talk to us for example in English, that is the brain at work.  It is not the mind.  When we do planning for a trip, solve a Mathematical problem, think of something to say etc, all these are from the brain, and not the mind.  This is why although citta is uncontrollable, there is a portion of our mental world that is controllable, that is the brain portion.  We can control to switch to seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching.  We can switch to reading a book, or think of certain things.  Although we may not hold the concentration long because attention is a citta function, we nonetheless have the control of what to switch to.  We can control our bodies as well.  I can will my body to tolerate things, and do things.  Will power is both a mind function as well as a brain function.


How Does the Brain Affect Our Mental World

Other than the mechanical functions of controlling our bodies, the brain heavily influences our mental world through two ways: concepts and memory.  Though the brain does not control our emotions directly, these two ways are strong enough to influence our emotions and experience deeply.

The brain learns knowledge and is capable of logical reasoning.  Thus it assimilates concepts that one could agree upon, to become beliefs.  Once one’s beliefs are formed, one becomes judgmental about what one perceives (perception as in including sight, sound, smell, taste and touch).  These judgments influence one’s emotions deeply.

For example one posses a house and one knows about the law and one’s social rights.  These are concepts and beliefs in one’s mind.  One day, if one’s house is taken away from one by surprise, one may feel angry.  “How can you take my house away?  It is not fair.”  The anger emotion is induced from non-acceptance, that one’s beliefs are contradicted.  The anger is not produced by the brain.  However the brain is influential enough to condition the arising of citta with the anger feeling.

Memory affects our emotions as well.  As memory is recalled, mental phenomena can be re-enacted in our minds.  The re-enactment influences one’s emotions deeply.

For example one may remember a happy incident, the re-enactment then conditions the arising of  the citta with the happy feeling.  One may also remember simply the experience of happiness, this too can condition the arising of the citta with the happy feeling.


Mindfulness Meditation

Breathing in, I know I am breathing in; breathing out, I know I am breathing out.  Our body is built such that deep breaths calm our body.  After a vigorous exercise that makes us go out of breath, and our heart beats very quickly, it helps to take deep and mindful breaths.  We would recover our breath and the heartbeat would return back to normal.  When we are angry, it also helps to take a few deep breaths.  Often we would find that the anger subsides tremendously after the deep breaths.  If we were mindful of our breaths, we can maintain a calm body for a long period of time.

After our body is calm, the next most active thing we notice is the working of our brains.  We call it ‘thought’.  Thus it is often confused as the third foundation of mindfulness - the mindfulness of thoughts.  Many practitioners thought they reached the third foundation, skipping the second one on mindfulness of feelings.  This is not true.  The so-called ‘thought’, which is actually a voice speaking in a learned language, is just the brain portion of our mental world.  Since our body is calm, our mind portion has no other object to focus on, hence it focuses on our brain’s ‘thought’.

Every time we manage to refocus our attention to our breath, our brain’s ‘thought’ would lose focus and it would stop.  It is like breaking up a sentence.  It has this process: breathing in, breathing out, …, “Tomorrow I should eat…”, breathing in, breathing out, “The answer for question one of the homework is …”, breathing in, breathing out, …  Those words are from the brain portion of our mental world.  Identify it and be familiar with it.  This is your brain, the organ that is bestowed on you in your present rebirth.  Cherish it.  It will be your closest spiritual friend in this lifetime towards helping you end your suffering.  In your next life, this brain will no longer be with you.


-- By Lee Hon Sing.  Last modified: Dec 30, 2003.  All ignorance is mine.

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