Abstracts Accepted

Buddhist Concept of Mind

Abstract:

It is well understood Buddhism was a reaction again contemporary tendencies. Gautama Buddha presented a rational religion. He is also presented simple principles of life. In this sense he was anti-intellectualist. But towards superstitions he had the approach of a modern scientist. Seeing the degeneration of faith, he emphasized experience and efforts.

‘Is it “I” who draw the bow, or is the bow that draws me into the state of highest tension? Do “I” hit the goal, or does the goal hit me? Is it spiritual when seen by the eyes of the body, and corporeal when seen by the eyes of the spirit or both or neither? Bow, arrow, goal and ego, all melt into one another, so that I can no longer separate them. And even the need to separate has gone. For as soon as I take the bow and shoot, everything becomes clear and straightforward and ridiculously simple…’

The Buddhist denies the existence of any permanent entity either physical or mental. He considers the human person as a psycho–physical complex. The Buddhist concept of mind is a concept that will always lie in the background of the study of the psychology of Buddhism. The concept of mind is explained with the help of psycho-physical complex (nāma-rūpa). Nāma is used to refer to the four non-material groups (skhandhas): these are vedanā, saňňa, sańskharā, and vijňana. Buddhist philosophy is known as momentariness, which is explained with the help of Prattityasamutpada. According to Buddha mental phenomena have to be understand in the light of causal laws, meaning law of Dependent Origination.

In this paper, I seek to re-evaluate Buddhist concept of mind.

Key-Words:

 Common concept of mind; Mind as vijñana (consciousness), which is also known as anattā; psycho–physical complex; Prattityasamutpada.

Declaration and Conflict of Interest:
This is our original work, not published or presented before. There is no conflict of interest involved in this work.

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*Lecturer, Birla College, Dept of Philosophy, Kalyan Maharashtra.
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