The Concept of Mind in the Vedas
The nature of mind and the functions and constituents of mind have
been agitating the people for a long time. There have been various
explanations but none is satisfactory. Indian philosophy, from the very
beginning, has recognized mind as something distinct from the self or the
Atman, though it partakes of its nature as intelligence through association
with it. Since it is subtle in nature, it is not a gross matter. The word
‘mind’ literally means ‘measuring’; and it has been used in this sense in
the Vedas and the Brāhmaṇas from early times. It is a subtle matter in all
philosophy. It has been considered to be the part of that which was
designated by its name manas. It is an activity in the life of man and it
measures his wisdom, pleasures, pain, feelings etc. It seems that the
problem of the nature of mind and its relation to matter may be
satisfactorily solved only if we think of mind as a higher form of matter
capable of reflecting the nature of self which is consciousness. This mind
or manas has no concrete place. It is the name given to a series of
conscious activities such as desire, aversion, pleasure, pain,
intelligence, thought etc, and this mind is capable of referring to the
past, present and future.
Apart from the qualities of the mind it is very difficult to know the
pure self at the empirical level.
“The mind is the material part of the external world. It belongs to
us but it does not explain who we really are, just as our house belongs to
us but is not us. This may be a shocking matter to consider, but it is
really something intuitively known to us. When we speak of ‘my mind’, we
are defining the mind as an object which belongs to us and not as ourselves”
The mind has a material structure; and it works as an instrument or
tool. The sense organs themselves are instruments. The eye is an instrument
of seeing; the ear is an instrument of hearing and so on. Similarly, the
mind that works to process sensory information is itself an instrument. The
mind is the main instrument we use to function in life. It is organically
related to our physical body. So, the mind is also a kind of body organ.
The physical body is primarily an organ of perception and expression. It is
structured mainly by our sense the motor organs like the sound and hands
through which we express ourselves. The mind can function apart from body
consciousness as in sleep, trance and after death states.
The reference to mind can be found in the Vedas from the beginning.
The first germ of mind can be radical in the lust or wish. It is desire for
individual pleasure. In the Ṛgvedic hymns it is said: {PIG MINDS ARE HERE}
Kāmastad agre samavarttatādhi manaso retaḥ prathamaṃ yadāsīt || R V 10 129
4 Nasadiya suktam
Out of desire acting in crude wishes retha pratama, cells and b lood of the
body that desire, first it acts.
From these days the philosophers were interested in understanding
and controlling the mental processes. Mind originates from the root ‘man’
‘to think’ and the word ‘citta’ is used at some places almost synonymous to
mind and it has been used in this sense in the early Vedas, Brāhmaṇas and
Upaniṣads. It is the recording faculty and it receives impressions gathered
by the sense organs from the outside world. It seems to be regarded to
attend to all the cognitive, affective and conative processes.
Śathapathabrāhmaṇa-III.2.6
manodevā manuṣyasyā''pmānantīti manasā saṅkalpayatitatprāṇamapi
padyatepprāṇo vvātaṃ
vvatodevebbhya ācaṣṭṭe yathā puruṣasya manaḥ ||
>From the beginning such a concept of mind can be found in the Vedas
themselves.
THUS ANTI DESIRE SOLUTION WERE IMPLANTED IN THE MANTRAS TO CONTROL:
The famous Gāyatri mantra in the Ṛgveda and in the Yajurveda reveals the
way in which the consciousness pervades the Vedic prayers:
oṃ bhurbhuvasvaḥ tat saviturvareṇyam bhargodevasya dhīmahī dhiyo yona
pracodayāt ||
This mantra was revealed by sage Viśamitra. It is named after its metre
Gāyatri which means ‘the saviour of the singer’. It is looked upon as the
essence of the Vedas. The essence of the prayer is ‘stimulation of one’s
intellect; and enlightening of one’s mind’.
Another great Vedic hymn desires that man’s resolutions should be
auspicious verses: -Yajurveda 34 6
suṣārathiraśvanivayenmanuṣyānnenīyathe'śubhirvājinaiva hṛdpratiṣṭhayaṃ
yadaciraṃ javiṣṭam manme manaḥ śivasaṅkalpamastu
It is the fantastic verses about mind. It says that mind is considered as
the swiftest, and it is seated in the heart and also unmortified. It is the
controller of the sense organs. These verses also indicate the necessity of
controlling the mind. In the Vedic texts, there are numerous references to
mind as being located in the heart. The Yajurveda declares that the mind is
the means of knowledge. The mind is considered as mananaśīlaṃ
jñānasādhanam. Mind is sarvakarmasādhanam. In the Ṛgveda the mind occupies
a major part of logical thinking and discussions. Mind can be truthful,
unruffled, mature, firm and sharp. The mind has been considered as a lord
of the body, showing the significance of mind over the body. The
description of mind in the Ṛgveda comes in the context of alcoholic
intoxication. This indicates that somarasa envelopes the mind and it
produces a marked effect on the sense organs. The ‘naiṣadīyasūkta’ of the
Ṛgveda indicates the important role of mind in human life. The word ‘citta’
is used at some places almost synonymous to mind.
The Ṛgveda states that intellect is the swiftest of birds. It is:
mano javiṣṭaṃ patayatsu antaḥ || [13]
The Ṛgvedic hymns proclaim the unity among the people and maintain the
unity for mankind.
The mind can play the main role of universal unity. It preaches that:-
saṃgacchadhvaṃ saṃvadadhvaṃ saṃ vo manāṃsijānatāṃ devā bhāgaṃ yathā pūrve
saṃjānānā upāsate | samāno mantraḥ samitiḥ samānī samānaṃ manaḥ saha cittaṃ
eṣāṃ samānaṃ mantraṃ abhimantraye vaḥ samānena vo haviṣā juhomi || samānī
va akūtiḥ samānā hṛdayāni vaḥ samānaṃ astu vo mano yathā vaḥ sa sahāsati ||
[Rifg Veda 10 9 2-4]
Mind in the Saṃhitas and the Brāhmaṇas is the pure sensory organ or it is
possible intellect. It is identified with the Being. The Carakasaṃhita
states that knowledge is the character of mind and that mind and knowledge
are interrelated. In the absence of mind, knowledge gets vanished.
So knowledge is the attribute of mind. It says:
lakṣaṇaṃ manasojñānasyābhāvo bhāva eva ca || charaka samhitai 1 18
The Yogavāsiṣṭa discusses the mind of which the characters are declared
as abstractive forms. It states: -
saṅkalpanaṃ manoviddhi saṅkalpāttannabhidhyate || [Y V 3 4 43]
The target of mind is to achieve higher knowledge for enlivening the
intuition of the Jīvātmā. This presumptive mind is immortal because it has
the essence of the Ātman. The mind is related to the energy of citta.
In the Vājasaneya Saṃhita the conception of mind as a psychical entity
is fully discussed. The concept of mind is dealt with in some details in
the Vājasaneya Saṃhita and it takes the ‘mind as a whole’ i.e., tanmemanaḥ
śivasaṅkalpamastu. Dr. Jwala Prasad translated the very first verse of this
collection in his Indian Epistemology; and he characterizes the mind as
something which goes out afar. It is not a gross physical sense organ, it
cannot be conceived as going out of the body, nor can it be the soul for
the same reason. Intelligence, feeling and resolution are the three-fold
divisions of mental activities and the mind is responsible for all
accomplishments. From these ideas it becomes evident that even in the
ancient texts the physical and the epistemological functions of mind have
been recognized and acknowledged.
The Atharvaveda uses a number of psychological phrases like
ṣardayam, samanāsyaṃ etc. The word ‘meda’ is used for intellect or
intelligence. The Aitareya Āraṇyaka elucidates the significance of the
human mind. According to this, all reality exists as far as it is known.
The cognition is divided into the knower [prājñā], the intellect [prajñā],
and the cognition [prajñānaṃ]. Some references of mind are given in the
Śatapata Brāhmaṇa about the perception and cognition of things, and the
relation of name and form with the mind. These ideas or doctrines are
further elucidated in the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa. The characteristics of mind
are enumerated through a number of concepts. Awareness, comprehension,
understanding, knowledge, retentiveness, insight, resolution, opinion,
memory, reflection, impulse, will, purposed life, desire, control etc are
the names of mind or knowledge.
In the second chapter of the Aitareya Āraṇyaka it is mentioned that
man is superior to animals because he can anticipate the future and
remember the past. The Yajurveda states that the creations given to that in
mind the moon, in eye the sun, in ear the air and in mouth the fire are of
much significance. Mind is the first creative partner of the world.
IF SO, ONE WHO CONTROLS THE MIND DOES NOT TURN A PIG; HOWEVER, MIND
DRIFTERS ARE AT LARGE DUE TO TAMO,AND RAJO GUNAS, AND HENCE, CAUGHT IN THE
‘HERDS’ INSTINCT” (SIGMUND FREUD). K Rajaram
IRS 15 9 24
On Sun, 15 Sept 2024 at 04:25, Jambunathan Iyer <[email protected]>
wrote:
> CATCHING WILD PIGS
>
> Karl Marx once said - *"Remove one freedom per generation. Soon you will
> have no freedom left and no one would have even noticed.*
>
> One day while the class was in the laboratory, a professor noticed a young
> man kept rubbing his back and stretching, as if his back hurt. The
> Professor asked the young man what was the matter. The student told him
> that he had a bullet lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting
> Communists in his native country, who were trying to overthrow his
> country's Government and install a new Communist regime.
>
> Then, the student looked at the Professor and asked a strange question- "Do
> you know how to catch wild Pigs?"
>
> The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punchline. The young
> man said that it was no joke at all.
>
> "You catch wild Pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting
> Corn on the ground. The Wild Pigs find the Corn and begin to come every day
> to eat the Free food. When they are used to coming every day, you put a
> fence on one side of the place where they are used to coming regularly.
>
> At first, the Wild Pigs are scared, but when they get used to the fence,
> they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence.
> They
> get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all
> four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side. The Pigs, which
> are used to the Free Corn, start to come through the gate to eat that Free
> Corn again. Then you slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd. Suddenly,
> the wild Pigs have lost their freedom. They run around inside the fence,
> but they are caught. Soon they go back to eating Free Corn.
>
> They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods
> for themselves, so they accept their captivity and they are slaughtered
> thereafter.
>
> The young man then told the Professor- "That is exactly what is happening
> in many countries today. The Governments keep pushing the people towards
> Socialism and keep spreading the Free Corn out in the form of programmers
> such as Free Rations, Free Electricity, Tax credits, Caste Benefits, Farm
> subsidies, Welfare Schemes, Free entitlements, Free medicines, while the
> people continually lose their freedom, just a little bit at a time."
>
> One should always remember a simple Truth:
>
> There is no such thing as a Free Lunch. If you think that the Free Ride
> is essential to your way of life, then God help you when the gates slam
> shut...!
>
> Most of the problems we are facing today are because the people who work
> for a living are now outnumbered by those who vote for a living...!
>
> N Jambunathan Rengarajapuram-Kodambakkam-Chennai-Mob:9176159004
>
> *" What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you
> become by achieving your goals. If you want to live a happy life, tie it to
> a goal, not to people or things "*
>
>
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