Mind is a mean which allows us to establish a relation with the external environment.
Just ponder about the body, that through its physical receptors it is able to experience sensations, and we can be more than aware of that just through the simple observation of these phenomena; these same perceptions generate emotions that should be recognized, noticed while they arise, while they manifest themselves and while they vanish- we should be able to distinguish the qualities of these three moments. But, all this ordinarily remains confined in the individual who finds it impossible to compare what he observes with what he experiences in a sober and vast way: we ordinarily lack the necessary “space” which could allow us to see what is effectively happening, to understand the dynamic of the external causes that produce internal reactions.
It would really be a precarious condition if there would not be a third skill which would allow to put in relation, the influences produced from the external situations with what is produced from the same inside of us: mind. Indeed, it’s the mind that permits us to relate, compare, and associate different experiences and giving to them a concrete meaning. But this is only a possibility. Indeed, to be able to perform all these actions in an objective way, a mind should be “awake”: to use Buddhist terminology, there should be a “clear”, conscious mind.
Mind itself is really a great space, a gateway through where it is possible to overreach the sensorial and emotional experience and reach the so called “abstraction” (this does not have to be considered as a term in the ordinary meaning that is given to it) grasping contents that otherwise wouldn’t be available as direct experience. That’s the power of a ”clear mind“, a mind clear from its habitual, associative contents.
But this is only a possibility. Indeed, mind, the most powerful tool we have and, as we know, different from the other living beings on this planet, is also the greatest limit to experience reality as it is: it translates experiences into ideas, producing further ideas which transform the experienced in an abstraction (this time, consider this term in the usual way that is given to it) more and more distant from reality.
The untrained mind of the ordinary human is the seed of all the illusions that transforms life into a hallucination: we begin to do things and act in situations according to the ideas we have of them, obtaining abstract experiences that we accept or refuse depending on the idea we have of them.
This is the way how convictions, points of view, intolerance, the incapacity to see people and situations as they are, is born. And, this is the cause of why we can’t be or do anything spontaneous; often it happens that, even during a retreat devoted to self-development, when it is said to a person to breathe with the belly, this same person produces a mental image, an idea on how this should be done in a right way, and is convinced to breathe in a right way just because he/she thinks it’s the right way, without even noticing, for example, that during the practice he/she attends to the abdomen in an unnatural way; and all this happens just because of the idea it has about “belly breathing”.
And the same processes happens during our ordinary life in relationships with others, the rational or idealistic points of view, what and who we love and what/who we hate, what we eat, what we buy, the holidays we chose etc, etc, etc…..
In one word, we don’t live our life, we interpret it.
If you carefully observe the work that happens in the mind, you’ll surely notice that it tends to create problems without any necessity; every suffering arises through inventions (illusions) and the reactions of the untrained mind. It’s a container of very destructive elements that are often hidden in very deep fields, that continuously contaminate the quality of our life, of our experiences, degenerating the mind to the degree that it becomes our prison, not the gateway for our freedom. The emancipator becomes the jailer.
One of the main aims of inner development is to overcome this ignorance of the mind, but to accpomplish this task isn’t enough just to say “Now I’ll stop my mind”, because this is just another idea produced from the same thing we wish to “stop”, so separated from an action.
Something else, a different approach is needed.