Mind / Body Problem

 

Finally listening to some people in the pub discussing the mind/body problem and particularly a Buddhist friend of theirs who believes that the mind and body are separate I realised that finally I’m satisfied with an answer to this problem…

I caught myself saying No, No, No! as I heard their views. The trigger was that word “separate”… in “what” are the mind and the body separate? Something new that is neither body or mind? [SRH would say that the mind cannot separate “itself” from the body, and vice versa].

It is obvious the mind is not separate from the body. But - and this is the hard bit to grasp - it isn’t un-separated either. To argue that because the mind is not separate from the body so it must be un-separated from the body is making a cardinal mistake: the law of the excluded middle does not apply here!

The answer to the problem is to understand that the mind creates difference, so how can it be different itself? Just as God creates things, how can God himself be created? [more SRH]

This is all argued very concisely in the Shurangama Sutra.