Buddhism states there are six senses. But strictly speaking there are six facilities – five senses (sight, sound, smell, taste,and touch) and one faculty (mind).
The senses are to experience the reality. The mind faculty is to make sense of the reality.
In other words the mind is not an organ to sense directly the environment. It is a secondary faculty when compared to the other senses.
Here are two definitions of world given in Flew and Priest’s Dictionary of Philosophy:
Definition #2 suggests that the world and mind are separate, therefore the mind is not part of the world. It also suggests that the world is somehow created by the mind, and it depends on the mind to exist.
Two problems arise from this. One is that what is the quality of this mind that does not match the qualities of the world? Secondly, how does one person’s world match to another person’s world? Furthermore, if the first mind is the creator of the world then it must be creator of the second person’s mind as well. Or else, the mind is not your mind but the mind of someone else’s (God as Berkeley suggests).
Somehow I suspect that definition #2 is the definition for idealism, mind-only monism, rationality, and logic based philosophies.
Only definition #1 is feasible.
1.
Buddhist thought can be said to begin with the formulation of the three marks of existence. These are:
Conditioned things here means the ordinary concrete (physical) objects of reality, and unconditioned things means abstract objects (thoughts, concepts and ideas). The physical reality is impermanent and unsatisfactory. The true nature of the physical reality as well as the abstract reality is without self (without identity or non-self). The suggestion here is that abstract objects are permanent and satisfactory.
| Impermanent | Unsatisfactory | Without self | |
| concrete objects | O | O | O |
| abstract objects | X | X | O |
To state this plainly, concrete objects are impermanent, unsatisfactory, and without self, and abstract objects are permanent, satisfactory and without self.
Concrete objects reside in the reality. Abstract objects reside not in the reality but “somewhere else”. I suggest this “place” is the mind. But by the above definition the mind must be permanent. If this is the case, then the mind is abstract or unconditioned, which is paradoxical or illogical.
One must now define what a mind is.
2.
A standard definition in philosophy of an abstract object is that 1) it has no spatio-temporal location, 2) it has no effects on the concrete spatio-temporal objects and locations, 3) it is imperceptible by the sense, and 4) yet, it is thinkable. This last item I think is important – it is thinkable.
Abstract objects only reside in the thinking mind. If it is not located, has no affects, and is not perceived by the sense, then whether it exists in the same way as concrete objects do or not has no consequences upon the physical reality.
The new paradox is there are objects that think affecting the reality.
The only logical conclusion therefore is instead of dealing with abstract objects, one is better off dealing with the objects that think of abstract objects. This is where Buddhism is practical and functional in its outlook.
Instead of dealing with a mind, one should deal with the object that thinks, deal with the object that does mind things.
Let me be clear: the claim is, a mind is not a thing.
A mind is a process of a thing.
There are two objects. One is similar to the other. From experience I assume their characteristics are similar to one another as well.
This body has a mind. It is therefore reasonable to assume other similar bodies have minds as well.
theoria 