Your mind, my mind, everyone’s mind, has
these four characteristics. It is:
1. impermanent: Consciousness is a stream, a fluid process of change. Even something seemingly static like a pain in your knee has dynamic qualities. As soon as one moment of experience appears, it’s replaced by another one. The mind that is represented by the nervous system of a particular body shares the fate of that body, which will eventually pass away.
2. compounded: Experiences are made of many parts. For instance, if you observe a worry, you’ll see different aspects of this experience, such as sensations, thoughts, desires, and emotions. More generally, information in the nervous system about any one thing must be distinct from information about other things.
3. interdependent: Our experiences exist and change due to causes. They don’t occur on their own. The causes that make your mind in this moment could include what you were thinking about a few minutes ago, your personal history, the state of your body, and the fact that a mosquito just landed on the back of your neck.
4. empty: The first three characteristics above establish the fourth characteristic, that all experiences are “empty” of any permanent, unified, self-causing essence. That experiences are empty does not mean they are void. Thoughts, joys, and sorrows do exist, but emptily. The stream of consciousness exists while also being empty. The mind, including its unconscious elements, is empty
//////////////////. Like the mind, the brain is:
1. impermanent: Each day, hundreds of new baby neurons are born in a process called neurogenesis, while other brain cells die naturally. There is ongoing rebuilding of existing connections between cells and structures within cells. New synapses form, while less used ones wither away. New capillary tendrils—the tiny tubes that supply blood to our tissues—grow and reach into particularly active regions to bring them more fuel. Individual neurons routinely fire many times a second. And molecular processes cascade like falling dominoes over the course of a single millisecond.
2. compounded: The brain has three major parts: brain stem, subcortex, and neocortex. These parts contain many smaller regions that do different things. Altogether, there are about 85 billion neurons inside your head, plus another 100 billion supporting glial cells. These neurons are connected in a vast network with several hundred trillion synapses. And the microscopic structures of cells and synapses can be divided even further into smaller and smaller parts.
Interdependence means that a thing can arise only in reliance on other things. THICH NHAT HANH
3. interdependent: What happens in one part of the brain is affected by what is happening in other parts of it. Neuronal activity interacts with activity in the glial cells. The brain interacts with the rest of the nervous system…which interacts with the rest of the body… which interacts with the world…and so on.
4. empty: Based on the three characteristics above, the brain is “empty” of any permanent, unified, or self-causing essence. It exists—emptily.
1. impermanent: Consciousness is a stream, a fluid process of change. Even something seemingly static like a pain in your knee has dynamic qualities. As soon as one moment of experience appears, it’s replaced by another one. The mind that is represented by the nervous system of a particular body shares the fate of that body, which will eventually pass away.
2. compounded: Experiences are made of many parts. For instance, if you observe a worry, you’ll see different aspects of this experience, such as sensations, thoughts, desires, and emotions. More generally, information in the nervous system about any one thing must be distinct from information about other things.
3. interdependent: Our experiences exist and change due to causes. They don’t occur on their own. The causes that make your mind in this moment could include what you were thinking about a few minutes ago, your personal history, the state of your body, and the fact that a mosquito just landed on the back of your neck.
4. empty: The first three characteristics above establish the fourth characteristic, that all experiences are “empty” of any permanent, unified, self-causing essence. That experiences are empty does not mean they are void. Thoughts, joys, and sorrows do exist, but emptily. The stream of consciousness exists while also being empty. The mind, including its unconscious elements, is empty
//////////////////. Like the mind, the brain is:
1. impermanent: Each day, hundreds of new baby neurons are born in a process called neurogenesis, while other brain cells die naturally. There is ongoing rebuilding of existing connections between cells and structures within cells. New synapses form, while less used ones wither away. New capillary tendrils—the tiny tubes that supply blood to our tissues—grow and reach into particularly active regions to bring them more fuel. Individual neurons routinely fire many times a second. And molecular processes cascade like falling dominoes over the course of a single millisecond.
2. compounded: The brain has three major parts: brain stem, subcortex, and neocortex. These parts contain many smaller regions that do different things. Altogether, there are about 85 billion neurons inside your head, plus another 100 billion supporting glial cells. These neurons are connected in a vast network with several hundred trillion synapses. And the microscopic structures of cells and synapses can be divided even further into smaller and smaller parts.
Interdependence means that a thing can arise only in reliance on other things. THICH NHAT HANH
3. interdependent: What happens in one part of the brain is affected by what is happening in other parts of it. Neuronal activity interacts with activity in the glial cells. The brain interacts with the rest of the nervous system…which interacts with the rest of the body… which interacts with the world…and so on.
4. empty: Based on the three characteristics above, the brain is “empty” of any permanent, unified, or self-causing essence. It exists—emptily.
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