Where does the mind go when one is sleeping?

The Teaching of Ajahn Suchart.

20 August 2024

Question: Where does the mind go when one is sleeping?

Tan Ajahn: The mind and the body are not really in the same place. The mind has its own place of existence, and the body has its own place of existence.

Let me give you an example. The mind is like the controller of the spacecraft. You send a spacecraft into space, and the controller is on earth. You communicate through radio waves.

This is the same way that the mind communicates with the body, we call it viññāṇa. Viññāṇa will receive all the data from the body such as the eyes, ears, nose, tongue and mind. Then the mind will use saṅkhāra, which is thinking to instruct the body what to do.

So, the mind is in what we call the celestial world or in the spiritual world, while the body is in the physical world. The mind is in contact with the body through the viññāṇa.  This is like the spacecraft and the controller. The controller stays on earth, while the spacecraft is in space.

When the body goes to sleep, it means that the mind and the body stop communicating temporarily. 

Sometimes the mind will do whatever it likes. Sometimes it will think of the past, it will go to some places that it might have visited before; it can be quite varied, but you don’t know about it. Sometimes when you dream, you are not sure what you were dreaming about, whether you were dreaming about this life or past lives. Sometimes you don’t dream at all, or sometimes the mind just wants to rest. It stops thinking.

But the mind and the body are never in the same place. Should anything happen to the body, should there be a nuclear bomb and all the bodies are incinerated, the mind will still remain the same. The mind of everybody remains the same. The mind is indestructible, because the mind is not in this world. Even if this world should explode, when this world no longer exists, the mind still exists. If the mind still has desires, it will go look for a new body on a different earth, in a different world.

Imagine the people in a spacecraft; if they lose this spacecraft, they will build a new one, and then they will send the new spacecraft into space to explore some more. So this is like the body and the mind.

Finally, let me remind you that you are the mind, that you are not the body. Don’t worry about the body, you will lose it one day. Take care of your mind. And the way to take care of the mind is to bhāvanā, to develop mindfulness (sati), samādhi and paññā. That is all you have to do because the mind will be with you all the time. The mind is your real possession.

But right now it doesn’t have the right knowledge to look after itself. It doesn’t have the Dhamma necessary to become peaceful, calm, and wise. The mind is still deluded. The mind still thinks the mind itself is the body. 

When you bhāvanā, you will eventually get to the state where you see that the mind and the body are two separate things.

In the meantime, just keep reminding yourself, I am not the body. I am going to lose the body one day, sooner or later. But losing the body is not important because I can always get a new body. I have lost so many bodies before so I won’t worry about losing the body. The only worry is to worry about not having the Dhamma to look after the mind.

“Dhamma for the Asking, Dec 2, 2014”

By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
www.phrasuchart.com

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