“The mind doesn’t rise so it doesn’t cease.”

“The mind doesn’t rise so it doesn’t cease.”

Question: “Why do you say, ‘The mind is permanent;’ when the Buddha said, ‘All is impermanent'?”

Than Ajahn:  “All except the mind. When the Buddha said, ‘All,’ he means ‘all the things that are created in this world.’ Everything that is created is impermanent. Everything that is created will eventually dissolve because everything is made up of the four elements.

Like this body, it comes from the four elements and one day the four elements will separate, they’ll go back to the four elements. When a person dies and if you leave the corpse alone, eventually all the fluids will come out of the body. The air will disappear. The heat will disappear. All that is left is just the solid part which becomes earth.

So, everything in this world is made up of the four elements: earth, water, fire, and air. If you use the scientific terminology, everything is made up of solid, liquid, heat, and gases. Like these wooden beams are solid, they are made of solid things and they will break down slowly. Eventually, they will return back to earth. So, everything in this world is impermanent.

The Buddha never said, ‘The mind is impermanent.’ It’s a misunderstanding. No one clarifies his teaching. So you start to imagine it in your own mind because you have never seen the mind before. You don’t know the true nature of the mind.

When the Buddha says, ‘everything,’ he means ‘everything that rises will cease’.  But the mind doesn’t rise so it doesn’t cease because the mind has no form. The mind is not made up of anything. The mind is like empty space. How can you destroy empty space? Can you destroy space? You cannot. Space is always there.

All objects, all emotions, all feelings, all thoughts are impermanent. They rise and cease. They come and go. But the feelings never disappear. They will always stay with the mind.

The mind has four functions: to feel, to think, to remember/to perceive and to be aware. These are the characteristics of the mind. They never die. They never disappear but they change. They come and go. You think and then you stop thinking. You remember, then you stop remembering and you forget. You have feelings, you have good feelings then you have bad feelings, then you have neutral feeling. These phenomenon keep changing. These will only stop when you meditate.

When you meditate, the mind becomes calm, and all these four function of the mind will stop functioning temporarily. But they will never disappear. They will always be with the mind.”

Dhamma for the Asking,
Q&A, Jan 9, 2017 (youtube live)

By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
www.phrasuchart.com

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