[Buddha-l] re. Heart of the Matter?

[Erik Hoogcarspel]

P Amin schreef:
> Hi! All,
>
> I am no scholar but a mere student of Buddhism and am interested in
> all other branches of philosophy. I am not even sure if it is my place
> here to say something… But I couldn't resist the temptation after
> reading the 'heart of the matter'.
>
> I wanted to say something about the Kundalini cakras and the one of
> them being near to the heart, and having attributes of the heart.
> While interpreting Abhinava Gupta (an eminent tantric philosopher of
> 11th century based in Kashmir, India), Laxman Joo (a present day
> tantric practitioner, also from Kashmir) says that the seat of all
> cakras are the heart, despite of their physical location being in
> different part of the body. I thought was   an incredible
> philosophical finding. I have also read that the seat of the soul
> which is the core of our being is at an equal distance form the heart
> and the mind (brain) in the middle part of the chest.
>
> As Buddha says 'Daya' in my language and compassion in English which I
> think is the core of Buddhism, and from which the whole Buddhist
> philosophy emanates, comes from the heart. I would say regarding to my
> previous argument that I would do away with just the heart rather than
> mind!!!
>
> Parul Amin
> India
>   
Hi Parul,

the underlying assumption of this kind of discussion is that the mind has to be located somewhere. This means that the mind or consciousness is a physical object, because only matter takes up space. It makes no sense to say that friendship or hatred or the number Pi or the square root of two are located somewhere. When we write down the Greek character Pi, we write down the signifier which means for us 'pi'. It seems to me that the discussion you're referring to is merely about what a suitable signifier would be for mind or consciousness and that is a conventional matter. Another but related question is how body and mind influence each other, and that is a complicated biological puzzle, which is not addressed in the discussion. 

Erik

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