“be neither pleased nor displeased by what you do and do not desire and recognize these feelings are created only in the mind.”
Something I heard from Buddhism that bugs me to this day. I mean from what it reads it sounds like what I think “makes me happy” (movies, characters, games, etc) is just things of my own creation and not something in the object. That kind of brings me down a little since it makes it sound like it’s “fake” in a sense of the feelings are created by me.
Here we go again. Oh grasshopper you are a challenge.
This too shall pass - does not mean ‘this’ is “fake” - then again . . .
Hey a few weeks back I read something about Buddhism that rang a bell for me. Makes as much as sense as anything else I’ve heard, and part of me can certainly relate and I’ve been saving it for you and the right moment, now here we are, xoxo
He wrote, that Buddhism isn’t about becoming free of pain, it was about accepting all the pain that exists in the world and continuing to live.
Something close to that, I bet a lively discussion could be had. Me all I know is that it as the ring of truth. Guess that another way of saying it resonates.
Happy Holiday Xain, I hope you have a chance to hug a few people.
Friends are good, most old folks sure appreciate it, strangers can be fun and interesting - though proceed with caution & situational awareness 
, lovers are very cool and you don’t have to stop at the hug.
Xain, your bizarre and perpetual quest can be trying, but I actually think you are learning some things along the way.
Feelings are pretty much just respondent behaviors, i.e., inborn natural responses to eliciting stimuli. They are NOT
“created only in the mind”. They are a product of our currently evolved, overall physical being (not done in the brain alone) PLUS they are a product of the eliciting environmental contingencies that we are confronted with.
There can be survival elements involved in experiencing feelings. (Else we would not have evolved the ability to have emotions.) Certainly there can be a downside in experiencing some feelings. But buck up. All in all they are probably for the best.
Have your fill of Christmas cheer, Xain!
It’s just that this issue, like many others, bugs me because the answers that I have been given for my whole life turn out not to be the answers that are necessarily the truth.
Xian, nobody knows what the Buddha taught. The mind is a metaphor, a figure of speech. Feelings arise, not in the mind. Forget the geography. The mind-body separation is an illusion.
Sree, I sort of like how that sounds, but …
mind is a metaphorDoesn't that gloss over a whole bunch?
How do you mean that?
Mind as metaphor for what?
Citizen, the word “chair” is a name of a physical object. The word “mind” is a name for an idea.
How are we doing so far?
Not so good.
Particularly not, if you are trying to explain anything to us.
I think most of us here have spent some time musing on “mind” so simply proclaiming to us that Mind Is Metaphor, is like painting a mustache on a great portrait. What’s the point?
Get my drift?
oh and,
Sree: "name for an idea"is going from bad to worse.
You don’t think mind is an idea, Citizen? Is it because I don’t have the intellectual heft? Or is it because you accept the popular scientific belief that it is the consciousness generated by your brain?
Citizen said: “I think most of us here have spent some time musing on “mind” so simply proclaiming to us that Mind Is Metaphor, is like painting a mustache on a great portrait. What’s the point?”
My point is to engage you in debate in the scientific manner Dawkins want.
All the monks in Tibet have spent their lives musing on “mind”; and even that did not deter me from debating rimpoches on the nature of mind. If you don’t like the conversation, drop it. We can talk about other things.
It’s not a belief but more a fact, consciousness is created by the brain and feelings are created in the mind. It’s not the object or event otherwise we would all react the same way (a lesson I learned the hard way as I didn’t have correct reactions to things growing up).
Xain said, “…consciousness is created by the brain and feelings are created in the mind. It’s not the object or event otherwise we would all react the same way…”
TimB replies, NOOOO! The lesson you “learned the hard way” is WRONG. And your paradigm is faulty. First, consciousness is behaviors that primarily occur in the brain in response to perception and personal history. Emotions also occur mostly in the brain, but also in other parts of the body. They are primarily respondent (reflexive, in-born) behaviors. But the unconditioned emotional responses that are elicited by unconditional stimuli, are subject to changes by historical conditioning. I.e., a fluffy bunny presented to a young child at the same time as some noxious frightening stimulus, can condition that child to be terrified of fluffy bunnies in his/her future. Most people would not have had that particular conditioning, and would not be terrified by things that resemble fluffy bunnies.
This individual history of reinforcement accounts for much of the differences that people have in emotional reactions. But it can also be that some people start out with a different baseline of emotional responding due to having unusual neurological functioning, e.g., persons in the autism spectrum, for instance.
Oh yes, and the term “mind” is simply a word that we use to talk about brain processes, generally, along with some other vague processes. Hence it can cause more confusion than it helps, because its definition can be so diffuse. It does NOT refer to some entity that is separate from our brain and body functioning.
Well consciousness is not behaviors, it’s being aware. It’s a state made possible by the brain which is where it comes from. And yes these feelings are created in the mind and not by the object which is what explains different responses to the same thing.
Sree: You don’t think mind is an idea, Citizen? Is it because I don’t have the intellectual heft? Or is it because you accept the popular scientific belief that it is the consciousness generated by your brain?What's your intellectual heft, or lack thereof, got to do with it? Sounds like a gratuitous diversion intended to avoid the simple question.
No I do not think mind is just an idea, mind is the product of all those neurons who are acting in concert with our bodies and with the stimuli it is receiving for the outside world.
Your turn, what do you think the mind is. If you believe the mind is no more than a metaphor, can you explain what in the world that mean and how it can help us understanding anything?
December 26, 2019 at 3:43 pm#316552 Sree Citizen said: “I think most of us here have spent some time musing on “mind” so simply proclaiming to us that Mind Is Metaphor, is like painting a mustache on a great portrait. What’s the point?”SreeMy point is to engage you in debate in the scientific manner Dawkins want.
All the monks in Tibet have spent their lives musing on “mind”; and even that did not deter me from debating rimpoches on the nature of mind. If you don’t like the conversation, drop it. We can talk about other things.
Hmmm, you say you want to engage in scientific debate, then you dodge my simple question with avoidance, then you top it off with some sort of claim to authority that’s supposed to justify your dismissal and ignoring my questions.
"did not deter me from debating rimpoches"Is that supposed to impress me? Fine! You must have great heft to debate theRimpache.
Rather than backslapping yourself why not tell us a little of what you may have learned from those debates?
Oh and
I wasn’t asking about how great you imagined your own understanding to be,
I was asking you to define what it is you understood the mind to be and you ducked out. Not very scientific. Nor intellectually constructive.
Xain, You are not obliged to accept my paradigm, in which I view consciousness as various behaviors that occur primarily on the level of neurological correlates. But if you do, I think you can make more sense of things. There are remembering behaviors, attending behaviors, internal verbal behaviors, imagining behaviors, and on and on.
I am convinced of this because of my understanding of Verbal Behavior. Verbal behavior can take place on the level of one’s own thoughts (i.e., it manifests only as neurological correlates). And Skinner showed how verbal behavior is functional and develops according to the established rules of behavior. So if the verbal behavior that manifests ONLY as neurological correlates (e.g. privately rehearsing what you will say to your boss), follows the same rules as behaviors that occur outside of one’s skin, then why can’t other acts of consciousness, also be the same. Consider remembering behavior. Researchers have found that our memories of events, are reconstructed each time we remember an event, and this renewed memory is impacted by current and intervening contingencies. Our memories are not video recordings. They are a behavior that can be impacted like any other behavior, by environmental contingencies.
So consciousness behaviors occur in the brain but as is the case, with all behaviors, they are a product of environmental contingencies as well.
Emotions are primordial behaviors, akin to reflexive behaviors. They are respondent behaviors as opposed to operant behaviors.
And Xain, WHEN you say “feelings are created in the mind and not by the object.”, you deny that behaviors are always a product of the organism’s potential behaviors PLUS environmental contingencies.
If you recognized that emotions are respondent behaviors, the tip off is in the name “respondent”. e.g. you see something horrible, you respond by feeling horrified. The horrible view that is in your environment, elicits the behavior of feeling horrified.
If you understood the rules of behavior, better, you would also recognize that people can feel differently about the same environmental cues, DUE TO THEIR INDIVIDUAL HISTORIES OF REINFORCEMENT.
That people have different responses to the same emotional cues is NOT AT ALL proof that the cue is not a fundamental component of the emotion occurring.
Citizen said: "No I do not think mind is just an idea, mind is the product of all those neurons who are acting in concert with our bodies and with the stimuli it is receiving for the outside world.
The word “mind” has the same meaning as “consciousness” to folks who share your view. Like Newton’s Theory of gravity, it’s a simplistic idea that works if you live within the confines of that “premise” (i.e. mental framework). But when you sit back and think about this, to reflect or meditate on it as it were, the idea falls apart.
Newton lived in the world of classical physics. If he were alive today, he would be like someone who believes that mind is a product of neurons. I am not saying that you and Newton are wrong. Neither was Pope Paul V wrong when he ordered Galileo to abandon his idea that the Earth was not the center of the universe.
I would not say mind is limited to the consciousness were aware of, but fundamentally, YES.
Now, what is it that you are proposing?
the idea falls apartHow's that? Can you describe it?