Last week, thinking about dimensions and trying to find out more information about the subject (yes, even the ancient Chinese notion of dimensionality), it occurred to me, seemingly out of the blue, that the pure Mind, of which I preach a lot about on this blog, is without dimension or in Chinese “wu-hou”.
As I began to recall many passages from Buddhist Sutras and other works it became more apparent to me that the Buddha would have been very comfortable with calling Mind, non-dimension or the same, dimensionless.
As you might guess, treating Mind as a dimensionless and luminescent animative power might prove a pain in the arse for our neuroscientists who are busily trying to prove that mind springs from our multidimensional brain—and a computer.
“In particular it is important to leave open the possibility that minds might emerge not only in brains but also in radically different things such as computers” (Evian Gordon, Integrative Neuroscience, 58).
But now think about this: what if our ordinary, everyday mind is, in fact, non-dimensional? This would mean that it is intrinsically free of the corporeal body but only seems bonded to it out of ignorance. With such a mind, how could a brain, which is certainly dimensional, give rise to something as dimensionless as our mind?
On this track, for Mahayana Buddhism it is absurd that brains should produce minds. Rather, instead, Mahayana Buddhism might say that the dimensional arises from the non-dimensional so that it makes perfect sense to say as the Lankavatara Sutra does, “cittam hi traidhâtukayonih”, i.e., the source of the triple world is Mind. (Yes, it is entirely plausible that the dimensional springs from the non-dimensional.)
Drawing further thoughts from this, we could say that the effective attainment of nirvana lies in uncovering the dimensionless Mind by means of special kinds of meditation. On the other hand, samsara is when our ordinary mind, in a state of ignorance beginning at inception, strongly clings to the three dimensional brain and its body (skandhas) so that it believes this is mine, I am this, this is my self.
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