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Mind in Buddhism. There is no single term in Buddhism that directly corresponds to the English terms "mind" or "consciousness." The principal Sanskrit (and Pāli) terms that are employed to denote what in the west is called mind or consciousness are: citta, manas and vijñāna (Pāli viññāṇa). In western publications these terms are mostly rendered as mind or consciousness, mind, and consciousness.[1]
The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism states:
- ...mind is designated as citta because it “builds up” (cinoti) virtuous and nonvirtuous states; as manas, because it calculates and examines; and as vijñāna, because it discriminates among sensory stimuli.[2]
Bhikkhu Bodhi states:
- While technically the three terms [citta, manas and viññāṇa] have the same denotation, in the Nikāyas they are generally used in distinct contexts. As a rough generalization:
- Viññāṇa signifies the particularizing awareness through a sense faculty (as in the standard sixfold division of viññāṇa into eye-consciousness, etc.) as well as the underlying stream of consciousness, which sustains personal continuity through a single life and threads together successive lives (emphasized at 12:38-40).
- Mano serves as the third door of action (along with body and speech) and as the sixth internal sense base (along with the five physical sense bases); as the mind base it coordinates the data of the other five senses and also cognizes mental phenomena (dhammā), its own special class of objects.
- Citta signifies mind as the center of personal experience, as the subject of thought, volition, and emotion. It is citta that needs to be understood, trained, and liberated.
- For a more detailed discussion, see Hamilton, Identity and Experience, chap. 5.[3]
Notes
- ↑ Skorupski 2012, p. 43, n. 1.
- ↑ Buswell & Lopez 2014, s.v. citta.
- ↑ Bodhi 2000a, pp. 769-70, n. 154.
Sources
Bodhi, Bhikkhu, ed. (2000a), The Connected Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Samyutta Nikaya, Wisdom Publications
Buswell, Robert E.; Lopez, Donald S. (2014), The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, Princeton University