[Quick links] [Pause] Buddhism that started as Tera Vada Buddhism, evolved into many more forms over a period of time. Adherents to each form claimed authority from Buddha himself. There was Mahayana, Vajrayana, Zen and so on. One interesting development that revolved around the Mind, which is the topic of interest to us, is the so called Vijnyana Vada that got developed as an offshoot of Mahayana Buddhism sometime around 4th century A.D. They had some interesting views about the Mind.

[Quick links] [Pause] Buddhism is generally attributed to the great reformer philosopher Siddhartha Gautama who probably lived during 623-543 B.C. Buddha was more concerned with the miseries that afflicted common people and he gave up his throne and went in search of a solution to all the miseries of mankind. The early form of the religion that got formulated sometime during 300 B.C., i.e. two centuries after the death of Buddha, was called ‘Teravada’ Buddhism – a word that simply meant – ‘the path of the elders’.  Most of what I am going to talk in this episode pertains to this early form of Buddhism which is believed to be based on the preaching of Buddha as recorded in the Tipitakas.

[Quick links] [Pause] We started our discussions with the fundamental premise that brain and mind are almost synonymous. One by one, we saw how many aspects of our mind can be mapped on to the activities of the brain. We said that our feelings, thoughts, consciousness and even the so called ‘free will’ are all just happenings in our brain. We were almost close to concluding that even the illusive entity namely the soul does not exist. We can explain everything about our existence without taking recourse to concepts like soul etc. But do we really have all the answers?

[Quick links] [Pause] I know it sounds a bit absurd to ask such a question. It is like asking someone whether he or she is asleep! If you are not conscious, there is no way you can answer my question.

[Quick links] [Pause] Homeopathy is one medical discipline which can cure any disease without any harmful side effects. Nor does it need any invasive procedures, not even any painful pricks. Just take some sugar pills and you can cure yourselves.

[Quick links] [Pause] Love is one of the human emotions that is often eulogized to the extent of raising it to divinity! Not that animals don’t exhibit this emotion. But they probably don’t believe in God as we do

[Quick links] [Pause] Brain is such a complex part of our body that you may need a detailed book to understand that. That is what I have attempted to do in my book “How does the Mind work?”. But still, what I have presented in that book is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.

[Quick links] [Pause] Reasoning is a very powerful tool used by our mind to know that which is not directly apparent to our senses. Can we use logic to know everything – even those that cannot be perceived by our senses?

[Quick links] [Pause] Ancient Indians believed that the entire Vedic literature is the recording of visions of various sages when they were in deep states of meditation. They did not compose them. But they merely had the visions that they later recorded. One such record of visions of a sage by name Mandukya, namely the Mandukya Upanishad, is considered to be the essence of all the Vedas by philosophers like Sankara. It is a very short record with only 12 verses. Gaud pada uses this short composition as a basis of his theory that we discussed in the previous episode. What do these 12 verses say?

[Quick links] [Pause] As usual, I am using the title as a sequence of overloaded words. I am simultaneously implying that Yoga is the solution to all your ‘worldly problems’, as well as all the ‘problems of the world’.  I may appear to oversell Yoga. But it is true as I explain later.