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The Buddha described everything as made from mind and matter. Both mind (citta) and matter (rupa) are not conceived as static things, but as one moving process.
The ancient eastern philosophers recognised the importance of control and discipline of the mind to be wise, content and happy in life. This was achieved through mindfulness (to be constantly aware of all arising thoughts, actions and their impermanent nature).
 Sabbo pajjalito loko, sabbo loko pakampito.(The entire universe is nothing but combustion and vibration)(Buddha)
Observing, observing you will reach the stage when you experience that the entire physical structure is nothing but subatomic particles: throughout the body, nothing but kalapas (subatomic particles). And even these tiniest subatomic particles are not solid. They are mere vibration, just wavelets.
As you experience it yourself you experience that the entire material world is nothing but vibration. We have to experience the ocean of infinite waves surging within, the river of inner sensations flowing within, the eternal dance of the countless vibrations within every atom of the body. We have to witness our continuously changing nature. All of this is happening at an extremely subtle level. These kalapas (subatomic particles) according to the Buddha, are in a state of perpetual change or flux. They are nothing but a stream of energies, just like the light of a candle or an electric bulb. The body (as we call it), is not an entity as it seems to be, but is a continuum of matter and life-force coexisting.
As you experience the reality of matter to be vibration, you also start experiencing the reality of the mind: vinnana (consciousness), sanna (perception), vedana (sensation) and sankhara (reaction). (S.N. Goenka, October 1995)
Hard to restrain, unstable is this mind; it flits wherever it lists. Good is it to control the mind. A controlled mind brings happiness. ... It is the mind which gives things their quality, their foundation and being. Whoever speaks or acts with impure mind, him sorrow follows, as the wheel follows the steps of the ox that draws the cart. (Dhammapada)
Our Essence of Mind is intrinsically pure. All things are only its manifestations, and good deeds and evil deeds are only the result of good thoughts and evil thoughts respectively. Imagination, thought and will make deeds, and by our deeds we make ourselves. All that we are is the result of our thoughts; it is founded on our thoughts, made up of our thoughts. (The Patriarch Hui-neng)
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 Cogito ergo sum - I think therefore I exist. (Rene Descartes)
 Just as fallow lands, when rich and fertile, are seen to abound in hundreds and thousands of different kinds of useless weeds so that, if we would make them do their duty, we must subdue them and keep them busy with seeds specifically sown for our service; so too with our minds. If we do not keep them busy with some particular subject which can serve as a bridle to reign them in, they charge ungovernably about, ranging to and from over the wastelands of our thoughts. (Michel de Montaigne, The Essays, 1592)
 The stuff of which the world of our experience is composed is, in my belief, neither mind nor matter, but something more primitive than either. Both mind and matter seem to be composite, and the stuff of which they are compounded lies in a sense between the two, in a sense above them both, like a common ancestor. (Bertrand Russell, The Analysis of Mind, 1921)
The possibility of affecting objects without touching them just exploded physicalism and materialism. It has been common in recent years to ridicule Descartes's 'ghost in the machine' in postulating mind as distinct from body. Well, Newton came along and he did not exorcise the ghost in the machine: he exorcised the machine and left the ghost intact. So now the ghost is left and the machine isn't there. And the mind has mystical properties. (Noam Chomsky on Newton's discovery of gravity and Action-at-a-Distance)
Editor: Haselhurst
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Mind (Greek nous; Latin mens, German Geist, Seele; French ame esprit).
The word mind has been used in a variety of meanings in English, and we find a similar want of fixity in the connotation of the corresponding terms in other languages.
Aristotle tells us that Anaxagoras, as compared with other early Greek philosophers, appeared like one sober among drunken men in that he introduced nous, mind, as efficient cause of the general order in the universe. In treating of the soul, Aristotle himself identifies nous with the intellectual faculty, which he conceives as partly active, partly passive. It is the thinking principle the highest and most spiritual energy of the soul, separable from the body, and immortal.
The Latin word, mens, was employed in much the same sense. St. Thomas, who represents the general scholastic usage, derives mens from metior (to measure). He identifies mens with the human soul viewed as intellectual and abstracting from lower organic faculties. Angels, or pure spirits, may thus be called minds (De Veritate, X, a. 1).
For Descartes the human soul is simply mens, res cogitans, mind. It stands in complete opposition to the body and to matter in general. The vegetative faculties allotted to the soul by Aristotle and the Schoolmen are rejected by him, and those vital functions are explained by him mechanically. The lower animals do not possess minds in any sense; they are for him mere machines. An early usage in English connects the word mind closely with memory, as in the sentence "to bear in mind". Again it has been associated with the volitional side of our nature, as in the phrases "to mind" and "to have a mind to effect something". Still when restricted to a particular faculty the general tendency has been to identify mind with the cognitive and more especially with the intellectual powers. In this usage it more closely corresponds to the primary meaning of the Latin mens, understood as the thinking or judging principle. Mind is also conceived as a substantial being, equivalent to the scholastic mens, partly identified with, partly distinguished from 'the soul'.
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The philosophy of mind covers a wide variety of topics ranging from consciousness to the nature of mental properties. While many are familiar with Descartes' famous mind-body dualism, the contemporary debate is centered around the formulation of naturalistic accounts of the mind.
One of the most vigorous discussions centers around the problem of consciousness, whether such a problem exists, and if so, how to get a theoretical grasp of it within the metaphysical framework of materialism. Some, such as Daniel Dennett, deny that the problem exists. Others, such as David Chalmers, insist that consciousness is such a serious problem that it may force us to reconsider the intrinsic properties of the basic building blocks of the universe.
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The opposition of mind and matter brings us face to face with the great controversy of Dualism and Monism. Are there two forms of being in the universe ultimately and radically distinct? or are they merely diverse phases or aspects of one common underlying substratum? Our experience at all events appears to reveal to us two fundamentally contrasted forms of reality. On the one side, there is facing us matter occupying space, subject to motion, possessed of inertia and resistance permanent indestructible, and seemingly independent of our observation. On the other, there is our own mind, immediately revealing itself to us in simple unextended acts of consciousness, which seem to be born and then annihilated. Through these conscious acts we apprehend the material world. All our knowledge of it is dependent on them, and in the last resort limited by them. By analogy we ascribe to other human organisms minds like our own. A craving to find unity in the seeming multiplicity of experience has led many thinkers to accept a monistic explanation, in which the apparent duality of mind and matter is reduced to a single underlying principle or substratum. Materialism considers matter itself, body material substance, as this principle. For the materialist, mind, feelings, thoughts, and volitions are but "functions" or "aspects" of matter; mental life is an epiphenomenon, a by-product in the working of the Universe, which can in no way interfere with the course of physical changes or modify the movement of any particle of matter in the world.
On the other hand, the idealistic monist denies altogether the existence of any extra-mental, independent material world. So far from mind being a mere aspect or epiphenomenon attached to matter, the material universe is a creation of the mind and entirely dependent on it. Its esse is percipi. It exists only in and for the mind. Our ideas are the only things of which we can be truly certain.
Mind is also contrasted with mechanical theories as cause or explanation of the order of the world. The affirmation of mind in this connection is equivalent to teleologism, or idealism in the sense of there being intelligence and purpose governing the working of the universe. This is the meaning of the word in Bacon's well-known statement: "I had rather believe all the fables in the Legend and the Alcoran than that this universal frame is without a mind" (Essays: Of Atheism). It is, in fact, the doctrine of theism. The world as given demands a rational account of its present character. The proximate explanations of much, especially in the inorganic and non-living portion of it, can be furnished by material energies acting according to known laws. But reason demands an account of all the contents of the universe-living and conscious beings as well as lifeless matter- and, moreover, it insists on carrying the inquiry back until it reaches an ultimate explanation. For this, Mind, an Intelligent Cause, is necessary.
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