Rememberance Day

[clyde]

When we look back on this life, we see that when people are born, no one has thoughts of joy, sadness, hatred, bitterness. Are we not born with the state of Buddha mind, given by our parents? But once intelligence develops, we learn habits from others, and our own personal mental habits emerge, and the Buddha mind is turned into a monster because of self-importance. We argue, lose our tempter, muse over useless things, repeat thoughts again and again . . . . It is darkness to darkness in an endless cycle.
Bankei

Do no harm <http://donoharm.us/>,
clyde

[scameter]

But how does that happen? If we are all born with the Buddha mind, why did it originally change to form the adult mind? I think it's choice, because choice can be negative or positive, and because of this, we're bound to choose the negative sometimes, which generates negative karma. A child does not really choose; he just acts, feels, receives. In Taoism, it is said that when we are born, we have the mind of a child, and then as we grow our egoism takes us out of touch with nature, and then as we become old, we return to the child mind.

[clyde]

As Bankei notes, it happens due to the development of intelligence which is the discriminating mind.

Do no harm <http://donoharm.us/>,
clyde

[______]

I've often thought along similar lines, but this mind doesn't need to develop into such a "monster". If we teach our children to be more mindful, will selfishness not disolve?

[scameter]

So then children are simply entirely morphable to their environment, and have no mind? To me, this deterministic view of the environment determining our mind is too mechanistic and narrow.

[clyde]

Bankei is no mechanical and narrow determinist as he notes it is both from others (our environment) and ourselves ("our own personal mental habits") that we turn the Buddha mind into a monster.

Do no harm <http://donoharm.us/>,
clyde

[scameter]

That isn't mechanistic?

[locomotive]

What would it be otherwise?


Did Bankei also say whether intelligence always results in "disaster" or not?

[clyde]

scameter;

You wrote,
So then children are simply entirely morphable to their environment, and have no mind? To me, this deterministic view of the environment determining our mind is too mechanistic and narrow.
Bankei did not attribute the arising of the "monster" to the environment alone, but included our own mental habits (our mind). My point was intended to address your question if it was only the environment.

If you are now asking a more general question regarding "mechanistic", my understanding of Buddhism is that phenomena arise due to conditions, not randomly. If you regard the web of inter-related conditions that give rise to phenomena, including the arising of mental phenomena, as mechanistic, then yes.

Do no harm <http://donoharm.us/>,
clyde

[scameter]

If you are now asking a more general question regarding "mechanistic", my understanding of Buddhism is that phenomena arise due to conditions, not randomly. If you regard the web of inter-related conditions that give rise to phenomena, including the arising of mental phenomena, as mechanistic, then yes.

Hmm... well, to me that isn't necessarily mechanistic, even though it is somewhat deterministic, which I have no problem with as long as determinism is both not taken to the extreme and not combined with things such as reductionism or empiricism. It does have a mechanical flavour to it, if you see, in that this determines that, but I think that is only due to the determinism of it. If it were mechanistic, all of existence would not determine and create the conditions for something to exist or occur, only a limited section.