Saturday, June 16, 2018

The Mind or the Citta

The Mind or the Citta


Durangamam, ekacaram, asariram, ghuahasayam


Ye sittam sannamesanti mokkhanti marabandhana


Fairing far, wandering alone, bodiless, lying in a cave, is the mind.

Those who subdue it are freed of Mara

Wandering alone No two thought moments are alike but changeable and move fast

Bodiless Mind is not understood as of material form

Lying in a cave No particular association with a site or an organ (brain for example). Conditional association with the body and dependent on material things
Yam rupam nissaya Dependent on material form (in the form of life-existence)
Mara Described as of five kinds in Buddhism

  1. Death
  2. Passions
  3. Activities both moral and amoral
  4. Association with sense organs (eye, ear, nose, tongue and skin–touch)
  5. Extremes of passions

Translated by Reverend Narada Thera of Vijirarama, Sri-Lanka

Pali Verse-37

My comments (Asoka):

The first sentence of this verse addresses the nature of the mind in descriptive terms.

The second sentence addresses the needs of its control.

There are no terms like conscious, subconscious, personality, id, ego and superego. The concepts when analyzed with the three basic tenets of Anatta, Dukka and Anatma (devoid of permanence, satisfactoriness and person) ingrained in Dhamma are quite the opposite of western psychological analysis. The representation of the behavior of the mind is lucid and simple. The mind resides in the cave (material body) but has no formal material form but quite free to wander on its own. The seat of its residence is neither indicated as to the brain nor the heart. This is also quite significant since in medical parlance the mind and its various perceptual functions are mapped to various anatomical regions in the brain.

Yam rupam nissaya– further reinforces this impression that the mind depends (arising from) on material thing (form) but not specifically localized in terms of reference to any focal point of origin.

Buddhist psychology has a distinctive form and with opposing themes of no-self, no soul or having any permanent substantial entity but subjected to eternal vagaries of change. To borrow a scientific notion, similar to the behaviour of energy (which cannot be made from nothing nor destroyed altogether), the mind in its subtle form that arises within biological forms (having an organized neural system) is dynamic in nature.

As going by modern psychology of not having a personal, emotional and cognitive elements to represent the behaviour of my memory, thoughts, beliefs and prejudices, I am really stuck and at cross roads.

I have only one option left though, but to delve into Abhidhamma. The fear aroused in me was much more than when I started experimenting with Linux. In experimenting with Linux I had windows to fall back to, if I failed. In this scenario I have nothing to fall back to except to my own insecurity. In any case the plunge was considered worthwhile.

I organized myself into certain compartments.

  1. Contemporary physiological psychology of Mind
  2. Behavioural psychology of Mind in Abhidhamma Context
  3. Application if any?

The content of the Abhidhamma is colossal and the following discussion is very selective. Patisandhi, Bhavanga, Avajjana, Pancavinnana, Javana and Cuti were the essential words mentioned in Abhidhamma out of 14 characteristics. One unexpected finding was Sutta explanation include six elements or essentials.

Solid Pathavi

Liquid Apo

Heat Tejo

Motion Vayo

Space Akasa

Consciousness Mano

Abhidhamma explanation of six psycho-physiological elements are

Eye Visible Object Visual Perception

Ear Sound Audible Perception

Nose Odour Smell

Tongue Food Taste

Body Touch Sensory Perception

Mind-element Thinking Thought Process

(Mano-dhatu) (dhamma-dhatu) (Mano-vinnana-dhatu)

1. Bhavanga


This is the essential mental accompaniment of every conditional of existence. It consists of succession of three components, arising, formation (development) and decay of thought moments. Arising and perishing it flows like a stream not remaining the same for two consecutive moments and is called by Bhavanga-sota (stream of consciousness). It has a past, present and a future course and is present in both wakeful and sleep states in a dynamic continuum.

2. Avajjana


In its formal existence the stream of consciousness Bhavanga-sota is subjected to attention and focus of a new thought process coming from all six senses. The stream is disturbed (Bhavanga-calana) and arrested momentarily (Bhavanga-upacchheda)

3. Pancavinnana


The six senses take over the perception (a physiological process) depending on the attention (avarjjana) focused. The three processes, the reception (Sampaticchana) of the (impulse or the impression), investigation (Santirana) and determination (Vothappana) of the impulse set forth an important mental activity called Javana.

4. Javana


Javana which consists of 4 to 7 thought moments is the most important part of the mental activity as far as Buddhist psychology is concerned. Javana means dynamic and running and this is the psychological stage where the Buddhist ethical concepts stand out prominently. Good and the bad, in effect the Kamma Concept (moral and immoral Javanas) is ingrained in this mental activity. The quality of the Javana is dependent on the intensity of the Sanna which is graded into four intensities. While feeblest of Sanna does not give rise to Javana.

In Jhana absorptions there are five (5) thought moments. This is quite acceptable concept in physiological responses (all or none) as the threshold and sub-threshold impulses. However the grades are finely defined in Abhidhamma into 5 grades.

5.Tadaramnna


The object of the Javana thought process in effect get registered in the stream of consciousness soon after. After tadarammana the stream of consciousness lapses into Bhavanga.

6. Patisandi (relinking) and Cuti (death consciousness)


The Kamma Concept is invariably associated with rebirth and the other two mental activities are rebirth consciousness (Patisandi-relinking) and death consciousness (Cuti) or the passing away from one life to another. As Patisandhi is the initial thought moment of life, so is cuti the final thought moment. The Bhavanga-sota flows into the next cycle of existence and carry with it the immense potentials of past Kamma Energy. If one is to accept the Abhidhamma Concepts the personality and emotionality of an individual is based on the mental activity that is neither destroyed nor different from the previous existence. Na ca so na ca anno; the identical stream of Kammic Energy.

Thought Moments


The contentious issue is the duration of a single thought moment which is considered very, very small. I do not intend to delve into time since it is a linear concept of only two dimensions which is not adequate to measure a multi-dimensional concept called the “thought process”. It is said that there are 17 thought moments for the impulse of the Sanna to alert awareness in Mind (consciousness). If one takes the transmission time of an impulse along a long un-myelinated (slowest conducting) nerve fiber, what we are talking about is in milli-seconds. One should not have any difficulty in perceiving that, the normal (ordinary) thought processes having fraction of a second duration.

What one is not sure is how finer is these measurements when somebody is in Jhana absorptions. If we are to take time as a relative concept as in modern physics this difficulty is imaginary.

Memory


It is a striking fact that there is paucity of discussion about memory in Buddhism. Sati does not correspond to western conception of memory and mindfulness is better equivalent. Samma-sati in fact is right consciousness and not memory. Similarly, Sanna is only a precursor of memory. The characteristic of Sanna is cognition of an object by way of its special attributes (mark of recognition-colour, rose). The stage of tadarammana(registering)in thought process can be considered as the final stage of memory (imprint) construction.

Could it be that the Kamma that is the vehicle for memory in Buddhist connotation?


In other words memory cannot be compressed into a one single existence. Similarly, the habits that one inherits, is the composite of many previous existences of personalities and not a single product of a single existence. It seems that the Buddhist thinking is quite at variance with the modern behavioural psychology.

The attempt at localizing memory to certain parts of the brain is made in physiological psychology. Certain parts of the brain seem to localize short term and long term memory but the chemical mediators (memory proteins) that are proposed as modifiers of this function are not identified convincingly as yet.

Are we barking at the wrong tree?


How is that some individuals who are exceedingly gifted with fluency in many languages (but ordinary people at best can master two or three languages)?

One should realize that I have not given conclusive evidence for or against the Abhidhamma Concepts. The intention was to present Dhamma concepts as it is in the scriptures without corrupting and rendering my interpretations. However, I have posed appropriate questions that come to my mind as a starting point for an apprentice wayfarer which I am.

Perception of Nature or Nurture

Modern psychology gives greater significance to behavioural modification assuming that nearly 50% is inherited and other 50% nurtured. This equation has outlasted its practical use. In modern day analysis in every matter with some obscurity related to biological phenomena that include mind, three elements have to be taken into account. There are genetic, environmental and unknown factors to consider (roughly 30% as far as intelligence is concerned) when analyzing scientifically.

The above simple equation has to be modified if one is to apply the Abhidamma Concepts for personality, emotion and behaviour. Instead of two factors at least three factors which include unknown elements should be considered in evaluation of mind and its behaviour.

Significantly Abhidhamma does not waste its energies on mundane affairs and its concentration is on wholesome Kammas and attainment of higher mental states leading to Nibbana. One should not waste time in discovering mundane psychological facets in Abhidhamma. Instead one should concentrate on developing Sati and concentrating on four Satipatthanas (Kaya, Vedana, Citta and Dhamma).

Bhavana is the only way

What happened to Gambas or Gon (a bull) Bass (is unskilled workman in Sinhala)?

What happened to Gambas or Gon (a bull) Bass (is unskilled workman in Sinhala)?



Gambas is a free development environment based on a Basic interpreter with object extensions, a bit like Visual Basic™ (but it is NOT a clone !). Read the introduction for more information.

With Gambas, you can quickly design your program GUI with QT or GTK+, access MySQL, PostgreSQL, Firebird, ODBC and SQLite databases, pilot KDE applications with DCOP, translate your program into any language, create network applications easily, make 3D OpenGL applications, make CGI web applications, and many more robust work

The Gambas project aims at making a graphical development environment based on a Basic interpreter, so that the language is as easy as Visual Basic under Linux but much better and less bugs.

The phenomenal quantity of bugs and inconsistencies in Visual Basic had persuaded developer me to start a fresh project. It seems that Microsoft was aware of the poor quality of its language, as VB, dot-Net (.Net) was not made backward compatible with older versions of Visual Basic.

Gambas does not try to be compatible with Visual Basic, and will never be. Its syntax and internals are far better than the one’s seen in its proprietary cousin.

The author who had very good understanding of Visual Basic from childhood, took from Visual Basic, the Basic language, the development environment and the user interfaces and dropped the bad practices in common use of Visual Basic program and made Gambas coherent, logical and reliable as possible.

Features

Below are the main features of Gambas and what sets it apart from the other languages.

Gambas is a Basic language with object extensions. A program written with Gambas is a set of files. Each file describes a class, in terms of object programming. The class files are compiled, then executed by an interpreter. From this point of view, it is very inspired by Java.

Gambas is made up of the following programs:

A compiler.

An interpreter.

An archiver.

A graphical user interface component.

A development environment.

The development environment is written with Gambas itself, so that I can show the abilities of the language and is useful for debugging.

What are the features that set Gambas from the other languages?

1. A Gambas project is stored under one directory. The archiver transforms the project directory structure in one sole executable file.

2. Compiling a project only requires the compilation of the modified classes. Every external reference of a class is solved dynamically at the execution time.

3. Gambas has a component architecture that allows it to extend the language. Anyone can write components as shared libraries that dynamically add new native classes to the interpreter.

Components can be written in Gambas too. The component architecture is documented in the Wiki encyclopaedia.

4. By default, the Gambas interpreter is a text-only program. The component architecture is used for writing the graphical user interface part of the language.

5. As the graphical user interface is implemented as a component, Gambas is independent of any toolkit!

One will be able to write a program, and choose the toolkit later : GTK+, Qt4, etc.

6. The graphical user interface is the Qt4 toolkit. The GTK+ component which is not finished will have almost the same interface as the Qt4 component.

7. Gambas projects are easily translatable, in any language.

8. Its object model is simple but powerful.

About the Author

Welcome to you, curious!

You’re going to know almost everything about me…

My name is BenoƮt Minisini.

I am a French man born in 1972, living in Paris. Programming is one my passion since I was twelve, and is now my job for many years now. This passion started with the Basic language on a CPC Amstrad 464, and later on an Atari 520 STE. Of course, now, I am using many other languages, but I never forgot that I have learned and done a lot with Basic.

I was always fond of writing languages, compilers, assemblers, and interpreters. I wrote a Z80 assembler on Amstrad and an interpreted language that consumed all its memory.

Later, during my studies at the E.P.I.T.A., I wrote a Lisp interpreter under Windows. During six months, I discovered its stupid memory model, the Microsoft compiler, and its numerous bugs.

Today, I keep on raging with the Gambas

Thanks to my boss, I have a half-time job, so I have worked actively on Gambas for the last years.

But I have other passions too, that burns lot of my time. That is music .

I’m playing flute for a long time – and theatre.

So, the development of Gambas is not as fast as it could be.

I hope your curiosity was satisfied…

Acknowledgment

Gambas is build on top of many free softwares, and could not exist without them.

So I would like to thank every people involved in the following projects:

Linux

KDE

GCC and all of the GNU tools, of course.

The Qt4 toolkit.

The GIMP and its toolkit GTK+

Libre Office.

The MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQLite database management systems.

And any other libraries used by Gambas.

That is enough for as an introduction to language packages.

I pronounce it as Gon (a bull) Bass (is unskilled workman) in Sinhala which is the phrase we use when the workman does a shoddy job. But that reference has no slur on this wonderful package which love the most. Unfortunately only few of the distributions port it as is. That is why I was very expressive here.

It needs to be there for the young newbies to take root in Linux.

Identity Crisis

Identity Crisis of a Key
Have you ever thought of the identity crisis the key would have of its own if s/he has a brain? 
Who am I the duplicate or the triplicate or the original?
Who goes first, me the original, you the duplicate or you the romeo?
Who will have the break me, you or the other?
Have you ever thought of what will happen if 100 replicas are produced from a single stem cell and the names of the beings such produced are given?
Stem Cell-01 being, 02 being to 100 being.
What will happen if they decide to come to a supermarket for shopping with only one credit card given to the original stem cell?
What will happen if they come for a super bowl?
It is mind boggling isn’t it?
Thank god the key does not have a brain of its own!

Key Point

Key Point

What is the best place to hide a key? I say in the key hole! Then who is going look after it? I haven’t got a clue!

What is the best place to keep a car key? It should be inside the car and locked! Then who will drive the car? I guess car key should!
I wonder, if the world is without keys and locks? Then evolution and innovation of man would stop at that point of time!

4MLinux

This is an old piece and Mandriva (not its derivatives) extinct but not 4MLinux
Small Is beautiful with UnetBootIn and Making Mandriva Flashdrive
I do not do any of these now but sleep well since I changed to Debian.
As mentioned already Mandriva is good idea badly implemented and slow to boot. One can remember Mandriva had Globe Trotter and Live Pendrives. Now the new Mandriva is bulky and difficult to work with just for for fun I decided to make Mandriva Flashdrive (I do not know how long I will keep it before erasing the image).
Steps are as follows.
1. Download 4MLinux all in one. 2. Download Mandriva image (better try another distribution). 3. Boot 4MLinux 4. Go to maintenance and click UnetBootIn 5. Plug in a Flash drive (I tried 8 GiB Flashdrive) since the image is heavy. 
One has to format it with FAT beforehand. I had 6.5 for Mandriva and another 1.5 as a reserve partition. 6. Give the path to your image (need not be Mandriva any you have downloaded). Root—> Media—-> Disk—–> Image 7. Click OK and in about 5 minutes you have Mandriva in a Flash.
8. Now to reveal how bad the new Mandriva boots (if you have 1 GiB RAM like me), go and make a cup of Tea/Coffee. I finish my tea (boiling the water to brewing and drinking it before Mandriva booted and fired up the FireFox). It did not go to Mandriva site as it used to do.
This is why I am happy that I left Mandriva long time before their split and use 4MLinux for my work on Live sessions and say “Small is beautiful” and promote Unity Linux and (Core Linux on top of one can built ones own packages) its derivative HUMANity Musician edition (currently downloading, the last 100 or so MiB). Unity is one of the earliest Core Live CDs before PCLinux stormed the community with Big Daddy (only in archives now).
It broke away from Mandrake and formed Unity and there are at least 8 derivatives and one of which is TinyMe.
One does not need to be FAT to be productive when the cloud is promoting thin clients. 4MLinux even though tiny and only 60 odd MiB, it can be destructive if you use it’s partition utility without due care. It only detect the first hard disk and if you select sda1 instead of sdc or /d or /e by accident your will boot Mandriva Live instead of your prized distribution (gone as you press OK in the dialogue box) in the first hard disk. Please take care and the UnetBootIn graphic mode fonts are very tiny for an old folk like me.
But I did not do any mistakes, simply because I check my actions especially typos now before clicking OK in any command line operation.