Mindfulness and the mindbrain

The word ‘mindfulness’ is less exotic and more user friendly than the word ‘meditation’.

But, to understand mindfulness, we need to be clear about (a) what we mean by ‘mind’ and how it is linked to the ‘brain’ and (b) how the two mirror each other in the ‘mindbrain’.

Your mind is a dynamic process that reasons, thinks, feels, wills, perceives, and judges. It also stores memories. From a psychological point of view the mind is the totality of conscious and unconscious mental processes and activities.

Your brain is the organ of thought and feeling and it also regulates bodily activities. It is the control centre of the nervous system. It consists of a soft, convoluted mass of gray and white matter and serves to control and coordinate your mental and physical actions. Different parts of the brain (modules) have different jobs to do.

SO – your brain is an organ, a physical thing, a structure with many subcomponents and modules. Your mind is a process, an abstract thing, a set of functions - again with many subcomponents. But you cannot have one without the other. Every mind function has a corresponding brain structure. And every brain structure has a corresponding mind function. Note – ‘you’ are unconscious of the vast majority of what goes on in your head.

In recent years a variety of brain scanning techniques have been developed. These show that particular parts of the brain light up when you are engaged in particular mental activities. This throws new light on the ancient ‘mind over matter’ problem!

Scanning shows that the brains of expert meditators light up differently from the brains of non meditators. This demonstrates that by taking thought it is possible to change the structure (physical, electrical, and chemical) of your brain. There is neural plasticity that allows for reconfiguring connections and forming new habits. There is the idea that ‘what fires together wires together’. It is never too late to change your mind.

It is not yet common to think or talk about the links between the brain and it’s minds or the mind and its brain based roots. But there are the beginnings of a need for the unifying concept of mindbrain – if only as an aid to mindfulness. (See the various works of Rick Hanson on the neuroscience of the Buddha’s brain).

The essence of mindfulness is to be still (physically and mentally) such that you can be a calm witness to the thoughts and feelings that attract and pass through attention. In time, with practice, this leads to an appreciation of the mess created by the monkey mind intuitively reacting to stimuli from the outside world. But the monkey can be tamed and the illusory nature of the ‘self’ becomes apparent. And then  – ‘No self, no problem’.

Were it not such an ugly word we could have the concept of mindbrainfulness.