Why Is the Mind the Key to Buddhism?
The first line of the Dhammapada (a seminal Theravada Buddhist text) states that "mind is the forerunner of all actions." What this means is that, contrary to many materialist philosophies, Buddhism teaches that all of the many phenomena we experience in the world begin with our perception and interpretation of them. In the Buddhist view, an individual is a participant in reality, rather than a helpless observer of things that are happening.
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The Eclectic Nature of Buddhism
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The term "Buddhism" is largely a term of convenience to describe a fairly broad spectrum of practices and belief systems, including Theravada, Tantric (or Vajrayana, including Tibetan and Shingon), and Mahayana (including Zen, Pure Land, and many others), and other traditions. What all of these systems of thought have in common is a belief in impermanence and in the importance of mental phenomena. In Buddhism, purification of the mind can lead to purification of the world, rather than the other way around.
The Four Noble Truths
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Buddhism is based on the Four Noble Truths, which, simply put, are as follows: 1) Life is suffering. 2) Suffering is caused by craving. 3) In order to eliminate suffering, one must eliminate craving. 4) This can be accomplished by following the eightfold path (or magga). This basis, particularly the Second Noble Truth, stresses the mentally based nature of suffering by recognizing its genesis in the phenomenon of craving, a purely mental phenomenon.
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Craving
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Craving is the experience either of wanting more of something that is pleasant or less of something that is unpleasant. The mind and body react to pleasant sensations by clinging to them, and when they are taken away, the mind suffers. Buddhism teaches that the way to escape suffering is to train the mind to observe sensations, both pleasant and unpleasant, with equanimity, thus depriving craving and suffering of the energy that keeps them alive.
Meditation
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There are many forms of meditation, both Buddhist and non-Buddhist. Most forms of meditation are designed to train the mind to observe itself and/or the world around it with "calm abiding." When the mind observes phenomena directly, unemotionally, without craving and aversion, in the present moment, it attains a state of equilibrium that in its purest form is completely free from craving and thus from suffering as well. This is an extremely advanced state of consciousness and is rarely attained. A person who attains this state is known as an Arahant.
The Bodhisattva
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In Mahayana Buddhism, an enlightened being is known as a Bodhisattva. A Bodhisattva has freed himself of all mental impurities and is free to leave the world at any time but remains due to the Bodhisattva vow, which promises to assist in the liberation of all beings. The only difference between a Bodhisattva and another being is the presence of a pure mind, and thus the Bodhisattva is a symbol of the centrality of mind to the practice of Buddhism.
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References
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