On Not Being a Victim
September 26, 2006
The mind has two basic functions. One is that it registers data coming in through the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and intellect. And the other is that it wills things, tries to exert an influence on things outside. You might think of these as the passive and the active functions of the mind or the reactive and proactive functions, because even as the mind is receiving sense data, it’s not totally passive. The willing function shapes the things you notice. Sometimes people complain about this: This is one of the reasons why we miss a lot of things in our lives, because we’re intent on something else. That is a problem, but it can also be used to our advantage. When the Buddha describes dependent co-arising, well before he starts talking about sensory data, he talks about issues of attention and intention and perception. These factors influence the way you see and hear and experience things. And they can have an influence either for suffering or for the end of suffering.