No Such Thing As Mind

[Telepresent]

Another day, another consideration.

The phrase 'no-mind' is widely used, but perhaps the idea of 'mind' is something of a trickster itself.  Certainly, it can seem as though the mind is 'a thing': an object, an entity, something which owns/makes/thinks thoughts.  But if we look at what mind is made of, it's made of those same thoughts (and maybe feelings, depending on how you look at it).

So, if it's made of thoughts, it can't be the cause of thoughts.  Yet we speak of mind as thought it is an extant object.  A thing.  Of course it's not: it's just a collective noun.  In the same way we can break down the body into organs, to cells, to atoms, to particles, to strings... we can break down mind into thought-sentences, to thought-words, to thought-sounds... (not to mention interpretations, images, feelings...)  At what point in this is 'mind'?

Of course, it's not.

Not to say that collective nouns aren't useful (mind is a nice shorthand), but it can easily be misunderstood to be an objective thing.  Whoops.