Dear Robert,

I have been giving some further thought to this msg of yours. Sorry to
disturb your evening in Japan, but there are some more points which occur to
me that I would like to put to you.

> Mind is a concept that also doesn't help us- cittas and cetasikas
> are nama (mentality), they do not depend on 'brain'.

1. There is a line in the SN which says "naamaruupa-samudaaya cittassa
samudayo" -- which my poor Pali knowledge suggests "By the arising of
naama-ruupa, [there is] the arising of the citta". To me, this implies that
there is some sort of dependence upon ruupa as well as naama. I am
therefore puzzled by the above statement of yours. Could you help out,
please ?

2. I have seen it said that citta is basically synonymous with "manas".
If the "hadaya-vatthu" is said to be the base of manas, where or what is the
"hadaya-vatthu" ? It sounds suspiciously like a material thing to me.

3. Turning the direction of this discussion on its head, what functions
do you ascribe to the brain ? Medieval European doctors thought that its
purpose was to cool the blood. Do you subscribe to a similar view ?

> The texts are clear that many moments of nama/citta/mentality arise
> and pass away in a split second

Throughout this discussion, somethinmg had been niggling me and then
suddenly while pondering this in bed last night, I suddenly came to me. I
have been reading Buddhist texts for more than forty years but never once
have I come across "citta" in the plural (cittaani), outside Theravadin
commentaries, except in general sense as in such phrases as "the minds of
people", "their minds" etc. It should be noted that, as far as I can
ascertain, "cittaani" does not occur in any other sense in the Pali nikayas.
This is why I have been finding all this talk of "thoughts" flashing by in
trillionths of a second so curious. Of course, the concept is not new to me
but I had never really thought why nobody else mentions it in Buddhist
texts.

Curiously, the solution to the problem is quite simple. Time for a tiny bit
of philology. As you are aware, Pali is a prakrit derived from an early
stage / pre-classical form of Sanskrit or Vedic as it is sometimes called.
Sanskrit is phonetically more complex than Pali and so various words can
become easily conflated or confused when the earlier Sanskritic words are
converted / evolved into Pali. And, of course, one such word is "citta"
which is a past participle derived from the root CIT. However, PED among
others, derive it from it from "cinteti", which corresponds to a Sanskrit
root CINT.

CIT in Skt means "perceive, know, be aware, observe" etc (but no "think").
On the other hand, CINT means "think, having an idea, consider" etc. So
what seems to have happened is that by the time of the Pali commentorial
literature, "ciita" was considered to be derived from CINT, especially in
the citta / cetasika context. If one derive "citta" from CINT "think", then
it is quite natural to have a plural version in the sense of "thoughts" or
however you choose to translate the term here. I am beginning to get the
sense (respectfully, of course) that all this talk of super-duper ultra
high-speed "cittaanis" is quite spurious, non-nikayan and probably not even
taught by the Buddha himself -- though it may have pedagogical use for some
people. I have not personally done so exhaustively, but one might look up
all occurences of "citta" in the nikayas to see whether the "thought" or the
"mind" meaning is most appropriate. So far, I get the feeling that the
Buddha is normally talking about something close to the Englsi words "mind".

Concerning these folk etymologies, we find them well-loved of Buddhist
commentators in all schools. They often seem to be adopted as a way of
introducing a particular, sometimes innovative, doctrine or explanation.
Thus one will also find "citta" derived from "cita" (accumulated) -- which
sees the mind a a kind of receptacle or store for anu'sayas, biijas and so
forth or else as an accumulation of these things.

Best wishes,
Stephen Hodge

PS: Whereabouts are you based in sunny Japan ? I used to live in Sendai
when not staying at Koyasan.
PPS: When I earlier said "rather naive, ill-informed and a tad emotional"
about something you wrote, I hope you did not take amiss and think I was
accusing you of being a supporter of the current pseudo-president of the US.
That would have been *really* insulting.