Difference between Brain and Mind

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rajan

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I don't know whether this question belongs to this forum or not. If it does not belong to this forum, please ignore it.

I want to know what is the difference between brain and the mind. I got one definition from the internet that I am pasting it for you. This definition seems right. If anyone has different opinion about this explanation, please do mention that would be helpful to me in understanding this.

Quote Brain is the organ of the body which processes our thoughts and creates reasoning while mind is the consciousness of having a particular thought. The mind is controlled by the brain. Unquote

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Rajan
 

Route21

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When living in the Middle East, I would regularly see sheep's brains served as one of the meat dishes in a buffet.
You can't serve (intangible) sheep's minds as a buffet item!

Hope this clarifies it more easily.

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R21
 

emsr2d2

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Brain - the organ of the body which can be injured, touched, operated on, removed, dissected. It is a physical, tangible thing.
Mind - the intangible aspect of a person - their thoughts, opinions, etc. The process of using your mind clearly happens in your brain, but you can't touch a mind.

You can change your mind about something, you can't change your brain!
 

rajan

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Thanks for your reply. My understanding now says after your answer that thought, opinions are Mind. I am extracting few paragraphs from a book on mediation for your reference. If you go through it, you will find that mind is different from thought and opinions.

"It was one of those lovely mornings that have never been before. The sun was just coming up and you saw it between the eucalyptus and the pine. It was over the waters, golden, burnished such light that exists only between the mountains and the sea. It was such a clear morning, breathless, full of that strange light that one sees not only with one's eyes but with one's heart. And when you see it the heavens are very close to earth, and you are lost in the beauty. You know, you should never meditate in public, or with another, or in a group: you should meditate only in solitude, in the quiet of the night or in the still, early morning. When you meditate in solitude, it must be solitude. You must be completely alone, not following a system, a method, repeating words, or pursuing a thought, or shaping a thought according to your desire. This solitude comes when the mind is freed from thought. When there are influences of desire or of the things that the mind is pursuing, either in the future or in the past, there is no solitude. Only in the immensity of the present this aloneness comes. And then, in quiet secrecy in which all communication has come to an end, in which there is no observer with his anxieties, with his stupid appetites and problems only then, in that quiet aloneness, meditation becomes something that cannot be put into words. Then meditation is an eternal movement. I don't know if you have ever meditated, if you have ever been alone, by yourself, far away from everything, from every person, from every thought and pursuit, if you have ever been completely alone, not isolated, not withdrawn into some fanciful dream or vision, but far away, so that in yourself there is nothing recognizable, nothing that you touch by thought or feeling, so far away that in this full solitude the very silence becomes the only flower, the only light, and the timeless quality that is not measurable by thought. Only in such meditation love has its being. Don't bother to express it: it will express itself. Don't use it. Don't try to put it into action: it will act, and when it acts, in that action there is no regret, no contradiction, none of the misery and travail of man.

So meditate alone. Get lost. And don't try to remember where you have been. If you try to remember it then it will be something that is dead. And if you hold on to the memory of it then you will never be alone again. So meditate in that endless solitude, in the beauty of that love, in that innocency, in the new then there is the bliss that is imperishable.

The sky is very blue, the blue that comes after the rain, and these rains have come after many months of drought. After the rain the skies are washed clean and the hills are rejoicing, and the earth is still. And every leaf has the light of the sun on it, and the feeling of the earth is very close to you. So meditate in the very secret recesses of your heart and mind, where you have never been before."










Brain - the organ of the body which can be injured, touched, operated on, removed, dissected. It is a physical, tangible thing.
Mind - the intangible aspect of a person - their thoughts, opinions, etc. The process of using your mind clearly happens in your brain, but you can't touch a mind.

You can change your mind about something, you can't change your brain!
 

5jj

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My understanding now says after your answer that thought, opinions are Mind. I am extracting few paragraphs from a book on mediation for your reference. If you go through it, you will find that mind is different from thought and opinions.
If you go through ems's post you will see that she did not say, 'thoughts, opinions are mind'.

She said that 'mind is the ' the intangible aspect of a person' and then gave some examples of some parts of this intangible aspect, 'their thoughts, opinions, etc'.
 

emsr2d2

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Thanks for your reply. My understanding now says after your answer that thought, opinions are Mind. I am extracting few paragraphs from a book on mediation for your reference. If you go through it, you will find that mind is different from thought and opinions.

AS 5jj said, that's not quite what I said. I gave "thoughts, opinions etc" as examples of things that come from our mind. Even if you accept that thoughts come from both the mind and the brain, there is one thing that separates them completely:

- Brain: touchable
- Mind: untouchable
 

Winwin2011

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AS 5jj said, that's not quite what I said. I gave "thoughts, opinions etc" as examples of things that come from our mind. Even if you accept that thoughts come from both the mind and the brain, there is one thing that separates them completely:

- Brain: touchable
- Mind: untouchable

Not a teacher


For Chinese people, if we say "Joe doesn't have brain", it means "Joe's IQ is very low".
 
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emsr2d2

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For Chinese people, if we say "Joe doesn't have brain", it means "Joe's IQ is very low".

We, if we are being very rude, call people "brainless" but we don't actually mean that they were born with no brain in their skull. It's taken to mean "low IQ" but it doesn't literally mean that.
 

Raymott

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For Chinese people, if we say "Joe doesn't have brain", it means "Joe's IQ is very low".
That's because not having a brain implies not having a mind. It doesn't imply that thoughts are physical - only that mental events don't occur in the absence of causal physical ones. Of course a substance dualist like Descartes would consider that a disembodied mind could think, so your saying wouldn't work in that case.
 

BobK

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In general, 'brain - concrete; mind - abstract' is a useful rule of thumb. But as Ems said, figurative speech can blur the distinction. A 'brainless' person is a physical impossibility (except in a mortuary). And when you keep hearing a song over and over again (in your mind, rather than on Radio 1), you 'have the song on the brain'.

b
 
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