The mind faculty lets us look back at our own mind

The Buddha taught that there are six faculties (lục căn), that is, six senses:

• Eye faculty (the eyes, for seeing)

• Ear faculty (the ears, for hearing)

• Nose faculty (the nose, for smelling)

• Tongue faculty (the tongue, for tasting)

• Body faculty (the skin, for touch)

• Mind faculty (ý căn)

The first five senses let us perceive and make contact with the outside world, while the sixth, the mind faculty, does the opposite: it helps us to look back at our own mind. This is a unique discovery that science has not addressed. Science mainly explores the other five senses and regards the sixth sense as intuition (a hunch). Only Buddhism discovered this: intuition is treated as a different kind of ability, whereas human beings already have six faculties, and the sixth, the mind faculty, allows us to see our own mind.

For example, when we hear a child complain, “All this studying makes my head so tired,” or, “Today I miss Dad so much,” we understand that the child is seeing their own mind at that moment, seeing the tiredness or longing in it. In the same way, we too often see our own mind, but we see it and that is all, without being aware of what is arising in the mind, so we remain sunk in the cycle of birth and death. Only when we know how to look deeply into the depths of our inner self, see the flaws and wrongs in it, and then correct our mind does practice begin. That is practice.

Indeed, nature has given human beings six senses, but five of them run outward. So most of us tend to let the mind run out to external things, rarely look back at our inner self, and rarely see our own mistakes. We are usually better at assessing others. For example, seeing someone smile, we think them tactless; when they walk past us, we say they lack consideration; when they say a few words, we judge them uncultured... That is, we are very quick to judge other people (and usually to judge them badly). But in truth, where are all those tactless and uncultured traits? They are still found in abundance in ourselves, but because we have only one sense for looking back at ourselves, we do not see them.

If nature had turned things around, giving human beings only one sense for looking outward and five senses that all look back into our own mind, one specialising in seeing greed, another in seeing anger, another in seeing selfishness... then perhaps very many people would already have become noble ones, because they would see their own faults so quickly. But nature, ironically, gave human beings five senses turned toward the outer world, so we have sunk into the boundless realm of sense objects and the endless cycle of rebirth. That is why practice is hard for us.

From now on, when we kneel at the Buddha's feet and give rise to the will to practise, we must make a vow and ask the Buddha's blessing for us to have the wisdom to see our own faults, making the mind faculty a hundred times stronger than the other senses. That is, whenever the eyes have just seen an object, the mind faculty must immediately reflect back on our own mind, observing what is appearing inside, so as to find the wrong and stop it at once.

For example, a truck carrying beer overturned, spilling crates of beer all over the road. Seeing the scene, many people could not restrain their greed and ran to carry beer home, in spite of the driver, who had just narrowly escaped death, standing there weeping and pleading. Hearing this story, a corrupt official said, “Everyone keeps scolding me for corruption, but look at those people looting the beer. If they became officials, they would be even greedier than me.” So greed lies ready in everyone, and watching this scene of looting beer reveals more clearly what is in people's hearts. But while they were scrambling, those people did not see the greed in their own hearts.

We are the same: too many times we have been greedy without knowing we were greedy, angry without knowing we were angry. Over so many years and lifetimes, although our eyes have seen and our ears have heard countless things, we have never been aware of what was arising in our own mind. That is why we remain sunk in the cycle of birth and death.

From now on, whenever the eyes have just seen or the ears have just heard something, use the mind faculty to look at our mind and see what it is thinking, what it wants. If we see it, or only hear it, or read about it in the news... then the mind faculty must look at our mind to see what is arising in it. Can we do anything to help the driver? Do we feel pity at the sight of people scrambling instead of helping one another? Does our mind harshly blame those who are behaving badly, or do we too want to join in and carry beer home...? From this we can know what is wrong, repent and correct it.

But if we only run after the five outward senses, we will forever be swept away by external things. When someone makes a cutting remark, instead of turning back to see what is arising in our mind, we look at how tough that person is, how rich or poor, and what would happen if we went to scold them or hit them back... Or suppose every afternoon we put on our lay robe, go to the temple to do voluntary work and chant sutras, and then someone says a cutting thing: “You speak like a Buddha but have a heart like a snake, you hypocrite!” What will our reaction be? We may take off the robe, roll up our sleeves, and threaten to “have a talk” with that person right away. That is a person who does not know how to practise, dragged along by external things. A person who knows how to practise, as soon as the ears hear the insulting words, has the mind faculty immediately look back inward to see the annoyance, wounded pride and anger within. Then they “deal with” those states of mind, not deal with the other person. That is, they let go, tell themselves not to be resentful, not to be touchy, not to be angry and deluded any more. The secret of practice is to strengthen the mind faculty.

Take the case of a young person who comes to the temple to practise and do voluntary work and wishes to ordain, but who still has duties to attend to and, because the conditions are not yet ripe, still hesitates. The monks advise: “To ordain, you must keep away from what the world calls joys, especially romantic feelings between men and women, because they are a heavy bond. The Buddha taught that the greatest debt of a human life is emotional attachment. The debt of affection is heavier even than debts of money, so try to keep your heart pure and still in order to practise.” Hearing this, the young man was deeply moved, but he held his heart steady only for a few minutes, because fifteen minutes later there came a girl: her figure graceful in a white dress, the sun making her cheeks even rosier, her velvet-black hair rippling in the wind, the afternoon sun glittering on the treetops, and so on, all very poetic. The young man was stirred and agitated, his eyes following her until her figure disappeared at the end of the road! That is being carried away by external things.

That is how the eyes can arouse the mind of attachment and make us act against our own aspiration. So, to avoid running after external things like this, as soon as we see a beautiful person of the other sex, the mind faculty must immediately arise to see our own mind of attachment. If we see attachment arising, we must repent and eliminate it at once, restrain ourselves, stop staring at the person, and tell ourselves: “I must not be infatuated. Infatuation is a boil, a burden, and it will produce heavy wrongdoing...” We tell ourselves to let go so as to wipe out that attachment. So what matters is how to strengthen the mind faculty: the mind faculty must work a hundred times harder than the outer senses before we can observe our own mind sharply and keenly. That is the secret of practice.

Tuệ Trung Thượng Sĩ (a lay person who attained realisation) said: “Turn the light back, observe oneself: that is one's duty...” Phản quan means to illuminate or examine, and tự kỷ means oneself, so it means to turn around and look at oneself. This is the duty and the strength of a practitioner, and also the key to practice.