The Mind and The Body

The Mind and The Body

Janpha Thadphoothon

One of the questions humans have been investigating and discussing is the quality of mind and body. Convention has it that the mind is the master of the body. The mind can control the body e.g. you can control the movement of your fingers and hands.

What is harder is the control of the mind. St Augustine wrote in the Confessions that:

"Yet the mind is mind, whereas the hand is body. The mind commands the mind to will, the mind is itself, but it does not do it. ... The mind I say commands itself to will: it would not give the command unless it willed: yet it does not do what it commands."

(p. 141)

St Augustine reasoned that the mind needs a will to be a command. The mind disobeys the command because it does not will.