Our minds are our true homes - Destination: Buddha

We experience everything from the mind. Outwardly and inwardly, we only can know anything through our mind. If our mind is not functioning, we are more or less dead or like a zombie. Everything that we experience and know, we do through our six senses. Our six senses are not only the five usual senses, but include the mind, meaning that all the things which we think are processed through the mind. Yet, how many of us have any idea what the mind is? How many of us experience this mind in itself? We are always looking outwards and even when we talk about the mind, we talk about it from the intellectual point of view. We have all sorts of theories, ideas and psychologies but to experience a thought as a thought, to experience an emotion just as an emotion, to know what is an emotion, how it feels, what is it, who is thinking—we almost never even ask ourselves this. And yet, everything, all our joys, our sorrows, our hopes, our fears, everything which we experience and could possibly experience, we can only experience through the mind.

For example, consider our homes. Many of us are very careful about where we live. We rent, buy or build nice houses which will impress all our neighbours and friends and we decorate them very carefully. We spend a lot of time planning what we are going to put in our residence and how it’s going to be furnished and adorned. We spend a lot of time, a lot of money, we work so hard just so that we can have a nice home, a nice car, and nice clothes. We spend most of our lives maintaining this space for ourselves and we keep it so nice and clean—but we don’t really live in our homes. We don’t live in our houses. We live in our minds—that’s our home. No matter where we go, Australia, Europe, America, Africa, we take our minds with us. We can never leave our minds behind, our minds are our true homes.