Faster Than the Speed of Light

[RedLantern]

Light travels at a speed of over 300,000 kilometers per second.Theoretically,nothing is faster than light.  According to the Buddha,however ,the speed of mind is faster than the speed of light.
In a split second,the mind can travel and reach up to three thousand of galaxies of worlds.Not only that the mind is fast and fast reaching,it's karmic effect are extensive and profound.Always busy is the mind which runs into the past,the present,the future and back and forth.The mind is constantly loaded with creations made of images,odors,tastes,sounds,touch,contacts and discriminating thoughts.
As a result,we are trapped in a fast moving,non-stop,elusive and karmic mental stream.It hinders us from  seeing our original nature.This is an interesting read,but how do we control and purify our mind?

[dondrup]

Our mind is very powerful.  It is the creator of every phenomenon that we will experience in our lives. Every thought that arises is due to the ripening of our karma created in the past. Thoughts lead to actions.  We are always creating positive, negative and neutral karma due to our wandering and discriminating thoughts.  If we do not observe our mind and be aware and mindful of our thoughts, we will be at the mercy of our thoughts. 

We need to apply mindfulness to how we think constantly.  By practising the Three Higher Trainings in Moral discipline, Concentration and Wisdom motivated by renunciation or bodhichitta, we are able to control and purify our mind and hence our thoughts and subsequent actions. 

Vippassana Mediation is a method to control and purify our mind.  By observing our mind, we develop concentration and awareness of the activities of our mind.  When we understand how our mind works, we can transform and purify our mind

[Midakpa]

I've always believed that without meditation, there will be no enlightenment. But first we must learn to tame the mind. The mind is likened to the ox that the cowherd seeks. Once he finds the ox, he does not let it go but catches it, tames it and rides it home. The following verses tells us what the cowherd must do with the ox (mind):

                 Catching the Ox
"He must tightly grasp the rope and not let it go,
for the Ox still has unhealthy tendencies.
Now he charges up to the highlands,
now he loiters in a misty ravine."

                 Taming the Ox
"He must hold the nose-rope tight and not allow the Ox to roam,
lest off to muddy haunts it should stray.
Properly tended, it becomes clean and gentle,
Untethered, it willingly follows its master."

                 Riding the Ox home
"Riding free as air he buoyantly comes home
through evening mists in wide straw-hat and cape.
Wherever he may go he creates a fresh breeze,
while in his heart profound tranquility prevails.
This Ox requires not a blade of grass."

[Midakpa]

Venerable Ajahn Chah, who was a great meditation master, likened the mind to animals that are trained to work for people, like elephants and oxen:

"Training the mind well is a useful activity. You can see this even in draft animals, like elephants, oxen, and water buffaloes. Before we can put them to work, we have to train them. Only when they're well trained can we use their strength and put it to different purposes. All of you know this.

A mind well trained is of many times greater value. Look at the Buddha and his noble disciples. They changed their status from being run-of-the-mill people to being noble ones, respected by people all over. And they've benefited us in more wide-ranging ways than we could ever determine. All of this comes from the fact that they've trained their minds well.

A mind well trained is of use in every occupation. It enables us to do our work with circumspection. It makes us reasonable instead of impulsive, and enables us to experience a happiness appropriate to our station in life."

(extracted from: Ajahn Chah, "In Simple Terms")

[Midakpa]

According to Ajahn Chah, the mind is like the buffalo. Ajahn Chah was fond of using examples from nature to explain points of Dharma. For those of you who wish to learn how to tame the mind, these simple similes used by the Venerable Ajahn will help you to understand the mind, and how to practice mindfulness and how to meditate.

The following simile is about taming the mind (the buffalo). Do compare this to my earlier post about the cowherd (practitioner) who tames the ox (the mind):

Beating the Buffalo

"The mind is like the buffalo. Its objects are the rice plants. Awareness is like the buffalo's owner. What do you do when you keep herd on a buffalo? You let the buffalo loose, but you try to keep watch over it. If it gets near the rice plants, you yell at it. When the buffalo hears you, it'll back off. But you can't be complacent. If it's stubborn and won't listen to you, you have to take a heavy stick and really beat it.

And then where do you think it'll go?"

This question is really thought-provoking. Does anyone have an answer to this?

(Ajahn Chah, In Simple Terms)

[fruven]

The speed of thought is faster than light. However here is the question. If you have never been to a place such as the place I stay, how would it be faster than light? You cannot find the place just from thought alone. Some sort of navigation systems must be there to find the location. For simplistic sake when the light is shined from the sky it would have reached everywhere on earth. Unless it can be said or proven that the thought as such capability to be projected everywhere to look for the place as well.

[yontenjamyang]

The speed of thought is faster than light. However here is the question. If you have never been to a place such as the place I stay, how would it be faster than light? You cannot find the place just from thought alone. Some sort of navigation systems must be there to find the location. For simplistic sake when the light is shined from the sky it would have reached everywhere on earth. Unless it can be said or proven that the thought as such capability to be projected everywhere to look for the place as well.

fruven,

When we say mind/thought is faster than the speed of light we are not referring to the physical aspect of it only in the sense that in the physical world, a physical entity of either one's own body or an object needs to be present for us to calculate the speed. We measure speed with the eye sense or its' machine equivalent. The limitations to this method is the physical and eye sense aspect itself and the fastest  speed is the speed of light as proven by Einstein and since has been the confirmed by scientists. What else to measure but light if we are using the eye sense? If we use the ear sense then the fastest is sound but it is much slower than light. Hence we say the fastest thing in the universe is light. A point to note is that a few seconds after the big bang the universe actually expanded exponentially; much faster than light. Otherwise, today there will be no distance or space for light to travel  as light would have already flooded the universe and we would not have the dark night sky. So basically space itself expanded faster than light during those early times of the universe.

In Buddhism, we say one is in samsara due to the 3 poisons of ignorance, attachment and anger. Due to the 3 poisons; we have the 5 aggregates of form, feeling, perception, karmic formations and consciousness. Within the 12 dependent links arising from ignorance, we have the composition factors, consciousness, name and form, 5/6 senses (5 of senses and 1 of mental power), contact, feeling, craving, grasping, becoming/existence, birth and lastly aging and death. From the 5 senses power arises feelings, craving, grasping and of existence of the world as we know it. This is the form that we are talking about. All of the physical universe including light is form that arises from our ignorant and hence it has its limitations or the speed of light.
It takes light 8 minutes to arrive from the sun to earth but it takes split moment for one to imagine/see the sun in our mind. It takes hours for one sometimes to go physically to go somewhere or to meet someone but it takes a moment for one to think in our minds of that thing. And the object/thing actually exist. Hence mind is faster than light. We just need to clear our minds' noises to actually see the object clearly in mind. That is why the Buddha taught meditations in its various forms. To have a control of our mind and to see our Buddha nature.

[Big Uncle]

I actually saw a documentary once that estimated the speed of the mind based on the amount of brain cells and the distance between them and how fast the electrons was fired, they calculated a speed that is faster than the speed of light. So, it is not something outside of science but the human mind still poses a lot of questions and grey areas in the understanding of it that Buddhism already has very valuable understanding and explanations.

It is only recently, dialogue between Western scientists and prominent meditators are able to meet on some common ground between science and Buddhism. However, Buddhism offers much more towards the understanding of the mind than psychology could ever provide because it has produced masters who not only have control of the mind but are able to manipulate internal (and external elements) as well.

In Tibetan Buddhism, Lojong and Lorig, respectively Training the mind and understanding the mind teachings are central towards having the proper tools in meditation and practice that will gain mastery of the mind and also of death and rebirth. Although this extends beyond the boundaries of our understanding of reality but in Buddhism, everything is grounded with logic, reasoning and more importantly, people who have realized these finer aspects of the mind and reality.

[brian]

I agree with you Big Uncle, there are documentaries that proved mind travels faster than speed of light. If that is the case, would that mean gods/ghost/spirits travel faster than light too as formless beings were merely in a form of mind existence (correct me if i am wrong)?

May i speculate, in order to tame a mind, there should be a method to calm the mind in the first place and would that be referred as meditation? If we are able to tame the mind, we will be able to control it eventually just like the Mahasiddhas and the Living Buddhas where their minds are not affected by whatever that is happening surrounding them.