Mind

If you want to investigate the nature of a river first you must be able to see for what it really is.

You can investigate the nature of the water, filling a container and then studying it. It will be discovered that while the nature of that particular stream, with those particular loops, shores, waterfalls, landscape etc. it is unique, the nature of the water that flows is not different from the water of any other stream or even of the rain. But the still water in the container is no longer stream. Water is stream as it flows. In the same way, the mind is movement, continuous flowing. It is often desired, seeking liberation and following any doctrine, to have a still mind but no longer mind if it did not flow, just like the water of the stream enclosed in the vessel, it is no longer river. One can, practicing, reach a certain degree of "stilness" of the mind that can help to examine the nature of the mind itself, as well as studying the nature of water by collecting it and stopping it in the vessel. What we will discover is that the nature of what we call mind is different from individual to individual, but what "flows" in it and that makes it mind is the same in everyone.