[Advaita-l] Re: A doubt on certain terms used in gItA and other works

[S Jayanarayanan]

Thanks for the very informative posting on the difference
between the various Vedantic terms such as "manas", "Buddhi",
etc.

Just for the sake of comparison -- Western philosophy lumps
everything into one entity called "mind". But the mind itself is
said to consist of parts or aspects such as intelligence,
memory, emotions, etc. Therefore, the English word "mind" may
not be a direct translation of the Sanskrit word "manas", though
the two words may actually have had a common etymological root,
both being Indo-European.

There are lots of online resources in this regard, e.g:

http://www.duke.edu/philosophy/mind.html

For a general idea:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind

-Kartik

--- Vidyasankar Sundaresan <svidyasankar at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> >is there any difference between words like
> >antaHkaraNa.m, chitta.m, manas or are they all the
> >same?
> >
> >i would also like to know the differences and
> >similarities between terms like buddhi, vij~nAnam,
> >manas etc.
> 
> In the gItA itself, manas and buddhi are used distinctly.
> SankarAchArya also 
> refers to these two as the antaHkaraNa-dvaya (the two-fold
> internal organ), 
> in upadeSasAhasrI, kenopaniShat commentary etc. In the
> yogasUtra, buddhi is 
> not used significantly, the terms preferred being chitta and
> manas. 
> antaHkaraNa is more vedAntic in its usage and is sometimes
> used 
> interchangeably with other words, e.g. manas, hR^idaya, hR^it,
> chitta and 
> buddhi. The antaHkaraNa interacts with the physical sense
> organs, processes 
> their input and takes action on them. The context usually
> makes it clear 
> whether the general "internal organ" or a specific faculty
> such as manas or 
> buddhi are intended.
> 

[..]

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