There Is No Mind-Body Problem
In Western philosophy and neuroscience, the mind-body problem is presented something like this:
The fundamental question is whether mental states and experiences are reducible to physical states and processes, or if they represent a distinct and irreducible realm of existence.
Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science
That’s the so-called mystery.
And it's a problem that can't be solved not because it’s too complex, but because it’s built on a conceptual mistake.
The whole debate about how subjective experience could possibly arise from material processes is built on a false foundation. We’re asking the wrong question, because we’re assuming a split that was never there to begin with.
The real issue isn’t how the mind interacts with the body. It’s why we ever believed they were two separate things.
The Problem Behind the Problem
- We think matter is primary
We assume matter is the fundamental substance of reality, it's solid, inert, measurable. Our experience shows us that reality truly exists.
But physics has already pulled that rug out from under us. At the smallest scale, “matter” breaks down into probabilities, fields, and observer-dependent events.
What we call matter has no inherent existence. There’s no truly existing “stuff” under the surface. What we call “matter” is just a label for certain appearances, filtered and interpreted by human perception.
2. We think mind is a product
We treat consciousness as an emergent phenomenon that arises from complexity, an effect of neurons firing.
But no one can explain how. There is no bridge from physical form to first-person presence. Neuroscience can map correlates of experience on a fMRI scan, but it cannot grasp the space in which experience arises. That space is awareness itself.
The hard problem of consciousness isn’t hard. It’s impossible, as long as we operate inside the materialist paradigm.
Why? Because the paradigm is trying to explain awareness from within its own conditioned operating system, while ignoring the source.
Drop the Frame: Mind and Body Are Not Two
Consider this shift in perspective:
You don’t have a mind and a body.
You don’t need to reconcile two separate things.
You need to see that they were never separate to begin with.
Both are the energetic expression or display (Tib. tsal), of a single, indivisible ground of awareness (rigpa zhi).
Not awareness as a mental function. Not consciousness as cognition. We’re talking about primordial awareness: the open, empty, luminous basis that is inseparable from all experience.
Mind and body are not joined together. They are inseparable expressions of the same energetic field of awareness.
Ground and Expression: One Field, Two Faces
In Dzogchen, we speak of the ground (zhi) and its expressive energy (tsal). But this isn’t a dualistic framework. The ground and it's energetic expression are inseparable.
The expressive energy or tsal is not an external energetic force, but the vividness and immediacy of appearances themselves, inseparable from awareness. Like waves and water, heat and fire, light rays and sun, you can name them, but you can’t divide or separate them.
The body is not “material.” The mind is not “immaterial.” They are both appearances of the energetic display, vivid and interdependent, arising within a single field of awareness.
And the moment you stop trying to resolve them as two, they resolve naturally as as a single unified experience of simply being.
Dependent Origination, Not Causal Reduction
Western science tries to solve the mind-body problem through causal reduction:
The brain causes the mind.
Neurons firing creates thought and emotions.
But this view assumes a one-way street from “matter” to “experience.”
Buddhist metaphysics doesn’t work like that.
The body and the mind are coarising as mutual expressions of the same field, conditioned by karma, perception, form, and habit patterns. They appear together, move together, change together.
You don’t need to collapse mind into matter. You need to see how both mind and body arise as the energetic expression, inseparable, coemergent, and ultimately empty of existing as some truly existing thing or substance.
What This View Changes
1. For the philosophy of mind
No more dualism. No more reductionism.
Consciousness is not something that needs to be “explained.” It is the field in which all explanation happens.
You can’t explain awareness from its contents. You have to recognize it directly.
2. For neuroscience
The brain doesn’t generate awareness. It’s a patterned expression within awareness. It's a lens or filter for the experience of energy and light rays, not the source itself.
This doesn’t invalidate neuroscience. It grounds it and opens up field of study into how we understand and work with the appearances of reality without mistaking them for the origin.
3. For practice
If you’re trying to fix the mind without understanding its ground, you’ll always be in conflict. Trying to train the mind without recognizing its source results in endless frustration.
But when you see the inseparability of ground and expression, the struggle dissolves.
There’s nothing to fix. Nothing to split. Nothing to reconcile. You just need to learn how to resolve the appearances of the ground with its true nature.
The Mind-Body Problem Was Never a Problem
It was a false question built on a false premise. There is no need to unify what was never divided.
The body is not matter. The mind is not separate. Both are the energetic play of awareness. That awareness is not somewhere else. It’s the ground of being, what’s here, right now—empty in essence, naturally clear, and responsive.
When you recognize that, the old questions fall away and something deeper appears.
Not an answer. But a view.
Not a solution. But resolution.
Being decisive in that view, we can continue with confidence on the path of freedom and learn to occupy our world with presence, openness, and generosity of spirit.
The view leads to the path, a way of being. This is where philosophy becomes practice.