Mind vs. Brain

The brain is a physical organ which is a store house of all memory, enables us to think, plan, execute, regulates body movement and temperature and all other functions to enable body functioning properly. If the brain gets injured, depending on the part of brain gotten hit, correspondingly the functioning of the body can get hampered. Being a physical organ, it can be nurtured by proper diet. Studies on meditation confirm benefits because of favourable structural changes in the brain.

Mind on the other hand is a subtle invisible aspect of the body. It should not be confused to be an organ although it dominates most thinking using the brain as a platform to work, so to say. It must be noted carefully that the brain is present in a dead body but the mind is absent because it functions only when the body is alive.

The mind is too subtle to bind it into the scope of a definition and so any definition of mind is just an attempt to academic effort which with time becomes redundant or upgraded. So for the sake of definition, the mind is a subtle entity, the faculty that enables the thoughts in the brain to function in a way that the system that we are behaves like a human being rather than a robot functioning under the domain of binary coding and lateral functioning.

The mind enables reasoning, curiosity, imagination, creativity, planning, critical thinking, strategizing, contemplation, introspection, analyzing and the like functions. The most important human functions of the mind are the ability of humans being conscious of their presence and experiencing emotions. These two largely differentiate us from the other living species and provide depth in our existence, as an individual and a species.

Emotions being a domain of the mind, both positive and negative emotions arise and disperse in this faculty. Therefore to understand emotional intelligence it is important to understand the mind in detail. All stress and related negativity that we see around is the play of mind; the way the mind perceives a situation and frames or tags it with an emotion. All of this is illusory because the situation is the same for everyone but the reaction is subjective and using the brain, comes from the mind only.

The mind is like clay, the way you groom it in childhood, it takes that shape and defines the personality of the individual. Therefore it is important that both parents and teachers condition the mind in a way that the self-esteem of the child is developed very well and the child transforms into a responsible adult as he grows.