When learning meditation, one of the fundamental things to learn is not to attach. When doing virtually any other type of self discovery, the importance of goals and outcomes are usually brought to attention. So what to do? Set goals, attach and introduce unhappiness or let go of everything, find a cave and be happy. Oops, even finding a cave is a goal it seems! Slowly I'm learning that there is a subtle third alternative.

How often do you ask the big questions: Why are we here, why do we think, is everything around me an illusion? Susan Blackmore takes one of these hard topics --- consciousness and 21 of the brightest minds in the area of study, maybe some of the brightest minds on the planet, to discuss their views on some of these topics.

I recently had a the pleasure to spend some time with Rob Nairn where he explained a little bit of the tibetan buddhist theory of mind. This set me thinking and I've come up with an interesting speculation on how this maps to some recent theories on how our brains work.My understanding from what Rob explained is that our consciousness consists of 8 parts. Part 1 to 5 is our senses, vision, hearing, touch (and its internal variants), smell and taste. Part 6 is our pattern matching mind, the part capable of logical thoughts, planning and modeling.