[sybe07]

The Amazing Mind – Critical Role of Nāmagotta (Memories)

Hi all,

Thanks Lal for the new reply.

Some information i read. I have understood a newborn baby has allready at birth certain preferences for taste, especially sweet. Receptors for taste allready develop in the womb.

I think babies have also a preference for, for example, basking, i.e. for certain tactile sensations.

Maybe most important, for it’s development and, it seems, even for its survival a baby need bodily affection, it needs to be loved, touched, consoled etc, so not only fed with food! Even certain animals (especially social) show this inborn need to be fed with more than phyisical food only.

I think this shows how deeply inbedded this craving is. The craving for love, attention, affection will even kill the newborn child when it is not met with.

I think this scream for love and attention, while being so helpless, still rules us as adults. But one tends to forget this deeply inbedded longing when one has a loving partner or loving friends or loving family.

But not met with it, it is almost impossible to relax. One will probably experience great stress, taapa, inner fire, when this deeply imbedded need for love and attention is not met with. I also think mental problems arise when this biological longing is frustrated in one way or the other.

It shows, i find, also the destructive potential of this need for love and attention.

kind regards,
Siebe

[Lal]

Yes. A baby is not an inert log. It can feel certain sense inputs.

But the point is that those sensations cannot be IDENTIFIED with the baby’s set of anusaya. That is why thoughts of hate and greed does not arise in a baby that is a week old, but could develop slowly over the first few years as the “brain wiring” takes places gradually (initially showing up as likings and displeasure and gradually intensifying).

The development of the brain starts in the womb, but is not completed for a few years (brain is not fully formed and neural wiring is not complete for several years). So, it is a gradual process.

[y not]

Siebe writes:

“But(love and attention) not met with it, it is almost impossible to relax. One will probably experience great stress, taapa, inner fire, when this deeply imbedded need for love and attention is not met with. I also think mental problems arise when this biological longing is frustrated in one way or the other.

I see exactly what you mean. This I see as a result of either one’s gathi or one of reciprocal kamma with those denying that love and attention, or of the two factors at once (to different degrees,according to the case in question).

As to babies, although “those sensations cannot be IDENTIFIED with the baby’s set of anusaya” (Lal), yet we see that behavioral patterns in babies must be due to gathi (therefore gathi is active even at that stage,not dormant as in the case of their response to sense inputs) – for otherwise, whence the difference: one of my daughters used to sleep”like a baby” (!!) – how else?, for several hours, the other one cried at intervals during the night – the former grew up to be visibly more composed and deliberate in her demeanour.

much Metta

[sybe07]

MN64 describes that a young tender infant has allready the five lower fetters as underlying tendencies: sakkaya ditthi, doubts, adherence to rules and observances, sensual desire and ill will.
https://suttacentral.net/mn64/en/bodhi

Do i understand it correctly, Lal, that those anusaya can only be triggered after a certain period when the brain is ripened to a certain degree?

On internet i encounter info that immediately after birth there is allready a certain preference for, for example, sweet tastes. It is also said on internet (dutch sites) that a baby senses with all senses. So when it experiences a taste it can also see certain colours, have smell sensations etc. This seems to show that de brain is not ripened yet to only smell smells, hear sounds etc.

Siebe

[Lal]

Thanks, Siebe, for quoting that sutta. I had forgotten the name of the sutta. I just revised the post to cite it.

You asked: “Do i understand it correctly, Lal, that those anusaya can only be triggered after a certain period when the brain is ripened to a certain degree?”

Yes. As I explained in the previous post, these anusaya start getting triggered gradually as the baby grows. By age 7, that process is complete.

There are some other subtle points involved here too. For example, being able to taste the sweetness of sugar is not the same as having craving for it. An Arahant tastes the sweetness of sugar, but does not form any attachments; see, “Kāma Guna, Kāma, Kāma Rāga, Kāmaccanda“.

[Lal]

I just revised #5 of of this post to make it clear why a fully-developed brain is needed to recall the memories: “The Amazing Mind – Critical Role of Nāmagotta (Memories)“.

As long as the gandhabba is inside the physical body, memories come to the mind via the mana indriya in the brain.

[Author]

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