What Is the Mind? — The Quiet Answers Philosophy Has Built Up: Chapter 4　The Mind’s Orientation Toward “Essence”

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Hello everyone. This is Akira.

In the previous chapter, we saw that Plato understood the act of “learning” as a kind of “recollection.”

Our mind does not merely collect information from the outside; it already possesses certain inner connections — that was the perspective.

Then, what exactly is the mind ultimately oriented toward?

Here, Plato introduces the concept of the Idea (Form).

The Idea is the perfect, unchanging “essence” that exists as the true form of all things in this world.

Take “beauty,” for example.

There are beautiful flowers, beautiful people, and beautiful music in this world.

Yet all of them are slightly different from one another, and eventually they fade or change shape.

There is nothing in this world that is completely and eternally beautiful.

And yet, we can still feel that “this is truly beautiful.”

Why is that?

According to Plato, it is because our soul already knows the Idea of “perfect beauty.”

Even while living in this imperfect world, the mind is drawn toward and seeks “true beauty,” “true justice,” and “true goodness” somewhere within itself — this is what he suggests.

This idea may feel surprisingly familiar to us today as well.

In our daily lives, we are constantly exposed to various “ideals” and notions of “correctness.”

The perfect lifestyle we see on social media, the results demanded at work, the attitudes expected in human relationships — don’t many of these feel somewhat removed from their “true form”?

When the mind becomes exhausted, it is often because we are continuously chasing these “imperfect copies” in the outside world.

If we keep trying to make imperfect things “closer to perfect,” the mind eventually becomes empty and worn out.

At such times, having quiet moments or creating “sacred blank space” becomes an important opportunity to return, even slightly, to the “essence” toward which the mind originally wanted to move.

What is truly beautiful?

What is truly important?

What is “goodness” for oneself?

— These are questions we can quietly face after stepping away from external noise.

Especially when the brain is tired, instead of forcing ourselves to find answers, simply maintaining a blank space can allow the mind’s natural power to turn toward “what is real” to emerge.

The Ideas Plato spoke of are not merely religious “eternal truths,” but continue to hold meaning today as the mind’s power to seek “something better” and “something more true.”

Perhaps the mind is not merely a vessel where emotions move, but possesses a force that seeks to connect with “essence” somewhere.

And because this force is easily lost amid the noise of daily life, it becomes all the more important to intentionally create blank space and quietly face it.

In the next chapter, we will look more concretely at how these Platonic ideas can be applied to the exhaustion of the modern mind and the nature of rest.

Please look forward to it!

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Akira

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