The Inner Instrument (Antaḥkaraṇa: Manas, Buddhi, Ahaṅkāra)
The mind taken apart: the processor, the decider, and the 'I'-maker — none of them you.
The antaḥkaraṇa is the 'inner instrument' — the toolkit of the mind, analyzed into parts: manas, which gathers and processes the impressions of the senses; buddhi, the intellect that judges and decides; and ahaṅkāra, the ego or 'I-maker' that claims experiences as 'mine.' Crucially, in Vedānta and Yoga none of these is the true self; they are subtle equipment that the witnessing self lights up but is not.
How it traveled
- Bṛhadāraṇyaka UpaniṣadMithilā (kingdom of Videha) · -700explains
- Bhagavad-gītāKuru-Pañcāla region · -150explains
Key passages(20)
The senses are said to be superior (to the body); the mind is superior to the senses; the intellect is superior to the mind; and that which is superior to the intellect is He (the Atman).
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Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad · Vedic Revelation (śruti)
'The mind is one Graha, and that is seized by desire as the Atigraha, for with the mind one desires desires.'
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The great Elements, Egoism, Intellect, as also the Unmanifested (Mulâ Prakriti), the ten senses and the one (mind), and the five objects of the senses; desire, hatred, pleasure, pain, the, aggregate,
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Know the Self to be sitting in the chariot, the body to be the chariot, the intellect (buddhi) the charioteer, and the mind the reins.
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Vivekacūḍāmaṇi · Śaṅkara (traditionally ascribed; authorship doubted)
Vivekacūḍāmaṇi · Śaṅkara (traditionally ascribed; authorship doubted)
Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad · Vedic Revelation (śruti)
Yagnavalkya said: 'Let us hear what anybody may have told you.' Ganaka Vaideha replied: 'Vidagdha Sakalya told me that the heart (hridaya) is Brahman.' Yagnavalkya said: 'As one who had (the benefit o
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Beyond the senses there are the objects, beyond the objects there is the mind, beyond the mind there is the intellect, the Great Self is beyond the intellect.
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He who knows the home, becomes a home of his people. The mind indeed is the home.
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'Will (saṅkalpa) is better than mind. For when a man wills, then he thinks in his mind, then he sends forth speech, and he sends it forth in a name. In a name the sacred hymns are contained, in the sa
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He replied: "O Gârgya, As all the rays of the sun, when it sets, are gathered up in that disc of light, and as they, when the sun rises again and again, come forth, so is all this (all the senses) gat
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