What is Buddhi?
Buddhi (Intellect) is the part of the mind which helps us to distinguish and decide. It helps us to form and retain concepts, apply logic and reasoning, discern, judge, comprehend, understand, plan, and strategize.
It is derived from the Sanskrit root ‘Budh’ which means to be awake, to know, to be conscious, observe, learn, etc. A more common word derived from the root is “Buddha” which is the masculine form. The person whom we know as “Buddha” his real name was “Siddharta Gautam” but because he reached a level of higher consciousness (enlightenment) he was called A Buddha. Perhaps any person who reaches that level can be called a “buddha”.
Functions of buddhi
It is generally represented by a sword and its quality is Tez (sharpness). The sharper it is the better you would be able to cut through and dissect a situation to decide which step to take. Out of the many voices in the head, the buddhi helps us to choose which one to follow. The catch here is that it should be pure.
The buddhi takes the inputs from other parts of the mind (manas, Chitta, and ahamkara), analyze them, and then acts accordingly. These inputs could be right or wrong. You could have read about something which was a piece of wrong information but you trusted the source and considered it right. Even though the information was wrong the buddhi will treat it as right and decide on the basis of that (this is how the media and advertisements can hack our minds).
We need to create a habit of not believing anything unless it is logical and makes sense. If you get a piece of information first try to verify the information. Ask questions to yourself or others around to find the truth about the information.
We tend to not verify the information or analyze it in our minds because our minds are lazy and don’t want to do any work. Analysis, logic, and reasoning require work and energy; to make the Intellect (buddhi) sharper we need to keep using it and train it like you would train any muscles in your body.
Buddhi, desires, and emotions
The buddhi can also be hacked by our emotions, desires, etc. A diabetic person definitely knows that they should not eat sugary things but the desire and the sensation of the taste of sweetness takes over and hacks the buddhi and makes them take the wrong decision.
Kids use emotional manipulative techniques to get things done, this is their conditioning. To get a thing they might cry and throw tantrums but the Mom’s Buddhi knows the reality and would act accordingly.
This conditioning is not limited to kids, lots of people use this emotional manipulative technique to get their things done. We need to be aware, and not get driven by just the emotions; use your buddhi and then decide. It might sometimes mean taking a difficult decision but it will train you to trust your buddhi and not get manipulated by people.
Information Vs wisdom
A common misconception is that people start considering a person who has memorized a lot of things as intelligence, but memory (which is stored in Chitta) is completely different from intelligence. Just memorizing a chunk of information cannot be considered as being intelligent. Buddhi (wisdom/knowledge/intellect) is something that can use that information to solve a problem.
Sadbuddhi (positive intellect) Vs Durbuddhi (negative intellect)
As mentioned above the buddhi decides on the inputs it gets. These inputs are the information that is fed to us, our own inferences from our past experiences. If this information and inferences are wrong and we act on those then it results in Durbuddhi (दुर्बुद्धि), the negative intellect.
Sadbuddhi (सद्बुद्धि), the positive intellect is the conditioning where our buddhi is able to extract the correct information and inferences from whatever is fed to it. If it doesn’t make sense then it keeps working to find a logical explanation.
Even with the best intentions if you have the wrong information any outcome will end up being undesirable. If you have the correct information but your past experiences have made a wrong understanding you can easily be manipulated by yourself or others to act in a counterproductive way.