http://www.dharmasalon.net/Audio/audio.html
Bodhi Zendo | August 2017
These are the workshops and talks given at Bodhi Zendo, in southern India, from 7 to 21 August 2017.
I was struck by the discussion of Mindfulness of Body, talks #13 here: https://patrick-kearney.wetransfer.com/ ... 522/1aba65
He comments that his preferred translation of nāmarūpa is "named form", and I see that a few others have used this. The usefulness of this translation is that it emphasises that one cannot separate the nāma and rūpa in nāmarūpa, which the translation "name and form" suggests.
As Ven Nananda comments in the Nibbana Sermons:
Patrick borrows the example of the child with the ball in his talk, and also emphasises the inseparability that I have highlighted in the above quotation. In this, and other talks, he discusses how much western philosopy and "spirituality" have this idea of a "mind" or "spirit", which is the important bit, and a "body", which isn't so important. However, it's clear that the body and the heart/mind are not really separable. One's moods can affect the body (e.g. when angry) and vice-versa.We find ourselves in a similar situation with regard to the
significance of rūpa in nāma-rūpa. Here too we have some-
thing deep, but many take nāma-rūpa to mean `mind and mat-
ter'. Like materialists, they think there is a contrast between
mind and matter. But according to the Dhamma there is no such
rigid distinction. It is a pair that is interrelated and taken to-
gether it forms an important link in the chain of paṭicca samup-
pāda.
Rūpa exists in relation to `name' and that is to say that form
is known with the help of `name'. As we saw above, that child
got a first-hand knowledge of the rubber ball with the help of
contact, feeling, perception, intention and attention. Now in
the definition of `form' as cattāri ca mahābhūtāni, catunnañca
mahābhūtānaṃ upādāya rūpaṃ the four great primaries are
mentioned because they constitute the most primary notion of
`form'. Just as much as feeling, perception, intention, contact
and attention represent the most primary notion of `name', con-
ventionally so called, even so the four great primaries form the
basis for the primary notion of `form', as the world understands
it.
http://seeingthroughthenet.net/wp-conte ... NMS_LE.pdf
Ironically, modern neuroscience may be doing us a favour in this respect, but considering the mind as just a part of the body (i.e. the brain). That's undoubtedly a gross oversimplification in other ways, but at least it challenges the "disembodied spirit" idea.
Mike