What is the "psyche"?

[Fake Genius]

you need to ask a professor for science definition for it. but i doubt science of all fields would agree on it.

culture and religion give different definitions and ideas to it. idk any of them. generally most of them believe in soul as something that moves the physical body. in this case, i don't understand what they mean by "I" or oneself.

if it's the soul that controls the body, then who am I? who are you? are you your soul? in this situation, do you exist? is it the soul that exists? how do you explain you as the body and the soul?

i don't know what they want to say in their ideas. that can be diverse. It's I think not well defined or agreed upon. Different people have different ideas or they agree with some people and disagree with others. I doubt religions define it well either. [see her https://www.google.com.au/search?num=30&..._XphkiCSg]

Soul, breath (the breath from god)... here they define a baby is born and soul (breath) is put into it by god. Fetus is thus not alive or have no soul. [we know that idea is not right].

........

my limited knowledge in Buddhism about psyche is psyche is defined differently. Vinnana is the word in Pali. It's the word for the ability of knowing. That's all.
[viññāṇa: 'consciousness', http://www.viet.net/anson/ebud/bud-dict/dic3_v.htm - read the definition there.]

In terms of Namma (mind) and Rupa (physical body), namma is explained in four categories (four aggregates) and physical body is what we can see.

The four are: feeling, perception, thought and consciousness. [In this case, i think you can call namma as psyche].

Consciousness is that knows or recognises or the state of being aware.
Vinnana (consciousness) works with the other three - as sense consciousness and thought consciousness. Sense consciousness doesn't require perception. Thought consciousness requires perception. Sense consciousness can be all by itself and doesn't need thought to follow it. When you think or perceive or define or interpret, thought consciousness appears. In Buddhism, this thought consciousness is the main danger because view arises; there are right view and wrong views.

If only sense consciousness arises and not followed by thought, we can be freed from all successive troubles - and this is the goal in Buddhism. This is the state of nibbana or the state of the cessation of perception and feeling. https://www.google.com.au/search?q=cessa...2&ie=UTF-8

But ordinary people are not capable of this. Perception always follows our sense consciousness, as thought consciousness.

Perception can be understood as memory or stored information. It matches its stored information with whatever arises as sense consciousness. Hence, we call it we perceive.

When feeling arises, consciousness arises.
When feeling ceases, consciousness ceases.
Feeling arises as mental thus. But it needs physical body as five senses: sense consciousness of seeing, sense consciousness of hearing, ... touch, ... taste, and ... smell.

Thus, the meditation is to train in sense consciousness and to control it not to go into thought (thought consciousness or perception).http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/mahasati09.htm
https://www.google.com.au/search?num=30&...OwZSteAN04

Perception is just unnatural. It prevents one from understanding the nature as it is. With perception, we develop view and view is personal, not natural.

But without perceiving the nature, we cannot know anything. Thus, we should only perceive two things as natural reality: mind and matter (body).

edit:
if you're concerned about the danger of perception or view, you can learn about it from some books. we all should actually. it's about how perception/view influences afterlife (rebirth) and the destination of beings. it's also about how attachment works for perceiving (perception or memory - explained above).

when one sees a physical form and knows this physical form as a cat, or a dog, or a woman or a man or car or something as view, it's attachment that links sense consciousness to thought consciousness which requires perception. the way one should know is form as form and mind as mind, nothing beyond that.

That's Buddhist view of mind and matter.