Materialists say that "mind stuff" (consciousness, awareness, perception) arises from matter.
If that's so, then mind must be an occasional weird property or manifestation of matter, just as matter is said to be an occasional manifestation or weird property of energy that occurs given just the right conditions. (But what's energy a manifestation of? That's another subject. Or is it?)
Since without mind matter can't know or feel that it "is" anything at all, for all practical purposes a material universe can't "exist" without mind. Only as mind does it become aware of itself.
Thus, materialists find themselves back at the mysteriousness of mind. It purportedly arises from matter, yet doesn't seem to share the basic properties of material. It mirrors and knows and perceives, and without it there isn't the conception of mind or of matter, of basic properties or anything at all.
All the so-called material stuff you desire -- like drinking Pol Roger champagne in a speedboat with Angelina Jolie -- appears only in the mind and is actually inconceivable and wouldn't even "exist" (could never be sensed) without mind.
Yet you can't grasp mind, can't buy and sell it, can't have more or less of it, and can't define what it "is" exactly!
"Cast aside all things, become without thought and intone: NAMU MYOHO RENGE KYO." -Hakuin
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