Consciousness generates mind, but neither mind nor consciousness actually exist. They are both phenomena arising from the brain activity, yes, and none of that activity is beneficial for your well-being and constitutes what in spirituality is called “the dreaming mind”. It is possible to cease this activity completely and lead an extremely satisfying life.

The brain exists, yes, as the organ of the body whose function is to detect patterns in your environment and make predictions based on it, same as any other animal. It is no different and no more or less important than, say, your liver. It’s a part of you.

What gives rise to the brain itself is, strictly speaking, an unanswerable question because any answer will be produced by the brain, but for convenience you may just assume that this question is no different than, say, what gives rise to your liver. So if you describe it scientifically, as atoms, molecules, tissue, growth, evolution etc. then you should be able to describe the brain in the same terms. There is nothing that special about the brain, really. But when the mind is actively dreaming it sure appears very special, because a lot of stuff is happening in the mind, a lot of stuff, and we all know that it’s all ultimately happening in our brains, so we give our brains a lot of significance and a lot of attention. This is a mistake.

You can’t live without the brain, yes, but you also can’t live without the heart and a great many other things. Trees, however, live without either a brain or a heart, and that doesn’t seem to bother them one bit.