Author: Neil

Categories
Reality Zen

One life or many? Rebirth and the brain

Where are we going when we pass out of this life? For that matter, where did we come from, to find ourselves here? For many, myself included, these are important questions – perhaps the ones that first drew us to deeply engagement with spiritual practice.

Like many in the Midwest, I grew up in a largely Christian community. And, although I did not personally have a strong connection to a church, the idea of an afterlife – in which some part of our consciousness would continue past our physical death – was familiar to me.

And as I encountered Zen as a teenager, discussions of an afterlife, and specifically the Buddhist idea of rebirth, were not emphasized in the teachings I encountered (especially those which were popular in the U.S.). So, I was very interested to come across an excerpt of Roger R. Jackson’s new book, Rebirth in the latest issue of Buddhadharma magazine (Summer, 2022), which considers the various ways that Buddhists today understand rebirth. Jackson identifies several broad, often overlapping, approaches, ranging from those who hold that rebirth is literally true, to those are more agnostic about the metaphysical truth of rebirth, and to secularists who often ignore or reject the teaching.

As a scientist, I find myself personally more persuaded by the agnostic or secular camp. And, while I appreciated Jackson’s article, I did find myself reacting, pushing back on some of the approaches described, especially what he calls the neo-traditional approach. This would include attempts to reconcile a literal version of rebirth with our scientific understanding of the world, in part by carving out exceptions to physical laws. He summarizes one such argument by the Dali Lama, that:

… although there may be a stronger connection between neurological events and ordinary mental states than traditional Buddhists believe, there remains the possibility that there are extraordinary mental states that do not depend on the neurological system, namely, the meditative experiences of advanced tantric yogis…

Jackson, p. 19-20

This is an interesting idea: that there could be mental states (something which we can experience) that are not dependent on our body and brain. This kind of approach, to carve out some distance between the mind and the brain, seems to be a common approach that some will offer when we look for ways that parts of our self (our memories, personality) could survive the death of our bodies.

However, before we carve out an exception for any mental states (from brain activity), we should look closely and ask: do we need to do so? And here, I would say that the answer is,  no.

Our knowledge about the brain, while still growing, has shown that our mental experience is deeply bound to the delicate functioning of our nervous system. Anyone who has taken care of a loved one recovering from a stroke, or through the painful erosions of dementia, has seen firsthand how important the brain is for our mental experience. Our sense of our “I”, as a stable sense of self, is a kind of illusion – you cannot find a permanent, stable “I” or self in the brain. And, the illusion is a fragile one, that depends in each moment on the continuity of our experiences, our memory, and our personality.

Could it be that there are mental states which exist independent of the activity of the nervous system, as the Dali Lama or others have suggested? Perhaps, but the literature of neuropsychology is full of descriptions of individuals who have lost their memory, or their ability to feel emotions, or experienced a dramatic change in personality after suffering brain damage or disease (and, for the interested reader, I would recommend Paul Broks’ beautiful book, Into the Silent Land, for some examples).

One of the most famous cases in neuroscience is that of Henry Molaison, who had parts of his brain surgically removed to treat very severe epilepsy. Mr. Molaison’s epilepsy was improved after the surgery. But, he tragically lost the ability to make new memories, because parts of his hippocampus were removed in the operation.

For more than forty years, he never made a new memory (though he could learn some new things, closer to what we could call skills). And, if brain damage can block the ability to make memories in this life, I doubt we will be able to carry our memories over to some future life.

Beyond memory, it is difficult for me to identify an example of a feeling, thought, emotion, or any mental state, that cannot be disrupted or transformed by affecting the nervous system. To think that the mental states of meditation are somehow exempt is unnecessary. And, that is why possibility that rebirth is literally true (instead of true in a more metaphorical sense) seems very unlikely to me.

However, even if you find yourself in agreement, you might still be asking: What if you are wrong?

The only reply I have is – of course I am wrong, how could I not be wrong? Or rather, can any of us be right?

I see quite a bit of evidence that our mental experience depends on the activity of our brains, following the laws of nature. But, for our practice, I find it very important – critical – to remember that the very idea that we have a brain (or a body) is itself nothing more than a useful tool. And we should be careful not to let our tools shape how we see reality itself.

The brain is something that we can observe. I’ve held one (though, thankfully, I have never seen my own!). But, calling that thing I was holding a “brain” is also a concept. Like other concepts (trees, cars, weather), “the brain” helps us make sense of the world. There is our direct experience of brain, or tree, or weather. And, there is a step (that we often do not even see) where we name “the brain,” “the tree,” and “the weather”.

Each concept helps us group together what we experience. Concepts help us explain why our experiences appear to have structure, order. And, the scientific approach offers a very powerful way to explain how these things that we have named work, how the physical world works.

But, no matter how good our system is for explaining the world (and the scientific approach has done very well), every approach will always be only partially accurate. Because, in the most important sense, the idea that we have a body, or a brain, is itself an idea, something we add to our actual, direct experience. A useful fiction. Like our idea of “the weather” or “a whirlpool,” concepts give us handles that we can use to grasp at a part of reality. But, in doing so, we have to ignore the ways that a concept has left something out about the real texture of reality.

All-in-all, I find the scientific approach to making sense of experience very useful. Too useful, it turns out, to allow others to carve out space for rebirth (in that literal sense of the concept). Once we do that, we have really left science behind, in order to save the idea that we will be literally reborn after this life. And, just as I am wrong (because my own understanding is built on a set of abstractions) every system we use to understand and make sense of the world is wrong. We all have rebirth wrong, and that is ok.

In the end, remember that whatever system we use to make sense of our experiences, none can be “true” in a satisfying, final way. Each requires some kind of unfounded assumption. From the specific perspective of our practice, though, what matters most is what flows out from those assumptions.

While I consider myself a scientist, in matters of spiritual practice, I really do not care what you believe. I want to know – how do you live?

If our beliefs help us realize the truth of impermanence, of interconnection, and to commit our lives to the benefit of all beings, then those beliefs are valuable. That is the real measure of a belief system. Any system of belief that lets us turn away from the world, or to selfishly cling to our own small, ego existence is useless. And, for our spiritual practice, arguing over which belief system is correct is a waste of our precious time, whether we think that we have one lifetime ahead of us, or many.

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References

Jackson, R. R. (Summer, 2022). How do we make sense of rebirth? Buddhadharma, 17-35.

Categories
Practice

We cannot “like” our way to wisdom

Can we “like” our way to greater wisdom and peace?  Or even to just to some deeper measure of happiness? These questions came to me as I was scrolling through Instagram posts the other day. On my Neural Buddhist account, I mainly follow people who focus on Zen and meditation, and science-related accounts that I find interesting from a Buddhist perspective. On any given day, I come across many meaningful, heartfelt posts by teachers and by other practitioners who I respect.

Image credit: Rawpixel Ltd.

For example, the short poem below, by punkrocksadhana, struck me as a beautiful image of the very concrete ways that all things in this world are deeply interconnected:

In my own posts on Instagram and Facebook, I have tried to share teachings that I have found personally meaningful, and which I think might be helpful to others. And, I’ve also shared posts that distill some of my essays on my own Zen practice (like the post below). I am left wondering, though, what the benefit of this kind of engagement on social media is for our practice, much less for our mental health in general.

Over the past few months, my interactions with others on Instagram and Facebook have mainly been “liking” or “loving” posts, or sharing a post as a story. In total, these interactions have been fleeting, delicate moments. Like a bubble hanging in the air, they may be beautiful, but most disappeared without leaving a lasting trace.

I wrote recently about the connections between rituals and habits, and the importance of engaging fully in our daily habitual behaviors, rather than falling into autopilot. But, when I turned my attention back to my own use of social media, I found that I was often not acting mindfully, but had fallen more into a mindless habit. And, I was not really surprised at this fact – like many, I usually expect that high levels of use of social media could be unhealthy (or at least, is not likely to make people happier, on average!). So, how then should we approach social media? And, is social media fundamentally unwholesome (in the sense of supporting our practice)?

It does seem that the core mechanics that draw us in to engage with social media are not ones that naturally support our practice. As we look around Facebook, Instagram and similar platforms, we are most likely to find those voices that appeal broadly, and that appeal to those who we already agree with. And, our attention, and our very sense of value, can be drawn in toward posts that receive a strong response. This can certainly be unhealthy, as it can skew our sense of what messages are meaningful, or one may become distraught to find that their own heartfelt expressions receive little or no response. And, as I found in my own life, the type of engagement we see may also be superficial, fleeting.

What then are our options?  We could certainly pull back from these social spaces, and work to invest our energy into healthier, more humane forms of interaction. That may be the right answer for many people, but I have remained on Facebook and Instagram simply because they are places where many people spend some of their time. But, if we stay in these spaces, how can we become habitually mindful of the ways that we can be trapped by social media, and work to promote more wholesome engagement?

In my own practice, I have made a few changes to how I use social media (and, I am focusing here especially on my neuralbuddhist accounts – for my personal accounts, I appreciate this advice from a post on Tiny Buddha).

First, in all of my accounts, I have hidden the number of “likes” that posts receive (if you are interested, here are some tips for how to turn off likes for Instagram and Facebook posts). These options are not perfect, but it can be very helpful to not immediately see the number of people who have “liked” a post.

Second, when I scroll through social media, I try to hold the intention to engage deeply with at least one post. I may “like” several posts on Instagram, but I also to make a comment that responds to one post that resonates with me. And, I consider how I can take that teaching with me into the rest of my day. Instead of repeating the habit of superficial engagement, I am working to build a new habit of seeing these posts as a call to mindfulness. This helps connect my time on social media to the whole of my practice.

Third, for the posts I make on social media, I am working to focus my attention to my goals. Instead of focusing on the reactions (the number of likes and such) on Facebook or Instagram, I am focusing on the number of people who engage more deeply – commenting (thoughtfully!) and those who actually engage further. It doesn’t matter, really, how many people reacted to a post.

The key question for me is how many people interacted more deeply – commenting on the post, and finding the longer essays (such as this one) that the post attempts to summarize. That proportion, the number who engage more deeply, will always be much smaller than the number who like a post, but it is the most important point for me.

All-in-all, the total number of people who read an of my essays may be small, but I am always encouraged to find that a few people found my essays (like this one). And, I hope that even one person may take what I wrote to heart, and that it might encourage them in their own practice, in the same way that I have been encouraged by others.  If so, then social media can be of some benefit, within the larger context of the whole of our practice.

Categories
Meditation Zen

Making a ritual out of habit

Last fall, I found my way back to a more regular Zen practice. When we moved our family to a small, Midwestern town years ago, it was very difficult to find local groups to connect with, especially as we raised our young children. And so, for many years, I fell out of the habit of sitting at a Zen center. I sat by myself, and only rarely with others. Even when I did meditate with others, it was usually in a very informal space.

Image credit: Kenny Pinheiro, “zazen” – flickr

But, after the extreme disconnection during the height of the pandemic, I felt a strong yearning to connect with other practitioners. And, I found it to be an opportune moment, where my own children were a bit older, and it was easier for me to travel to a local zendo. And, many Zen centers had developed strong options for virtual attendance.

It had been years since I had been to a zendo, and from the first moment that I stepped across the threshold, I was grateful for the feeling of entering back into a community of practitioners. Bowing as I entered, and bowing to my cushion, I was also grateful to recognize the simple forms that provide structure to our practice. Settling back into chanting the four vows, bowing, and prostrations, I was somewhat surprised by the feelings of connection that came with these rituals. I found that I had come back to a kind of joy as I picked up the habits of the zendo once again.

I have been thinking more about these experiences, especially with how they contrast with the habits that often fill up our everyday life. Many times, when I notice that I have been drawn into a habit, these are occasions of inattention – distracted while I drive to store, ruminating on some minor issue while doing the dishes, daydreaming while mowing the lawn. As I look at these moments of everyday distraction, and those of great engagement in the zendo, I wonder what the space is that separates habit from ritual.

For a long time, I have been somewhat wary of falling into habitual behaviors. Many teachings warn us about falling into the trap of habitual behaviors, or describe how practice can be a path that frees us from dysfunctional, rigid patterns of thinking. I encountered some of these ideas when I read Suzuki’s Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind when I was first learning about Zen:

A mind full of preconceived ideas, subjective intentions, or habits is not open to things as they are. That is why we practice zazen: to clear our mind of what is related to something else.

Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, p. 88

… as long as you have some fixed idea or are caught by some habitual way of doing things, you cannot appreciate things in their true sense.

Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, p 112

These and other teachings shaped some of my early approach to Zen. For better or worse, I considered habitual behavior as a kind of trap, something to be avoided. Or, at least that practice involves substituting “bad” habits for better ones. Ritual, as an example of a repeated, patterned behavior, could be considered a habit. But, what is it that distinguishes rituals from the rest of our habits?

To feel for the gap between rituals and habitual behavior, it helps to look closely at what we mean by habit, which I approach from my perspective as a psychologist and neuroscientist. In our everyday use of the term, we are often pointing out a pattern of behavior (or thought) that is repeated, consistent, and perhaps difficult to change. This idea of habit is broadly similar to what I would mean by the term, when speaking as a psychologist. But, research on habits has tested and extended this definition, somewhat.

Habits are behaviors (or pattern behavior) that typically are learned slowly, over many over many repetitions. This learning process roughly involves monitoring the effects of our actions, and learning what we need to do in order to reach our typical goals. Habits are often tied to stimuli in our environment, such that we might develop a habit of always turning left as we leave our house (if our car or bicycle is usually located in that direction), or reaching directly to a specific button to turn off our alarm in the morning.

The key is that a habit represents the behavior (or sequence of behaviors) we have learned to do in a specific place or moment. When we engage in a habit, we can then perform these behaviors without needing to plan out our behavior beforehand, intentionally. Because of this, habits can be performed quickly at the opportune moment, with little planning, and initiated by triggered by cues around us as we work to reach our goals.

One weakness of habits, though, is that they are not very flexible: in order to respond rapidly and with little oversight, we give up the ability to modify our behavior if we encounter an obstacle, and they can be slow or difficult to change. In this sense, we can contrast habits with deliberative behavior – moments where we spend some time consciously considering our options to find the best one.

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Our daily life usually represents a mixture of habits and deliberative behavior (and other kinds of behavior), but we will often use a habit for common, typical behaviors. Think, for instance, of making a drive to a well-known location, and how different this experience can be from driving to a new job, or from a new home.

Habits are with us in all parts of our daily life, though we may not even notice them until a change in the environment or our routine draws them out into the light of day. For example, when I started my job at a small college in Indiana, as our department’s behavioral neuroscientist, I inherited an aging animal research lab in the basement. The building had been built in the 1960s, and the research lab looked like it had never been updated (and still had its original lime green wall tile).

In one room, I found an enormous surgical light mounted to the ceiling, like something you might expect to see in an old movie (maybe a horror film involving dentistry). The device was in terrible condition, and I was never able to make good use of it. But, removing the light was a difficult prospect, and for perhaps a decade I simply ignored it. Or I tried to ignore it, but many times I walked accidentally into the heavy arm of the light – which floated just at about the level of my head.

The light fixture and I reached an uneasy truce over the years, but I never really appreciated how much it had affected me until it was finally gone. One summer day, after one final bruise to my temple, I gathered some tools and took the fixture down. Like many tasks that have been deferred too long, it was a wonderful relief to finally have the light removed, and to feel that the room was more open, and spacious.

But even though the light fixture was gone, I could still feel its weight in the air. Every time I walked through the center of that room, as I approached the empty space, I found myself involuntarily ducking under that space. It truly was a strange feeling, to watch myself dive under a phantom light fixture. I would laugh, and sometimes felt the need to explain myself to my students (some who had joined the lab after the light was gone).

Intellectually, I knew there was no obstruction there, of course. But, another part of me knew something else, something learned slowly with each time I had struck my head on the heavy counterweight. The past has its own weight, a kind gravity that draws us back to familiar paths.

This habit of mine, ducking under the light fixture, was a great help to me over the years, and saved me from a number of injuries. In the same way, all of our other habits, often operating invisibly, just out of sight, are a crucial part of our daily life. It took me some time to appreciate it, but our habits are a gift, the distillation of our experiences. They allow us to move easily through the common paths of our day, and can free up other parts of our minds. Far from being a hindrance, our lives would be very difficult without habits. In fact, in Parkinson’s disease, cells that release dopamine in the brain die off, which impairs the function of structures deep in the brain that are critical for the execution of habits. This can lead to a disruption in the learning or use of habits, making daily life more exhausting, and requiring greater attention to complete everyday behaviors.

If habits are a cornerstone of our daily life, then was I wrong to feel that habits could be harmful? In a sense, yes – habits are not harmful in themselves. Habits can offer us an opportunity to go on “autopilot” – where we find ourselves moving through the world, but with a sense of disengagement. We may be lost in thought, following a daydream or fantasy, or ruminating on the past. Moments when habits can guide our behavior smoothly are also ones where we can fall into a kind of slumber – disconnected from the world around us.

But, this does not have to be the case, and we can look to our experience in rituals for a clear example. As I returned to sitting more regularly last fall, it had been several years since I had visited a Zen center or zendo. I felt quite self-conscious at first, working to remember the simple forms for entering a zendo, taking my seat. But, those old habits came back, and slowly adapted to the specific forms of these new communities. Far from being moments of autopilot, of disconnection, I felt a deep sense of connection – to my body, the world around me, to the group. Especially after the disconnection of the pandemic years, I was so grateful for the experience of sitting again with a community – virtually and in person. These forms offer us – if we are open to it – an opportunity to experience a profound sense of absorption in the moment, and for me, a sense of gratitude and wonder. And in the rituals – all of the forms, chants, each careful behavior – I saw fingerprints of habitual behavior.

In the end, there is nothing special abou the habits that support the rituals of our practice – they are the same as the habits that support our daily life. Each offers us a moment in which we can fall into autopilot, and turn away from reality. And, both offer us an opportunity to cultivate presence, and experience directly our deep connection to all beings. Moments of connection may be more likely in the rituals of our practice, were we have made a commitment, the intention, to engage wholeheartedly. And, where we find the support of our practice community, taking strength from their intention.

There may be moments of mindlessness in the zendo, of course, where we fall into a habit mindlessly. But, our practice is to be aware, and to come back to this moment each time. As we bring that intention to our daily life, we can also engage more mindfully at times when our behavior is guided by habits. Driving to work, or washing the dishes, our intention to engage wholeheartedly can give each habit the depth of a ritual.

References

Shunryu Suzuki. (1970). Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. Weatherhill, New York, NY.

Categories
Meditation Zen

What do we already know?

… instead of thinking in terms of movement toward something new and shiny and different, let’s try thinking of spiritual practice as a process of remembering that which we already know.

Mark Frank, That Which We Already Know, p. 30

What does it really mean for us to follow a spiritual path? What is the nature of our effort – are we looking to find some kind of insight or experience? Or, are we working towards some other goal?

In Buddhist practice, we are encouraged to look closely at our motivation, to notice what is fueling our efforts, And, we often find that we are striving towards some goal, looking for something outside of our self that might fulfill us, that could ease our suffering. But, this type of seeking is an error – a type of craving that can up prolonging our suffering.

But, even if we are not striving to get something, that does not mean that are not working towards something. We might frame this as a change of view, that our goal is not to get something, but to see the world in a different way.

Recently, I had a chance to read That Which We Already Know, a new book written by a friend, Mark Frank. Mr. Frank is a Zen practitioner, and has written over the years about spirituality and his experiences, including on his blog, Heartland Contemplative. His book focuses on this question: what is it that we are working to realize, in our spiritual practice?

That Which We Already Know is structured as a memoir centered on Frank’s childhood, and richly infused with insights from his Zen practice. He writes beautifully about the time he spent exploring the “Nursery” – a patch of wilderness near his childhood home that he presents as a kind of mini-Eden. The affection he has for that place is clear and touching, and reminded me of my own childhood, growing up in the farmland of rural Illinois.

Frank uses stories about growing up immersed in nature to illustrate his argument: that the goal of our spiritual practice, which Buddhists often name as awakening, is in fact a state that we experienced as children. His premise, and the title of the book, is that awakening is something we already know, and many of our deepest spiritual practices are helping us reconnect with that state.

An important part of Frank’s argument is that in childhood, before we develop the ability to strictly see ourselves as individual, separated from the world, we experience directly a sense of connection and wholeness. As we grow and mature, we develop a strong sense of self-awareness – the feeling that there is a me existing separate you and the rest of the world.

Do you recall such days lived without any sense of separation, with trust and acceptance, with mind and body seamlessly integrated one with the other and together with all things? … This is the freedom of children and the wisest among us, and everything else that resides in the natural world – the freedom to be precisely what we are and nothing we are not …

Children don’t simply know this freedom; they embody it. Ironically, our developing self-awareness brings this freedom into view just as it begins to disappear, like sunlight creating a rainbow in the mist even as it boils that mist away.

Frank, p. 9-10

Looking at the development of self-awareness, Frank draws an interesting parallel to the Christian story of Adam and Eve, framing our normal development as a kind of recapitulation of that first fall from grace. As we grow and mature, our sense of self develops, and we “fall” out of this state of grace into our ordinary, deluded state. Of Eve and Adam’s lack of shame (of their nakedness) before consuming the fruit of knowledge, Frank proposes that perhaps the lack of self-awareness, of being a person separate from the world, was the source of their innocence:

… we might think of this nakedness in metaphorical terms. They’d not yet become clothed with any ideas of separate selfhood. It wasn’t just that they were unaware that they’d done something wrong. They were unaware of being separate beings in the first place.

Frank, p. 14

Reading the book, I thought a great deal about Frank’s premise, the argument that spiritual awakening might share some similarities to states we experienced as children. And, I realized that I have often taken for granted that I see spiritual practice (study, meditation, prayer) as focused to realize something that I did not know. I found that I have assumed, without really thinking much about it, that I came into existence as a deluded being, and my practice was focused on letting go of some of my own false views. Perhaps the difference is subtle, but it was one that I appreciated once I saw it.

Reading Frank’s descriptions of his own childhood, which do make up some of the evidence for his argument, I did struggle to see childhood as an idyllic time when we live without a self (at least not once we are old enough to go off and explore the wildness). In the end, this did not end up resonating with my own experience. I actually cannot say that I have very many concrete memories of being a child – I reach and find only vivid little fragments here and there. And, some of the drier facts that I remember about childhood. I enjoyed my childhood, as I remember it, and I value my experiences. But I do not feel deeply nostalgic about the actual experience of being a child. I don’t remember experiencing the kinds of deep experiences that Frank finds in his own past. And, I don’t know that my spiritual practice is focused on reminding me specifically of what I knew as a child. 

Perhaps the gap, between my own recollections and the vision that Frank describes, has something to do with the times and places we each grew up in. Frank mentions the shadow that the Vietnam War and the draft cast over his own childhood. At that time, a real, palpable loss of innocence loomed as one grew towards adulthood. In the early 1980s, I did not have a similar experience, and I don’t remember having any specific concerns about becoming an adult.

Me (right) with my little brother

I do wonder, though, about the children growing up today. A time marked by the strains of the COVID-19 pandemic, and deep polarization. And I wonder whose childhood – Frank’s or my own – would resonate most deeply with my own daughters.

But, even though the specific image of childhood as a time of wisdom, and awakening, did not resonate with me, the larger argument is one that I found interesting, and compelling. To understand that the innocence of children is a kind of wisdom, and that we can let go of some of the rigid views that cut us off from that wisdom – these were some of the key treasures I took from this book, and I am grateful to Frank for sharing his experiences.

And, while I don’t personally look back to my own childhood and see a state of wholeness and wisdom, I do find myself here and now as a single, limited being. A person that emerged at some hazy point in memory from a place of stillness. To take a moment to look back to what came before, to try to touch the stillness that our life emerges from, has been an important part of my own practice, and I appreciated very much the reminders I found in this book.

Where there is meaningful religious practice, there is stillness. And where there is stillness, there is the potential for transformational human experience.

Frank, p. 142
Categories
Ethics

A clean and pure anger

Ukranian diaspora in Brussels protesting

Over the past week, the military conflict in Ukraine has been at the top of my mind, like so many in the world. As reports of escalation of military force have dominated the headlines, my heart goes out to all those affected. I hope for cooler heads to gain purchase, and that Russian forces withdraw from the country. And, I hope for all those involved to find a path to end this needless suffering.

Ukranian diaspora in Brussels protesting
Bartosz Brzezinski – Ukrainian diaspora in Brussels protests the Russian invasion

From where I sit, in the Midwestern U.S., it is difficult to know what I could personally do that would have a real, and meaningful impact. We have joined in local gatherings to support the Ukrainian people, and to call for peace. We’ve looked for ways that our donations can help those who are displaced. And, while I don’t think that social media is a particularly effective way to help, we have been encouraged to see the public support for Ukraine, and all of those who are suffering needlessly.

Last week, I also came across some discussions on Reddit, where people were still processing the early escalation of violent attacks. On a Buddhist-focused forum, I found a number of people struggling with the question of how a Buddhist could act ethically, if they found themselves in the middle of the fighting.

It was probably inevitable, really, that this question would surface in these communities. But, I was disappointed to see a number of strong statements, and what seemed to be rigid, inflexible positions. Although, based on other conversations I have seen on Reddit, I probably should not have been surprised.

I was disappointed to see a number of cases where people reached quickly for a justification to condemn anyone who participated (as violating Buddhist principles), or for joining in the fighting. Other voices did acknowledge the complexity of the situation, and how difficult it can be to find the skillful action in the middle of violence. But, I felt that the places where the discussion focused on whether using force (in self-defense of one’s self or one’s country) was “right” or not to be a bit tone-deaf. In many cases, it felt that those commenting were judging the actions of people who were living out a terrible situation (while they themselves were not in any particular danger).

Overall, can we say that force is never a skillful means to deal with a dangerous situation?  I worry about taking that step – to say that I can be confident that force is never appropriate. And I worry that it is all to easy to judge from afar the actions of people who have been thrown into a terrible situation.

When we find ourselves in the middle of a conflict (violent or otherwise), what one does – the specific actions one takes – is less important than how one does it. If we can act from a position of equanimity, of balance, that is the most important point. I was reminded of a quote from Charlotte Joko Beck, reflecting on whether anger could be pure:

Suzuki Roshi was once asked if anger could be like a pure wind that wipes everything clean. He said, “Yes, but I don’t think you need to worry about that.” He said that he himself had never had an anger that was like a pure wind. And our anger is surely not that pure, either, because of the fear that lies beneath the anger. Unless we contact and experience our fear, we will have harmful anger.

Charlotte Joko Beck, “Nothing Special: Living Zen“

Often, our actions – and especially our use of force – comes out of our fear, or our anger, and the results can be harmful.

Last week, someone from my hometown posted on social media about an incident at a local store. A man was acting erratically, as they described it, and making a number of extreme political statements. From their description, his behavior did not suggest that he was in full control of his faculties. And, it seemed that he might be a risk to himself or others.

The staff in the store were able to talk with the man, and to deescalate the situation, and the person who posted about the incident praised their ability to stay calm and deal with the situation humanely. We should be grateful for those who have the presence of mind to be able to act skillfully in such a charged situation.

I noticed, though, in the comments on this post, one man described how he would have handled the situation. His recommendation was something to the effect of “two punches to the head, one to the throat.”

I’m glad he wasn’t there, in that moment, to make a delicate situation worse. Force may sometimes be the best option available. But, I also understand that we can find ourselves turning quickly to force out of fear. Or, because we see so many stories around us that glorify solving our problems with our fists.

As we look at the conflict in Ukraine, and in every place that people are suffering under injustice, I hope to be careful about judging their actions. I hope we have the humility to know that the challenges in such a moment are very different from those that many of us are facing.

I hope that in the same situation, I would be able to look past my own defensiveness, my own anger, and reach for the best means in the moment. With the full knowledge that I may be wrong. Or, miss some other open path that is in front of us. That is our vow, is it not? To save all beings?  

As Kōshō Uchiyama’s wrote in “Opening the Hand of Thought,” there are may be times when one acts in a way that is counter to the precepts:

… it’s not enough for a bodhisattva of the Mahayana to just uphold the precepts. There are times when you have to break them, too. It’s just that when you do, you have to do so with the resolve of also being willing to accept whatever consequences might follow.

Kōshō Uchiyama, “Opening the Hand of Thought,” from “The Bodhisattva Vow”

The real challenge, though, is to see each situation clearly.

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Categories
Zen

Lottery tips from our Zen practice

Tonight, the drawing for the Mega Millions lottery in the United States will have an obscene prize, $396 million USD. At a price of $2 per ticket, I have a hard time truly grasping the number of people that have participated to generate this jackpot. And, if you are one of them, maybe you are looking for lottery tips on how to maximize your chances of winning tonight’s jackpot.

Credit: Jeremy Brooks, SuperLotto Dreams

Well, I can’t really help you there, but I would say: don’t buy a ticket at all, if you have any hope of winning. That hope, of winning this lottery, is something that can distort your life, and not for the better. But, if you can afford a ticket, and can buy one cleanly, without any hope or expectation of winning? Then, go right ahead.

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But, why should our attitude matter when we play the lottery? And after all, isn’t that why people play lotteries and games of chance in the first place – because they have some hope of winning?

I would argue that our attitude does matter, especially because the odds of winning are so low. To buy a ticket with the hope of winning is to grasp at some unattainable thing. It is like reaching up for the full moon in the sky with the hope of clutching it in your hand.

Tonight, someone may win the jackpot, but you, as one specific person, do not have a (useful) chance of winning. You may very well be aware that the odds of winning the Mega Millions jackpot is about 1 in 302 million.

Three hundred million of anything is hard for our minds to grasp. To put it into perspective, you have a (much, much) better chance of being killed by a bee, hornet or wasp sting. Or, of going to the emergency room for a pogo-stick injury.

Or, compare the Mega Millions drawing to flipping a coin. If you were to flip a fair coin once, your chance of getting heads is 1 in 2 (half the time, the coin will come up heads, half tails). If you flip that coin 3 times, your chance of getting heads all three times is 1 in 8. Not bad, really – you would have a better than 10% chance of succeeding.

But, your chance of winning the Mega Millions lottery is about the same as flipping a fair coin 28 times and getting heads every, single, time (1 in 268 million).

So, to buy a ticket for tonight’s lottery with any hope, any expectation, of winning is not rational, in any sense. In practical terms, your chance of winning is basically the same whether you buy a ticket or not.

This is an argument I have made a number of times in my life, to discourage people from playing the lottery. I recall a time several years ago, that I had a student who was excited about the Powerball lottery (1 in 292 million chance of winning). That young man maintained that if he kept playing, every week, he was sure to win someday.

I argued with him, gently but persistently, going around and around again.  I worked hard to get him to admit that no one, none of us, has a good chance of winning the Powerball. I made spreadsheets, showing the cumulative odds of winning, if we played every drawing for 50 years of our life. (Spoiler alert: the odds are still pretty terrible.) I wanted to be sure that he understood that it was a waste of money, there was no way he would ever win.

And, to be fair, I guess it is not literally impossible that he could win. Some people have won, that is true. But, out of the hundreds and hundreds of millions (billions?) of lottery tickets sold, there have been 223 jackpot winners in Mega Millions, and about the same number have ever won the Powerball jackpot.

Through all of our arguments, I remember clearly how he would listen to me carefully. Nod his head a bit, with a laugh and a bright, mischievous grin.

And, he would say something like, “No, it definitely is a sure thing.”

Looking back, I can see that I argued with him because I felt an obligation to speak up when I saw someone promoting a wrong view. But, I did start to look more closely at my own motivation. After our first conversations, I found that it was not skillful for me to continue to push the issue. I found that I needed him to admit that he was wrong.

We would all have been served better if I had focused on having a conversation, rather than treating this as another lesson from class. I learned something from these arguments, and I am grateful to that student, for holding his ground.

Today, I don’t worry, in general, about whether people play the lottery or not. While the chances of winning are very low (zero, for all practical purposes), is there any real harm to spending $2 USD on a lottery ticket? If you have $2 to spend, and you enjoy daydreaming a bit – or feeling that you are part of the experience – then why not?

And, at this point I do feel that I owe you a confession. For all my protests, I have played both the Powerball and Mega Millions lotteries. Not very often, and usually at points when the jackpots had grown to $200 million or so. And, I did enjoy the feeling of being part of these jackpots, being a part of the event.

And, it was diverting, to be honest, to imagine what I could do with the winnings. We have people in our family who are struggling in various ways, and could use help. We can see the real, pressing needs in our local community, and in the world. It is tempting to think about how we could make a real impact if we were to win.

But, as I’ve seen several large jackpots emerge over the past year, I have also had some concerns about how I was affected by the lottery. As I looked at myself, I found that some part of me did believe that I could win, hoped for it, even to just a small degree. I found myself drawn into daydreaming about what I could do with the jackpot. Fantasies about how much a prize like that could help the people in my life.

And, after two tickets won the last Powerball jackpot, I did notice that I felt let down. Not in a major way, but I was disappointed that it was over. In that moment, I felt (realized?) that I had been wasting my time and energy. For all of my well-intentioned daydreams, what real impact was there for my family? For my community?

So, I do not see anything wrong in general with buying a lottery ticket (if you can afford it). But, for me personally, I don’t think that I should participate. Because, when I look very closely at myself, my actual experience and behavior, I can see that buying a ticket affected me in a negative way.

Reflecting on my experience with the lottery, I was reminded me a short passage that I had read years ago, about the Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki, after he had moved to San Francisco. This was early in his work, teaching Zen in America, as he was working to establish his own habits in a new country:  

… he was careful not to get involved in the sort of socializing he had done in his last years in Japan, when it had become a diversion from his unsatisfying temple responsibilities. He wouldn’t play go anymore. He walked over to the Go Club on the other side of the building one day, reached for the doorknob, paused, then had backed away and gone home.

David Chadwick, Crooked Cucumber

In the whole biography of Suzuki, this was a small point. But, it was one that stuck with me. Perhaps because I have also found myself drawn into comfortable habits by my own diversions. And, I worried that the lottery could become something similar for me – a way to avoid contact with the reality of my life.

I’ve written before about the importance of looking carefully at our motivation to practice, and being aware of how our goals can distort our efforts. In my own Zen practice, I have also been grateful for times, such as with the lottery, where I have been mindful of how my daydreams have widened – solidified – the gap between my self and reality. I appreciate how Steve Hagan captured this gap, in his book, Buddhism Plain and Simple:

Our life is like a wheel out of kilter. It’s not satisfying. ‘There’s something out there I’ve got to get. And there’s something else out there I’ve got to keep away from me.’ This is bondage–this wanting, leaning, craving for something outside ourselves.

Steve Hagan, Buddhism Plain and Simple

In this quote, Steve Hagan is making a general point about human life, about the roots of our dissatisfaction. ⁠

In the case of the lottery, I found that I had become preoccupied, in a small, subtle way. And, in a way that had some negative effects on my life. In noticing this point, I found that for me, the lottery is not innocent fun. For me, I have found that I cannot play the lottery cleanly – without falling a bit out of kilter.

And, this may not be true of you. If you can buy a ticket to the lottery, and then continue on in your life without any impact, that is wonderful. But even so, keep an eye out for other places in your life where you might be caught. My advice to you is to always be attentive to how our life is affected by our actions.

And, I personally work to take Hagan’s advice to heart:

Attend to immediate experience. Cultivate your mind in meditation. Become familiar with the workings and leanings of your own mind. You’ll be spared a great deal of misery, and ultimately you’ll know True Freedom.

Steve Hagan, Buddhism Plain and Simple

Someone will eventually win this lottery prize, and I hope that they will be grateful for their fortune. It would be wonderful if they would use some of their prize to make a difference in the world. For me, I’ll be doing the same, in whatever way I can.

Categories
Reality Science Zen

A look into Being You by Anil Seth

The mystery of consciousness – how minds arise in the material world – has perplexed me for most of my adult life. This question drew me to both Zen Buddhism and neuroscience when I was in college. Still today, I believe that it is important to understand why consciousness exists – because the nature of consciousness, and of our self, can tell us a great deal about what we truly are, in the deepest sense. o, it is no surprise that I was very excited when I came across Being You by Dr. Anil Seth, a new book on the science of consciousness.

Being You by Anil Seth

In the book, Dr. Seth presents a synthesis of current research on consciousness, with a focus on his one work (primarily in the area of perception). In the prologue, Seth begins with a description of a time when he went under general anesthesia.

Experiences of anesthesia are not exactly common (many people have likely never had a surgical procedure that requires general anesthesia. Or, they have only had one, if any). But, general anesthesia is also not exactly rare. Personally, I have been put under anesthesia twice, but not since I had my wisdom teeth removed when I was a teen.

So, given the “ordinariness” of this procedure, I was impressed with how Seth used it to tease out the problem of consciousness:

Five years ago, for the third time in my life, I ceased to exist… I returned, drowsy and disoriented but definitely there. No time had seemed to have passed… I was simply not there, a premonition of the total oblivion of death, and, in its absence of anything, a strangely comforting one.

Anil Seth, “Being You” (pages 1-2)

From this (rather unsettling) start, Seth goes on to lay out the problem of consciousness: how does our consciousness emerge from the activity of a brain? He acknowledges that many other researchers and scholars have struggled with the “hard problem” of consciousness, which he introduces with a quote from Dr. David Chalmers:

It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it arises. Why should physical processing give rise to an inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does.

David Chalmers, “Facing up to the problem of consciousness”

This problem, a kind of philosophical koan, is one that has gripped me for as long as I can remember. As a college student, I vividly recall long walks on the unpaved roads near my home, looking across empty corn and soybean fields at the setting sun. I struggled to understand, then and now, – why do I experience this light as a rich set of colors?  Why does the winter breeze feel cool? How does my subjective experience actually come from the activity of the brain?

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In this book, Seth recommends that we set the hard problem aside, and to focus on what he frames as the “real problem.” The real problem frames the goals for a science of consciousness to “explain, predict, and control the phenomenological properties of consciousness” (p. 25).

While at some level, this feels like Seth is dodging the important question, I left feeling that this could be a valuable mindset to bring to consciousness research. He made an interesting comparison to early theories about life, some of which held that life required something extra, “a spark of life.”

But, a focus on describing and detailing the basic properties of life and living systems has eliminated a need for something “extra” to explain life. As Seth summarizes:

As the details [of life] became filled in – and they are still being filled in – not only did the basic mystery of “what is life” fade away, the very concept of life ramified so that “being alive” is no longer thought of as a single all-or-nothing property… Life became naturalized and all the more fascinating for having become so.

Anil Seth, Being You, p. 32

I don’t know that the consciousness research will follow a similar path, and let go of the hard problem in the end. But, I think that Seth makes a strong argument that focusing on the real problem will help consciousness research move forward. His own book gathers many of the fruits of this approach.  

Is seeing believing?

As a Zen practitioner and neuroscientist, one section of the book that I found particularly compelling was how Seth looked at the contents of our conscious experience – essentially our actual subjective experiences. He focuses on our perceptions of the external world at first, and points to how our perceptions of reality are limited. The argument he uses is pretty much consistent with what I’ve written here about how our senses are limited, and misleading, and about the limits of our ability to truly experience “reality.” He argues, for example, that all of our sensory experience of the world – the sights, sounds, smells, etc. that we experience – are not really faithful representations of the world, but are our “best guesses” – in a statistical sense – about what is out there in the world.

This is easily demonstrated in visual illusions, where our experience of color is not determined just by the wavelengths of light that are falling on the retina in our eyes, but also by the context. For example, in the checkerboard below, both boxes A and B really are the same color, but we perceive A as being much darker because of the surrounding context:

Checkerboard Illusion – Mental Floss – “5 Color Illusions and Why They Work“

But, there is an important difference in emphasis in Seth’s approach, compared to how I would normally describe perception. Usually, I would say that my experience of the world (what I see, hear, taste, etc.) is a representation of the sensory data that that I am receiving. It is how my brain is representing the information coming in from my sensory nerves. I would accept that the brain is attempting to correct for missing information, or context (as in the visual illusion above), so of course we should not trust our perceptions to be direct measurements of the world. The goal of the brain is to produce a useful representation.

But, I would normally accept that what I am experiencing is the incoming sensory information itself. That view, the one I held, assumes that perception is as a process where our senses provide a window onto the world. That window is not fully transparent, certainly. The window controls what information gets through, and transforms or distorts it.

But, Seth goes farther, I think, and in an important way. He argues that our experiences of the world, the contents of our consciousness, is not the sensory information itself. Seth points out that the brain has no direct link to “reality” – it is stuck inside the skull. And the information that the brain receives from the senses is only partial, and often imprecise. So, at each moment the brain must make its best guess about what is out there, in the world, to try to explain the (unreliable, incomplete) sensory signals that are received.

In this view, what we actually experience – the feeling of texture, the color of the sky – is not the sensory information itself. Instead, we experience the predictions that the brain is making, the brain’s best guess about what is out in the world. The sensory information itself, in this view, is mainly used to verify if our guess (a prediction) about the world is true. For this reason, Seth describes our experience of the external world as a controlled hallucination, one where the brain is creating a set of predictions (also referred to as “top-down” – that is, from the brain) that are compared to incoming sensory information (also referred to as “bottom-up” – that is, from the sensory organs).

It seems as though the world is revealed directly to our conscious minds through our sensory organs. With this mindset, it is natural to think of perception as a process of bottom-up feature detection – a “reading” of the world around us. But what we actually perceive is a top-down, inside-out neuronal fantasy that is reined in by reality, not a transparent window onto whatever that reality may be.

Anil Seth, Being You, p. 88

Seth describes this as a controlled hallucination, because he argues that the brain is always making these kinds of predictions. And, when the process of making “top-down” predictions becomes disconnected from those sensory signals, that is when we would start to experience real hallucinations.

But, and for me this was a critical point, Seth points out that the line between hallucination and accurate perception is not a sharp one, but a matter of degree. The brain is constantly making predictions, and what we experience are the predictions. When they are tied to the sensory data, then we would say that a person is accurately perceiving the world. But in both cases, they make up the contents of our conscious experience.

You could even say that we’re all hallucinating all of the time. It’s just that when we agree about our hallucinations, that’s what we call reality.

Anil Seth, Being You, p. 92

Under this view, hallucinogenic drugs may decrease the impact of sensory data, allowing top-down predictions (our best guesses) overwhelm our experience. While Seth does not give much attention to other states, this could also explain some of the properties of dreaming. Or even the kinds of hallucinations that can be common during intensive meditation (makyō):

The makyō I’ve experienced include the sense that my hands in the zazen mudra were huge (a persistent one early on), faces in the wall I sat facing (a particularly beautiful Avalokiteshvara), and the piercing song of a bird coming from the far side of a lake perhaps three miles away.

Dōshō Port, “Is Awakening (Kenshō) a Hallucination (Makyō)?”

Are we more or less than beasts? Than machines?

I found Being You to be a worthwhile read, and there were many other sections that I found personally relevant (as a Zen practitioner, and as a neuroscientist).  I would recommend the book to others, because it was one of those books that showed me the world from a new perspective.

But, there were other sections of the book that I would have liked to see Seth develop further. One of these areas was Seth’s presentation of his overall theory of consciousness, and our sense of self – what he calls the “beast machine” theory. After arguing that our perceptions of the world are fundamentally controlled hallucinations, Seth makes a similar case about emotions and interoception (sensations from the body).

Around this point, Seth introduces a theory of consciousness, and the self, that is grounded very strongly in our status as living being, and in our biological drive to stay alive. We can easily take life for granted, but in reality, keeping even one cell in our body functioning is a delicate dance. How much more difficult when that body has trillions of cells? Seth argues that this drive, to live, is at the core of our brain function:

Evolutionarily speaking, brains are not “for” rational thinking, linguistic communication, or even for perceiving the world. The most fundamental reason any organism has a brain – or any kind of nervous system – is to help it stay alive, through making sure its physiological essential variables remain within the tight ranges compatible with its continued survival.

Anil Seth, Being You, p. 196

Working from this premise, Seth develops the “beast machine” theory of consciousness (and self), which he states as “Our conscious experiences of the world around us, and of ourselves within it, happen with, and because of our living bodies.” (p. 181) 

I cannot do justice to the argument here, certainly, but I feel that in this area, he has drawn too narrow of a foundation. Staying alive is a key goal for any living being, and to be certain, it is not an easy process. At every moment, our bodies must work to push back against entropy.

But, is that our only goal, evolutionarily speaking? 

Perhaps, but many of the behaviors we engage in are only very weakly related to our physiological survival. Some motivations fit very well: consider the drive to eat, drink, find shelter (all of which help keep our bodies in an optimal range). But what of our motivations for exploration, sex, and parental care. What of the drives that support our social communities? These motivations might somehow serve physiological goals (keeping our body alive), but the direct benefit to our own physiological state seems tenuous.  Seth draws one explanation for exploration (as a way of better predicting what you’ll need to do in the future to protect yourself), but I felt even that link was thin.

To flesh out Seth’s theory of consciousness and self, I would have appreciated seeing him integrate more of what we know about other systems in the brain, besides perception. For instance, while there is some attention to decision-making (in the chapter, “Degrees of Freedom”), this part of the book could be developed further. For the interested reader, I would recommend Dr. A. David Redish’s book, The Mind Within the Brain for a good overview of decision-making systems in the brain (full disclosure: Dave was my PhD adviser, so I’m not entirely objective!). For those interested in a Buddhist perspective on the mind (focusing on cognitive and evolutionary psychology), I would also recommend Robert Wright’s excellent book, Why Buddhism is True.

And, while these concerns might seem technical, or trivial, I think they do matter a great deal. Or could, some day.

If we believe that consciousness is intimately tied to our status as living creatures, then we will have concerns about extending any moral protections to non-living beings. And at the moment, that makes perfect sense. But, what about in the future?

Seth uses the popular examples of the android Ava from the movie Ex Machina, and the androids in the series Westworld (both of examples of humans treating their creations quite terribly). By centering his theory on our status as living things, Seth seems unwilling to accept that these (fictional) creatures could be conscious. And he wonders about these kinds of cases: “Will we feel that these new agencies are actually conscious, as well as actually intelligent – even when we know that they are nothing more than lines of computer code?” (p. 269-70).

Seth does state clearly at other points in the text that he is claiming that he believes machine consciousness to be impossible. But, the tone of the book seems skeptical of the potential for machine consciousness, and I worry about that. If you read Being You, I would ask that you look at that part of the book very carefully. If you walk away from this book holding on to a theory that will make it harder for us to recognize machine consciousness, if it ever emerges.

If you end up believing that the take-away message of Ex Machina and Westworld is that we should be worried about being too nice to androids, I think you missed the point.

As work in artificial intelligence proceeds, there is no guarantee if and when one of these robots/androids/programs would become conscious, but if we don’t admit that it is possible, then I do worry that we will unintentionally (callously?) be introducing new suffering into the world.

And, if we are truly committed to freeing all sentient beings from duhkha, we should at least be ready to pay attention to the androids.

Categories
Ethics Zen

Our responsibility to life

In the last few months, as struggles in the U.S. have intensified over access to abortion, I have found myself conflicted as I reflected on the logic of my own attitudes. On the one hand, I see that access to abortion is an important part of reproductive medicine. But, I can appreciate that drawing a single, firm line to define when abortions could be allowed is difficult.

The life of a living thing begins when conditions are right, and will come to an end when conditions change. Much as a whirlpool emerges from the turbulent flow of a river, we exist as a temporary, dynamic structure. Our life is never really separate from the universe, in the same way that a whirlpool is not separate from the water of the river.

And, as every whirlpool stills eventually, it is natural for each life to come to an end. But, it is also natural, and right, to cherish our time as a living being – and I believe deeply that each life is a precious treasure. But, each human life, from conception to birth and beyond, is a process without sharp transitions. Each life takes its shape and structure gradually, much as a whirlpool begins with a gentle rotation, and only slowly takes its mature form. Where then does abortion fit into our responsibility to life?

Photo credit: Alex Wright, Children playing at sunset, Ko Tao, Thailand

Thinking about abortion as a Zen practitioner, one recent piece that I found interesting was by Sallie Jiko Tisdale about Buddhist views on abortion. Tisdale considers the tension that we see in some Buddhist traditions, observing:

… the conclusion of Orthodox Buddhist scholars has long been that a human being appears at the moment of conception. Because human birth is a rare and precious gift, to deprive a being of the opportunity is a grave mistake. Therefore, a one-day-old embryo must be accorded the same protection as living human beings.

Sallie Jiko Tisdale, Is There a Buddhist View on Abortion?

However, this view – of the absolute sanctity of human life – contrasts with some Buddhist teachings that human life is impure, or to be avoided:

Traditional Buddhism is anti-birth, based in a celibate and solitary life outside the family. Sexual desire is said to turn the wheel of samsara, and procreative sex is a greater transgression for a monastic than nonprocreative sex. The uterus is a disgusting place and babies begin to decay at birth, yet women are told to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the embryo… A human body is so rare and precious that we must protect it from the day of conception? … Wouldn’t the highest form of practice be to create more opportunities for human birth?

Sallie Jiko Tisdale, Is There a Buddhist View on Abortion?

In that essay, I was struck by the line, “Wouldn’t the highest form of practice be to create more opportunities for human birth?”

I put this question to myself: if I believe that to live as a human is a precious gift, then do I see an ethical obligation to increase human life, an imperative for procreation?  You can find similar arguments in other religious traditions, where procreation can be framed as a duty (and here, I think of the conservative Christian “Quiverfull” movement which received attention a few years back).

Personally, neither position – that procreation as a duty, or as a defilement – resonates with me. In the end, what is the real difference between these extremes?

Our human life is a rare opportunity. As we look out into the universe around us, we see great beauty. But, we have not yet seen other people, intelligent beings, looking back at us. Our own galaxy has hundreds of billions of stars. There may be other suns in our galaxy (or beyond) that have planets with life on them, and even intelligent life. However, from what we have seen so far, the universe does not appear to be bursting with life. And, intelligent life may be quite rare. In so many places, the flowering of the universe plays out to an empty room.

The life that we have on this planet, then, seems to be a remarkable gift. And, it would have been a terrible shame, I think, if our planet had been yet another lifeless world. If the course of the river of the universe had run entirely straight, with not a single whirlpool, here on Earth. What if not even one person was ever to have taken a deep and authentic delight in this world? How tragic that would have been.

But on the other hand, what if the river of the universe was a chaotic, churning rapids? Full of whirlpools that came into a crowded existence, interfering with one another, full of suffering? We have seen great suffering where humanity increases beyond the ability to support each person. What benefit is there to bringing life into a world that will not support it?

Influenced by my Zen practice, I would love to see the universe more full of life, bursting with it. But, only to the extent that we can bring an end to suffering, to duhkha. Thinking about this delicate balance, I am reminded of a quote from Paul Broks:

To disturb someone from a state of non-existence is a terrible responsibility.

Paul Broks, Into the Silent Land

Broks was not advising us to avoid our responsibility to life. Rather, he was both acknowledging the precariousness of our life, while celebrating the preciousness of life. And the seriousness of creation, the responsibility we have to children. That resonates with me as a parent. I enjoy so much the delight that children take in the world, in all of the possibilities that their futures hold. And I am afraid, too, of where some of those paths may lead. The responsibility of a parent is awe-inspiring. Momentous.

Any conversations we have about abortion, about reproductive medicine in general, should be grounded in this responsibility to our children, to all of life. To all of children who we have called out of the void of non-existence. And, I don’t think that rigid rules (allowing or restricting abortion or any other reproductive medicine) will entirely satisfy this responsibility.

In this vein, I have appreciated a passage in Kōshō Uchiyama’s book, “Opening the Hand of Thought,” where he describes advising a young woman to get an abortion. Uchiyama felt that ending the pregnancy was wrong, but he also believed that it was the right thing to do in her case. And, if she would have suffered negative consequences for that decision, he was willing to suffer right along side of her:

… it’s not enough for a bodhisattva of the Mahayana to just uphold the precepts. There are times when you have to break them, too. It’s just that when you do, you have to do so with the resolve of also being willing to accept whatever consequences might follow.

Kōshō Uchiyama, “Opening the Hand of Thought”, from “The Bodhisattva Vow”

Most importantly, I feel that our responsibility is to care for life. That we nurture the flower that is human existence, for as long as it can bloom. And that we help those humans, and all sentient beings, escape from suffering and to take delight in existence.

In the end, I don’t know what our laws specifically about abortion should be. But our responsibility, one of the bodhisattva’s vows, is to free all sentient beings from duhkha (suffering). Knowing how to act skillfully in any specific case will require our complete engagement, and may lead us to avoid simple rules.

Categories
Meditation Science

How do we become our best self?

mudra

Many of us come to our meditation practice with the hope that we can improve ourselves, that we can become our best self. This is a natural, normal place to begin. But, in Zen Buddhism, we often encounter teachings that ask us to examine our motivation for our practice very closely, lest it lead us to greater suffering.

mudra
Credit: Kevin, “Day 47 – Zazen“

Note: a version of this essay was published recently by The Tattooed Buddha

For instance, consider the First Noble truth in Buddhism, that that human life is characterized by duhkha (often translated as suffering, but dissatisfaction is closer). Steve Hagan, in “Buddhism Plain and Simple” explains that our suffering has three major sources. We cannot avoid pain (physical and mental). Change is core part of our experience (so pleasure is fleeting). And, if we identify our life with our self (our existence as a separate being, one thread of identity that traces its way from birth to death), then we can suffer greatly as we worry about when that thread will be broken. ⁠

If we do not understand the causes of duhkha, or dissatisfaction, in a deep way, then our approach to our meditation practice may just continue our attempts to avoid pain, to resist change, and to turn away from the knowledge that our lives will end someday. Instead of working towards freeing ourselves from duhkha, our practice could end up being cosmetic, something closer to spiritual plastic surgery.

And in fact, the comparison to surgery seems appropriate here. In medicine, we have made great strides in our ability to heal the body, and repair injury. But, at our local dermatologist’s office this week, I was struck by the number of advertisements for purely cosmetic treatments. Rather than focusing on treating a medical condition, or conditions such as acne, the focus felt to be on fighting against the inevitable decline of our bodies. Or, helping us meet some standard of beauty that we felt we have fallen short of.  

And, this seemed like just more duhkha – any benefits we might obtain will fundamentally be unfulfilling, if we do not realize that we cannot stop aging entirely, or that there are limits to how much we can modify our bodies.

In our lifetimes, we are going to see more of these kinds of advertisements, and we will see more that reach past our external appearance to try and shape our minds as well. Even today, our ability to repair the nervous system is improving, and cochlear implants for individuals with hearing loss are a good example. More interventions are on the horizon (for individuals with vision loss, or paralysis, for example). ⁠

And, there is considerable promise to intervene far beyond sensation (hearing, vision) and movement (paralysis). You may have seen a story recently, about a case where direct brain stimulation was used to help a young woman who had a long history of treatment-resistant major depression (for a good summary, see this summary by Dr. Francis Collins).

Credit: Ken Probst, University of California San Francisco

This case is remarkable, and one that will be very important as we work to create new, and more effective, options for mental health treatment. ⁠

Some of these treatments will change our lives for the better, as reconstructive surgery has done. But, following closely behind that work will be those companies that want to sell us all manner of neuroscience enhancements – perhaps as a kind of cosmetic surgery for the brain.

Recently, I listened to an episode of Shankar Vedantam’s Hidden Brain, that captured this tension – our interest in using new technology to improve our daily lives, and be more effective. In the second half of the episode, Vedantam visits George Mason University, to learn about research using transcranial direct current stimulation (dTCS) to help regular people improve their ability to focus their attention after being distracted. In the piece, he describes the allure of this kind of neurostimulation in a way that seems very familiar:

… the idea of running an electrical current through my head is not exactly appealing. But the possibility that I could juggle the many demands on my time? That’s irresistible.

Shankar Vedantam, “Work 2.0: Life, Interrupted” starting at about 34:56

In recent years, many groups have been studying the effectiveness of tDCS to influence our cognition and emotion. The basic technique is quite simple and essentially uses a battery to send a very weak current through the brain.

While research like that described in the episode have shown that tDCS has some potential to improve some cognitive skills, Dr. Melissa Scheldrup (who was a graduate student at the time), expressed hesitation about using the technology casually:

I personally don’t think that tDCS should be used in somebody’s everyday life. It should be used as a tool to look at the underlying physiological process. So, I don’t think that everybody should have a helmet that has this… it’s like cheating.

Melissa Scheldrup, “Work 2.0: Life, Interrupted” starting at about 47:54

While I personally am not as worried about this technology becoming a type of cheating, I do have concerns about adopting this technology to help us be better workers. I worry that this may just be a shortcut, that stops us from looking more deeply at why we feel we need to be better workers.

But, many companies are pressing forward with technology aimed at neuroenhancement. For instance, I recently came across an article from the Huffington Post from back in 2015. The story was about a device produced by the company Thync to help us decrease anxiety using transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) of the vagus nerve. The first line was interesting: “What if you could zap your brain into a state of calm or energy with only the push of a button?”

Indeed, what if we could?

Thync’s stimulator was based on at least one interesting research study (published in 2015 in Scientific Reports), but their early consumer devices never really caught on.

Today, Thync seem to be marketing some new products, like one that they call the “FeelZing” energy patch. An ad on their site promises “Energy and focus boost for 4 hours,” and “Reduced mental fatigue,” where a dose of electrical stimulation can give you a boost without needing to use caffeine or other stimulants. Images in their promotional video show a person apparently in seated meditation. The narrative appears to imply that the FeelZing gives the benefits of meditation (energy? focusing?) without needing to resort to caffeine or stimulants.

Personally, I find this work, to apply research findings to better our lives, to be very interesting. And, to also be fundamentally flawed if we use them in isolation. It feels that some of this work is focused on treating the symptoms of our dissatisfaction, rather than the root cause of the disease of suffering. To really benefit from any of these technologies, we need to look at the root of our suffering. Otherwise, we may just be leaning more heavily into duhkha.

And here, I think that some advice on Zen practice may be helpful. While there is no perfect way for us to ensure that our meditation practice is not just more duhkha, I have appreciated advice from Zen teachers such as Dainin Katagiri. Of zazen (the practice of seated meditation), Katagiri said that “Some Zen teachers tell us how helpful it is for us to do zazen… But I said just the opposite: zazen is useless” (Dainin Katagiri, “Returning to Silence”).

Meditation is useless?  This may seem like a contradiction, to recommend that we pursue a useless practice. But, the important point is that when our meditation practice is motivated by what we expect to “get” out of it (the benefits), then this can be an obstacle to ending suffering.

In a similar vein, Charlotte Joko Beck advised us that the fruits of a meditation practice may not be those we expected when we first sat down:

What we get out of practice is being more awake. Being more alive. Knowing our mischievous tendencies so well that we don’t need to visit them on others. We learn that it’s never okay to yell at somebody just because we feel upset. Practice helps us realize where our life is stagnant.

Charlotte Joko Beck, “Nothing Special: Living Zen”

What I have appreciated about these approaches to Zen practice is the call to be aware, as much as we can, of when our motivations are driven by duhkha. And, to still act (to continue meditating, to continue to learn about our bodies and the brain).  Katagiri pointed out to how we can work to transform our “thirsting desire” – our ambition, our craving to get what we want – into something that benefits all beings:  

According to the story of Zen Master Rinzai’s life, he planted pine trees at the temple for two reasons: one was to make the scenery of the temple more beautiful, and the other was so they would be there for future generations. His activity was based on human thirsting desire, but his purpose was vast, extending in the universe. If you use thirsting desire in a selfish way it is really dangerous, but if you use thirsting desire for the benefit of others, your purpose, your hope extends far.

Dainan Katagiri, “Returning to Silence”

Our desire for pleasure, for power, and to hold off the inherent transiency of life can all lead to suffering. But, if we “know that thirsting desire is something that can be used for all sentient beings”, as Katagiri said, then we can transform that desire and through it, the world. ⁠

If we understand these points, then I think that the fruits of our meditation practice, and from our use of new technologies will lead us to our best self. And, that best self happens to be one that has let go of all of our gaining ideas.

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Featured Meditation

This life is a precious treasure

Frosted zinnia

Recently, I wrote an essay about looking at our lives as humans through the window of metaphor. To see our existence as a complex structure, a pattern that depends on conditions, similar to a whirlpool.

This view of our lives is something that I have found very useful, in helping me explain what we are, and the arc that our lives follow. These metaphors have also given me comfort in my life. But, it would wrong to say that they have removed the sting of death and suffering. And, I have recently found myself worrying that the views in my last essay could be seen as cold, and indifferent when we come to the end of a life.

The very day after I published that last essay, I received a call from a close family member. They had just received some troubling medical news. While not conclusive, a scan had potentially revealed a very serious illness. The month that followed since has been a limbo as we have all waited for more information. And now, once additional tests have confirmed our original fears, we are shifting into trying to learn more about what options might be available.

I would love to be able to tell you that through all of this, that I found myself perfectly prepared for this moment by my meditation practice, by my faith. To be able to tell you that I have handled it calmly, and offered comfort to my relative and their family. To their young child. To my own spouse and children. But, to be completely honest, while I have been able to be present for my family, I have also struggled in deep way ever since I received that call.

I’ve cried more in the past month than probably in all of the past decade. With my spouse, on the phone with my family, alone in my car, in my office. For most of an entire month, this has been with me. In a constant, almost physical way that I am really not used to. Like carrying a heavy stone.

But, if endings are natural, and each life comes to a close when conditions change, then why do we lament the loss of a life? Is our anxiety about loss, or our grief, wrong in some sense?

Feeling stuck in this contradiction, I have thought of a poem by Issa many times over the past several weeks:

The world is a dew drop,
Yes, the world is a dew drop,
And yet, and yet . . .

Kobayashi Issa

⁠Our life as a conscious being, as a single person, is like a whirlpool that depends on the flow of the river and the rocks along the river bed. Our life is like a clear, bright note, trembling in the air, rising as our breath flows across a flute. Each whirlpool will subside. No song carries on forever. It is natural for each to come to an end.

And yet, and yet, it is also natural that we lament: each life is a precious treasure. The grief we feel is an important part of how we honor those lives, and our commitment to the wellbeing of all beings.

In his book, “Buddhism Plain and Simple,” Steve Hagan shared his reflections on the pain of losing a close friend suddenly. And, he pointed to how we must acknowledge that endings, that change, are fundamental to life: “This is human life. We cannot lose sight of it. Weeds will flourish, though we hate them and wish them gone; flowers will fall, though we love them and long for them to remain.“

Frosted zinnia
Zinnias from our garden, wilting suddenly after the first fall frost.

I have been deeply impacted by the teachings of Hagan and other Zen teachers who have not called on us to reject our grief. Rather, they have drawn us back to look more closely at how endings are inextricable from beginnings. And, while we will grieve, we can also see that in a deep, crucial sense, nothing is created in birth or lost in death.

As he reflected on a waterfall he saw in Yosemite National Park, Shunryu Suzuki captured this view well when he said,

… the water does not come down in as one stream, but is separated into many tiny streams. From a distance, it looks like a curtain. And I thought it must be a very difficult experience for each drop of water to come down from the top of such a high mountain… ⁠And it seems to me that our human life may be like this. We have many difficult experiences in our life. But at the same time, I thought, the water was not originally separated, but was one whole river.

Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

Zen practice, similar to a number of other meditation traditions, tries to help us look past our self, and to loosen the hold of our individual ego on how we see our life. But, the goal is not nihilistic, but rather to help us make a deep shift in perspective. Each drop in a waterfall emerges from the same river at the top, and all will merge again at the bottom. ⁠

Hagan, as he considered our desire to prevent or avoid the changes that we don’t want in our lives (loss, death), also pointed back to how the contingency of life is an important part of why it is precious. Considering how we regret seeing the flowers wilt and fade, he wrote:

One solution to this problem is to ignore the real rose and substitute a plastic one, one that never dies (and never lives). But is a plastic rose what we want? No, of course not. We want the real rose. We want the one that dies. We want it because it dies, because it’s fleeting, because it fades. It’s this very quality that makes it precious.

Steve Hagan, Buddhism Plain and Simple

This example that Hagan uses reminds me of many stories in science fiction about immortality. Many of which explore the promise of new technology to greatly extend the human lifespan. Or, to give our consciousness life in a new body (or perhaps in a computer simulation). Greg Egan’s book, “Permutation City,” is a good example, where Egan considers how humans might live if we could “upload” our consciousness to computer simulations.

What I love about Egan’s story is how much attention he gives to the problem that (really) long life, much less immortality, poses for us. How many of us would really be prepared to live for thousands, upon thousands, of years? Probably very few of us could, if we were to keep living in the ways that we do now. Egan thinks very carefully about this problem, and asks what a person would have to give up of themselves, how deeply they have to transform themselves, in order to truly be able to live indefinitely. His answer?  Quite a bit, and that point has resonated with me.

Like Egan, I think that most of us are not really prepared (emotionally, psychologically) to live forever. But, many of us also find the end of a life of a loved one to come too soon, no matter how old a person is. Some of our fascination with immortality, I think, is more motivated by our fear of death, rather than a real desire to exist forever.

I remember talking with my children about some story or movie about immortality, and I said to them that most people were not really looking for immortality, saying something to the effect, “It’s not that people really want to live forever; they are mostly afraid of dying.”  ⁠

An oversimplification, true. But, I think that for me, it captures an important part of how I feel. I don’t want to see the flowers wilt, or to lose the whirlpools. I don’t want the song to end. I know that they can’t go on forever, sure. I hope they will a little longer.

So, I personally have found this last month to be a difficult experience. There will be more tears in our future. And, that is ok. We don’t know how much time we have left together. But we can savor each moment. As Scott McCloud wrote in “The Sculptor,” (a graphic novel that is a beautiful meditation on death and the urge to leave a legacy):

“Every minute is an ocean… let them in… let them all in…”⁠

For me, my practice has been a comfort in this time. It has given me a refuge that I treasure. But, it has not been some kind of emotional insulation. And, I wouldn’t want that: to avoid suffering by cutting off those feelings. Each life is a precious treasure, and I am grateful for the chance to enjoy this one, and that this practice has helped me to better be present for each minute of it.