Why are our minds repeatedly trapped in the bodies of animals and humans?

Sow a thought, reap an action
Sow an action, reap a habit
Sow a habit, reap a character
Sow a character, reap a destiny

 

Why are the minds of samsaric beings repeatedly drawn into the bodies of animals and humans?  If the mind is capable of existing independently of the body, then why doesn't it do so?   What drives it to biological rebirth? 

Why can't we debiologize ourselves once and for all?
 
If there is a path to enlightenment which leads out of this continual cycle of birth, aging, sickness and death, why doesn't everybody take it?   If we all have Buddha nature, why do we always end up in such a mess? Why do we seem to take a perverse delight in spiritual self-harm?

The reason for this endless cycle of suffering is that we always have 'something on our mind'; and that something is karma.  The true nature of our mind is clarity, but that clarity is obscured, distorted and weighed down by the imprints of millions of nasty, brutish and usually violently short lifetimes. 

Our minds are deluded into thinking that happiness can be found in samsara, and though it has never worked in the past, this time we'll finally get it right. So after death we are drawn into another rebirth in the biological realms.

Fortunately, we can accomplish a karmic detox of all this accumulated delusional crap, and bring about long-term mental peace and clarity, leading to release from samsaric rebirth for ourselves and others.


More at Buddhist Philosophy

Buddhism and Science

SEE ALSO  Buddhist Philosophy

The truth about the situation in Myanmar

The OIC-financed dhimmi MSM are full of jihadist taqiyya and kuffarophobic agitprop about the situation in Myanmar.
Learn the truth here and here

See also No Future for Buddhism

Understanding Terrorism

Understanding the minds and motivations of the Jihadist bombers

'I have been made victorious with terror!'

UPDATE HALLOWEEN 2017.
ANOTHER ATTACK, THIS TIME VEHICULAR JIHAD RATHER THAN A BOMBING,  WITH A TRUCK AIMED AT A SCHOOL BUS, BUT THE SAME ARGUMENTS APPLY...


I wrote this original analysis of terrorism as a contagious mental illness  four years ago.   The situation has continued to deteriorate since then, with the attacks becoming ever more frequent, and the latest one specifically targeting children, leaving little girls killed, maimed, mutilated and disfigured for life, with faces ripped apart by shrapnel deliberately added to the bomb for that purpose.  Ever since the Beslan attack, the jihadists have been particularly keen to murder and maim infidel children. with more attacks planned for the future.   (For an explanation of the jihadist attitude to child murder/abuse/rape read this)

 

Saffie Roussos, youngest victim of Jihadist human sacrifice

The well-intentioned but dangerous delusion of the 'Religion of Peace'
It is dangerous and deluded wishful thinking, no matter how well-intentioned,  to claim that every major world religion, including Jihadism,  advocates peace, love and compassion at the heart of its teachings, and that all violent manifestations are a corruption of the original faith. 

- It is wishful thinking, because we 'kuffars', as they call us, are vainly wishing that all the jihadists, and their supporters and enablers, are mistaken about the true nature of their faith. 

- It is deluded, because half-an-hour's investigation of the teachings of Jihadism, the character of its founder, and the history of its expansion, will demonstrate that the jihadists are correct. The ideology is indeed powered by hatred, intolerance, ignorance and aggression  Jihadism is an arrogant, expansionist, totalitarian and supremacist faith, commanded to world domination. It always has been and always will be.

- And it is dangerous wishful thinking, similar to the well-intentioned 1930's propaganda that the Nazis wanted 'Peace in our time', which lulled the civilised world into complacency, and allowed the forces of evil to gather strength. Hitler could have been stopped much earlier, and with far less bloodshed, if the appeasers had not deluded themselves, and most of the gullible public, about the true nature of his ideology.  

Malware of the Mind
Perhaps if we were to reclassify jihadism from being a religion, to being a contagious form of insanity, we might find better ways of dealing with it.  Maybe if we regarded jihadism as a public health problem, we could use some of the epidemiological approaches to eradicating it that have been so successful against other contagious scourges of humanity, such as smallpox and polio. 

Using the public health analogy, we could employ immunization. We could deliberately spread the metameme (a meme about memes) to give immunity to more pernicious supremacist memes by stimulating critical thinking in would-be jihadists, much like the harmless cowpox virus can block out the lethal smallpox virus by stimulating the immune system.

The mental infection of jihadism is transmitted by a collection of memes (mind-viruses), which when they come together in an organized, mutually-reinforcing system such as religious supremacism are known as a memeplex.  A malignant memeplex takes over the normal mental processes of its host, just like a virus takes over the normal biochemical processes of the body to ensure its own reproduction and spread, even if it means destroying its host in the process.

As Nobel-prize winning author V.S. Naipaul pointed out, hatred of kuffars is the pivot of supremacist existence, and this is the central meme around which all the other components of the jihadist memeplex revolve.   The hatred is so psychopathically intense that the host will destroy himself in order to further the purposes of the memes.  

Jihadism, like Nazism, is what political scientists classify as an 'otherising' ideology. Both Nazism and Jihadism derive their energy from dividing the world into them versus us. For Nazism this conflict is Untermenschen versus Ubermenschen, for Jihadism it is Kuffars versus Ummah. Despite the differences in terminology, the results are very much the same.  This divisiveness leads to the classical liberal dilemma of tolerance of the intolerant, or how do you avoid otherising people who insist on otherising you from themselves?

This isn't to say that all supremacists (and especially heretics such as Ahmadiyyas and Sufis) automatically hate us. It's just that 'Kill the unbelievers wherever you find them' is the pivotal commandment of the Koran, with the phrase 'wherever you find them' presumably including children's concerts.   The jihadist hostility towards kuffars is obsessive, about one third of the Koran consists of fulminations against unbelievers!

So the devout supremacist will always have this genocidal commandment ticking away at the back of his mind, ready to explode into Sudden Jihad Syndrome as soon as he becomes mentally unstable.   

For mentally unstable people who have been brought up in Christian, Jewish, Buddhist or Hindu cultures, the internalized commandment 'Thou shalt not kill' may have a restraining influence.    But for the mentally disturbed supremacist, the commandment 'Thou shalt kill!' has the opposite effect. 

This seething hatred of all infidels, whether men, women or children, provides much of the motivation and justification for the jihadist rape gangs and pedophile networks who harass women and girls in Europe's cities. As with the caliphate, the relevant verses in the Koran and hadiths are quoted to justify their sadisticly depraved and perverted lusts, but that's another story.

From the Buddhist point of view, jihadists such as the Manchester bombers deserve compassion just as much as their victims, for their lives are also being ruined by this contagious viral memeplex of self-reinforcing delusions. A rabid dog suffers from the rabies virus just as much as the people he bites. 

And perhaps Buddhism might offer some hope of treatment for potential jihadists. It may be possible to use Buddhist meditation techniques to cut through delusions and weed out malignant memes even after they have become established ( more here)

And finally, another intellectual weapon against the ideology of jihadism is the theory of evolution itself (from which memetics and the metameme derive).  Jihadism is incompatible with evolution. If evolution is true then the Koran is false, and consequently all its incitements to violence are revealed as nothing but the rantings and ravings of a psychopath, rather than the commandments of God.   

Of course evolution is no threat to Buddhism, though Darwinism does raise some interesting questions about what experiences our body censors from our mind. 

See also Malignant memes, memeplexes and the metameme.
and   TERRORISM AND BUDDHISM 

 

The Two Enlightenments - Buddha and Voltaire

Enlightenment Values  (Not applicable in Scotland)

From The Public Domain Review     
by Donald S. Lopez, Jr.
 
"...It would not be until well into the nineteenth century that European scholars, all sons of the Enlightenment, sought to turn the founders of religions from gods into men, to separate their precepts from church doctrine. For Jesus and the Buddha, this transformation entailed not debasement but exaltation... Over the course of the nineteenth century, the European portrayal of Buddhism underwent a profound metamorphosis: from a form of idolatry practiced by pagans, to a religion, and a world religion, finally to something beyond the category of religion...

Read it all

See also  The Rational Basis of Buddhism 

Nagarjuna, Gödel’s Theorem and Russell’s Paradox

Unconventional knowledge

by Kenichi Morita

from East-West paths to unconventional computing

Distinguishing between “conventional computing” and “unconventional computing” is not so easy, since the notion of unconventional computing is rather vague. Some scientist may want to give a rigorous definition of it. But, if he or she does so, then unconventional computing will become less attractive. The very vagueness of the concept stimulates one's imagination, and thus is a source of creation.

In this short essay, related to such a problem, we consider thinking styles of the West and the East. We examine several possibilities of ways by which we can recognize various concepts in the world, and acquire enlightenment from the nature. At first, we begin with the two categories of knowledge in Buddhism. They are “discriminative knowledge” and “non-discriminative knowledge” (however, as we shall see below, discrimination between “discriminative knowledge” and “non-discriminative knowledge” itself is not important at all in Buddhism). Although it is very difficult to explain them, in particular  non-discriminative knowledge, by words, here we dare to give some considerations on them.

Discriminative knowledge is just the set-theoretic one. Namely, it is a knowledge acquired by classifying things existing in the world.  For example, the discriminative knowledge on “cat” is obtained by distinguishing the objects that are cats from the objects that are not cats. Therefore, what we can argue based on discriminative knowledge is a relation among the sets corresponding to various concepts, e.g., the set of cats is contained in the sets of animals, and so on. Knowledge described by an ordinary language (or a mathematical language like a logic formula) is of this kind, since “words” basically have a function to distinguish certain things from others.

Non-discriminative knowledge, on the other hand, is regarded as the true wisdom in Buddhism. But, it is very difficult to explain it in words, since words can be used for describing discriminative knowledge. Therefore, the only method by which we can express it is using a negative sentence like “Non-discriminative knowledge is not a knowledge that is obtained by distinguishing certain things from others.”

Actually, non-discriminative knowledge is recognized neither by words, nor by thinking, nor by act. Moreover, it is not even recognizable. This is because all acts such as recognizing, thinking, and explaining some objects necessarily accompany discrimination between the self (i.e., actor) and the object. In Buddhism, everything is empty, i.e., it has no reality in the world in its essence. Hence, there is nothing to be discriminated, and there is a truth that can be gotten without discriminating things. Furthermore, such a truth (non-discriminative knowledge) itself is also empty, and thus does not exist. It may sound contradictory, but this is caused by explaining it by ordinary words.

There is no doubt that discriminative knowledge brings practical convenience to our daily life. Today's science also relies on discriminative knowledge. There, objects to be studied are clearly identified, and their properties are described precisely. By this, science brought us a great success. However, discrimination is considered as a kind of “biased view” in Buddhism. Thus, we should note that such a knowledge is a “relative” one. Namely, when we state a scientific truth, we can only say like “If we assume a certain thing is distinguishable from others based on some (biased) viewpoint, then we can conclude so-and-so on it.” We should thus be careful not to overestimate the descriptive power of languages.

It is well known that from the end of 19th century the foundation of mathematics has been formalized rigorously with the utmost precision. It is, of course, based on discriminative knowledge. However, at the same time, problems and limitations of such a methodology were also disclosed. A paradox by Bertrand Russell on the set theory is the most famous one, which first appeared in Nachwort of the Frege's book (Frege, 1903). Russell's paradox is as follows:

Let R be the set of all sets each of which does not contain itself as a member.

Is R a member of itself or not? In either case, it contradicts the definition of R.

Due to this paradox, the naive set theory had to be replaced by some sophisticated ones such as the type theory. The incompleteness theorem by Kurt Gödel (1931) also shows a limitation of a formal mathematical system. He proved that in every formal system in which natural numbers can be dealt with, there exists a “true” formula that cannot be proved in this system. He showed it by composing a formula having the meaning  “This formula is unprovable.”

Nagarjuna is a Buddhist priest and philosopher who lived in India around 150 - 250 AD. He is the founder of Madhyamaka school of Buddhism, where he developed the theory of emptiness. In his book Vigrahavyavartani (The Dispeller of Disputes) (Westerhoff, 2010), he pointed out “very logically” that false thinking will be caused by relying only on discriminative knowledge. This book is written in the following form. First, philosophers of other schools who believe every concept has a substance (here, we call them philosophical realists) present objections against those of Madhyamaka school. Then, Nagarjuna refutes all of them.

While philosophers of Madhyamaka school assert every concept has no substance (but they assert “nothing” as we shall see below), the opponents (philosophical realists) say as follows (Westerhoff, 2010):

If the substance of all things is not to be found anywhere, your assertion which is devoid of substance is not able to refute substance. (Verse 1)

Moreover, if that statement exists substantially, your earlier thesis is refuted. There is an inequality to be explained, and the specific reason for this should be given. (Verse2)

Nagarjuna says:

If I had any thesis, that fault would apply to me. But I do not have any thesis, so there is indeed no fault for me. (Verse 29)

To that extent, while all things are empty, completely pacified, and by nature free from substance, from where could a thesis come? (Commentary by Nagarjuna on Verse 29)

That is, without saying “all things are empty,”all things are empty by nature, and hence the Nagarjuna's assertion itself is also empty.

We can see that the observation “If all things are empty, then the assertion ‘all things are empty’ cannot exist” resembles the second incompleteness theorem:

“If a formal system in which natural numbers can be dealt with is consistent, then consistency of the system cannot be proved in the system” by Gödel (1931).

However, methodologies for obtaining the above observations are quite different. In the former case, non-discriminative knowledge played the crucial role, and thus the observation itself is again empty.

Nagarjuna launches a counterattack against philosophical realists, who claim “all things have substances", by the following objection:

The name “non-existent” what is this, something existent or again non-existent? For if it is existent or if it is nonexistent, either way your position is deficient. (Verse 58)

It is clear that the above argument is analogous to Russell's paradox. By this, Nagarjuna pointed out that philosophical realists who rely only on discriminative knowledge have a logical fault. However, as stated in Verse 29, Nagarjuna asserts nothing in his book.

It will be reasonable to regard discriminative knowledge as conventional knowledge. Then, how is non-discriminative knowledge? Although this kind of knowledge has been argued by philosophers and Buddhists for a very long time, we can say neither conventional nor unconventional. Probably, it is meaningless to make such a distinction. Instead, we consider a question: Can we use non-discriminative knowledge for finding a new way of scientific thinking, and for giving a new methodology of unconventional computing? Since current scientific knowledge is very far from non-discriminative knowledge, it looks quite difficult to do so. However, it will really stimulate our imagination, and may help us to widen the vista of unconventional computing.

I have been studying reversible computing and cellular automata (Morita, 2008) for more than 30 years. Through the research onthese topics, I tried to find novel ways of computing, and thus I think they may be in the category of unconventional computing. Besides the scientific research, I was interested in Buddhism philosophy. In 1970's and 80's, I read Japanese translations of several sutras and old texts of Buddhism. They are, for example, Prajnaparamita Sutra (Sutra of Perfection of Transcendent Wisdom), and Vimalakirti-nirdesa Sutra (Vimalakirti Sutra), as well as Vigrahavyavartani (The Dispeller of Disputes). All of them discuss emptiness of various concepts and things in the world, but assert nothing. I was greatly impressed by these arguments, which themselves are empty. Although my research results are, of course, given in the form of discriminative knowledge, and thus in the purely Western style, I think such a thought somehow influenced me on my research when exploring new ways for unconventional computing.

Read the full article here 

See also

Liberation: jumping out of the loop, stepping out of the system and transcendence    

and

Beyond True and False by Graham Priest   

Sentience, suffering, and the futile quest for homeostasis

The first priority of all living organisms is to maintain a steady state, known as homeostasis - the regulated stability of structures, organs and internal systems that allows life to continue.

All living things need to protect and maintain a minimum functioning structure to survive.    An animal deprived of functioning limbs, or a plant deprived of leaves, will soon die. 

Metabolic homeostasis

In addition, all organisms need to regulate a complex set of interacting metabolic chemical reactions. 

From the simplest unicellular organisms to the most complex plants and animals, internal processes operate to keep conditions within tight limits to allow these reactions to proceed. Homeostatic processes act at the level of the cell, the tissue, and the organ, as well as for the organism as a whole.  
 
Maintenance of homeostasis requires a continuing input of energy in the form of food for animals, and sunlight for plants.   If the energy needed to maintain homeostasis exceeds the energy input, the organism will die once its reserves are exhausted.  In terms of energy expenditure, you’ve got to keep running just to stay still.



In addition to maintaining structural integrity and metabolic stability, a juvenile organism will have a secondary priority to grow, and an adult organism a secondary priority to reproduce.  But without homeostasis, these secondary aims cannot be achieved.


Conscious and unconscious homeostasis.
Non-sentient organisms, such as plants and bacteria, maintain homeostasis by purely mechanistic processes, using automatic feedback in the same way that a centrifugal governor mechanism maintains a steady speed for a steam engine.    Even in sentient animals, many homeostatic processes are unconscious, and we have no awareness of their operations.

Automatic feedback mechanism

But the game completely changes when sentience comes into the picture.  Two non-mechanistic factors come into play - qualia and intentionality - which allow far more adaptive homeostatic control strategies than purely automatic feedback loops.

Qualia (singular quale) are qualitative experiences including experiences of suffering such as  thirst, hunger, fear, pain and so on.

Intentionality is the property of being ‘about’ something, of having 'an intentional object'.

So the quale of thirst forces the mind to become obsessively intentional about water, the quale of hunger forces the mind to become similarly intentional about food, and the qualia of  pain and fear force the mind to become intentional about avoiding the causes of these unpleasant sensations (objects of aversion).


Did sentience evolve, or was it co-opted?
Now the interesting thing is that neither qualia nor intentionality are physical phenomena (as was first pointed out by the Victorian physicist John Tyndall 140 years ago).  Neither are they in any sense mechanistic phenomena.
 
Consequently, there is no known process by which sentience could have arisen by Darwinian evolution.  Evolution can account for the physical structure of the bodies of sentient beings and their automatic homeostatic control mechanisms, but it cannot bridge the explanatory gap between the physical and the mental.

As Thomas Nagel argues, the materialist neo-Darwinian conception of nature is incomplete, because it cannot adequately explain the appearance of consciousness.

So if sentient minds haven’t evolved, have they nevertheless been co-opted by evolutionary processes to improve the homeostatic behavior of animals? Suffering, unpleasant though it may be for the individual, has survival and evolutionary advantages for the species. 

To quote Richard Dawkins:

"The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored."


Mental states such as suffering, unsatisfactoriness and pleasure are qualitative subjective experiences, which carry strong immediate meanings, and do not exist in automata - mechanistic systems such as relay networks or computers.

It is for this reason that complex animals have evolved neural structures which attract and capture minds. Fundamentally, it is the suffering and grasping of their minds - the need to avoid pain and seek pleasure - that provides the driving force for survival and reproduction of complex animals. The physical body enters into a symbiotic relationship with a non-physical mind.

In Buddhist philosophy, the mind of a sentient being is not a product of biological processes, but something primordial which has existed since beginningless time, and which will be drawn into another body once the present one has died. But reflecting on Richard Dawkins' description of the horrors of Samsara, it's surprising that sentient minds allow themselves to be co-opted by biological systems again and again. Maybe they've got no choice, maybe they're deluded, or maybe they just don't know how to get out.

The brain is a device which has evolved to delude the mind.
It could also be argued that in addition to biochemical and physiological mechanisms for maintaining homeostasis, evolution has also given sentient beings a psychological homeostatic mechanism by constructing the illusion of a stable self, which can and must be maintained.

This false sense of a stable self is, of course, a delusion, though from the evolutionary point of view, a very useful one.

Survival advantages of sentience
In evolutionary terms, any adaptation or feature must have some selective benefit for the organism that possesses it. Obviously, a physical body equipped with sentience will have an improved chance of surviving to propagate its genes over any mindless competitor which is not deterred by pain or motivated by pleasure.

But what does the mind gain from this symbiotic association?   Usually little or nothing. 

When the life of the biological partner comes to an end, the mind has to endure the sufferings of death and then leave its home, being unable to take anything with it. It must then enter the unstable hallucinatory state of the bardo,  and perhaps soon after find a new body. 

Or even worse, if it doesn't find a new body quickly, it may stay in a nightmarish state of karmically induced hallucinations - a perpetual bad trip that lasts indefinitely: 'for in that sleep of death what dreams may come...'.

Parasitic body, parasitized mind?
In Buddhist terminology these minds are wanderers or migrators in samsara (the realms of suffering and delusions). The mind is non-evolved and non-evolving, at least not by the normal processes of natural selection. The body uses the mind for its own purposes, not vice versa as we may like to imagine.
 
So, perhaps the relationship between mind and body is more one of parasitism than symbiosis. The biological body gets a better chance to propagate itself.  But the mind has to endure dukkha -  the ever-changing experiences of craving, suffering and attachment, that the body imposes upon it in order to force it to do what is necessary for survival, competition and reproduction.


Homeostasis is a mug's game
Since maintaining homeostasis is like running to keep still, sooner or later the body's systems will wear out, with the inevitable results that the Buddha observed on his ride outside the palace...

The Four Sights

See also Buddhist Philosophy

and Can you debiologize yourself?
 

Meditation, Downward Causation, Neuroplasticity and the Quantum Zeno Effect.

Recent research has shown that Buddhist meditation can not only affect long-term behavior, but can actually alter the structure of the brain (1, 2, 3,  4).

So how does something as non-physical as the attention developed during meditation affect physical structures of the brain?  According to the mechanistic materialist worldview, this sort of 'downward-causation' (mind over matter) shouldn't happen.  To a materialist, mental activities result from physical processes, not vice versa.

One possible mechanism for downward causation has been suggested by physicist Henry Stapp, who proposed that the Quantum Zeno Effect  allows the observer to hold patterns of energy states in a stable condition where they would normally, if left unobserved, decay randomly .  

The Quantum Zeno effect (also known as the Turing paradox) is a situation in which an unstable quantum system, if observed continuously, will never decay. One can "freeze" the evolution of the system by measuring it frequently enough in its known initial state. 

A watched quantum state never changes

The prolonged processes of attention in Buddhist meditation are good candidates for the kind of mental activities that could affect the physical state of microscopic brain structures.


Related Articles

Buddhism, Quantum Physics and Mind

Quantum Buddhism

The Mind-Bending History Of Buddhism And Psychedelics

Opening the doors of perception?  Go ask Alice

by Carolyn Gregoire

In the Huffington Post

"The history of Buddhism and of psychedelics in American culture follow a surprisingly similar trajectory from the 1950s through the present-day.

But perhaps this shouldn't come as a surprise, given that they share a common aim: the liberation of the mind.

Many of the thinkers who turned to Buddhism and other Eastern philosophies in the 1960s -- including Alan Watts, Jack Kerouac, Aldous Huxley, Allen Ginsberg and Ram Dass -- were influenced in some way by their experiences with LSD and other psychedelic drugs.

American Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield said that LSD, "prepares the mind for Buddhism," while Allan Watts described both practices as being part of a comprehensive philosophical quest.

Now, more than 60 years later, we're seeing a resurgence of popular interest in Buddhism -- with mindfulness meditation now firmly entrenched in the cultural mainstream -- and also in psychedelics, which are being investigated as therapeutic agents for mental health issues including depression, anxiety and addiction.

The intersection of these practices raises a number of questions: Are psychedelics an obstruction to a Dharma practice, or a helpful accompaniment? Are mind-altering substances a legitimate means of personal transformation..."    Read it all here  

 
See also Can you trust your brain?

and  Buddhism, Shamanism and the use of Hallucinogens   

THE STRUCTURE OF BUDDHISM

Aspects, components and interfaces

Buddhism - a religion, a philosophy or a psychology? Or all three?

Most religions have no foundation apart from the ‘truths’ revealed long ago by the voices of the gods to a collection of prophets. 

When different voices of different gods say different things to different prophets, then the only way to determine which version is correct is by war,  persecution and terrorism, as the Islamic State so effectively demonstrates.

Thankfully, Buddhism is different.   The Buddhist religion is based on two rational and verifiable foundations - a philosophy and a psychology.    And the psychology is itself founded upon philosophy, as shown in the diagram. 

So whereas other religions can only support their tenets by reference to ‘truths’ revealed to an exclusive group of long dead people who heard voices in their heads, Buddhism can appeal to rationality and shareable, reproducible experience.


Components and interfaces

The diagram illustrates how these three major domains of Buddhism - Philosophy (blue), Psychology (green) and Religion (orange) - fit together, with their components and interfaces.

LOGIC
The foundation of Buddhist philosophy is a logical analysis of phenomena, which radically deconstructs how things exist, and also how we think things exist. 

Deconstructing how things exist reveals that all phenomena are ultimately processes, and no thing or substance is capable of permanent existence, or existence 'from its own side'. This is the basis of Buddhist METAPHYSICS.

This conclusion immediately raises psychological implications. If everything is impermanent, then why are our minds so biased in favor of viewing the world as things and substances, rather than processes?    This is the main topic of Buddhist EPISTEMOLOGY, which interfaces philosophy with psychology.  An important concept in this epistemological analysis is the theory of the two truths - the contrast between the ‘working approximations’ we use to find our way around the everyday world, and how phenomena truly exist when we analyze them in depth.

The conclusion reached from the study of epistemology is that our distorted view of the world gives rise to DELUSIONS, especially the three mental poisons of aversion, attachment and ignorance.   Eradication of these three biologically based poisons, and prevention of their resultant actions, is one of the principle aspects of Buddhist ETHICS.   One of the main ways of reducing and eventually eradicating delusions is by the practice of MEDITATION, especially meditation on emptiness.

ETHICS and DELUSIONS are thus at a triple interface between philosophy, psychology and those aspects of Buddhism that people from Judeo-Christian cultural traditions would more readily recognise as religious.

Interfaces between psychology and religious practises are provided by RITUALS (such as sadhanas, pujas, mantras, mudras etc), ART (including numinous symbolism) and TANTRA.  

Unlike other religions, rather than aiming to placate or appease jealous gods, ritual practices are intended to produce changes in the minds of the practitioners, resulting in the ability to step outside the system of the Samsaric world (TRANSCENDENCE).  

Thus Buddhist art and ritual practices are intended to facilitate mental realisations, mystical experiences and ultimately the recognition of ones own Buddha-nature. Hence they are each shown as interfaces, with one end in religion, and the other in psychology.

Components which are primarily religious are the SANGHA, which is the community of Buddhist practitioners in its widest sense, including both ordained and lay persons organised as traditional congregations in dharma centers, or increasingly nowadays as online communities of people who may not have easy access to a center.  These geographically scattered Sangha often meet up for FESTIVALS.
 
Another major component of Buddhism is the large collection of NARRATIVES, ranging from historical accounts of the lives of major Buddhist teachers, including the Buddha himself, to the various parables such as the Jataka tales and Zen stories.

For a detailed discussion of the rational foundations of Buddhism see Buddhist Philosophy.


- Sean Robsville


 

Mindful Eating for Weight Loss and Other Health Benefits

From Global Times 

"Li Shanshan, a 29-year-old girl in Beijing, sat quietly on the ground in a dimly lit room with light music floating through the air. Holding the plate in front of her, she opened her eyes. With a deep breath of the aromatic air, she grasped some food from it and took her first bite.

While she ate, she did not think about anything else. She put all of her attention toward the food. She takes her time to chew slowly, sense the vegetable's flavors and textures and observe how her body reacts to the food.

"It feels really different when I eat my food this way. I feel so relaxed and pleased. I can actually feel which food my body wants, if the food can give me more strength and if I want to eat more," Li said.

Li experienced this on Tuesday at the Beijing Mindfulness Center (BMC) in Dongcheng district, which provides classes and workshops on meditation to seek awareness of one's body and mind. Li first started to practice the method in September, and lost five kilograms after the first week.

"It's not just about losing weight. I am also healthier and in a better mood since I feel more in control of myself," Li said.

The practice of mindful eating has existed for over 3,000 years within Buddhism. Recently, it became more popular as a secular practice as the latest research has shown that practicing mindful eating has been directly related to the regulation of weight and fighting obesity, according to Dalida Turkovic from Serbia, the executive coach and founder of the BMC... "

Read it all

The Unconditioned

From Beliefnet 

   "...Buddhists believe that Siddhartha attained a state that was free of conditions—things like upbringing, psychology, perceptions, opinions, presuppositions, and so on. To be Enlightened is to be Unconditioned, and a Buddha is free from conditioned responses such as prejudice, hatred, and greed. Rather, a Buddha is characterized by wisdom, compassion, and freedom. To be a Buddha is to see reality as it truly is. The word Buddha, in fact, is a title which means “one who is awake”—in essence, one who has completely awoken to reality..."


See also  Can you debiologize your mind? And if you do will anything remain?

Buddhist meditation helps kids unplug from their online world

From the Telegraph

"Children should be taught Buddhist meditation techniques and yoga in schools to help them "unplug from their online world", a minister has said.

Edward Timpson, an education minister, said that schools across the country should start teaching "mindfulness" as a "normal part of the school day".

The meditative practice, which has its roots in Buddhism, encourages people to focus on the present, rather than on the anxieties of the past or future.

Speaking during a debate in Parliament, Mr Timpson warned that “children cannot unplug from their online world, and that is changing the shape of many of their relationships and the pressures that they come under at a much more tender age”.

He said that mindfulness is “a modern innovation born from the deepest traditions of meditation” and that schools and colleges using the technique will “to enable all children to enjoy good mental health and emotional wellbeing...”.    More


See also  Number of calls to Childline from children experiencing suicidal thoughts doubles in five years

 

Graham Priest on Buddhist Philosophy

Buddhism & Philosophy - an interview with Graham Priest




see also Buddhist Philosophy

Can mindfulness improve high school students' concentration?

From the BBC Magazine

"...The practice of mindfulness - which draws on Buddhist thinking - has become increasingly popular in recent years. There have been calls for brain-training techniques, using breathing to achieve mental clarity, to be introduced in schools.

In October, the Mindfulness All-Party Parliamentary Group said the practice should be made more widely available and recommended the Department for Education designate three schools to "pioneer mindfulness teaching and disseminate best practice".

Political author and former head of Wellington College Anthony Seldon has called for daily "stillness sessions" in schools, saying a decline in traditional religious assemblies has left students with little space for reflection in the school day.

So can mindfulness meditation really help pupils concentrate amid the distractions of 21st Century living? A group of BBC School Reporters from Connaught School for Girls in Leytonstone, east London, decided to investigate... "

"... At the end of the two week experiment, the results were positive. Those who had taken part in mindfulness meditation successfully completed the concentration task an average of 2.15 times more than before, while the results of the control group improved by just 0.69 times..."

Full report here

 

Be mindful when you smoke and booze.

   

A simple way to break a bad habit - Judson Brewer at

TEDMED 2015

Can we break bad habits by being more curious about them? Judson Brewer, MD, PhD, Director of Research at the Center for Mindfulness and Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School studies the relationship between mindfulness and addiction - from smoking to overeating to all those other things we do even though we know they're bad for us. Learn more about the mechanism of habit development and discover a simple but profound practice that might help you beat your next urge to smoke, snack or check a text while driving.

Watch Dr. Brewer's presentation at TEDMED, November 2015

Tonglen Meditation - Mutually Assured Destruction of Bad Karma

Meditation environment

To perform this meditation it helps to be in a suitable environment and maintain a correct posture.

Suitable Environment
Find somewhere crowded, noisy, hot, stressful and generally frustrating.  A packed commuter train or bus is ideal.

Correct Posture
Check whether you're sitting comfortably. If so, you're doing it wrong. Get up off your ass, hang on the strap and let someone who needs it have your seat.


The correct frame of mind
Concentrate on your own frustration, stress, boredom, discomfort and low-level hostility to the passengers around you who are swaying and bumping into you and crowding you in.   Visualize these negative feelings as a cloud of acrid black smoke swirling around your heart.

Next, imagine all your fellow passengers are experiencing the same hassles. 

On an in-breath, breathe in all their irritations as black smoke which mixes with and annihilates your own swirling black smoke in a burst of white light.

The light purifies and calms your body and mind.  Imagine the irritation of yourself and the irritation of others as antimatter meeting matter in a burst of mutually assured destruction, producing vast amounts of pure positive energy. 

As you breathe out, imagine this pure white energy radiating out into the hearts of all those around you, remaining in the form of a globe of white light, an abiding centre of calmness and clarity in their hearts.



Karmic supernova
Now repeat the procedure, but this time the energy release is going to be HUGE, like a karmic supernova.

Imagine all the problems and sufferings of your fellow passengers: sickness, pain, sick relatives, financial worries, work problems, loneliness, insecurity, fear, relationship breakdowns, legal hassles, mental illness, addictions and so on.    Then reflect that you yourself have the negative karma to experience all this, and much worse, for life after life.   This negative karma  swirls around your heart like a thick cloud of hot, acrid, black smoke.   

On the in-breath, breathe in all these present and future sufferings of your fellow passengers in the form of black smoke, which mixes with, and annihilates, the negative karma at your heart in an ENORMOUS release of energy in the form pure white light. This reaction utterly destroys the sufferings of others and your own bad karma like matter meeting antimatter.

On the out breath, imagine that this colossal burst of purifying energy radiates in all directions through everyone around you, cleansing all their negative karma, and their potential for future sufferings, and sweeping it all away, utterly destroying it never to be seen again.

Finally, dedicate any merit you may have created from this meditation to the enlightenment of all sentient beings.

More meditations