I have always been drawn to a more Buddhist framework for understanding life, with all it's joy and suffering. The more I read about it and experience it's truths through meditative practice, self study and contemplation on life, the more it makes sense.
Of course, we are drawn to the things that affirm are already existing beliefs, but for me, it seems that Buddhism explains the truths that I already know - not in an arrogant, egotistical way, but in a 'a-ha, of course' understanding that suggests this is absolute truth, and could not be anything else. There is no room for doubt. As I write these lines, I am aware that this is how Christians might feel about their beliefs too - a kind of knowing that is absolute truth.
However, what has always been fascinating for me is the intersection between science and Buddhism. Psychology, with it's modern co-relationship with neuroscience, seems to work hand in hand with the Buddhist belief system, as if it is merely using a different collection of words to explain what this belief system had been saying all along.
@porters dropped a link to an open university course on Buddhism and Modern Psychology in the Natural Medicine Discord channel this week, which @vincentnijman and I promptly signed up for - it's a scientific evaluation of Buddhist ideas, which suits my mindset. I don't like 'unexplainable' things - whilst I can concede some things are inexplicable, I believe they are merely not yet explainable. Buddhism actually is able to look at the root cause of our suffering as having a naturalistic root - it helps us see the truth of the world as it actually is, and do to so, assists us help us understand the human predicament
And that's what psychology does too - it explains how our minds work to build a particular reality that can cause - or undo - suffering. If one can understand how the human mind works to create reality, then one can create a more harmonious reality, can one not?
I tend to read transcripts rather than watch videos, because I take in a lot via the written word rather than videos. Thus, within half an hour I'd read the first couple of transcripts and read again of Buddha's Four Noble Truths (you can read about them here, a reading recommended in the course. What I really related to, however, was the lecturer's ideas about Buddhism as rebellion. He speaks of how the brain has evolved to create particular realities. For example, the perception of an outsider to the tribe as a threat, or to fear a rustling in the bushes as a bear. Pure survival mechanism. However, because it is possible to manipulate emotions to manipulate perception, it is important to rebel against this natural, evolutionary aspect of our brains. Referring to a study whereby people were played happy music, scary music or neutral music before viewing a snake, it was the people who were already in a state of fear that would respond most negatively. The link to modern politics here is clear - get people in a state of fear (the invader is coming) and they'll see that reality (they see them as an invader) and take actions to do something about it, not all of them good (build a wall, lynch).
Thus, what really got me nodding was Buddhism as a counter to these natural, innate tendencies of our brains:
Part of the idea of Buddhism is to do what you might call kind of counter programming of, of the brain. In particular through such techniques as meditation. And kind of neutralize some of these tendencies that I would say were built into the brain by natural selection. And in fact one thing I like about Buddhism is the sheer audacity of it. You know, it's kind of like a rebellion against our creator. Natural selection it, it very much wants to, wants to run in opposition to some of the logic by which natural selection wired the brain. Now. Should emphasize that it's not a complete rebellion against natural selection. Buddhism does make use of some things natural selection engrained in us including, you know, love, compassion, rational thought, but still it's a pretty thorough going rebellion we're talking about.
Buddhism as rebellion is my kind of language. I don't think there is a day goes by where I'm not kicking against the pricks whereby I refuse to accept the reality around me, socially, personally, politically.
We have to constantly check to see if our feelings, as Wright says, are 'reliable guides to reality'. Meditation thus becomes a way to give yourself some 'critical distance from your feelings to avoid being misled by them'. It matters because feelings can manipulate how you see the world by changing your thoughts.
It is something I am continuously reminding my students of in the classroom. Why is it you want to participate in 'muck up day', a barbaric Australian spectacle whereby school students, in their leaving days, do things like glue locks, let off stink bombs, and egg teachers cars, I ask them, when they moan that the school is 'too strict'. How might you be influenced by something you believe is an entitlement? How might your behaviour impact others? What about Halloween? Why do you find yourself at the check-out buying plastic masks and capes? Is that because it is an important cultural value (to celebrate Halloween in Spring constantly boggles me) or is it because you've been manipulated by retailers and feel good marketing? Whilst I might be the 'fun police', I am trying to encourage them to see how feelings can be manipulated to see the world a particular way, and to be wary of these. Notice how it feels in the body first, watch the feeling arise and pass. Make a choice based on the truth - something driven from anywhere else but conditioning and manipulation.
And then perhaps, your choice might be driven from love and compassion, such as respect for your teachers or love of the environment as opposed to self interest and disregard for others.
Gosh I'm a mean teacher. Perhaps I should just take them to Macdonalds. Yet I want them to be curious, to question, to dive deep. To be rebels, rather than slaves, resisting the pull of desire and aversion with insight over blindness.
As Wright says, evolutionary psychology says skepticism is useful. We're not designed to see the truth - we see what are illusions. We might live somewhere unsafe, for example, so we become wary of strangers. However, such hypervigilance is not always something that arises from truth:
Remember that one reason ... politicians manipulate the emotions of people is when these politicians want to go to war is because by manipulating people's emotions, you can change their perceptions, you can change the perception of the people that the politicians want to go to war with. So these things do matter. And it's really while to figure out what the interaction is about feeling and thoughts and perceptions, and how collectively they can distort our view of the world.
Again, rebelling against our brains and psychology is important. I was totally bestotted with @el-nailul's post that was the first one I read after contemplating my readings this morning. He wrote about being scared of the creatures in his environment - cobras, wasps and the like. Of course, it is important to be scared. The brain has evolved in such a way so that we survive. But @el-nailul draws the conclusion that there are too many things we're scared of that stop us being truly free. He talks about his experience with a cobra, that once he would have instantly killed out of fear. Now, he says, by living side by side with them, and sharing what he has with them, he has eliminated his hatred and replaced it with love. So too with the winged insect that sits on his hand - the viewer becomes curious and interested and reverent, rather than afraid. He is rebelling against his protective instincts here and rewiring his brain. There is something very beautiful about this - living in a harmonious, equanomious state with your surroundings must go a long way to ease suffering.
Photo by @el-nailul
And thus, Buddha's Four Noble Truths are about psychology as much as they are about anything else. The fourth noble truth offers us a path to follow as a way out of suffering - the eight-fold path of right understanding, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right, mindfulness, and right concentration.This is not about blindly following rules or codes, but practising them and judging for ourselves their central truths. Once we see the truth, everything else follows. If we can see the truth of the wasp or the cobra - that we are scared because of our natural tendency is to be scared, or we've been conditioned by our environment to be scared or unhappy or any of the other emotions and feelings that arise within us to create a particular state of mind.
A naturalist viewpoint is also the domain of red brain/blue brain theory. Stephen Fry's animated video here does a wonderful job of explaining how Trump's racist tweets work because of theories about the brain. Red brains, labelled as 'conservative' brains for the sake of this video, are more likely to react to particular words such as 'invasion' than blue brains, or 'liberal', left brains who are often more empathetic and curious and more likely to interact with the 'invader'. Humourously, the video suggests blue brains are more likely to eat magic mushrooms and jump off a cliff than right brains, who will be putting the signs up to warn us against it. Trump's language of exclusive and 'invaders' works because the red brain people amongst us are driven more by a limbic brain response in the amygdala - a reactionary, fearful, flight or fight response. The blue brains, the theory postulates, are more driven by the pre-frontal cortex. This neuroscience blog post writes:
Conservatives have an enlarged right amygdala—the fear processing center of the brain responsible for the fight or flight response—compared to liberals. This explains why Republican politicians exploit fears among their base while liberals roll their eyes and wonder why these people are buying it. Liberals, on the other hand, are highly open to new experiences, are much less religious, and inform their decisions based on science. This is because liberals have enlarged anterior cingulate cortices—the center of the brain responsible for critical thinking based on new and scientific ideas. This is also why conservatives yawn and daydream while a Democrat is speaking and wonder why liberals even listen to the “crap” being spewed.
Of course, there's more to it than this - nurture, such as parenting, also has an impact on the brain and thus one's political leanings.
And here we are in increasingly polarised worlds. The answer, according to Fry, is getting out of our bubbles. The more we interact with the others, the less fear we have. Our brains are plastic, malleable. Just because we are born this way does not mean we have to be this way forever. The fears that drive us do not necessarily have to dictate our feelings and reactions to the world around us.
Again with the rebellion.
And we come full circle back to Buddhism, who always said that a way out of suffering - unhappiness, disharmony - is to strip away the illusions that give us a particular version of reality. To understand that our brains might be wired that way, and can be unwired and rewired, is incredibly powerful. Even this information is enough, guiding us to deeper contemplation about our own psychology and the interaction with the world around us.
Thus to me, the intersection between Buddhism and psychology is most appealing - it is a rebellion against everything we have been told, and all our social and neurological conditioning, allowing for the possibility of positive transformation - perhaps not Nibbana in this lifetime, but at least a place where it might be felt and glimpsed.
