05.16.08
Neural buddhism, and software/hardware
Scienceblogs links to ‘Neural Buddhism’, see also Douthat & other links there.
David Brooks’ essay was a fishing expedition with inadequate terminology, indeed inadequate concepts, but the sense of things he indicates is real enough, in fact, ad hoc combinations of western science and Eastern mysticism have been cycling the New Age mill since the nineteenth century, with Buddhistic frameworks often showing themselves the best match to science frameworks.
Into this discussion come the obsessive theists (to say nothing of the obsessive atheists) attempting to retrieve the subject for god-beliefs. This strategy is actually entirely ancient also, and the cooptation of ‘materialist (samkhya type)’, ‘atheist’ buddhadharma style religion was achieved millennia ago. We see the result in much Indic religion where theism is grafted onto something that fully existed in complete form millennia before the emergence of monotheism.
The question of materialism is insoluble at this point. Seeing the limits of materialism as a cultural force or mood of scientism is not the same as refuting its basic claims. Even if the subject was incoherent from the beginning (yeah, what about Platonic ideas?? Rah, rah), and it is my feeling that it was/is, I still wouldn’t feel comfortable denying a biochemical component to many mystical mysteries. The Samkhya materialists had an answer to this, quite outlandish, but effective in quieting mental confusion: there are many levels of materiality, quite beside the question of the ’spiritual’. Most of what we call the ’spiritual’ was therefore a different degree of materiality in their view.
It is worth keeping in mind Buddha’s deft navigation through these waters. He wanted to avoid at all costs the forest of concepts wherein the mind is doomed to become lost. In the heritage of Samkhya he proceeded with as close a track near materialism as could be managed for his time, and at the same time understood the futility of the metaphysical pitfalls of these issues, open to idealist versions of his indifferent, though not theistic, conception.
The solution was practical, and the practice of Buddhism was kept carefully quarantined from metaphysical hangups, supernatural or natural. A Kantian before Kant, as it were, he saw the snare of metaphysics lying in wait of the unwary.
Thus, for our own time, we should keep in mind the hardware/software distinction in thinking of anything like ‘neural buddhism’, which will confuse us even as we seem to be on the verge of a new insight.
What is potential to the brain is a question of software, its potentialities and possible states, and this must be explored on a software level (e.g. via meditation), and is given in the legacy of many ‘religious’ traditions (barren Christianity excepted, better thought of as Christian inanity), but most assuredly in yogic and Buddhist traditions of meditative exploration. Nothing in neuroscience is going to subtract a jot from the findings here of the basic samadhi states. It is a software question about what can be done with a certain blackbox called the brain, whose hardware aspects, while in one sense relevant possibly to the discussion, are finally irrelevant to the software issues. To be talking in the abstract about materialism versus mysticism is a complete waste of time.
Nothing is finally answered here about materialism or spirituality (I don’t want to use the symmetric term ’spiritualism’ here) in a physics sense. We can’t escape from confusion by claiming to have passed beyond materialism, because the result is a leap from one puddle into another.
For me, the bridge between the poles of these questions is answered in principle by Kant/Schopenhauer. But these two already begin to diverge slightly, with Schopenhauer claiming an explicit idealism that Kant rejected. The noumenal/phenomenal distinctions are far more fruitful than the material/spiritual, and the stance of ‘transcendental idealism’, as a kluge to correct the misleading stances of materialists, also gives a thorough warning that the ’self’ is regrettably behind the barrier of phenomenal representation. That was the point of Buddhistic/yogic practices: the hope to penetratre this veil of the unknown that leaves us stranded in self-ignorance (materialist or spiritual).
James said,
June 11, 2008 at 3:48 pm
“Scientists have more respect for elevated spiritual states. Andrew Newberg of the University of Pennsylvania has shown that transcendent experiences can actually be identified and measured in the brain (people experience a decrease in activity in the parietal lobe, which orients us in space). The mind seems to have the ability to transcend itself and merge with a larger presence that feels more real.”
It is unfair to expect Brooks and these scientists to be schooled in the obscure points of Buddhism, but is it really helpful to advocate the resurgence of New Age confusion…this time endorsed by techies with fMRI machines (the garbage about “oneness” and “interconnectedness” will be unending)? To interpret samadhi/meditation states as “transcendent” or “spiritual” misses the point and completely bungles the insight from early Buddhism that these are artificial states that merely help one perceive the factors of mental causation clearly:
“On attaining any of the first seven levels of jhana, one may step back slightly from the object of jhana — entering the fifth factor of noble right concentration [§150] — to perceive how the mind relates to the object. In doing this, one sees the process of causation as it plays a role in bringing the mind to jhana, together with the various mental acts of fabrication that go into keeping it there [§182]. Passage §172 lists these acts in considerable detail. The fact that the passage emphasizes the amazing abilities of Sariputta, the Buddha’s foremost disciple in terms of discernment, implies that there is no need for every meditator to perceive all these acts in such a detailed fashion. What is essential is that one develop a sense of dispassion for the state of jhana, seeing that even the relatively steady sense of refined pleasure and equanimity it provides is artificial and willed, inconstant and stressful [§182], a state fabricated from many different events, and thus not worth identifying with.”
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/wings/part3.html#part3-f
James said,
June 11, 2008 at 3:59 pm
With these points in mind we can now turn to the maps to see their answer to the question of how breath meditation leads to the mastery of jhana. As noted above, the practice of keeping the breath in mind is the meditation method that the Canon teaches in most detail. There are two possible reasons for this, one historical and the other more theoretical. From the historical point of view, the breath was the focal point that the Buddha himself used on the night of his own Awakening. From the theoretical perspective, a state of concentration focused on the breath is the meeting place of all the elements of the factor of “fabrication” (sankhara) in the formula for dependent co-arising [§§218, 223]. This factor, as experienced in the present, consists of bodily fabrication (the breath itself), verbal fabrication (the factors of directed thought and evaluation applied to the breath in the first jhana), and mental fabrication (feeling and perception, in this case the feelings of pleasure and equanimity experienced in the four jhanas, plus the mental label of “breath” or “form” that act as the basis for the state of jhana). Because transcendent discernment must deal directly with these three types of fabrication if it is to eliminate the ignorance that underlies them, the practice of jhana based on the breath is an ideal point to focus on all three at once.
The first two steps of breath meditation [§151] involve simple tasks of directed thought and evaluation: directing one’s thoughts and attention to the breath in and of itself, in the present, at the same time evaluating it as one begins to discern variations in the length of the breath. Some modern teachers maintain that the factor of evaluation here also includes taking one’s observations of short and long breathing as a basis for adjusting the rhythm of the breath to make it as comfortable as possible. Because the first level of jhana must be based on a sense of pleasure [§238], this advice is very practical.
The remaining steps are willed or determined: One “trains oneself,” first by manipulating one’s sense of conscious awareness, making it sensitive to the body as a whole. Then one can begin manipulating the bodily sensations of which one is aware, reducing them to a single sensation of calm by letting “bodily fabrication” — the breath — grow calm so as to create an easeful sense of rapture and pleasure. A comparison between the stages of breath meditation and the graphic analogies for jhana [§150] indicates that the fifth and sixth steps — being sensitive to rapture and pleasure — involve making these feelings “single” as well, by letting them suffuse the entire body, just as the bathman kneads the moisture throughout his ball of bath powder. With bodily fabrications stilled, mental fabrications — feelings and perceptions — become clearly apparent as they occur, just as when a radio is precisely tuned to a certain frequency, static is eliminated and the message sent by the radio station broadcasting at that frequency becomes clear. These mental fabrications, too, are calmed, a step symbolized in the analogies for jhana by the still waters in the simile for the third level, in contrast to the spring waters welling up in the second. What remains is simply a sense of the mind itself, corresponding to the level of fourth jhana, in which the body is filled from head to toe with a single sense of bright, radiant awareness. This completes the first level of frames-of-reference practice [II/B].
Once this stage is reached, steps 10-12 indicate that one can now turn one’s attention to consolidating one’s mastery of concentration. One does this by reviewing the various levels of jhana, focusing not so much on the breath as on the mind as it relates to the breath. This allows a perception of the different ways in which the mind can be satisfied and steadied, and the different factors from which it can be released by taking it through the different levels of jhana — for example, releasing it from rapture by taking it from the second level to the third, and so forth [§175]. One comes to see that, although the breath feels different on the different levels of jhana, the cause is not so much the breath as it is the way the mind relates to the breath, shedding the various mental activities surrounding its single preoccupation. As one ascends through the various levels, directed thought and evaluation are stilled, rapture fades, and pleasure is abandoned. Another way of consolidating one’s skills in the course of these steps is to examine the subtle defilements that interfere with full mastery of concentration. The fact that one’s focus is now on the mind makes it possible to see these defilements clearly, and then to steady the mind even further by releasing it from them.
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/wings/part3.html#part3-e