Monday, March 25, 2024

Paleontologist and museum curator explains why the fossil record supports intelligent design not natural selection.

Gunter Bechly was a curator at a museum in Germany. For the 200 year anniversary of Darwin's birth, he put together an exhibit that included a display to disprove intelligent design.  He said:

I made one big mistake I read the books ... [on intelligent design] and what I recognized to my surprise is that the arguments I found in those books were totally different from what I heard either from colleagues or when you watch youtube videos where the discussion is around intelligent design versus neo-Darwinian evolution. And I had the impression on one side that those people are mistreated their position is misrepresented and on the other hand that these arguments are not really receiving an appropriate response and they they have merit.  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ToSEAj2V0s)

In this video, Gunter Bechly explains how the fossil record differs from what evolution by natural selection would produce, and he explains how we know that enough fossils have been found to rule out incompleteness as an explanation for that deviation. He also explains why more scientists don't speak about the overwhelming evidence in favor of intelligent design - he lost his job because he spoke the truth.

From the video:

Differences between the fossil record and what evolution by natural selection would produce:

"Darwinism predicts slow changes but the fossil record shows rapid changes"

"The theory predicts gradual changes with small steps but the fossil record shows sudden changes with big steps"

"There is no evidence for gradations of one form of one species into another."

"The fossils are distributed mostly on the terminal branches of the phylogenetic trees but they lack mostly for the internal branches and for the nodes where they should be found according to the theory."

"Even though there are some transitional fossils what we lack is this plethora of transitional fossils that would be predicted by the theory where you would have thousands of small steps that show the transition from one form to another form."

"There is conflicting evidence between the fossil record and between the predictions from the theory. For example between molecular data molecular clock datings between the pattern of appearance that is predicted by the philogenetic reconstruction and the pattern of appearance in the stratigraphical column.

"There are often fossils that are out of place that are found at the wrong place and at the wrong time and conflicting evidence that does not support Darwin's theory can no longer be explained away as an artifact of undersampling or as caused by the incompleteness of the fossil record."

How we know the fossils that have been found represent an accurate portrayal of the history of life:

"Charles Darwin was quite aware that his theory does not agree with the fossil record and so he hoped that this can be explained away with the incompleteness of the fossil record with our insufficient knowledge of geology. And he hoped that over time the gaps would be filled and ultimately the theory would be confirmed by the fossil record but this didn't happen. Now we know a lot more than Darwin did and over time with growing knowledge about the fossil record the problem didn't disappear it even became more acute."

"Darwin's attempt to explain the evidence from the fossil record away as lack of knowledge about the fossil record and the incompleteness of the fossil record is no longer tenable. And here's why, let me first give a metaphor and this example was coined by my colleague Paul Nelson. Imagine you have a new hobby and you walk along the beach and you collect what the flood washes in. You collect starfish and shells and snails every day you find something new. But over time repetition sets in and ultimately you reach a day where you only find over and over again what you already found. And then you know that you have sampled enough to know what is out there."

"Exactly this method is applied in paleontology to statistically test the completeness of the fossil record and in paleontology it's called the collector's curve. In most groups of organisms we know that the fossil record is sufficiently complete to be sure that the gaps that we see and the discontinuities we see are not artifacts of undersampling or of an incomplete fossil record but actually data to be explained."

"But there is another reason why this phenomenon cannot be an artifact and that is if it would be an artifact we should expect that over time the gaps get smaller and the apparent non-gradual transitions become more gradual but what we actually find is that with growing knowledge of the fossil record the problems don't disappear but they get even bigger and bigger and this shows us that nature wants to tell us something."

"The phenomenon of sudden appearances in the fossil record is not just an exceptional case say as in the Cambrian explosion but actually is a pattern that is found everywhere. It is beginning with the very origin of life. It goes up to the origin of human culture. It is found in all periods of earth history. It is found in all geographical regions. And it's found over all taxonomical categories from plants and protists to invertebrate and vertebrate animals. So it's a clear pattern that cries out for an explanation."

"We have no transitional fossils for all the animal body plans and the Cambrian explosion. We have no or nearly no transitional fossils for the origin of the different insect orders, for the different mammal orders. And this for example includes bats. And imagine that the oldest fossil bats that we know are already totally modern hardly distinguishable from a modern bat with completely developed wings already with evidence in the ears for echolocation. They are just there and there's no fossil record showing the many steps that were necessary to build up these body plans by incremental changes."

"Douglas Ervin who is one of the world's foremost specialists on the Cambrian explosion and Douglas Ervin said that it looks like the great taxonomic categories, the classes, came first and that the lower taxonomic categories came later and that it doesn't look like that the large differences were built up by the smaller differences."

Rapid evolution cannot be explained by alteration of regulatory networks. Bechly says, "Recent studies have shown that this is not true every major transition in the history of life required new genes and new proteins."

And various environmental changes that might require rapid evolution do not explain the mechanism for producing new genes.

Microevolution (small changes in existing species) cannot be used to explain macroevolution (large changes resulting in new types of species) because,  Bechly explains, it is known, based on the time it would take for a single mutation to become established in a population, that there is insufficient time for new types of species to have evolved by natural processes. Bechly says, 

"The geologically established windows of time that are available for different transitions in the history of life are orders of magnitude too short to allow for the necessary genetic changes to arise and to spread in an ancestral population and this basically shows that Darwin's theory the neo-Darwinian mechanism is not mathematically feasible."

Bechly explains how it is known that there is insufficient time for new types of species to evolve by natural processes. He says the the time it takes for new species to appear in the fossil record is often similar to the average life span of a single species when there should be many intermediate species needed to produce, for example, a new organ or a new body plan.

The problem for the Darwinian mechanism that is posed by the fact that for many transitions we only have time available that equals the lifespan of just one or two species that come successive after each other is the following: To make a major re-engineering you usually think you would require many successive species which are slightly different from each other and then ultimately after a long time and many different species you get a major new body plan or a new organ. But here you see that you would have to make a jump either with one or two species or even within a species to a totally new reconstruction and so even if common ancestry should be correct this shows that this cannot be explained with an unguided process there you need some kind of intelligence be infused from outside the system to make such a big jump within a single species

There should be many intermediate species between a quadrupedal swimming mammal and a whale, yet the transition happened in a third of the lifespan of a single vertebrate species.

"What we found is that to make the transition between the so-called protocetus which were still quadrupedal swimming animals which were propelling in the water with their hind legs to make this transition to fully marine fish-like whales which swim with reduced legs and driven by the tail fluke for this transition there's only one and a half million years of time available that is according to mainstream evolutionaries knowledge.

Just a third of the lifespan of a single vertebrate species to make this re-engineering from a land animal to a fish-like whale that's unbelievable and shows that there is a major theoretical problem for the unguided process postulated by Darwin.

Blechly goes on to explain that naturalistic alternatives to neo-Darwinism do not solve the problem of the origin of genetic information needed for those mechanism to evolve.

And he says intelligent design is the best explanation for the scientific evidence based on logical inference:

In my view the fossil evidence clearly points towards intelligent design because the observed changes happened much too quickly to be explained by an unguided naturalistic process. They have to be explained with an intelligent agent. And for me personally, really a light bulb went on when I discovered that this is not based on an argument from ignorance, not based on a kind of god of the gaps argument, but it's just based on a rational inference to the best explanation. We know that only intelligent causes can cause this effect we look at the evidence and we see that this evidence clearly points to this cause. So ignoring the evidence from the fossil record that points to intelligent design actually is some kind of science denial

At the end of the video Bechly explains that scientists are not free to express belief in intelligent design because doing so would end their careers and that there are probably many more scientists who believe in intelligent design than those who publicly acknowledge it.

At the natural history museum in Stuttgart as soon as I came out as an intelligent design proponent collaborations were stopped, I didn't get funding anymore, my website was deleted, I was removed as head of an exhibition that I had designed, and ultimately I was told that I was no longer welcome and that I was considered to be a risk for the credibility of the institution. So it's not a big surprise that many scientists even if they are secretly doubting Darwinism are not outspoken about it and stay undercover and after my coming out as an ID proponent I was contacted by two famous colleagues who are famous scientists and world-renowned experts in their fields and they told me very confidentially that they have come to doubt the neo-Darwinian process themselves so probably there are more out there than we think.

Copyright © 2024 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Stop Making the Story About Yourself

As you experience various situations in daily life, you will tend to think about how the situation affects you, and about how you relate to the situation. This creates a story about you, a story where you are the main character, the victim or the hero. Most people are constantly making stories about themselves. This perspective on reality is what causes suffering.

If you observe the activity of your mind, the stream of consciousness, during meditation and daily life, you will see this happening, you will see how you make yourself suffer by making everything about you. When you understand how you make yourself suffer, you will also understand how to stop it.

You will see that when you stop making the stories about you, when you stop taking everything personally, when you stop focusing on yourself, when you stop thinking "I don't like this", "I don't want that", "I want this", I like that", when you stop making yourself the central character in everything that happens, you stop making yourself suffer. But you need to experience it from inside your mind, you need to feel how one way of thinking is suffering and how a different way of thinking doesn't make you suffer.

Mindfulness can help people give up the habit of making themselves the main character in every story. When you are mindful, your mind is in the present moment, you are just aware of what you are doing as you are doing it. You are not imagining, your mind is not wandering, you are not carried away by thoughts, emotions, impulses, sensory experiences, etc, you are not making stories about you that cause you to suffer. Then, when dukkha arises, you can see how you have caused it by making the story about yourself. But if you change the story, let go of that plot, think about the situation without yourself as the main character in the story, you don't suffer. This requires just a tiny change in perspective, a relaxation, a letting go, (not a lot of analytical thinking, not anything mystical, not anything non-dual), and you don't have to suppress anything - just notice the difference in how you feel. The point of mindfulness is not to concentrate the mind as a means of suppressing thoughts and emotions etc, the point is to provide a contrast where dukkha is absent so that when dukkha arises, the contrast is clear and when you return to mindfulness that contrast is also clear. Meditation that is relaxing can also help provide a quiet mind that helps you to maintain mindfulness and experience the contrast.

And then, when you are not making the story about you, you can respond to situations with compassion and reason instead of selfish emotions.


Copyright © 2024 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Friday, December 29, 2023

Do Buddhists believe in a soul?

On another forum, someone asked about Buddhist beliefs about the soul. Below is my brief reply, an expanded version follows.

In Buddhism consciousness is believed to continue after death, and can be reborn, and experiences karma (experiences the consequences of one's action) from previous lives. However consciousness flows/propagates as a sequence of cause and effect and is not a property of some constant separate unchanging thing. Like a wave that flows through water is not separate from the water. The first stage of awakening, stream-entry, occurs when you are freed from identity-view - the belief that the self is a thing.

If you watch the activity of your mind you will notice that thoughts, emotions, impulses arise fully formed into consciousness. We don't really see where they come from or how they are formed. Most people recognize emotions are beyond our control. If you try to meditate you will notice distracting thoughts so you don't control your thoughts either. Even if feel like you are using your mind to solve a problem, where did the impulse to do that come from?

And the sense of self, as an observer or experiencer or as a role in various situations like school (student), work (employee/supervisor), with family (parent/child/sibling), with friends, as a sports fan, a driver of a car, an owner of a house etc etc, or the characteristics we believe we have, smart/dumb, winner/loser, rich/poor, nice, mean, arrogant/humble or the sensations we experience form moment to moment, hot/cold, comfortable/uncomfortable, smells, bodily sensations etc - all these are constantly changing. And the feeling of self is no different from other thoughts or emotions that arise from unconscious processes.

And if you watch the activity of the mind you see that one thought or emotion or impulse leads to another by association, memory, or reason in a chain of cause and effect with no one in control until something distracts you onto a new tangent.

Without things to observe, to see, hear, smell, touch, (or thoughts, emotions and impulses to observe) there would be none of those sensations occurring. There would be no consciousness of them. Consciousness does not exist separately from the things it is aware of - like a wave in water is not separate from the water.

If you look closely you see there isn't a thing that is a self that you can find nor can you find anyone in control in your mind. These beliefs are formed not by religious dogma but by simple observation of the mind.

Here is an expanded version I wrote for this blog.

In Buddhism, consciousness is believed to continue after the death of the physical body and can be reborn and continue to experience karma (the consequences from one's actions) from previous births. However, consciousness flows or propagates as a sequence of cause and effect and is not a property of some constant separate thing. It is like the way a wave that flows through water is not separate from the water. The first stage of awakening, stream-entry, occurs when a person is free from identity-view - the belief that the self is a thing.

If you watch the activity of your mind, you will notice that thoughts, emotions, impulses, and sensory experiences arise fully formed into consciousness. We don't really see where they come from or how they are formed. Most people recognize emotions are beyond their control. And when you try to meditate you will notice distracting thoughts arising which shows you don't control your thoughts either. Even if you feel like you are using your mind to solve a problem, where did the impulse to solve the problem come from? The activity of the mind arises from unconscious processes, in Buddhist terminology these processes are part of what is called "the aggregates of clinging".

It might seem like the unconscious mind, the source of thoughts, emotions, and impulses is the self. But this source is not unified, one part might be sending the impulse to meditate while another is sending out distracting thoughts. One part might be trying to accomplish a purpose to gratify the ego while another might be sabotaging it because of fear of the consequences of success. The unconscious mind is not a unified thing, it is an aggregate of different functions.

And the sense of self, as an observer or experiencer or as a role in various situations like school (student), work (employee/supervisor), with family (parent/child/sibling), with friends, as a sports fan, a driver of a car, an owner of a house etc, or the characteristics we believe we have, smart/dumb, winner/loser, rich/poor, nice, mean, arrogant/humble etc, or the sensations we experience from moment to moment, hot/cold, comfortable/uncomfortable, smells, pleasure/pain or bodily sensations etc, all these are constantly changing. The sense of self or the feeling of being is no different from other thoughts or emotions that arise from unconscious processes. All those selves, the student self, the worker self, the family member self, the sports fan self, the smart self, the nice self, the mean self, the happy self, the angry self, the hot self, the hungry self, come from the aggregates, the unconscious processes that generate other thoughts, emotions, impulses, and sensory experiences.

When you experience how fleeting all these selves are, you see how unreal each is. Each movement of the mind creates a different self - which one is the real one? Your attachment to self diminishes and you suffer less when you experience this.

And if you watch the activity of the mind you see that one thought or emotion or impulse leads to another by association, memory, or reason in a chain of cause and effect with no one in control until something distracts you onto a new tangent.

Without things to observe, to see, hear, smell, touch, etc (or thoughts, or emotions or impulses to observe) there would be none of those sensations occurring. There would be no consciousness of them. Consciousness does not exist separately from the things it is aware of - like a wave in water is not separate from the water.

If you look closely you see there isn't a thing that is a self that you can find in your body or mind, nor can you find anyone in control in your mind.

Yet, the ego, our idea of the self, is the source of much of our suffering. If we are not shown proper respect, or if we lose a contest, or if we experience some misfortune that makes one seem to be a loser, we suffer because those events hurt our self image, our ego is hurt. If you watch your mind carefully, you will see that most suffering has the ego involved. Feeling successful in life depends on getting what we want and avoiding what we don't want.

But the ego is not a real solid material thing, it is an abstract concept. Yet we act as if it is a real thing that we have to defend from insult and injury. The ego is just a product of the same unconscious processes that produce any thought, emotion, or impulse. When someone can see this in their own mind, when they see how suffering is caused by their egoistic emotions and they recognize that those emotions are not chosen but arise from unconscious processes unasked for and uninvited, they understand that those emotions are not truth, those emotions are not an inevitable aspect of reality. Different people in the same situation might have different emotional reactions. Egoistic emotions are not inevitable like some laws of nature. When people realize that egoistic emotions are not reality, that the ego (the self) isn't a real thing, it becomes much easier for them to let go of egoistic emotions and they suffer much less. Recognizing "It is the ego coming from the aggregates" can end a lot of suffering.

The belief that the ego, the self, is not an actual thing is obtained not from religious dogma, but by simple observation of the mind.


Copyright © 2023 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Friday, November 17, 2023

Identity-view

https://mohitvalecha.wordpress.com/2016/06/15/stepping-on-a-frog/

Once there was a monk who specialized in the Buddhist precepts, and he kept to them all his life. Once when he was walking at night, he stepped on something. It made a squishing sound, and he imagined he had stepped on an egg-bearing frog.

This caused him no end of alarm and regret, in view of the Buddhist precept against taking life, and when he finally went to sleep that night he dreamed that hundreds of frogs came demanding his life.

The monk was terribly upset, but when morning came he looked and found that what he stepped on was an overripe eggplant. At that moment his feeling of uncertainty suddenly stopped, and for the first time he realised the meaning of the saying that “there is no objective world.” Then he finally knew how to practice Zen.

If you want to know what this story really means you can follow the link.

What I want to discuss here is that this story illustrates an important principle of how to let go of attachments and aversions, how to let go of unpleasant emotions.

The monk was upset when he thought he stepped on a frog, but when he found out it was an eggplant he wasn't upset any more.

When you are upset and it is due to a misunderstanding, if you clear up that misunderstanding, you can let go easily and you won't be upset any more.

When people are upset, usually it is their ego that is making them upset, but they don't notice it because it feels like a normal and unalterable fact of reality that they should be upset in that situation. That is the fundamental misunderstanding of most suffering, we think our emotions reflect reality when they are really produced by the ego, by egotistic and egocentric thinking (identity-view, Sakkaya-ditthi).

But if people examine their feelings and see their reaction is somehow due to egotistical or egocentric thinking, then they realize they are being silly, they don't have to be upset. And they can let go.

Sometimes it's hard to see how our ego is hurting us because these ways of thinking are so ingrained we don't even notice them, we just think "this is reality and it is not always nice." 

But if you can examine your thinking and see how it is really your ego that is causing the trouble, you see it was just a misunderstanding (you thought it was an inevitable aspect of reality but then you realized it was just your ego), and you can let go. Then reality is a lot nicer.

It might be hard to understand how it can be so easy to let go of unpleasant emotions just by recognizing the involvement of ego in suffering, so I will provide an example.

One day I walked to the grocery store. Often when I would go out for a walk, I would walk in my neighborhood and it would be a pleasant walk. It was a residential neighborhood, there wasn't much traffic, there were birds singing, and cute rabbits in nicely landscaped yards. But that day I needed to go to the store and instead I had to walk on streets with a lot of noisy traffic, past storefronts on streets with litter. It wasn't very nice. I didn't like it. It was better to walk in the residential area than the business district. Then I recognized it was my ego that was upsetting me. This idea that it is better to walk by the houses rather than the busy streets is egoic thinking. The word "better" is saying something about winners and losers. If you have what is better, you are a winner, if you have something worse, you are a loser. I realized it was my ego that didn't like the walk to the store, my ego (the aggregates) wanted to do what was better and not what was worse. When I understood that, the feelings of better and worse disappeared. I (the aggregates) felt like the walk to the store was not better or worse, just different. It had it's own flavor of familiarity, there were people in the cars and stores, it enabled me to get the groceries I needed, etc. It wasn't all good, but it wasn't all bad ether. Really, it wasn't good or bad. The problem was my unconscious egoistic reaction.

This kind of thing can happen many times a day. We have ingrained in our thinking that if we get what we want and avoid what we don't want, we are successful, and if we don't get what we want and can't avoid what we don't want, it is a failure. If you are mindful, if you watch the activity of your mind in meditation and daily life, and can see how every little twinge of dukkha, every little craving or aversion, every little liking and disliking, wanting and not wanting, is your ego is making you suffer, you can let go each time. It sounds simple, but this kind of thinking is so ingrained, it seems like an aspect of reality rather than something you are doing to yourself. You have to be alert to how you feel and then examine your feelings and see what role the egoistic and egocentric thinking (identity-view) is playing. If you do it, you can remove a lot of gloom from reality.

https://inquiringmind.com/article/2701_w_kornfield-enlightenments/

As Ajahn Chah described them, meditative states are not important in themselves. Meditation is a way to quiet the mind so you can practice all day long wherever you are; see when there is grasping or aversion, clinging or suffering; and then let it go.

Copyright © 2023 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Sunday, October 15, 2023

Perceptual Shifts Caused by Meditation Ease Suffering

When you look at the image above, you might see it as the profile of duck facing toward the left or as the profile of a rabbit facing toward the right. When what you see changes from one to the other, you experience a perceptual shift. Once you see this shift, you can't unsee it.

There are a number of perceptual shifts produced by meditation and mindfulness that lessen suffering and cause changes in behavior. None of these perceptual shifts have anything mystical about them. They are easy to understand intellectually but they are not transformative unless one sees the truth of them in their own mind. For example:

  • Before you begin a meditation practice, you may see events as the cause of suffering. For example, if someone says something unkind, it might hurt your feelings and you would see the person and their words as the cause of your suffering. But after you begin a meditation practice, you may come to see that such events are not the cause of your suffering, the cause of suffering is your reaction to the event. This doesn't mean you ignore problems, it means you can respond to them with compassion and reason rather than out of control selfish emotions.

There are many other types of perceptual shifts caused by meditation and mindfulness

  • At first you may notice that sometimes you are aware of emotions and other times you keep them bottled up inside yourself - suppressed. Later, when you observe the activity of the mind or when you cultivate metta or bliss, you notice there is something inside you like a switch or a valve or a gate that you can open to let emotions flow or close to suppress emotions. You notice that suppressing emotions makes you feel worse - the larger part of suffering comes from resisting emotions rather than the emotions themselves. So you try to keep the emotional gate open as much as possible, in daily life if you can, and when you are trying to concentrate in meditation or in mindfulness.

    Opening the emotional gate doesn't mean obsessing over every unpleasant emotion you can think of or remember. It means that if a situation arises that upsets you, you relax and you look for the emotion being held in, and let it out, let it into consciousness so you are not suppressing anything, and the unpleasant feeling, the "I don't like" or "I don't want" aspect fades.

  • Unpleasant emotions and cravings at first seem involuntary. Later they seem to be more like habits that you engage in inadvertently and with attention and effort you can give up the habit and stop making yourself suffer by staying relaxed, staying mindful in the moment - neither suppressing thoughts, emotions and impulses nor getting carried away by them - not mistaking the stories they try to tell you about good and bad, right and wrong, winning and losing as having anything to do with reality.

  • At first you think emotions are about reality, for example: in such and such a situation it is right to get angry, later you realize those kinds of stories are not reality, they are just a dream about how to make yourself suffer.

  • At first you get upset over problems, you might dislike or get angry at people and events. Later you realize you cannot learn to stop suffering without actually suffering and so you stop judging people and events because they help you to make progress, and because you feel compassion for people who are themselves suffering.
  • At first it seems normal to be immersed in your thoughts, emotions, impulses, and sensory experiences. Later, after practicing mindfulness in meditation and in daily life, you notice the distinction between mindfulness (observing your thoughts, emotions, impulses and sensory experiences - observing your environment, the sensations in your body, and the activity of your mind) versus being immersed. You see that being mindful, observing, creates a sense of detachment. You see that most suffering comes from immersion. Later the difference immersion and mindfulness becomes more like the difference between dreaming and being awake. Even later you see that the detachment leads to non-attachment, and mindfulness becomes the new default.

  • At first it seems like your mind is you, you think your thoughts, opinions, emotions, and impulses are yours. You think you are using your mind when you try to solve a problem. Later you see that thoughts, emotions, impulses, sensory experiences, and feelings of self arise from unconscious processes, they pop into awareness unasked for, uninvited. You don't see how they are formed or where they come from. Even when you are trying to solve a problem you don't know where the impulse to solve the problem came from. You realize thoughts, emotions, and impulses are not yours, you don't control them. You don't control your mind so your mind cannot be you.

  • Still later, when you observe the activity of the mind, you see that the moment to moment activity of the mind is a constantly changing sequence of cause and effect. An event or a thought may lead to another thought or invoke a memory that might cause an emotion that might produce an impulse etc. etc. You see there isn't anyone in control, all there is just cause and effect.

  • At this point you may feel like you are just an observer of mental activity without any agency, but later you realize observation creates the observer. Without anything to see, there would be no seeing, no observing of sight. This is true for the other senses, and it is also true for all mental activity. Without thoughts there would be no observing of thoughts etc. etc. So you see there is no observer separate from the process of perceiving, no experiencer separate from experiencing. The feeling of being an observer and the feeling of having no self both arise from the same unconscious processes from which all mental activity arises.

  • Another similar perceptual shift happens if you notice your sense of self, your feeling of being, you will notice that it changes from situation to situation. In school you think of yourself as a student. At work you think of yourself as an employee. When you are with your parents, your children, your friends, you have a different sense of self in each situation. When you think of different issues or topics that you often think about, you will notice you have a different sense of self with each of those. The same is true for emotions and emotional issues you experience. And if you keep observing you will see that the feeling of self is actually influenced moment to moment by every sensory experience, by everything you see, hear, and feel. You will see that every moment of experience produces a unique sense of self. This is another way of seeing that experience creates the experiencer. You see there isn't a separate continuous constant self apart from experiencing/observing.

  • Knowing that observing creates the observer you then notice, for example, when you see, if you just see and stay mindful, and you don't get carried away by thoughts, emotions, and impulses, you don't assume, because you see, that there is a seer, you just see without any observer necessary. When you are fully involved in experiencing, there is no experiencer.

  • Initially you think the ego is you, and is the good guy in all the mental stories the mind weaves, and who is someone who must be defended from insult and injury at all costs. Later you realize the ego is an opinion that is the main character in the plot to make yourself suffer. This disenchantment helps you to let go of selfish attachments and aversions arising from egocentrism and egotism.

  • Surrender, accepting emotions, not resisting emotions, is one level of non-attachment.

    But another perceptual shift goes beyond surrender.

    If you observe the activity of your mind, you may see that the stream of consciousness is simply a sequence of cause and effect. One thought or emotion, or impulse, or memory, leads to another until something sets you off on a new tangent. There isn't a unifying entity to be found in the various independent unconscious processes that produce the stream of consciousness (thoughts, emotions, impulses, sensory experiences, feelings of self and no self). And you may also see how the ego, (the idea of that entity which can't be found generated by those unconscious processes) is involved in most suffering - you understand how suffering arises in your mind - it arises from impersonal processes, you do not choose it or ask for it, it isn't you or yours, it isn't an objective truth. When you see it this way, there can be a perceptual shift, and you see there isn't anyone in a position of responsibility that could be identified to surrender, accept, or not resist.

    After the perceptual shift, you don't feel like there is anything that needs to be accepted because it isn't on you. You no longer see yourself as the central figure in the story to which suffering is happening because the premises on which suffering is based are undermined.

    You suffer less because you see that the old way of thinking, the thinking that produced the suffering, was based on a misunderstanding of the cause of suffering and on a misunderstanding of what the self is.

    You realize you suffered because you felt some responsibility for something. But when you recognize that feeling was based on misunderstandings, you suffer less.

These perceptual shifts come from observing the activity of the mind, in meditation and in daily life, and observing how dukkha arises and fades and how the ego is involved in dukkha (this is equivalent to observing the three characteristics and dependent origination). These perceptual shifts result in less suffering and in changes in behavior. They change one's approach to dealing with problems, and reactions to problems involve less emotional lashing out. They allow people who want to be more rational and compassionate to be so, people who don't desire those qualities will not automatically gain them by making these perceptual shifts although some might change their attitude if they do make these perceptual shifts.

Summary

When you watch the activity of the mind you see that:

  • Emotions are not reality. You don't have to believe the story that says you should, for example, be angry.

  • The situation is not the problem, the problem is your reaction to the situation.

  • When you notice unpleasant emotions and cravings arising, you find you can relieve much suffering by opening your emotional gate - by accepting emotions rather than suppressing them.

  • Unpleasant emotions and cravings that at first seem involuntary later seem to be more like habits that you engage in inadvertently and with attention and effort you can give up the habit without suppressing them.

  • You cannot learn to stop suffering without actually suffering and so you stop judging people and events because they help you to make progress, and because you feel compassion for people who are themselves suffering.

  • Thoughts, emotions, impulses, sensory experiences, and feelings of self arise from unconscious processes, they are not yours, you don't control them. You don't control your mind so your mind is not you.

  • The moment to moment activity of the mind is a constantly changing sequence of cause and effect, there isn't anyone in control, all there is just cause and effect.

At this point you may feel like you are just an observer of mental activity without any agency,

  • But then you notice without anything to see, there would be no seeing, no observing of sight. Observation creates the observer.

  • Every moment of experience produces a unique sense of self. Experience creates the experiencer. There isn't a separate continuous constant self or apart from experiencing/observing.

  • When seeing just see. When you are fully involved in experiencing, there is no experiencer.

  • The ego is an opinion that is the main character in the plot to make yourself suffer. This disenchantment helps you to let go of selfish attachments and aversions arising from egocentrism and egotism.

    Copyright © 2023 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Sunday, August 6, 2023

Tranquility and Insight

The Buddha taught that tranquility and insight are two qualities of mind that should both be cultivated.

Tranquility yields immediate benefits - you should feel tranquil after your first meditation session. Insight yields benefits that accumulate over time. As you observe the mind, you gradually learn how to let go of attachments and aversions.

In my view, tranquility involves two factors: relaxation and quieting the mental chatter. Relaxation occurs when the parasympathetic nervous system is active the sympathetic nervous system in inactive. Mental chatter is reduced when the default network in the brain is inactive and the experiential network in the brain is active.

The parasympathetic nervous system can be activated and the sympathetic nervous system can be deactivated with relaxing meditation.

The default network in the brain can be deactivated and the experiential network can be activated through relaxed concentration in meditation and through mindfulness in daily life. When the mind is focused on something occuring in present moment, the experiential network becomes active and the default network becomes inactive. The focus can be on an object of meditation as in the relaxing meditation in the previous paragraph, or it can be some type of mindfulness practice.

Tranquility is beneficial in itself (most people would prefer to feel tranquil and serene rather than stressed and upset)

And tranquility also assists in developing insight. When the mind is tranquil you do not get distracted and carried away by thoughts, emotions, impulses, sensory experiences, or the ego so you can observe the activity mind much better when the mind is tranquil. Observing the activity of the mind is how insight is acquired.

Insight can be explained in various ways and different people take different approaches to it. My approach to insight is to understand suffering so that one can reduce it as much as possible. The way to do this, in my opinion is to observe the activity of the mind.

In my opinion the essence of Buddhism is that it tells how to bring about an end to suffering. It seems to me the simplest way to do that is to cultivate tranquility and then observe the activity of the mind, see how suffering arises and fades and then use that knowledge to reduce the amount of suffering you experience.

In a very simple way of saying it, insight comes from observing suffering arising and fading which is the same as noticing when tranquility is disturbed and then returning to tranquility.

My approach is similar to that of Ajahn Chah which Jack Kornfield described as:

As Ajahn Chah described them, meditative states are not important in themselves. Meditation is a way to quiet the mind so you can practice all day long wherever you are; see when there is grasping or aversion, clinging or suffering; and then let it go.

My article on Observing the Mind describes how I recommend cultivating insight.

I've written about how fully letting go of emotions requires paying attention to even faint emotions that are barely on the edge of consciousness and bring them into awareness, and also feeling the full depth of emotions. Over time these two skills become an automatic habit and the result is like having the door to emotions entirely and constantly open so that when an unpleasant emotion arises you are just waving goodbye to it as it passes out the door. It isn't exactly pleasant, but the emotion doesn't hang around and cast a cloud over reality either. This is like the way Shinzen Young describes the Bhanga-nana (dissolution) the stage after A&P where, as he describes it, you see arising and fading as simultaneous. The consequence is that those unpleasant emotions don't linger in the back of your mind causing trouble. That comes from bringing them out and feeling them to their full depth. Without all that trouble, without the dukkha aspect of all things causing you suffering, what remains is ... nice.

I don't claim to have perfected this and I don't know if it leads to the perfect 100% end of suffering, but it is ... nice.

A lot of time spent observing the mind and dukkha in particular (in meditation and daily life) is needed to get to this point. At first suffering seems involuntary, then after a lot of observation you begin to feel more like it is a habit that you are doing automatically, so you begin to try to change your habit. You notice that suppressing doesn't really help, relaxing while feeling emotions to their full depth does help, and bringing them out fully into consciousness even if they are just faint inklings in the back of the mind helps too. Somewhere in there can be a lot of very unpleasant feelings coming out so you don't try to do it all at once, you give yourself a rest when you need to - meditation that produces tranquility can help. And emotions can hide under layers of other emotions so sometimes you have to dig through the layers to find what you need to let go of. But in time you get out a lot of baggage and become somewhat desensitized, and eventually bringing out and letting out becomes a habit and you notice your mood is a lot lighter and it's ... nice.

Ultimately, letting go means being relaxed and while bringing into consciousness and feeling to their full depth (in their entirety) feelings that are unpleasant, so faint they are barely conscious, or buried under layers of other emotions, and not getting carried away by thoughts emotions, impulses, sensory experience, or ego, so that they don't take over your mind and body. Being relaxed with a quiet mind while observing the mind makes this possible.


Copyright © 2023 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Sunday, July 30, 2023

Practicing Mindfulness in Daily Life

Practicing mindfulness in daily life is a way of meditating in daily life. It means being relaxed and in the present moment - not being lost in thought or trying to solve problems or worrying about the future or analyzing the past, or being carried away by your impulses and emotions. When practicing mindfulness and you find your mind wandering you bring it back to the present just as you do during meditation.

There are many many different ways you can be in the present moment. You can use a different technique at different times and in different situations.

  • The simplest technique is to just be aware of what you are doing as you are doing it.

  • Or you can notice your breathing like you are meditating.

  • You can notice each movement you make. You can say to yourself a word or two to describe each movement such as "stepping", "reaching", "grasping", "moving", "placing", etc.

  • Or notice or count your steps when walking.

  • You can notice everything you see or hear or feel.

  • You can focus your attention on your emotions. (That can be helpful, but overdoing it, dwelling on unpleasant emotions can be unhelpful.)

  • Read slowly so you can read mindfully.

  • Do puzzles or play word games slowly so you can do them mindfully.

  • One way to practice mindfulness in daily life is to watch the activity of your mind (thoughts, emotions, impulses, sensory experience, and sense of self the ego) and the feelings in your body that accompany emotions and impulses. Take note when dukkha arises and observe it. Notice what causes it to arise and what causes it to fade. Notice how the sense of self (the ego) is always changing and is often intimately involved in dukkha. In this way you observe the three characteristics: dukkha, impermanence (arising and fading), and anatta (there is no permanent unchanging self), and you learn to break the sequence of dependent origination by relaxing and letting go at the moment of dukkha arising. Being relaxed helps you notice when dukkha arises because you see how dukkha disturbs your relaxed state, and it help you notice when you let go because you return to the relaxed state.

The benefits include breaking the habit of believing the stories your thoughts, emotions and impulses tell you about reality, that you have to be afraid, or angry or jealous, or this or that. When you are free from those mental habits, you can react to life with wisdom and compassion rather than out of control emotions.

In order to have the presence of mind to stay mindful in daily life you need to have a calm quiet mind. Relaxing meditation is very helpful at producing such a quiet focused mind.

In the artcle Enlightenments, Jack Kornfield explains that Ajahn Chah has a very similar philosophy:

His approach to enlightenment was not based on having any particular meditation experience, no matter how profound. As Ajahn Chah described them, meditative states are not important in themselves. Meditation is a way to quiet the mind so you can practice all day long wherever you are; see when there is grasping or aversion, clinging or suffering; and then let it go.

How Mindfulness Eases Suffering

Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn explains:

And the interesting thing — and this is the study — when they put people through eight weeks of MBSR [mindfulness based stress reduction], this narrative network decreases in activity and this experiential network increases in activity and they become uncoupled. So they’re no longer caught together in such a way. So this one can actually attenuate and liberate you a little bit from the constant thinking, thinking, thinking — a lot which is driven, of course, by anxiety and, "What’s wrong with me?" The story of me is often a depressing story. And a fear-based story. We’re like driving the car with the brake on, with the emergency brake on. And if we learn how to just kind of release it, everything will unfold with less strain, with less stress and with a greater sense of life unfolding rather than you’re driving through it to get to some great pot of gold at the end, which might just be your grave.
                                                 

The Four Establishments of Mindfulness

Practicing mindfulness continuously all day (for at least a week) is, for practical purposes, equivalent to the third or fourth stage of awakening.

In the Sattipatthana Sutta, The Sutra on the Four Establishments of Mindfulness, The Buddha said: "Should any person practice these four foundations of mindfulness in this manner for a week, then one of these two fruits may be expected by him: highest knowledge here and now, or if some remainder of clinging is yet present, the state of non-returning."

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.010.nysa.html

MN 10 PTS: M i 55 Satipatthana Sutta: The Foundations of Mindfulness translated from the Pali by Nyanasatta Thera ... Thus he lives contemplating mental objects in mental objects internally, or he lives contemplating mental objects in mental objects externally, or he lives contemplating mental objects in mental objects internally and externally. He lives contemplating origination factors in mental objects, or he lives contemplating dissolution factors in mental objects, or he lives contemplating origination-and-dissolution factors in mental objects.[25] Or his mindfulness is established with the thought, "Mental objects exist," to the extent necessary just for knowledge and mindfulness, and he lives detached, and clings to nothing in the world. ... Verily, monks, whosoever practices these four foundations of mindfulness in this manner for seven years, then one of these two fruits may be expected by him: highest knowledge (arahantship) here and now, or if some remainder of clinging is yet present, the state of non-returning.[28]

O monks, let alone seven years. Should any person practice these four foundations of mindfulness in this manner for six years... five years... four years... three years... two years... one year, then one of these two fruits may be expected by him: highest knowledge here and now, or if some remainder of clinging is yet present, the state of non-returning.

O monks, let alone a year. Should any person practice these four foundations of mindfulness in this manner for seven months... six months... five months... four months... three months... two months... a month... half a month, then one of these two fruits may be expected by him: highest knowledge here and now, or if some remainder of clinging is yet present, the state of non-returning.

O monks, let alone half a month. Should any person practice these four foundations of mindfulness in this manner for a week, then one of these two fruits may be expected by him: highest knowledge here and now, or if some remainder of clinging is yet present, the state of non-returning.

Because of this it was said: "This is the only way, monks, for the purification of beings, for the overcoming of sorrow and lamentation, for the destruction of suffering and grief, for reaching the right path, for the attainment of Nibbana, namely the four foundations of mindfulness."

One could interpret this as stating that for practical purposes continuous mindfulness is equivalent to awakening. For practical purposes, when you maintain mindfulness continuously throughout the day you are awakened.

This might sound too good to be true,  but the catch is that practicing mindfulness continuously in daily life is not an easy thing to do and it takes a lot of time and effort and practice to be able to do it.

But there is a very good reason why practicing mindfulness fully during daily life should have such a good effect.

We already have skills we need to let go of attachments and aversions and we use them quite often, but we don't recognize what we are doing in context.

But when you are mindful in daily life, you see how there are some attachments you let go of easily and you see what it is that you do when you let go. And with that recognition and insight, you can apply those skills to stronger and stronger attachments and improve your ability to let go of attachments.

And when you are mindful in daily life you see how there are some aversions you easily let go of and accept those things you don't like or don't want. And you see what it is that you do when you let go. And with that recognition and insight, you can apply those skills to stronger and stronger aversions and improve your ability to let go of aversions.

Continuous mindfulness in daily life would also seem to be a clear way to measure your progress on the path.


Copyright © 2023 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.