Category: Buddhism

Most brains, when confronted with seemingly ambiguous data, will seek subconsciously to arrange it in a pattern that is familiar

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

__________

The title above states precisely what people do with interpersonal speech and semiotics: When confronted with seemingly ambiguous data, they seek subconsciously to arrange it in a pattern that is familiar. People do this all the time. Throughout history people have been doing this. It is a major source of suffering, violence, idiocy, madness, cruelty, and lost opportunity. Isn’t it obvious? When we talk or communicate in any way our message is frequently misunderstood, sometimes very seriously misunderstood. This causes all of us to live in a massively reduced world because the only way we typically deal with this interpersonally is by seeking subconsciously for a pattern that is familiar. So far, no one has suggested a cure for this horrible human malady, until FIML came along. FIML fixes precisely this problem: It’s not hard: You just have to change the way you think (and listen and talk). ABN

‘The Jews are the only people especially beloved by God’

~ ABN ~ 1 Comment

link

The Abrahamics cause so much suffering based on the sole fact that they all believe their scriptures absolutely tell them what God wants, yet few of the sects and divisions agree with each other. Buddhism at its core recognizes the indeterminacy of all speech and our interpretations of all of it. Clinging to speech as an absolute is a recipe for moral, intellectual, and spiritual failure. When speech is deemed absolute, the mind and spirit are blocked from full realization. This is why Buddhism often suggests rather than states and why the Buddha himself refused to answer questions on subjects that lead to clinging to absolutist ideas. From a Buddhist POV, to say the Jews are the only people especially beloved by God is ridiculous. I was raised as a Christian and do my best to remain respectful of Christianity and strongly believe a good Christian is better than a bad Buddhist. Given that background, I think it’s proper for me to speak this way about Christianity. Whatever spirituality people get from it is good, very good. Clinging to the absoluteness of the words is the mistake. ABN

Buddhism and modern psychology

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

I put up a post last year about the ‘erasure’ of dysfunctional psychological schema and how to achieve that. The article that post is based on, How the Science of Memory Reconsolidation Advances the Effectiveness and Unification of Psychotherapy is good and well-worth reading.

Today, I want to explain how that take on modern psychology fits very well with Buddhist practice.

Buddhist practice is best understood by understanding the Noble Eightfold Path:

Right View, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Samadhi.

If the Noble Eightfold Path is followed diligently, it will erase all dysfunctional schema from the mind. The complete erasure occurs in the eighth element of the path, Right Samadhi.

Right Samadhi is an elixir of the mind. It bathes and cleanses the mind like nothing else. Right Samadhi erases all delusion, all suffering, all dysfunctional schema. Right Samadhi is one part of the Noble Eightfold Path and also it can be understood as a culmination of the Path, the ultimate or penultimate reward of Buddhist practice.

On this site, I add something to the Noble Eightfold Path that, in my opinion, makes it even better. What I have added is FIML practice. FIML can be understood to be an addition to Right Speech and Right Mindfulness. FIML works by getting us to pay close attention to what we hear as well as what we say. When we do that using the tools FIML provides we also greatly improve our Right Mindfulness.

I deeply hope readers of this site will improve their understanding of Buddhism and learn how to do FIML.

The hardest thing about FIML practice is finding a Right Partner, someone who is able to understand the practice and willing to do it with you. The second hardest thing is overcoming a very deep-seated, instinctive human speech prohibition which prevents us from quickly shifting from talking to talking calmly and wisely about the minutia of the talking and listening that just occurred.

If you have a suitable partner, learning how to do FIML is much easier and more fun than finding a suitable therapist. Like Buddhism itself, FIML works directly with the unique reality of the lives of you and your partner. ABN

first posted March 21, 2024

A post on Reddit which suggests (to me) that the psychology of stigmatism has deep parallels between overt physical abnormalities and hidden psychological trauma

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

I’ve hidden my hand my whole life. I wear long sleeves and haven’t seen a doctor about it since I was a toddler. My right hand is completely normal. On my left hand, my pinky, ring, and middle fingers are normal. The issue is only with the thumb and index finger they are the same length and to the side.

It’s not painful or limiting physically but it’s always affected my confidence which is why I hide it. 

link

I mentioned the other day that Reddit has small subs that can be intellectually stimulating. The post linked above, including many of its comments, shows what the title says. One conclusion from this is that the shame and self-induced ‘need’ to hide that shame has wide applications across all stigmatisms and psychological conditions, which often are reified as stigmatisms. By hiding shame or stigmatism we give it an overblown life of its own. By not hiding it, we remove its power to shame us. A physical stigma is simply the luck of the draw and, while someone may be to blame for it, in the end you have to live with it. Psychological abuse or trauma is not so different. At the end of the day, it’s your cross to bear. If FIML is done with this in mind, both partners can use the FIML method to gradually bite off small pieces of whatever shame or trauma or confusion they are experiencing. Doing this repeatedly, over months and years, will slowly reveal the trauma to both partners. And this will provide a wondrous level of freedom. Psychological trauma always leaves evidence in the mind much as physical abnormalities can rarely be fully corrected. Nonetheless, both conditions benefit greatly from exposure to the sunlight of objective consciousness. And this can lead to a state of unperturbedness as the stoics say or enlightenment/ nirvana as the Buddhists say. ABN

Lucid dreaming isn’t sleep or wakefulness — it’s a new state of consciousness, researchers find

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

…Perception and memory processing in the lucid dreaming state were found to be different from non-lucid REM sleep. The consciousness of existing in a dream was associated with with beta waves in the right central lobe (which controls spatial awareness and nonverbal memory) and parietal lobe (which controls the sense of touch and spatial awareness). Beta waves are a type of high-frequency electromagnetic activity in the brain involved in conscious thought processes like solving problems or making decisions. Our consciousness is dominated by beta waves when we are awake.

This might explain why there is so much cognitive control in lucid dreams. Dreamers deep in REM sleep have no sense of control over factors like thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, but those in lucid dreaming states do.

…Demirel also linked gamma waves with lucid dreaming. These are the fastest brain waves, which become visible on an EEG at times when the brain is especially alert and focusing on something. When lucid dreaming begins, gamma waves increase in the right precuneus, which is involved in self-referential thinking—thoughts about ourselves and our lives. When we are awake, we often drift into this type of thinking when our minds wander.

Maybe the most mind-bending thing about lucid dreams is that they are, according to the study, similar in the brain to the effects of psychedelic drugs such as LSD and ayahuasca. These types of psychedelic experiences are also associated with the precuneus, whose activity is modified when waking imagery is seen despite having closed eyes (something usually only experienced with psychedelics).

link

Lucid dreaming and lucid sleeping are important practices in the Buddhist tradition. There is a lot of literature on it and it’s worth the time learning how to do it. For dreaming, napping in a slightly awkward position can help. I spent a year or so napping at noon on a couch with one foot on a table beside the couch, the other on the arm of the couch. That was enough to keep my bodily proprioception semi-conscious so when dreams started I was already slightly lucid. Sleeping on a bus or train is another place to practice. I had an extended period of becoming lucid during deep sleep, or so it seemed to me. Consciousness has many facets and angles. The original title of this article called lucid dreaming a ‘new’ state of consciousness. It is not new at all. It has been part of the samadhi traditions for millennia. ABN

Consciousness reveals there’s no single objective world — Christian List

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

Science as we know it won’t explain consciousness

…Over time, humans went from an anthropocentric to a geocentric to a heliocentric and eventually to a more universal view of the world, and each step constituted scientific progress.

Yet the crux is that there is at least one important phenomenon that resists such objectivization or “de-perspectivization,” and that is consciousness itself. If we accept that the core of consciousness is subjective experience, then consciousness is the ultimately subjective phenomenon. The core of my consciousness lies in the fact that I find myself in a world in which there are first-personal facts. I am conscious, I have certain experiences, I am in a particular perceptual state, and so on. First-personal facts are irreducibly subjective. They are “centred” around my perspective as an experiencing subject, and unlike objective facts, they are not invariant under shifts in perspective.

Crucially, each of us is inextricably tied to our own conscious perspective. I can reflect about your experiences and empathize with you; I can hypothetically try to place myself in your shoes; I can try to simulate in my mind what things must be like for you. But I cannot literally leave my own conscious perspective. It is an essential fact about me that I experience the world from my perspective and not from anyone else’s. To be conscious, one might say, is to have a subjective perspective around which some first-personal facts are centred.

…The lesson, I think, is that the attempt to “objectivize” consciousness – to represent it as an ordinary property that can be found in the objective world, like gravity and electromagnetism – fails to do justice to the irreducibly subjective nature of the phenomenon. Physicalist theories of consciousness are not alone in running into that problem; standard versions of dualism face the same problem too. We will better understand consciousness only if our scientific and philosophical theories fully come to terms with the existence of first-personal facts and recognize that reality may not be captured by a single objective book of the world, but only by a library of subjective ones.

link

This is a good essay. It provides an overview of consciousness studies to frame the worthy assertion that: ‘We will better understand consciousness only if our scientific and philosophical theories fully come to terms with the existence of first-personal facts’. This kind of thinking fits well with Buddhism, and especially well with the Buddhist emphasis on samadhi states, which are deeply subjective. A Buddhist might say samadhi is describable and sharable with someone else who knows it. Or a Buddhist might not say that. The full essay is 2,578 words long and worth reading because the point is well made and the overview fits it very well. It’s quality information briefly stated. ABN