This video is only sort of good. I watched it all and enjoyed it. It gives a decent overview of what else might have happened to Jesus after he died. Most Buddhists probably know there is a Buddhist angle to the story—that he went to Kashmir and lived a long life as a monk. This part of the film is presented in the last ten minutes or so. Other possibilities are reviewed in the foregoing parts. Definitely worth a look if you are not familiar with this subject. ABN
Category: Buddhism
Was the Buddha gaslighted?
Did his father, Śuddhodana, in shielding him from knowledge of suffering effectively gaslight his son?
And did his son by freeing himself from the illusions of his father’s palace further realize that all human beings live in delusion?
And is his enlightenment then an ultimate sublimation of the original illusions of his childhood and youth?
The answers can all be yes without demeaning the Buddha in any way. Indeed, we can see in this how profoundly human he was and how much he was able to do with the conditions he had.
Personality disorders and signaling
In my opinion, “personality disorders” are more easily understood as signaling problems.
All types of personality disorder involve dysfunctional signaling with other people. Signals are both sent and received in ways that result in suffering.
As currently defined, personality disorders “develop early, are inflexible, and are associated with significant distress or disability.”
Thus, if there are no significant brain injuries or other biological problems, all personality disorders (PD) develop through experience.
This means that during childhood the PD sufferer has received many bad signals (and/or interpreted many signals badly) resulting in their failing to form a coherent well-functioning internal signaling system.
The way to fix this is work with the signals. And the best way to do this is FIML practice. A professional psychotherapist cannot possibly provide this level of treatment.
This brings me to a second point: is there anyone who would not benefit from improving their signaling?
Why do we view psychotherapy as treatment designed merely to make us look and feel “average”? Why don’t we instead work to optimize our psychologies every day?
The Buddha said we are all crazy. We are. We all need to work on our signaling—our personality disorders—all the time.
The distinctions between one PD and another and those who have PDs and those who don’t are vague. This is because all PD problems (absent significant biological deficits, which may include intelligence) are idiosyncratic varieties of signaling malfunctions.
If signaling is the core problem, it should follow that all acquired PD will be classifiable as some kind of signaling malfunction. And that is precisely what we see.
Narcissism is a too simple signaling system. Borderline is an unstable signaling system. Compulsive, passive aggressive, histrionic, avoidant, and so on all are variations of a poorly formed internal signaling system.
The way to study this is through interpersonal semiotics; that is interpersonal semiotic analysis of real-time, real-world communicative signs and symbols.
All people need to do this to optimize their psychologies (their internal signaling systems). Why would anyone not want to do this? Maybe not wanting to do this is the surest sign of PD there is.
The hardest part about doing FIML is finding a willing and able partner. To me, this shows how pervasive bad signaling is. Most people will do almost anything but examine their own signaling with the help of another person.
Psychology as fundamentally signals
I propose that we largely discard all other paradigms for human psychology and replace them with one based on signals. Humans are semiotic entities who signal constantly internally and externally. No need for personality or self.
Signals are objective, measurable, quantifiable, and analyzable. And they are at the heart of everything we call “psychology.”
The most basic psychological paradigm still current today is personality. This concept should be greatly demoted, relegated to broad-brushing some genetic tendencies or matters involving personas.
Signals cover all psychological territory without exception, including everything we can now say based on personality. Bodies signal, brains signal, organs of perception receive signals, thoughts are signals, language is signals, biology signals, as does everything in physics.
No matter how you look at psychology, you will find signals. Using signals to describe psychology is almost always clearer, more succinct, and more precise.
Another basic paradigm for describing/explaining psychology is matter; psychology comes from the brain and the brain is matter. But then you get mind-matter problems, problems with top-down behaviors, loss of spirituality as an actual probability, and many problems with scale or behavior. Besides all matter signals!
So much simpler to describe how biological signals lead to thought and behavior. Or how top-down psychological signals affect biology.
Instead of “personality disorders” being vaguely defined and understood as ghostlike ephemera that seem to inhabit sufferers, we can define them as signal malfunctions that have arisen due to previous signal malfunctions, either biological, experiential, or semiotic.
A signal-based paradigm of human psychology would view individual psychology as a complex of signals, a semiology unique to each individual.
Narcissism has been discussed in this way. A signal-based analysis of other disorders can similarly make our understanding clearer and more efficient.
Borderline personality disorder, for example, can be viewed as a poorly integrated internal signaling system, a poorly functioning individual semiology. Due to the centrality of signals to all aspects of human psychology, we can expect borderline people to search frantically among others for the cohesion they lack in themselves.
If we understand psychology as a complex of signals, it becomes easier to categorize problems and discover treatments. It also becomes obvious that we can and should optimize this system even in healthy individuals by clearing up confused signals while removing bad ones.
Karma is ignorance
A Buddha has no karma because there is no ignorance.
Karma is the “work” ignorance does, the effects it generates in the mind-stream.
Karma disappears the moment it is fully understood; that is, the moment the ignorance underlying it is ended.
Some ignorance comes from people around us, our communities, how they define us. If this sort of ignorance is figured out, its karma disappears, the effects disappear. This is why people who have suffered serious psychological trauma and/or profoundly unjust social recrimination sometimes end up saying they are better off for all of it.
This caught my eye this morning:
…I feel that as Western societies we generally tend to label and marginalise mental illness instead of seeing it as a rather normal reaction to extreme and abnormal circumstances,” said Selen Atasoy, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Center for Brain and Cognition at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
“This, in my opinion, makes the recovery of a patient from trauma even more difficult, as this perspective of the society may further deepen the ‘dissociation’ – the withdrawal of the person, who experienced the traumatic event, from that painful experience.” (LSD produces a new type of ‘harmonic’ order in the brain, according to neuroimaging study)
Ignorance is less a moral factor in consciousness and much more a functional one. Good morals—that is, proper spiritual methods—lead us out of ignorance, but ignorance itself is by definition blameless.
The societal ignorance described in the above quotation is a crude response, the reasoning of a crowd. If you remove it, some other crudity will take its place.
Buddhism, as do most of the world’s spiritual traditions, honors reclusion, getting away from the crowd, going into the mind-stream unburdened by communal ignorance.
To get anywhere with karma, you have to be an individual and directly face individual realities.
Are humans biased in favor of punishment?
A new study indicates that we humans seem to get more reward from punishing wrongdoers compared to compensating victims.
…By combining a novel decision-making paradigm with functional neuroimaging, we identified specific brain networks that are involved with both the perception of, and response to, social injustice, with reward-related regions preferentially involved in punishment compared to compensation. (Source)
Whether we favor punishment over compensation or not, it’s obvious that we humans like punishment and do it often.
My guess is this accounts for a big part of interpersonal strife. Rather than look for a solution to interpersonal problems, a common default mode is to blame and punish instead. We even blame and punish ourselves.
This is why it is so important to know how to identify problems as they arise and how to deal with them as soon as possible.
Since we are probably born with a tendency to favor punishment, this must be taken into consideration whenever we make social and interpersonal decisions.
Lisa Feldman Barrett, “How Emotions Are Made”
One sentence I liked a lot in this vid is: “The experiences you cultivate today become the predictions your brain uses tomorrow.”
FIML practice cultivates in real-time the experience of changing your real-time interpretation, emotion, perspective, or understanding. Once you have done this many times with a partner, you will find that you will also be able do it with unwanted mental states when alone.
Basic FIML practice can be compared to musical scales or basic sports skills. Once these have been mastered, more complex skills become available. For this reason, FIML is a uniquely effective form of interpersonal psychotherapy.
Why narcissism works
Narcissism works because its victims don’t see it.
Victims don’t see it because they are children being raised by narcissistic parent(s) or very commonly adults who were raised by narcissists. There is even a term for the latter: ACoN, Adult Children of Narcissists.
Other kinds of people also fall for narcissists, but having been raised by narcissistic parent(s) is probably the most common.
Narcissists often appear normal to others due to narcissism being a fairly common disorder and also due to the narcissist’s deep-seated need to appear normal to others. They are experts at “impression management.” That’s a big part of what narcissism is.
For many ACoNs, narcissistic traits look perfectly normal because that is what they experienced at home. Narcissistic smiles, glares, malice, selfishness, ostracism, false concern, abuse, and more all seem normal because they were imprinted on the primary instincts of the child to need and trust their parents and siblings.
In truth, entire cultures can be narcissistic, abusive, hierarchical. To break these habits in interpersonal relationships, you have to do FIML practice or something very similar.
Fundamental to narcissism…
…is it is a one-way street. The narcissist must define and control “reality” so it travels in only one direction—from them to you.
Narcissism is a zero-sum game. The narcissist must win and cannot allow deeply shared realities that require nuance and complexity.
Most narcissists will act maliciously to achieve these ends.
Malice (often hidden), zero-sum, and one-way streets are very strong signs of narcissism.
If you are dealing with a narcissist, especially interpersonally, their narcissism will probably not be clear to you. That’s why you are staying in the relationship.
If you suspect you are dealing with a narcissist look for one or more of the signs above.
Malice, which frequently is concealed, can be the hardest to see. Narcissists gas light, abuse, reputation damage, backbite, physically harm, destroy property, steal, poison, and more. Their pleasure comes from watching you suffer.
Their one-way street deeply needs to define you and your reality. This is typically easier to see than their malice. They may come right out and say what kind of person they think you are. Just saying this does not make a person a narcissist, but saying it often and never accepting your explanations does. And if you say something similar to them, they will become angry either openly or concealed. Remember, it’s a one-way street with a narcissist.
You not only can’t win with a narcissist you can’t even break even because they are always playing a zero-sum game.
At the same time, most narcissists are skilled at “impression management.” They need other people to see them as being right and you being wrong. This is why narcissists often conceal their malice. They may conceal it completely. Or they may hide it in plain sight by explaining to everyone around you (behind you back) what your “problems” are and how they are only trying to help.
If you see any of these signs in parents, siblings, friends, or mates, look more closely. Don’t jump to conclusions. Ask yourself, is my relationship with that person deeply shared or is it a one-way street?
“Russian collusion” by Trump – ‘Game Over’
It’s been obvious for a long time to anyone paying attention that the “Russian collusion” story aimed at Donald Trump is a lie; and known to be a lie by those directing it within the Democrat Party, the FBI, and MSM.
One of the best researchers in this line of thought posted a terrific article last night: Game Over – Judge Jeanine Interview With HPSCI Rep. Chris Stewart…
I highly recommend reading that piece and perusing others on that site.
Just as tool awareness is nascent in animals so deep semiotic awareness is
nascent in humans.
The Russian collusion story is a story of semiotic manipulation that was too hard for most humans to figure out.
Much of our world—both public and interpersonal—is characterized by semiotic manipulation, often malicious. You cannot understand most of what happens around you (and in you) if you do not understand that.
Consciousness, Big Data, and FIML
Modern neuroscience does not see humans as having a discrete consciousness located in a specific part of the brain. Rather, as Michael S. Gazzaniga says:
The view in neuroscience today is that consciousness does not constitute a single, generalized process. It involves a multitude of widely distributed specialized systems and disunited processes, the products of which are integrated by the interpreter module. (Source)
Computer and Big Data-driven sociology sees something similar. According to Alex Pentland:
While it may be useful to reason about the averages, social phenomena are really made up of millions of small transactions between individuals. There are patterns in those individual transactions that are not just averages, they’re the things that are responsible for the flash crash and the Arab spring. You need to get down into these new patterns, these micro-patterns, because they don’t just average out to the classical way of understanding society. We’re entering a new era of social physics, where it’s the details of all the particles—the you and me—that actually determine the outcome. (Source)
Buddhists may recognize in these insights close similarities to core teachings of the Buddha—that we do not have a self; that all things arise out of complex conditions that are impermanent and changeable; that the lion’s share of “reality” for any individual lies in being attentive to the moment.
Notice how similar Pentland’s insights are to Gazzaniga’s—the whole, or the common generalities (of society), can be far better understood if we can account for the details that comprise them. Is an individual mind a fractal of society? Do these complex systems—societies and minds—both use similar organizational processes?
I am not completely sure how to answer those questions, but I am certain that most people are using similar sorts of “average” or general semiotics to communicate and think about both minds and societies. If we stick with general averages, we won’t see very much. Class, self, markets, personalities don’t give us information as sophisticated as the detailed analyses proposed by Gazzaniga and Pentland.
Well then, how can individuals cognize Gazzaniga’s “multitude of widely distributed specialized systems and disunited processes” in their minds? And how can they understand how “the products” of those processes are actually “integrated” into a functional “interpreter module”?
And if individuals can cognize the “disunited processes” that “integrate” into a conscious “interpreter,” how will they understand traditional psychological analyses of the self, personality, identity, biography, behavior?
I would maintain that our understanding of what it is to be a human will change deeply if we can learn to observe with reliable clarity the “disunited processes” that “integrate” into a conscious “interpreter.” That is, we will arrive at a completely new understanding of being that will replace the “self” that truly does not exist in the ways most societies (and people) understand it.
FIML practice shows partners how to observe with great clarity the “disunited processes” that “integrate” into a conscious “interpreter.” Once these process are observed in detail and for a long enough period of time, partners will realize that it is no longer necessary to understand themselves in the “average” terms of self, personality, identity, biography, behavior, and so on.
Partners will come to understand that these terms denote only a more detailed version of a naive, static view of what a person is. Most psychology is largely a more detailed version of a naive, static view of what a person is.
We see this in Gazzaniga and Pentland’s findings that are derived from complex analyses of what is actually happening in the brain or in the multitude of real transactions that actually comprise a society. We can also see very similar insights in the Buddha’s teachings.
It is my contention that FIML practice will show partners the same things—that their actual minds and actual interactions are much more complex (and interesting) than the general semiotic averages we normally use to understand them.
From a Buddhist point of view, when we “liberate” ourselves from “attachment” to “delusive” semiotic generalities and averages and are truly “mindful” of the “thusness” of the ways our minds actually work, we will free ourselves from “suffering,” from the “ignorance” that characterizes the First Noble Truth.
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First published 09/01/12
A maverick Jewish voice on how to treat Europeans is good for all of us to hear
I am not Jewish but I am from a very small European minority and I have been thinking like this for as long as I was conscious of these issues. Why would any small group want to undermine the larger group that surrounds it? Why not be helpful, friendly, and gracious? Without harmful hidden motives.
It’s the same for all other groups. You can support aggressive resource grabbing (which benefits greedy people at the top) or you can do your best to get along. It’s hard to get along. Believe me, I know all about that from all the angles, including trying to get along with Jews. In the end, it’s best to get along.
Here is the maverick voice with a link:
In my view, in 2018 what’s good for the Jews is for us to stop thinking about what’s good for the Jews and start thinking about the right to self-determination and survival for the people we live amongst: the people who have facilitated the most stunning successes of our tribe’s history in diaspora to date, Americans, Europeans, and people of European descent. (Source)
The same reasoning applies to all groups everywhere for both practical and spiritual reasons. I follow Asian American news fairly closely. So many complaints about YT (whitey). Why teach yourselves to be like that? It makes you blind to the many people who care about you.
Provocative analysis of cultural identity
A comment I read this morning has an insightful summary of what cultural identity is. And how it self-generates and self-perpetuates “…well beyond the control or foresight of anyone,.” (Source)
This complex of [cultural] ideas generates intense psychological pressures and allegiances and mobilizes some of the most primitive energies of the human psyche – safety, danger, clan, tribe, blood, status, power, domination – and leads to a clear pattern of behavior that is decentralized and not under anyone’s control but is still a very clear system that can be analyzed and identified. (Ibid.)
The entire string of comments is well-worth reading and can be found at the link above. [No permalink, so Ctrl F a snippet of the quote above to find the starting point.]
These comments are on Jewish culture and history but they apply just as well to any cultural “construct,” all of which are the stronger precisely because they are social constructs.
The commenter quoted above leans toward a negative appraisal of Jewish culture and history, which I largely agree with, but if it’s up to me I would say that virtually all successful cultures (“successful” being ones that perpetuate) have analogous negative features.
Incidentally, I believe a great deal of Buddhist practice and the practices of other religions are based on disentangling practitioners from cultural constructs to discover their authentic beings, souls, or the will of God.
Religions do this because in many ways cultures are toxic to the higher mind, the metacognitions of thusness and individual authenticity.
That said, cultures do teach us and raise us and we cannot develop without them. Religions are also cultures. And that said, we are capable as individuals of both learning from our cultures and growing well beyond them.
In this respect and in light of Buddhist practice, I am very leery of any and all kinds of cultural identities or individual identities fashioned as allegiance to a culture, especially an aggressive one. Sadly, it is also true that if you have no identity your culture will be lost or destroyed, so we all really do need some sort of “defensive identity.” In this respect, I can happily identify with most of the world Buddhist community and most of the traditional American Constitutional system interpreted conservatively. I also have a mild-but-strong-enough defensive white identity because that group is fast approaching eight percent of world population and I want it to survive.
The idea that everything is conscious is gaining credibility
Consciousness permeates reality. Rather than being just a unique feature of human subjective experience, it’s the foundation of the universe, present in every particle and all physical matter. (Source)
Goff believes quantum entanglement—the finding that certain particles behave as a single unified system even when they’re separated by such immense distances there can’t be a causal signal between them—suggests the universe functions as a fundamental whole rather than a collection of discrete parts. (Ibid.)
Basic FIML practice
Mastering basic FIML practice is similar to mastering musical scales or the basic skills of any sport.
Basic FIML is a kind of mental training that allows you to identify, understand, and react to real-time communication problems quickly and efficiently.
FIML analyses put both partners on the same page. Over time, partners develop a wealth of experience that improves communication while also illuminating individual and interpersonal psychology.
It is a fact that it is difficult for people to talk about how they talk when their talking has become heated for any reason.
FIML is designed to make it much easier to do that. Once mastered, the basic FIML technique results in a kind of metacognition that makes interpersonal analyses of all kinds easier and more efficient. Instead of fighting you can have fun with communication missteps.
After basic FIML has been done successfully a few hundred times, the basic technique does not need to be used as often because the metacognition that has developed between partners can handle many more situations than before.
FIML optimizes communication between partners thereby also optimizing psychological well-being. Though basic FIML can be done less often as skills improve, just as in sports or music it is always best to practice the basics frequently.
American Buddhist Net 