Tag: Buddhist Practice

Three essentials of good communication

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

The three essentials of any sentient communication system are:

  1. its rules
  2. awareness of those rules
  3. meta-awareness of how those rules are working

Culture is fundamentally a communication system.

Individual sentient beings require communication within themselves (the bodily system, individual subjectivity).

Humans also require communication with other sentient beings, especially humans. This could be called the instinct to be in or to form a culture.

We see this instinct in its rawest form in children as they learn language and behavior.

We also see it in raw form in adolescents and young adults as they seek out communication systems in art, political ideology, religion, ethnicity, career and community alliances, and so on.

Psychologically, humans are most fulfilled when they:

  1. are in a culture with good communication rules
  2. are aware of those rules
  3. are able to achieve metacognition of those rules; that is, how they are working within themselves and in relation to other humans

This satisfies the instinct to be in or form a culture.

The instinct to be in or form a culture can be super-satisfied if the culture has:

  1. really good rules
  2. same as #2 above
  3. metacognition of those rules has great explanatory power and is gratifying psychologically

Related: Buddhist practice can be divided into Three Trainings:

  1. Sila or ethics, morality
  2. Samdhi or concentration
  3. Prajna or wisdom

To me these Three Trainings look very much like the three points made in several ways above.

Until very recently, I had never thought of this but FIML practice can also be understood in terms of these three basic approaches to cultural and psychological communication.

FIML practice:

  1. fulfills our instinct to form or be in a culture
  2. harmonizes our psychologies
  3. provides a metacognitive vantage that explains (or enlightens us to) many things.

Since FIML rules are simple and open to infinite input, partners are able to form a super-satisfying culture based on their own needs and desires.

Consciousness as reality itself

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In Buddhism the idea that consciousness is reality and reality is conscious is called “mind only” or Yogachara.

David Ray Griffin, a process theologian, has come to similar conclusions—that reality is fundamentally conscious.

As has Donald D. Hoffman, a professor of cognitive science at UC Irvine.

Hoffman came at this subject from a mathematical angle, but arrived at a similar conclusion to Yogachara Buddhism. Hoffman says:

As a conscious realist, I am postulating conscious experiences as ontological primitives, the most basic ingredients of the world. I’m claiming that experiences are the real coin of the realm. (The Case Against Reality)

I tend to reach similar conclusions when I think about everything in terms of signals.

The advantage of thinking in terms of signals is we get a good picture of “reality” without needing to say what is real beyond the signal itself.

This kind of thinking is helpful for metaphysics but it is also extremely practical when it comes to human psychology.

Rather than posit personality types and what goes wrong or right with them, we analyze how people send and receive signals instead.

In thinking along these lines, I have come to the conclusion that most psychology as most people understand it uses “arms-length” language, the language of meso and macro signals rather than the much more precise language of the micro signals that actually comprise our shared “realities.”

The difference can be illustrated in this way: Rather than explain your most recent signal (sent or received) in terms of personality, explain it by accessing the micro-signals of short-term memory to find its true antecedents.

If you do this again and again by using a game such as FIML, you will probably come to conclusions similar to the above—that there is no deeper substance to psychological reality than your consciousness of it.

A modern contemplation of death

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Unless the person is depressed, contemplation of death is considered a good—even essential—practice for Buddhists.

“Analysis of death is not for the sake of becoming fearful but to appreciate this precious lifetime.” —Dalai Lama

I had an experience with this contemplation recently.

A bad sign made me decide to see a doctor. She said, “Full disclosure, this could be serious.”

I was calm because I already knew that. The clinic took blood and did some other tests.

I went home and thought about what might happen. My ensuing contemplation of death had not been planned but it did “concentrate the mind wonderfully.”

In doing so, it relieved me of all of my usual worries and fears. For days I was able to float above my life and look upon (almost) every moment as unique and valuable.

I loved this state. Everything I don’t like about myself went away.

Then my symptoms disappeared and I realized I was not going to die soon, at least not from what I had thought.

And almost immediately my concentration changed and the stuff I don’t like about myself (almost all) came back.

The worst thing you can do

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The worst thing you can do is trick someone into using their conscience to cause harm.

This not only causes said harm but also undermines the person’s moral sense, their trust in their own moral feelings. To say nothing of their trust in others.

This sort of mental jujitsu attacks the victim in the most important part of their mind, the part that guides them forward in a good direction.

Our ability to tell the difference between wholesome and unwholesome mental states is one power we never want to lose and never want to harm or undermine in others.

Examine closely all appeals to your conscience. Each one must be analyzed for hypocrisy, mendacity, who really benefits, and what the long-term consequences would be.

The science of psychedelics and religion

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Very pleased to read about a study on psychedelics and religion: Religious leaders get high on magic mushrooms ingredient – for science.

I am not at all surprised that of the lucky people chosen for this study, “So far everyone incredibly values their experience. No one has been confused or upset or regrets doing it.”

I call them lucky because where else can you medical-grade psilocybin?

If anyone hears of another study like this one, please let me know! I want to join.

More on Buddhism and psychedelics can be found here: Are We Misunderstanding the Fifth Precept?

Edit: 3:30 PM: Research Shows Magic Mushrooms Can Offer Real Benefits in Depression Therapy. Quote:

A review of the research on combining therapy with the psychoactive component from magic mushrooms has concluded it’s not only a safe and effective way to treat conditions related to anxiety, depression, and addiction, it could be better than many existing forms of treatment.

How the brain processes new information

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A new paper provides fascinating insight into how our brains amass information and organize and assess it in real-time.

The paper—Cliques of Neurons Bound into Cavities Provide a Missing Link between Structure and Function—proposes that “the brain processes stimuli by forming increasingly complex functional cliques and cavities.”

The full intro to the paper:

The lack of a formal link between neural network structure and its emergent function has hampered our understanding of how the brain processes information. We have now come closer to describing such a link by taking the direction of synaptic transmission into account, constructing graphs of a network that reflect the direction of information flow, and analyzing these directed graphs using algebraic topology. Applying this approach to a local network of neurons in the neocortex revealed a remarkably intricate and previously unseen topology of synaptic connectivity. The synaptic network contains an abundance of cliques of neurons bound into cavities that guide the emergence of correlated activity. In response to stimuli, correlated activity binds synaptically connected neurons into functional cliques and cavities that evolve in a stereotypical sequence toward peak complexity. We propose that the brain processes stimuli by forming increasingly complex functional cliques and cavities.

The cliques of neurons that grow and connect in real-time make up the transient “architecture” of awareness as it changes and responds to stimuli.

You can observe a process that seems to fit this description by simply turning your head and looking around. As your eye settles on something to consider in more detail, neuronic cliques will grow in your brain based on that stimulus.

Depending on the significance to you of what you are looking at, further associations drawn from memory and emotion will aggregate around it.

Interestingly, the concept of transient neuronal cliques that grow into larger structures fits very well with the Buddha’s Five Skandhas explanation of the path between perception and consciousness.

This paper also seems to explain why FIML practice works. FIML interrupts the (re)formation of mistaken neuronal cliques in real-time, thus preventing the (re)association of established mental states with new perceptions. If there was no mistake FIML affirms that truth.

By consciously interfering with habitual neuronal cliques, FIML eliminates the false and unwanted psychological structures that give rise to them.

FIML works because large (mistaken) psychological brain structures rely on reconsolidation through the continual processing of “new” information that falsely reconfirms them.

As such, human psychology to a large extent is an ongoing self-fulfilling prophesy.

Here is an article about the paper: Brain Architecture: Scientists Discover 11 Dimensional Structures That Could Help Us Understand How the Brain Works.

Free will: its locus is the mind

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Action in the physical world is a smaller set of options than action within the mind.

Thus, the locus of free will is the mind not the body or its actions.

We always have many options in the mind. Many choices are available for what we choose to think or how we choose to frame something.

A related idea that is not necessarily part of the above is if God or Dharma Protectors or some other being in a higher realm wanted to influence us, they would be most likely to do so by influencing our minds.

This influence could be a subtle guiding of our thoughts, actual channeling of their thoughts, or even a vision when we are alone.

When we are alone because in those moments the influence will be primarily on our minds not our bodies. Our eyes may see and our ears hear, but if no one else is there the influence will ultimately occur in our minds and remain in our minds as memory.

When we are alone because if another person is present and they see or hear the same thing, the influence will impact the physical world to a much greater extent.

It will not be contained within one human mind. Two people will be astounded by it, talk about it, share it with others. This extends the influence well into physical reality causing it to have a much wider impact.

Visions influencing more than one person have happened, but these should not be the standard of proof that events of that type do happen.

Indeed, it makes sense to assume that interventions into human affairs from higher realms happen to individuals far more often than to pairs or groups of people.

This also makes sense from the point of view that the locus of free will is in the mind.

A higher being can influence the mind and the will in this way without causing major distortions in the physical world.

Error, ignorance, and disproportionality

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Error, ignorance, and disproportionality are important factors in all forms of human communication.

They underlie and often dominate all individual psychology, all interpersonal communication, and all social arrangements, including economics, politics, science, media, societal norms, and so on.

We can see these three factors—error, ignorance, and disproportionality—in the recent revelation that the opioid addiction catastrophe was based on a single misconstrued sentence.

That single sentence was interpreted erroneously due to ignorance of its true context and then blown out of proportion.

Many thousands have lost their lives due to those mistakes.

Yes, science did eventually notice and will eventually correct this error, and that is good, but medical science also messed up prescriptions for dietary salt and fat based on even worse information.

For many years, and probably even still today, an obese person could go to a doctor’s office for a sore knee and be prescribed addictive opioids while also being advised to eat less fat and salt while increasing carbohydrate intake.

If even science can do this, how much more can it occur in politics, economics, and social norms?

When error, ignorance, or disproportionality happen outside of us, there is usually little we can do. Usually it is best to be stoical or Buddhist about it.

When error, ignorance, and disproportionality happen within interpersonal relations, there is much we can and should do. FIML can completely fix these problems when they arise between two people.

As mentioned, science eventually fixes its own problems. That is a foundational reason for the success of science and why humans admire it.

FIML is a kind of scientific inquiry into interpersonal psychology and functionality.

When people do not do science, they become even worse victims of error, ignorance, and disproportionality. When they don’t do FIML, the same bad things happen interpersonally and within individual psychology.

Error, ignorance, and disproportionality are often exploited for financial or emotional gain. If you know anything that someone else does not know, you will probably be able to exploit that knowledge to your advantage and their disadvantage.

And if you don’t do that (thank you for your goodness), you can be certain that many of the people around you will.

That is the world we live in. You have to be philosophical to accept that and to change that.

Thought alone tells us that removing error, ignorance, and disproportionality when we can is a good thing to do. Thought alone also tells us that in many cases we will pay a price for doing that as our good will will often be misinterpreted or used against us.

I see much of this as what the First Noble Truth is all about. A lotus grows out of mud much as our minds grow out of and beyond these kinds of delusions.

Philosophical psychology

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Are your thought patterns valid? Are your premises true? Is your mind sound?

Buddhism further asks are your mental states wholesome? Are they conducive to enlightenment, wisdom, freedom from delusion?

There are many things we can do while alone to clean up our thought processes. And there are some things we can only do with the help of another person.

Only another person can tell us if our premises, thoughts, and conclusions (however tentative) about them are true, valid, and sound.

Buddhism has a concept of a “spiritual friend,” a “good friend,” a noble friend,” or an “admirable friend.” All of these terms are translations of the Pali Kalyāṇa-mittatā, which is well-explained at that link. (Chinese 善知識). That link is well-worth reading in full.

From the link above and from many years of working with Buddhist literature and people, my sense is that a Buddhist “good friend” is someone who is to be admired and emulated. They are similar to what we mean today by mentors or “good role models.”

I deeply respect the concept of a Buddhist good friend, but find it lacks what I consider the preeminent virtue of philosophical psychology—real-time honesty based on a teachable technique.

Indeed, I cannot find anything anywhere in world philosophy, religion, or literature that provides a teachable technique for attaining real-time honesty with another person.

I also do not quite understand how this could be.

For many centuries human beings have thought about life but no one has come up with a technique like FIML?

How can that be?

I do not see a technique like FIML anywhere in the history of human philosophy nor anywhere in modern psychology.

The importance of a “good friend” who does FIML with you cannot be overemphasized because it is only through such a friend that you can discover where your premises about them are right or wrong, where your thoughts about them are valid or not, and through those discoveries where your mind itself is arranged soundly or not.

 

Consciousness is that which chooses

~ ABN ~ 3 Comments

Anything that can choose is conscious to that extent, to the extent that it can choose.

In this respect, “that which chooses” has cognition of its options and also tends to make anti-entropic choices, choices that go against the entropy of itself. (If it did not do this or stopped doing this, it would not survive long. Its anti-entropic choices take energy from the environment, of course.)

Choosing and going against entropy does not mean always doing this correctly or in the best way.

It can be argued that matter also chooses or participates in some overarching principle of choice or selection. Matter’s very common cause-and-effect relations with itself must be based on something besides matter itself.

Consciousness, thus, can be defined as that which:

  • chooses
  • has cognition of options
  • is primarily anti-entropic for itself

We can also say that this same consciousness as just defined:

  • chooses though not always well
  • has cognition though often mistaken
  • is anti-entropic in ways that can be counter-productive

Matter itself conforms to principles—the laws of physics—though these do not appear to apply or apply well to chaos, radiation, quantum fluctuations, black holes. Nor to themselves in the sense that they do not reveal where they come from.

This suggests that matter itself persists under unknowable conditions much as we do.

What we do not know does not just include metaphysics but also anything we can imagine. At some point, we just won’t know anymore.

Socially, we rarely know the motives of others. Psychologically, we often cannot be rational about our own motives. And even if we are being rational we often base our decisions on bad data or incomplete or unknowable data. We often do not understand or even know what our own motives are.

When there are many factors, we become confused. Our minds feel chaotic. We become anxious, indecisive, emotional. This is a form of consciousness trying to make choices, struggling to choose, to select.

Psychological optimization through analysis of communication in real-time

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The best way to analyze how you communicate in real time is:

Get an honest partner who cares about you.

Together and separately observe the small units of your thoughts and communication.

Use only units of communication small enough to be held in your short-term memory(s). This means the five to seven things you are able to hold in your short-term memory.

Discuss what you find in yourself with your partner.

Then discuss these units as they arise during communication with your partner.

If both partners understand what comprises a small unit (the 5-7 things in short-term memory), you are ready to share this information in real-time (that is, very close in time to when the small unit arose).

This small unit could be a gesture, a word, an expression, a tone of voice. Anything small enough that communicates to you and that seems to be coming from your partner.

The unit should be small and agreed upon by both partners.

Then analyze it as it functioned during the moment(s) it arose.

Example: the small unit might be a fleeting gesture—your partner drops their hand. You feel something and juust start to think maybe it is a dismissive gesture.

Stop the flow of communication immediately at that point (as you first perceive a reaction arising in yourself).

Then ask your partner what was in their mind when their hand dropped (or what was in their mind “just a moment before,” without identifying the hand drop).

(Your partner must previously have agreed to welcome this sort of intervention.)

Listen to what they say and compare that to what you were beginning to think.

If it was dismissive, find out why.

If it was not, examine yourself and how your psychology was actually functioning in real-time.

You can also do this with units based on positive emotions or unemotional states of mind.

It’s good to practice this technique on neutral states of mind.

What you will find.

You will find that a significant number of your real-time impressions of your partner are mistaken, either slightly or very much.

If both partners keep correcting these mistakes, you will come to have fewer and fewer of them (though they will always continue to arise due to inherent ambiguities in communication).

As both partners clear up communications between them, both will also clear up many cloudy parts of their own psychologies.

This is because our psychologies are based on communication. (Bad data in = bad conclusions both inside you and what you do with them outside you.)

I have used the above technique for many years and guarantee it works wonders.

The hardest parts of this are getting a good partner, getting them to agree to do it, then doing it your first few times.

It is hard at first because it goes against basic cultural instincts.

To overcome this, remember the units are very small and you agreed to do it.

This technique doesn’t hurt at all but will make you feel wonderful.

It doesn’t hurt because the units are so small.

It makes you feel wonderful because each mistaken unit you remove clears up mental space for something better.

When you observe and remove more and more small (micro) units of the same type, you will tend to eliminate the meso and macro (mistaken) psychological frames that support them.

Some frames can be eliminated after 1-5 micro units have been observed. Some take longer.

Buddhism and Stoicism

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Buddhism and stoicism are highly compatible with each other.

Stoicism is fairly simple. Here is a (too) short summary:

Our normal impulse is to see misfortune, loss, death, and the choices of others as primary concerns, since they can significantly affect our lives. But this is where the Stoics deviate from our natural inclinations. They offer a bold new take: a thing doesn’t automatically become your concern just because it might affect you. (The Only Thing You Need to Get Good At)

Be sure to read the article linked above. It provides more information and links.

“Culture and demographics are our destiny”

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What could be more obvious?

And yet, this obvious statement from a US Congressman is producing a minor firestorm among US media and political elites.

The full Tweet from Steve King of Iowa reads:

Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.

A cuck is basically someone who denies the obvious fundamental truth of King’s statement. A cuck supports policies that help them personally in their career (think neocons and “principled conservatives” in addition to leftists) but undermine their culture, society, or people.

Almost all cucks are white. You won’t find very many Chinese, Japanese, Jewish, Arab, or African cucks (in their own homelands). Unless, maybe they are Christian.

Christian so-called “universal morality” places little or no importance on ethnic, cultural, historical, or racial realities. That’s nice and may become so in future when robots, gene-splicing,  and brain-computer enhancements are the norm. But as of now, those are not the norm.

Basic human realities of violence, perfidy, hypocrisy, and deceit, unfortunately, still rule the world.

Fundamental truths are always very simple when stated outright and it is very easy to muddy the waters of basic truths. But they are still true and you are a fool to ignore them.

Arch leftist Howard Dean, Tweeted in response:

King is a total ignoramus and no one takes him seriously.

Dean’s response is the fundamental Christian/Western response approved by our elite masters of today. It says, “this person is bad, not one of us,” while conspicuously refraining from providing a counter-argument. Dean is a cuck, like it or not.

For Buddhists, here is what the Dalai Lama himself has to say on this issue:

BERLIN: The Dalai Lama said in an interview published Thursday that Europe has accepted “too many” refugees, and that they should eventually return to help rebuild their home countries.

“When we look into the face of every single refugee, especially the children and women, we can feel their suffering,” said the Tibetan spiritual leader, who has himself lived in exile for over half a century.

“A human being who is a bit more fortunate has the duty to help them. On the other hand, there are too many now,” he said. (Source)

The Dalai Lama knows from experience that too many immigrants destroy cultures. Tibet is all but lost due to massive immigration from China.

Buddhist morality is based on wisdom not compassion. Compassion must be tempered with wisdom. This is why the DL says in essence, “When we look in their faces, we feel compassion for them but culture and demographics are our destiny, so it’s is wrong to take in too many as Europe already has.”

The word cuck arose to combat the kinds of words Dean and the left use all the time. It’s unfortunate that public discourse needs a simple response like cuck but that’s reality too.

Cucks constantly swear at and demean opponents with strong words like “total ignoramus,” “rayciss,” and “deplorable” if you disagree with them.

So those of us who despise that simple-mindedness and the way it short-circuits wise discussion have been all but forced to respond with words like cuck.

Cucks like Dean are selling out American and Western civilization for their own selfish and temporary advantage. Their descendants will hate them for that.

_________________

Edit: The following point seems beyond obvious to me but probably needs to be stated:

Recognizing that your civilization will be destroyed if too many people from other civilizations come into it, does not mean you hate the other civilization(s).

I suppose the need to make this statement shows yet again how basic basic truths really are.

A subtle danger helping personalities face

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Generally, helping personalities enjoy seeing others do well.

They have an active desire to help others.

A subtle problem with this desire is if the helper is dealing with a narcissist (or worse), fulfilling the desire to help will also involve fulfilling the narcissist’s dark need for people to attend to them.

This is an example of why we must be careful about positive moral feelings in ourselves.

Such feelings probably will not be filed in the mind as “positive moral feelings.” Rather, they might be filed simply as “good feelings” or “relationship satisfaction” or “the right thing to do.”

The narcissist (or worse) feeds off the helper’s good moral instincts to maintain a dead-end desire, a low desire.

You can see this in subcultures as well. Like malignant narcissists, some subcultures will destroy, even seek to destroy, the larger culture that hosts them. They do this for pleasure and/or because it seems to them to be to their advantage.

Buddhist morality is always based on wisdom, on conducting a wise analysis of yourself and any situation.

It is good to be a helping type. But you have to be careful who you help. You really need to analyze it.

If you help a malignant narcissist because it feels right and because you are blinded to their condition by your moral feelings, you are not doing any good. You are probably causing harm.

At the very least, your positive moral feelings are being wasted. Beyond that, a more deserving person is not receiving your help. And beyond that, the narcissist is being strengthened and confirmed in their ways while a ripple effect from all of this goes outward.

Very small decisions and what they show about us

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A very small decision I make on many mornings is which coffee cup is going to be mine and which goes to my partner.

The two cups we normally use are the same and I cannot tell one from the other. If I thought one was better than the other, I would give it to her.

What happens is at some point while I take the cups from the cupboard and set them on the counter, I incline toward deciding that one of them will be for me and one for her. This “decision” is so small I describe it as “incline toward deciding.”

As I continue preparing morning coffee, my very small decision about which cup is mine spends more time in my mind. By the time I pour the coffee, I am generally always mildly set on which one is going to be mine for the morning and which hers.

My initial “inclining toward deciding” has changed into my being “mildly set on” which cup is mine. I might even feel a bit possessive toward “my” cup as I pour the coffee.

The main point is that once we make even a very weak decision or incline toward a weak decision it requires energy to change that.

Of course, I do not really care which cup I get and yet I have inclined toward one or decided on one of them. At some point in this process you have to do that.

If I try to change my decision once the coffee is poured and give “my” cup to my partner, I am aware of expending a bit of energy.

The energy required to change which cup is mine is greater than the energy required to decide which cup is mine. I only fell into my initial decision but must climb out of it if I want to change it.

I bet you do this or something like it, too. Just watch yourself and observe it happening. Once you see it, try changing to the other cup or whatever it is you have chosen.

It’s not hard to change your decision but it decidedly requires a little bit of energy. That may be some of the smallest mental energy you will ever exert, but you will have to exert it.

I find I feel a bit awkward when I change my initial decision. It seems my mind is already set at some lower level so the meta-level that  changes that does not have the right networking or connections for the transition to be completely smooth. This is the opposite of the initial decision which seems to have required little or no energy. And has managed to grow bigger all on its own, outside of my awareness.

Notice also, if you are like me, you will happily give your partner the better cup if one of them is better. That decision, too, will require energy to change, maybe even more energy than if the cups are the same. This probably happens because if you change your decision to the better cup (for yourself), you will also feel a bit selfish in addition to the above considerations. This will happen even if your partner wants you to change cups.

So either way—changing between two cups that are the same or changing from the worse cup to the better one—you will need to expend a bit of energy, even though your initial decision probably required none at all.