[FutureBuddha (19)] The Buddhist Three Poisons: Toned Down Desires

[Jundo]

Dear Cravers for This or That (we all have many) ...

... hopefully you are free of excess and harmful cravings though ...

We continue our look at how upcoming technological and medical discoveries might help moderate or eliminate the "Three Poisons," in this case, helping us attain the Buddhist "desire" for moderation of (or, in some cases, total freedom from) desires.

I remind readers: In the following I continue to ask, assuming that certain medical, genetic and other technological developments ...

(1) are inevitable and coming anyway, cannot be halted, cannot be ignored;

(2) have a high chance of being misused by bad actors unless we use them in beneficial ways;

(3) can be shown to be effective and safe to use; and

(4) can be introduced in an ethical way respectful of individual free choice, civil and human rights ...

... how should such technologies be best employed to heal some of what troubles this world??

My book states:

~ ~ ~

Looking again at excess desires, would it be possible to identify the parts of the brain, endocrine system, education, socialization and DNA that give rise to certain types and levels of craving and tune them down, or turn them off? Would it be possible to eliminate or moderate many of our most unhealthy cravings, much as modern medicine is currently employing drugs, surgery, and various psychological treatments to combat the ravages of extreme obesity, alcoholism, narcotics abuse, sex addiction, compulsions, and obsessions of all kinds? Can we be programmed to be nicely hungry and horny as nature made us in order to survive and thrive, but only to a happy and healthy degree? It would be efficient sometimes to have an inner “volume control” to tone down (or amp up) sexual desires and appetites for when and where they are appropriate, thus hot, horny, and hungry at our appropriate loving or lunching hours, but gratefully cool and untroubled by such desires the rest of the day.

We cannot eliminate all our desires to eat, drink and mate, but we can rid the world of excess eating and other out-of-control cravings that lead to obesity, alcoholism, and substance or sex addictions, and all the personal and societal ills which they cause in turn. Even today, drugs such as Disulfiram, Acamprosate, Naltrexone and Nalmefene are employed in the battle against alcohol and opioid dependances. Just removing the diseases of addiction that have destroyed so many would help make healthier, more fruitful lives for millions.

Furthermore, an ability to hunger, but have our hungers satisfied earlier and more easily, would halt excess consumption and all the personal and societal ills that result from excess desires in turn. Could the centers of our brain that trigger feelings of satisfaction be activated earlier, so that we feel ‘full’ with stomachs less than stuffed, experience less compulsion to buy things just to calm ourselves, are less susceptible to advertising and other visual temptations which trigger cravings in us? Imagine a body that felt satiated by a smaller number of calories, closer to the actual amount needed for health, that was more moderate in its consumer goals, and more easily contented with conditions that do not always turn out as hoped, all while one keeps working and striving, seeking and consuming necessities and good things nonetheless. Some people are moderate and sensible in their lifestyles and attitudes, while others are not, and there are certainly physiological and psychological keys to unlock as to why these differences exist.

Might we also feel a subtle, underlying satisfaction toward life in general? Thereby, we would continue our drive to plan and work our plans, but simultaneously experience an abiding foundation of inner peace even as we do so. The resulting spirit would be much like that of a runner, moving diligently toward a goal, seeking energetically to win, yet finding satisfaction in each step of the race, win or lose. We could keep ourselves clothed and fed, and the population replenished, enjoy healthful and hearty meals and orgasms, but also know a fundamental satisfaction that is underlying all desire.

The Buddha demonstrated, in pursuing his own projects and goals, that there is simultaneously a way to maintain an underlying satisfaction and goallessness in heart, even as one strives. The enlightened Buddha got up from under the tree where he sat, clothed and fed himself each day, then walked from here to there teaching relentlessly, and so he desired and made effort for many worthwhile things. One might say that the Buddha was something of a go-getter, a man who worked tirelessly for years to build his community and mission, who in no way remained placid and passive his entire life. Buddha did not just sit around under a tree! Further, he and generations of later Buddhist teachers counseled countless lay followers who were themselves leaders and kings, merchants, farm owners, scholars, physicians, explorers, early scientists, writers and artists. The Buddha and Buddhist masters would encourage their lay followers to continue at their pursuits … knowing that, without them to grow the food, raise families and run the government, society would grind to a halt. However, the Buddha and old masters also taught these lay followers moderation, to have desires but not in excess, to choose the good and healthful and not the unwarranted, harmful or destructive in their pursuits, and to find peace in heart even amid the struggles that society and the world frequently present in life.


(to be continued ... )


Gassho, J

stlah


tsuku.jpg

[Jundo]

A professor at Duke University Law School (my alma mater, although I was there 35 years ago, and none of my law professors even dreamt such questions) offers her fascinating insights in a podcast interview at the below link ...

~ ~ ~

Neurotech could connect our brains to computers. What could go wrong, right?

Connecting our brains to computers may sound like something from a science fiction movie, but it turns out the future is already here. One expert argues it's a slippery slope.


Who is she? Nita Farahany is professor of law and philosophy at Duke Law School. Her work focuses on futurism and legal ethics, and her latest book, The Battle For Your Brain, explores the growth of neurotech in our everyday lives.

Neurotechnology can provide insight into the function of the human brain. It's a growing field of research that could have all sorts of health applications, and goes beyond wearable devices like smart watches that monitor your heart rate of the amount of steps you take in a day.
Farahany describes it to NPR like this: "Imagine a near distant future in which it isn't just your heart rate, or your oxygen levels, or the steps that you're taking that you're tracking, but also your brain activity, where you're wearing wearable brain sensors that are integrated into your headphones, and your earbuds, and your watches, to track your brain activity in the same way that you track all of the rest of your activity. And that allows you to peer into your own brain health and wellness, and your attention and your focus, and even potentially your cognitive decline over time."


What's the big deal? You mean aside from the prospect of having your brain tracked? Farahany worries about potential privacy issues, and outlines various scenarios in which access to this information could be problematic, if the right protections aren't put in place.

Law enforcement could seek the data from neurotech companies in order to assist with criminal investigations, she says, citing Fitbit data being presented as evidence in court as a precedent.

And she warns it could extend to the workplace, giving employers the opportunity to track productivity, or whether workers' minds are wandering while on the job.
Farahany argues that without the proper human rights protections in place, the unfettered growth of this tech could lead to a world that violates our right to "cognitive liberty."

What is she saying?

Farahany on defining cognitive liberty:

The simplest definition I can give is the right to self-determination over our brains and mental experiences. I describe it as a right from other people interfering with our brains ... It directs us as an international human right to update existing human rights — the right to privacy — which implicitly should include a right to mental privacy but explicitly does not.

On the existing practice of tracking employees with tech:

When it comes to neurotechnology, there's already — in thousands of companies worldwide — at least basic brain monitoring that's happening for some employees. And that usually is tracking things like fatigue levels if you're a commercial driver. Or if you're a miner, having brain sensors that are embedded in hard hats or baseball caps that are picking up your fatigue levels. ... In which case it may not be that intrusive relative to the benefits to society and to the individual.

But the idea of tracking a person's brain to see whether or not they are focused, or if their mind is wandering — for an individual to use that tool, I don't think that is a bad thing. I use productivity focused tools. And neurotechnology is a tool given to individuals to enable them to figure out how and where they focus best. But when companies use it to see if their employees are paying attention, and which ones are paying the most attention, and which ones have periods of mind wandering, and then using that as part of productivity scoring, it undermines morale, it undercuts the dignity of work.

So, what now?

Like other new and rapidly developing areas of tech, Farahany warns that the pace of development may be far too fast to keep it reasonably in check. She believes it is only a matter of time before the technology is widely adopted.

"I don't think it's too late. I think that this last bastion of freedom, before brain wearables become really widespread, is a moment at which we could decide this is a category that is just different in kind. We're going to lay down a set of rights and interests for individuals that favor individuals and their right to cognitive liberty."

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/14/1163494707/neurotechnology-privacy-data-tracking-nita-farahany-battle-for-brain-book

Gassho, J

stlah

[Tokan]

Hi all and gassho

I feel like this topic will be another one of those contentious ideas about tampering with humans! In psychiatry, medication is often given until the person no longer needs it, much like you would take antibiotics or a skin treatment until the infection clears up. In my mind this is analogous to mindfulness practice (MBSR), it is helpful in the milder cases. Now when we look at serious mental affliction, which allows me to include not just illness, but those with very deep attachments to the three poisons, medication offers palliation and create side effects that make the mindfulness or talking therapy side of things more difficult to cognitively process. Many people I see talk about being "cognitively out of step" with themselves, or of feeling so numb or disassociated, such that doing the important work of self-analysis and growth seems less of a priority - the med's having toned them down. A technology, be it medicinal or stimulatory that could tone down our attachments or symptoms of illness, perhaps like a TV remote, so that when we are plagued by them we have a reliable method of control. Imagine hearing voices that are horrible to you and taking pills that make you zone out rather than actually stop the voices? What it an implant (with a neat remote control) gave you that power. It must not be programmed to 'give you voices', that would be one of those bad uses of technology and would be open to abuse for sure.

In all of this future-looking, we should continually look for cures or treatments (for illness or just 'this condition of life as it is') that enables us to be in touch with the best parts of ourselves and which can be linked to therapeutic treatments for the 'self', whether talking or brain-programming activities (along the lines of neurolinguistic programming - but maybe with some advanced features, ?app-based). I work with families where the intergenerational (epigenetic and social learning) basis of the toxicity of the three poisons is all too clear, with sometimes four generations of maladaptive and antisocial behaviour clearly identified. While they may have their human rights, we cannot ignore that, for them, returning to a prosocial lifestyle is either going to take generations or a radical solution, to avert continuing cycles of abuse, addiction, and violence, but also to allow these families a route 'back-in' to mainstream society, which currently shuns them. In terms of consent for these types of solutions, I do not believe that people with poison-inflected lives actually enjoy them in the deepest sense. Rather, in my view, they clutch at one experience that allows them to deny their misery for just a moment, and then clutch at the next one when it comes along, and so on and on, in a morally and spiritually exhausting ever decreasing circle of return. I suspect more people would consider such options if they felt less misery in their lives, even extending this to the hope that contentment and happiness might also be possible.

Another question then springs to mind - what kind of Buddhist are you if you have access to this technology? If you don't have to sweat blood and marrow on the zafu over years in order to obtain some level of control over the three poisons, then are you less of a Buddhist? I guess I have two thoughts about that. One, if you are a kinder and more considerate Buddhist that suffers less, and is able to role-model this mode of life because you have a type of enhancement that facilitates that, well then you are a good Buddhist are you not? Did not Dogen teach zazen as a technology? Was it not considered radical in it's own way in Japan? Why judge the means if you continue to practice zazen and adopt the precepts? Is this not the practice-life-enlightenment of zen? Secondly, sometimes I wonder if we have a 'stuck in the past' attitude towards what makes a good zen person. After all, we venerate and admire the great Masters and practitioners of antiquity (Bodhidharmas time spent facing the wall is but one obvious example!), and even in the present times, we offer deep bows of respect to those among us that teach us through their great human suffering mixed in with their practice-life. But the good Buddhist of yesterday and today need not be the way a good Buddhist is defined in the future, and I think we need to be open to how the world changes over time. In my eyes, even more than that, we should be out there more, not being stingy with the teachings, sharing a dharma-perspective, even if through an 'uploadable brain training package', why not make this available? Some of us may prefer the hard road, especially those of us that know that the path yields results, but many of us have put in years of effort, and we are a minority. Would such technology shift this balance, so that more people are receptive, not specifically to zen, but to moral and ethical teachings that reconnect the disconnected, that move us from dependent and independent to interdependent? I have hope that some of the technologies that target the three poisons will be ground-breaking in tackling some of our societies seemingly intractable mental and social diseases.

Gassho, Tokan

satlah

[Jundo]

Lovely insights, I feel, Tokan.

Gassho, J

stlah

Hi all and gassho

I feel like this topic will be another one of those contentious ideas about tampering with humans! In psychiatry, medication is often given until the person no longer needs it, much like you would take antibiotics or a skin treatment until the infection clears up. In my mind this is analogous to mindfulness practice (MBSR), it is helpful in the milder cases. Now when we look at serious mental affliction, which allows me to include not just illness, but those with very deep attachments to the three poisons, medication offers palliation and create side effects that make the mindfulness or talking therapy side of things more difficult to cognitively process. Many people I see talk about being "cognitively out of step" with themselves, or of feeling so numb or disassociated, such that doing the important work of self-analysis and growth seems less of a priority - the med's having toned them down. A technology, be it medicinal or stimulatory that could tone down our attachments or symptoms of illness, perhaps like a TV remote, so that when we are plagued by them we have a reliable method of control. Imagine hearing voices that are horrible to you and taking pills that make you zone out rather than actually stop the voices? What it an implant (with a neat remote control) gave you that power. It must not be programmed to 'give you voices', that would be one of those bad uses of technology and would be open to abuse for sure.

In all of this future-looking, we should continually look for cures or treatments (for illness or just 'this condition of life as it is') that enables us to be in touch with the best parts of ourselves and which can be linked to therapeutic treatments for the 'self', whether talking or brain-programming activities (along the lines of neurolinguistic programming - but maybe with some advanced features, ?app-based). I work with families where the intergenerational (epigenetic and social learning) basis of the toxicity of the three poisons is all too clear, with sometimes four generations of maladaptive and antisocial behaviour clearly identified. While they may have their human rights, we cannot ignore that, for them, returning to a prosocial lifestyle is either going to take generations or a radical solution, to avert continuing cycles of abuse, addiction, and violence, but also to allow these families a route 'back-in' to mainstream society, which currently shuns them. In terms of consent for these types of solutions, I do not believe that people with poison-inflected lives actually enjoy them in the deepest sense. Rather, in my view, they clutch at one experience that allows them to deny their misery for just a moment, and then clutch at the next one when it comes along, and so on and on, in a morally and spiritually exhausting ever decreasing circle of return. I suspect more people would consider such options if they felt less misery in their lives, even extending this to the hope that contentment and happiness might also be possible.

Another question then springs to mind - what kind of Buddhist are you if you have access to this technology? If you don't have to sweat blood and marrow on the zafu over years in order to obtain some level of control over the three poisons, then are you less of a Buddhist? I guess I have two thoughts about that. One, if you are a kinder and more considerate Buddhist that suffers less, and is able to role-model this mode of life because you have a type of enhancement that facilitates that, well then you are a good Buddhist are you not? Did not Dogen teach zazen as a technology? Was it not considered radical in it's own way in Japan? Why judge the means if you continue to practice zazen and adopt the precepts? Is this not the practice-life-enlightenment of zen? Secondly, sometimes I wonder if we have a 'stuck in the past' attitude towards what makes a good zen person. After all, we venerate and admire the great Masters and practitioners of antiquity (Bodhidharmas time spent facing the wall is but one obvious example!), and even in the present times, we offer deep bows of respect to those among us that teach us through their great human suffering mixed in with their practice-life. But the good Buddhist of yesterday and today need not be the way a good Buddhist is defined in the future, and I think we need to be open to how the world changes over time. In my eyes, even more than that, we should be out there more, not being stingy with the teachings, sharing a dharma-perspective, even if through an 'uploadable brain training package', why not make this available? Some of us may prefer the hard road, especially those of us that know that the path yields results, but many of us have put in years of effort, and we are a minority. Would such technology shift this balance, so that more people are receptive, not specifically to zen, but to moral and ethical teachings that reconnect the disconnected, that move us from dependent and independent to interdependent? I have hope that some of the technologies that target the three poisons will be ground-breaking in tackling some of our societies seemingly intractable mental and social diseases.

Gassho, Tokan

satlah