[FutureBuddha (21)] The Buddhist Three Poisons: Seeing Through Divided Thinking

[Jundo]

Dear You (who is seemingly not me or the other guys),

We live in a world filled with division, frictions, conflicts of person against person, friends vs. enemies. It is the original source of anger and violence in this world, as well as racism, the hoarding of resources and our hesitancy to share with strangers.

We feel separate from nature, and as if we are merely time-bound creatures who mysteriously appear in this world for a bit, live some years, then vanish. It leads to our own angst, our feeling lost in life, neurotic, alone and isolated.

But is that the only way to experience self-identity? Will future technologies and medical means, as extensions and aids to our meditation practices, better aid us in realizing our boundless selves?

Certainly, we need judgements and divisions, distant goals to attain, resources for our own personal needs. These are what allow us to live, do and achieve. But is that the only way to know life? Can those judgements and goals, needs and drives for achievement all run to excess? Would it also benefit ourself, and all sentient beings and the world, for each of us to see through the measuring and divisions, goals and selfishness too?

My book describes such possibilities:

I remind readers: My writings are based on the premise 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 ...

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

~ ~ ~

The third poison, divided thinking, will also be more easily transcended in the future. “Divided thinking,” in excess, rears its ugly head in two poisonous but overlapping ways: First, it moves from a simple “me and others” viewpoint onto seeing others as vile enemies, despised groups, hated races and the like. Second, it can turn into a deep, excessive, never ending, fundamental dissatisfaction with our life, and with ourself too.

We can eliminate the worst extremes of the first type, whereby anger and hate mix with thoughts of division and separation. Accordingly, racism, excess tribalism, the willingness to engage in ethnic cleansing, genocide, and the like will instead be replaced by increased inner tendencies toward empathy, friendship, cooperation, kindness and love of one’s fellow humans in all their variety. All could be achieved through changing our ancient brains, by enhancing our DNA for such tendencies, thus altering our hormones, thus finally, our resulting feelings, leaving us more loving, caring and kind. Making the right connections among our neurons, we will love or, at least, be more patient with our enemies rather than hate-filled, see them as wayward children for chastising, not as pests for extermination. We will seek to turn swords into ploughshares, and be more willing to turn the other cheek, more apt to do unto others as we would have done unto ourselves, a many a ‘Good Book’ preaches. Levels of healthy competition, rivalry and constructive disagreement will remain, but not to the point of scapegoating, hate mongering and homicide. Dictators and criminals can still be resisted (for love and patience only goes so far), but more calmly and clinically, like a surgeon removing a tumor. Even criminals will be treated with greater kindness and humanity, for they are simply suffering beings too. We will act with regret because we love more widely, even those we remorsefully must stop. Decreasing the hate and extreme anger, and upping moderately the tolerance in our hearts, will do just that.

Divided thinking leads us to categorize and rate things, including people and events we encounter, by how much they please or displease us. We judge everything in our life in some way: This is my farm field, but it is not fruitful enough; this is my friend, but he is not friendly enough; this is my chair, but it is not soft or hard enough. We divide the world into good and bad, win and lose, ally and enemy, ugly and beautiful, and a trillion other comparisons. Usually, our ability to do so is a very good thing, as we actually need to know if our farm field is under-producing to be good farmers. We must be occasionally cautious that our purported “friend” is truly a friend who can be trusted. If we could not tell friend from enemy, a ferocious tiger from a pussycat, pudding from poison, we would quickly die before ever reproducing. We would never have created all the wonders of science and civilization that our amazing, categorizing, judging, attraction/aversion filled brains are capable of.

Please allow me to judge judging by saying that the real problem is only judging which fits into the category of excess, and thus is used in unconstructive ways. Furthermore, beyond judging and dividing, we must learn to taste the simultaneous wholeness of all things, people, moments and the entire world free of any and all judgements and divisions.

Happily, the Buddhist masters discovered ways of training the mind that transcend the polar divisions of happy/sad, win/lose, love/loss, clean/dirty, friend/enemy, and even life/death. We can attain an underlying sense of nothing in need of winning, nothing lacking, nothing to gain, even as we keep judging win vs. lose in ways necessary for life, even as we keep moderation in those judgements and choose wisely … a true win/win situation.

One can clean a dirty monk’s bowl, or clean an entire polluted waterway or ocean, while profoundly accepting the dirty as well as the clean, possessing a Zen inspired attitude of: “dirt is just dirt, dirt is precious even when dirty, yet we clean it nonetheless.” It may sound strange to some, but one can come to appreciate the rusty tin cans in vacant lots, spilled oil on beaches, and the terrible sight of the homeless in our cities as each a kind of shining jewel in the crown of this fertile, vibrant, multi-faceted life, yet also pick up the ugly trash, scrub the oiled birds, search for cleaner energy sources, feed and house the hungry and homeless. Likewise for all the problems, big and small, in our personal lives and this whole world.

Then, even with such insight, there will remain goals and dreams, plans to make, efforts to expend, bridges to span, towers and new cities to build, even planets to colonize, but now combined with an inherent ‘peace & satisfaction’ with life, amid lifestyles of greater balance and moderation, tasting a basic harmony and gratification that underlies it all.

Then, there will be actions for us to take when action is required, responses to problems when problems present themselves, even times for marching in the streets and manning the barricades when called for, but partnered with an overriding, underlying tranquility, tolerance and equanimity too, free of falling into excesses of red-faced anger and needless violence.

Then, we will continue to experience, judge, and react to the endless, varied individual elements of life, while also knowing the overarching wholeness and union that sweeps it all in. One will know a harmony of all things, including you and me, even as we continue to function and compete in society as individuals with our own tastes, preferences and desires.

(to be continued)

[Jundo]

In the news this week ...

100,000 newborn babies will have their genomes sequenced in the UK. It could have big implications for child medicine

[CNN] The UK is set to begin sequencing the genomes of 100,000 newborn babies later this year. It will be the largest study of its kind, mapping the babies’ complete set of genetic instructions, with potentially profound implications for child medicine.

The £105 million ($126 million) Newborn Genomes Programme will screen for around 200 rare but treatable genetic conditions, with the aim of curtailing untold pain and anxiety for babies and their families, who sometimes struggle to receive a diagnosis through conventional testing. By accelerating the diagnostic process, earlier treatment of infants could prevent many severe conditions from ever developing.

The study would see roughly one in 12 newborn babies in England screened on a voluntary basis over two years. It will operate as an extension of current newborn testing, with the findings intended to inform policymakers, who could pave the way for sequencing to become more commonplace.

Nevertheless, the project has raised many longstanding ethical questions around genetics, consent, data privacy, and priorities within infant healthcare.

... One example is congenital hyperthyroidism, which impacts neurological development and growth and affects “one in 1,500 to 2,000 babies in the UK,” explains Krishna Chatterjee, professor of endocrinology at the University of Cambridge. It is the result of an absent or under-developed thyroid gland and can be treated with the hormone thyroxine, a cheap and routine medicine. But if treatment doesn’t begin “within the first six months of life, some of those deleterious neurodevelopmental consequences cannot be prevented or reversed.”

The Newborn Genomes Programme will test for one or more forms of congenital hypothyroidism that are not picked up by the heel prick test. “At a stroke, you can make a diagnosis, and that can be game changing – or life changing – for that child,” Chatterjee says.

... The program is led by Genomics England, part of the UK Department of Health and Social Care. Along with its partners, it has carried out a variety of preparatory studies, including a large-scale public consultation. A feasibility study is currently underway to assess whether a heel prick, cheek swab or umbilical cord blood will be used for sampling, with the quality of the DNA sample determining the final choice.

Genomics England says that each of the 200 conditions that will be screened for has been selected because there is evidence it is caused by genetic variants; it has a debilitating effect; early or pre-symptomatic treatment has a life-improving impact; and treatment is available for all through the UK’s National Health Service (NHS).

Richard Scott, chief medical officer and deputy CEO at Genomics England, says the program aims to return screening results to families in two weeks, and estimates at least one in 200 babies will receive a diagnosis.

... Bentley argues that early diagnosis via genome sequencing is cost effective in the long term: “People get sick, they get tested using one test after another, and that cost mounts up. (Sequencing) the genome is much cheaper than a diagnostic odyssey.”

[ETHICS AND CONCERNS:]

... But while some barriers to genetic screening have fallen, many societal factors are still in play.

Feedback from a public consultation ahead of the UK project’s launch was generally positive, although some participants voiced concerns that religious views could affect uptake, and a few expressed skepticism and mistrust about current scientific developments in healthcare, according to a report on its findings.

Frances Flinter, emeritus professor of clinical genetics and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and a member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, described the program as a “step into the unknown” in a statement to Science Media Centre in December 2022, reacting to the launch of the program.

“We must not race to use this technology before both the science and ethics are ready,” she said at the time. “This research program could provide new and important evidence on both. We just hope the question of whether we should be doing this at all is still open.”

Genome sequencing has raised many philosophical and ethical questions. If you could have aspects of your medical future laid ahead of you, would you want that? What if you were predisposed to an incurable disease? Could that knowledge alone impact your quality of life?

“People don’t generally understand deterministic or fatalistic-type results versus probabilistic, so it does require real teaching of participants,” says Topol. In other words, just because someone has a genetic predisposition to a certain condition, it doesn’t guarantee that they will develop the disease.

Nevertheless, sequencing newborn babies has made some of those questions more acute.

“One of the tenets of genomics and genomics testing is the importance of maintaining people’s autonomy to make their own decisions,” says Scott, highlighting the optional nature of the program.

“We’ve been quite cautious,” he stresses. “All of the conditions that we’re looking for are ones where we think we can make a really substantial impact on those children’s lives.”

... Part of Pichini’s remit is to ensure equal access to the program and to produce representative data. While diversity comes in many forms, she says – including economic background and rural versus urban location – enlisting ethnically diverse participants is one objective.

“(There) has been a lack of data from other ethnic groups around the world, compared to Caucasians,” says Bentley. “As a result, the diagnostic rates for people from those backgrounds is lower. There are more variants from those backgrounds that we don’t know anything about – we can’t interpret them.”

If genomics is to serve humanity equally, genome data needs to reflect all of it. Data diversity “isn’t an issue that any one country can solve,” says Pichini. ...

https://us.cnn.com/2023/03/19/health...ntl/index.html

Gassho, J

stlah