A very interesting article where, I feel, science and zen really come together.
Gassho
Ongen
Sat Today
Gassho
Ongen
Sat Today
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Ongen (音源) - Sound Source -
Hello,
Thank you for the link.
Gassho
Myosha sat today"Recognize suffering, remove suffering." - Shakyamuni Buddha when asked, "Uhm . . .what?" -
Thank you Ongen, I too just read that article this morning, very interesting. =)
Gassho
Shingen
s@todayComment
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Thank you for sharing the link, Ongen.
Gassho
Washin
sat todayKaidō (皆道) Every Way
Washin (和信) Harmony Trust
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I am a novice priest-in-training. Anything that I say must not be considered as teaching
and should be taken with a 'grain of salt'.Comment
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Let me cite a long old post ...
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First, traditional Buddhist psychology was way ahead of its time in attempting to describe how the mind creates, in the brain, a 'virtual' experience of the world, and of your 'self' in relation to the "not self" rest of the world. Modern science, though still so incomplete, understands this process better every day: Your experience of your self and of the world is ultimately a partial fiction created when brain, sense organs and the 'outside world' (everything that is "out there" in the world really, whether you experience it or not) come together. While I believe there is something "out there" which I am sensing (some Eastern and Western radical idealist philosophers have denied even that), our actual experience is much like an internal movie you call "me and the world" created when the world is 'virtually' recreated inside the brain via data that is collected by the senses, passed by chemical-electrical signals to neurons, then (in processes we still barely understand) mixed with all the inner emotions, instincts and everything else the brain has learned about interpreting, organizing and responding to the world since you were a baby. The result is the inner movie you call your "experience of life". In fact, you have never actually seen or felt "the world" at all ... not even your closest loved ones or the room where you sit ... only a virtual recreation inside your head of light that entered your eyes, somehow recreated and interpreted within the lobes of the brain as objects that, for example, you stick names on and find pleasing, displeasing or neutral.
Got the picture? The computer screen you are looking at right now may or may not be "out there" in some form (as philosophers have debated that for centuries), but no matter, what you ultimately are experiencing right now is some kind of a recreated picture of a computer somewhere in your visual cortex.
Next, Buddhism posits that the "Mind" is not something limited to only within you. I am not referring to some wild "cosmic consciousness", but merely the fact that you could not have an "inside" subjective experience without the rest of the world. Thus, the Buddhist meaning of "Mind" (Big "M") is something much much wider in meaning than just what is produced between our ears by the brain. What is outside us (assuming, of course, that there is something "out there") is seen or touched and flows in through the senses, is next processed and experienced between the ears, and thereupon results in our thoughts, words and actions back out to the world ... all of which can also be encountered as actually one great feedback LOOP, each dependent on the other for the creation of the whole of "reality" as our experience of the world (and the world's simultaneously being experienced and acted upon by us) ... outside flowing in and inside thereupon acting and flowing out ... so much so that one cannot even speak really of "Mind" as merely "inside" or "outside". In fact, "Mind" is a great inter-flowing inter-acting Whole of inside-outing and outside-ining! The world apparently "outside us", and our experience of "self" somehow "inside us" can be transcended in the Great Dance, and is Mind.
Thus, in Zazen, perhaps we might say that we encounter such whereby separation of self/other is only one way to see life, and whereby the hard borders may sometimes soften or fully fade away ...
... sometimes written by old Zen folks rather like this ...
However, PLEASE DO NOT MERELY PHILOSOPHIZE ABOUT THIS. Rather, get on the cushion and learn to be so in the bones!
Gassho, J
PS - A not-particularly Buddhist friend sent me the following little clip awhile back. The speaker is an evolutionary psychologist explaining something of a mainstream modern scientific model of how the brain creates a virtual sense of "self" and consciousness between the ears. The fellow, as an evolutionary psychologist, is very focused on how this is a product of evolution and neurons. That is not really the topic we are discussing (and a rather narrow way to look at the question if you ask me), but his description of the mind's creation of a "holo-deck" version of the self and world between the ears is perfectly harmonious with what the Buddhists have said for thousands of years.
Is consciousness real? Could it be just an illusion manufactured in the theatre of our minds? And what use is it – why did it evolve in the first place? Professor Nicholas Humphrey explores the mystery.in this film from the Royal InstitutionLast edited by Jundo; 06-03-2016, 04:03 AM.ALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLEComment
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By the way, the above can be a little distressing and destabilizing for some folks of a fragile psychological bent or condition who may think it means that anything they hallucinate is "real", or all their negative or destructive thoughts are somehow justified. That is not what it means. If one is dealing with a psychologically fragile individual, there might be more worry about such teachings reinforcing their sense of angst, nihilism, mental instability and such in which they already have a weak hold on their sense of self and the outside world.
In fact, what the above means is that we have more power to replace negative and harmful thinking and visions of the world with positive and healthful ways, e.g., anger with peace, fear with confidence, sorrow with joy or contentment etc. It points us to the fact that so many of the self and other destructive thoughts and emotions which flood our minds do not necessarily have to be there, and may be largely of our own making.
Gassho, J
SatTodayLast edited by Jundo; 06-03-2016, 12:59 AM.ALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLEComment
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Nice article and comments. Thank you.
A monk told Joshu, “I have just entered the monastery. Please teach me.”
Joshu asked, “Have you eaten your rice porridge?
The monk replied, “I have eaten.”
Joshu said, “Then you had better wash your bowl.”
At that moment the monk was enlightened.
Why complicate life?
I rather just wash my bowl. Unless complicating life is washing my bowl. Then I rather just wash my bowl.
Gasho, Jishin, _/st\_Comment
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Sometimes it is all the mental ideas, including of the separation of self and other with all the accompanying judgments and other ideas, which is the real complication. To go beyond that is the ultimate simplification.Nice article and comments. Thank you.
A monk told Joshu, “I have just entered the monastery. Please teach me.”
Joshu asked, “Have you eaten your rice porridge?
The monk replied, “I have eaten.”
Joshu said, “Then you had better wash your bowl.”
At that moment the monk was enlightened.
Why complicate life?
I rather just wash my bowl. Unless complicating life is washing my bowl. Then I rather just wash my bowl.
Gasho, Jishin, _/st\_
To understand what a trickster the mind can be, how our "common sense" ways of experiencing and understanding the world are no always so sensible, how the hard border between our individual "self" and the "outside world" is not solid, and how much of what we see is like a delusion ... this is the first necessary step.
Gassho, J
SatTodayLast edited by Jundo; 06-03-2016, 04:00 AM.ALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLEComment
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You are right. It is the first necessary step. I just have an aversion to learning. Don't like to think much anymore. Getting old. Almost 50.
Gasho, Jishin, _/st\_Comment
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Wow..very interesting and "mind boggling".
I Sometimes ask myself, who or exactly what is the "observer" in all of this? Our mind recreates what it perceives and then the "observer" sees the recreated object, "observes" it, ponders on it, judges it, and reaches certain insights as to what is being experienced. Can this"observer" be referred to as the self? Is this "self" a part of our brain or something totally separate?
One person described it like going into an ice cream shop and seeing the many flavors, colors, sights and smells of ice cream. The person might taste different flavors and then processes the information. But then based on the information that has been gathered a decision must be made. Will it be chocolate, strawberry our maybe even butter pecan with extra toppings? Who or what is this "decision maker"? Who actually "witnesses" all the information that is gathered by the senses?
Very profound, great comments. Thank you Jundo for the teaching. The circles really helped me visualize some of the concepts. It reminded me of the notion of "Holons" which is defined as something that is simultaneously a whole and a part.
Forgive me for being all over the place with my comment. Will stop philosophizing and head for my zafu.
Gassho to all
Mike
Sat2dayComment
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I was looking at a red colored chair today that happened to have a little ant crawling across it.
I see a "chair" with a function of sitting, of a certain color, with all manner of associations and judgments (it was kind of an ugly but comfortable old chair, if you ask my backside, that rather reminded me of one like it in my mother's house where I used to play).
But the ant, I am sure, did not know of "chairs" or the function of "sitting" in the human way, nor with her very different eyes perhaps even "red" as we see it ... let alone my childhood memories of my mother's house. Perhaps it knew nothing more then a chemical trail it followed across a certain obstacle on its way to forage, back to the hill. There is no "chair" there for the ant, just another obstacle on its way. (Heck, would a 8 legged space alien who did not "sit" like us even know what it was without a good explanation ...
). There is no "chair" there for them at all, just atoms bent in a certain shape (and that is something we must just assume too, given that we could all be dreaming heads in bottles in that alien's lab! 
).
We do not realize have much of our "common sense" day to day human experience of this world is a common dream of "shared conventions" we have been educated to see and label together with our fellow humans. Otherwise, it is not "out there" at all.
Gassho, J
SatTodayLast edited by Jundo; 06-03-2016, 05:06 PM.ALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLEComment
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I was looking at a red colored chair today that happened to have a little ant crawling across it.
I see a "chair" with a function of sitting, of a certain color, with all manner of associations and judgments (it was kind of an ugly but comfortable old chair, if you ask my backside, that rather reminded me of one like it in my mother's house where I used to play).
But the ant, I am sure, did not know of "chairs" or the function of "sitting" in the human way, nor with her very different eyes perhaps even "red" as we see it ... let alone my childhood memories of my mother's house. Perhaps it knew nothing more then a chemical train it followed across a certain obstacle on its way to forage, back to the hill. There is no "chair" there for the ant, just another obstacle on its way. (Heck, would a 8 legged space alien who did not "sit" like us even know what it was without a good explanation ...). There is no "chair" there for them at all, just atoms bent in a certain shape (and that is something we must just assume too, given that we could all be dreaming heads in bottles in that alien's lab! ).
We do not realize have much of our "common sense" day to day human experience of this world is a common dream of "shared conventions" we have been educated to see and label together with our fellow humans. Otherwise, it is not "out there" at all.
Gassho, J
SatToday
This reminds of me of funny quote by Wittgenstein, "if a lion could speak we could not understand him." Below is a link on a fun little thought experiment that also fits the discussion. If anyone is interested.
Gassho
Sattoday
AdamComment
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Thank you, Dude.
I was also reminded on Wittgenstein.
How do I perceive this color as "rot" (red)?
I learned german.
Gassho,
Kotei sattoday.義道 冴庭 / Gidō Kotei.Comment
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