Buddhism can free us from evolution's delusion

It happened again this morning, a sign from the non-God. 

I'd tried to continue reading a couple of Buddhist books that appealed to me, aside from occasional mentions of supposed supernatural phenomena, which had been bothering me.

Today the bothering overcame my liking of the books. 

In the course of returning them to the Buddhism section of my bookcase, my eye hit upon a book by Robert Wright, "Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment."

Highlighting indicated that I'd read the entire book. But so far as I can tell, I never wrote a blog post about it. Well, that changes with today. And I'm sure I'll write more posts as I re-read the book.

Here's an excerpt from the first chapter of the book that I got through this morning. I really like Wright's writing style and his approach to Buddhist meditation.

Evolutionary psychology can be described in various ways, and here's one way I had described it in my book [The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life]: It is the study of how the human brain was designed -- by natural selection -- to mislead us, even enslave us.

Don't get me wrong: natural selection has its virtues, and I'd rather be created by it than not be created at all -- which, so far as I can tell, are the two options this universe offers. 

Being a product of evolution is by no means entirely a story of enslavement and delusion. Our evolved brains empower us in many ways, and they often bless us with a basically accurate view of reality.

Still, ultimately, natural selection cares about only one thing (or, I should say, "cares" -- in quotes -- about only one thing, since natural selection is just a blind process, not a conscious designer). And that one thing is getting genes into the next generation. 

Genetically based traits that in the past contributed to genetic proliferation have flourished, while traits that didn't have fallen by the wayside. 

And the traits that have survived this test include mental traits -- structures and algorithms that are built into the brain and shape our everyday experience.

So if you ask the question "What kinds of perceptions and thoughts and feelings guide us through life each day?" the answer, at the most basic level, isn't "The kinds of thoughts and feelings and perceptions that give us an accurate picture of reality."

No, at the most basic level the answer is "The kinds of thoughts and feelings and perceptions that helped our ancestors get genes into the next generation."

Whether those thoughts and feelings and perceptions give us a true view of reality is, strictly speaking, beside the point. As a result, they sometimes don't. Our brains are designed to, among other things, delude us.

In the rest of his book, Wright describes his exploration of Buddhist meditation and how it can lead us to a less deluded view of reality.

One reason I like non-supernatural Buddhism so much is that it flips around the Hindu conception of maya, the illusory nature of this world. 

In Buddhism the world is simply what it is, the world.  

There's no problem with the world. The problem lies with the human mind that is trying to comprehend the world, to find the world satisfying, to treat other people compassionately. 

This is one reason why the Buddha reportedly wasn't much interested in abstract discussions of how the world is. His focus was on how a correct view of the world can lead to much reduced suffering, which Wright suggests is better termed "unsatisfactoriness."

At the end of his second chapter, Paradoxes of Meditation, Wright cites the questions he's going to explore via the scientific foundation of a Buddhist worldview.

Why, and in what particular ways, are human beings naturally deluded? How exactly does the delusion work? How does delusion make us suffer? How does it make us make other people suffer? Why would the Buddhist prescription for dispelling the delusion -- in particular, the meditative part of that prescription -- work?

And what would it mean for it to work fully? In other words, does the elusive state that is said to lie at the culmination of the meditative path -- sometimes called enlightenment -- really qualify for that term? What would it be like to see the world with perfect clarity?

Great questions.

I look forward to learning the answers through a second reading of "Why Buddhism is True." I'm a different person than I was almost four years ago, when I bought the book in August 2017.

So my comprehension of what Wright has to say also will be different now.

Comments

[Spence Tepper]

Hi Brian!
You quoted Wright then commented..

" 'Our brains are designed to, among other things, delude us.'

" In the rest of his book, Wright describes his exploration of Buddhist meditation and how it can lead us to a less deluded view of reality."

I re-read that and can't help smiling at the irony. If all creation made our brains to work a certain way then we should going against creation's design?
;)

Perhaps we are created in layers, many yet to be discovered, each functional in its own sphere. Whatever "delusion" keeps us alive may actually be the most accurate distillation of our social milieau. The threat may be real, though a functional response might be thoughtful diplomacy. Still, the anger becomes a flag, a useful one, demanding our attention.

Love may be misguided, but it may tell us something of our own needs, so we can address them more directly.

In that theory finding reality is nothing more than continuing our own development and unlocking the capabilities latent within us.

But in all events that's actually all we can do to move forward. We fight against irrational emotions, irrational in this civilized world, with our capacity to understand and guide ourselves by a higher awareness of our situation, so we can act for our own good even when our lusts and angers would have us do otherwise.. to understand those reactions and their legitimate basis, but honor them with more thoughtful and considerate behavior.

And strangely, in doing this we find happiness in peace. Happiness in not acquiring, not acting, but in submission. Built into us. Happiness at zero cost except that we, at least momentarily, let go desire. The candle we fought over in a dark cave is replaced with a cathedral of light all for the cost of letting it go.

Is that tiny candle a tiny thing we label the truth? Has it also become a comodity to overtake? A possession requiring so much effort to own, which, upon deeper inspection, evaporates? Then it is no truth at all, except, as Hemingway wrote, to see that it is all true.

[Appreciative Reader]

Quoted from Brian's article:

"Why, and in what particular ways, are human beings naturally deluded? How exactly does the delusion work? How does delusion make us suffer? How does it make us make other people suffer? Why would the Buddhist prescription for dispelling the delusion -- in particular, the meditative part of that prescription -- work?

And what would it mean for it to work fully? In other words, does the elusive state that is said to lie at the culmination of the meditative path -- sometimes called enlightenment -- really qualify for that term? What would it be like to see the world with perfect clarity?"

As you say, great questions.

I'm looking forward to finding out, with you, in your subsequent blog posts, the answers -- that is, answers based solidly in science -- to those questions.

Both questions, but especially the second one.

[Appreciative Reader]

Quote Spence:

"I re-read that and can't help smiling at the irony. If all creation made our brains to work a certain way then we should going against creation's design?
;)"

Hello, Spence.

Your comments, as ever, are an interesting read.

As far as what you've posted here, you do realize that the irony owes entirely to that ultra-loaded word, "creation", that you've slipped in there, right?

It is only when you view the world as having been "created", with everything that that apparently innocuous little word implies, that there's anything at all ironic in us trying to better ourselves as we see fit.

We haven't evolved to fly, yet fly we do, after a fashion. We haven't evolved to go to the moon, yet that's exactly what we've done, decades ago. Nor is this at all ironic, unless we look out at the world with loads of mental baggage.

(Of course, that analogy breaks down if you would point out, not incorrectly, that we've evolved the mental apparatus that lets us do these things. Which, while true, is only trivially true: and the same argument might apply to the kind of thing this article speaks about.)

To recount, in context, our many exchanges in the past, as well as all of your own stand-alone comments here: Even granted the veracity of your internal experiences, even granted that those are not vanilla hallucinations, even granted -- only for the sake of argument -- that they might represent some latent faculty that the human body comes equipped with: even granting all of that, the leap from that to a created universe appears to me to be entirely unwarranted, equally as unwarranted as arriving at that conclusion (the conclusion of a "created" universe) without any experiences and basis pure faith.

.

In other words:

Quoting further from your comment:

"Perhaps we are created in layers, many yet to be discovered, each functional in its own sphere. Whatever "delusion" keeps us alive may actually be the most accurate distillation of our social milieau."

That first sentence I can get behind, absolutely, as long as you stress that initial "perhaps". I'm with you, finding out more about those layers, should they exist, is a bona fide passage of discovery, irrespective of how the passage turns out.

But the second sentence does not follow, at all, from the first. If it were an accurate distillation of our reality, social or otherwise, then it wouldn't qualify as "delusion".

In other words, much like your use of the word "creation" above, this line of thought again owes to presuppositions and question-begging that assume, a priori, the nature of reality that you're apparently arguing (even if arguing with qualifications) for.

.

Let's see what Brian, and Robert Wright, have to say about what might be a scientific description and explanation of this delusion.

Actually this I think we can all kind of guess at, basis the kinds of things we've discussed on here in the past, but what I'm curious about is what might be a "scientific" description/explanation of "enightenment". I can think of nothing beyond merely a clear understanding of how things are. Which, when you think about it, is no big deal at all, unless you're someone who's as ridden with existential angst as Prince Siddhartha reportedly had been. And even if you are, I still cannot guess at what role meditation might play in all of this, if you leave out the cultural baggage specific to the Buddha's time and milieu, in making sense of all of this, at least given what we know today of the world.

Let's see how this turns out.

[Spence Tepper]

Hi Appreciative!
Great comments.
I have used words loosely.
Creation as in evolution. Evolved. I'm a big Darwinist.

The word "Delusion" is a little strong - context based. One realm's delusion is another realm's truth.

As for God thinking then creating, that's very human biased. The fact that it all happens simultaneously isn't proof of no creator. It may be proof that everything is conscious, so conscious thought and action are all one.

It is presumptuous to assume movement isn't action.

[Appreciative Reader]

Right. In that case it is I who read too much into that word "creation", more than you'd intended, and ended up misunderstanding your POV.

Actually I should've known better, I guess, given how often we've sussed out our respective POVs over here. Your perspective, while in some ways theistic, is way more subtle than that kind of ...brutish, creationism. My bad.

But in that case, given that in every which way we're striving to better the design that evolution has fitted us with, and often succeeding, why should this endeavor, to understand things as they are, evince any surprise? If anything, I'd say what is surprising is why it has taken us so very long to do this. It is this latter that might probably need some exploring. (No doubt the answer would be that we've been too busy, by and large, with things external to attend to this little inner puzzle first. But that's just my unsupported guess.)

[um]

>> ..... But in that case, given that in every which way we're striving to better the design that evolution has fitted us with <<

Can you give an example where humans have bettered the design?

[Appreciative Reader]

"Can you give an example where humans have bettered the design?"

Hello, um.

I've already given two. It would be easy enough to produce fifty more.

For instance, to take a third exacmple, you and I haven't evolved senses that might permit us to communicate with each other across the tens (or hundreds, or thousands, as the case may be) of miles that separate us. Yet we're doing just that, right now.

Sure, those are things we *do* rather than things we *are*. A pedantic difference, but for all that they're different things, and in some contexts that difference might actually be meaningful. But we've bettered what we *are* in many ways as well. For instance, we haven't evolved to be all of those things that medical science has enabled us to be: taller, and healthier, and longer-lived, and able to withstand a host of predators microscopic as well as life-size. Yet we are all of that now.

.

But of course, we have, indeed, evolved to do and to be all of these things, indirectly if not directly. We've evolved the mental apparatus that has enabled us to do all of these things.

Likewise, we've evolved the mental apparatus to figure out the tricks evolution has played on us, the delusions it has foisted on to us, the unnecessary pain/discomfort/agony that it has programmed us to suffer -- or at least, figure it out to the extent that we do/will figure it out.

[Spence Tepper]

Hi Appreciative
Great comments again.
You wrote
"why should this endeavor, to understand things as they are, evince any surprise?"

At the end of all our searching, we only end up with a better understanding of what existed long before we were born.

Even in invention, at its best, the invention functions at its height in absolute obedience to the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, neurology that existed for eons. We call our inventions genius when they only reflect a deeper obedience to more of these laws. Then we call it elegant. Look at that Starship fly, one day, without any crashes. On that day we can say it fulfills her purpose like any other member of creation. In absolute obedience to creation's laws.

But it is only a mere reflection of the elegance emerging from the creation itself evolving in perfect synchrony with its own laws, never wavering for an instant yet, paradoxically, of unending creative variation.

Every new variation perfectly expresses what it is without error of any kind.

Even the Starship development progresses exactly in accordance with all known and unknown laws. Every explosion inevitable, every following refinement inevitable.

Human thought is at best a dull mirror of this process. Real genius is in the very principles of every atomic particle, active and in action.

Yet every instant never existed before. Every new variation is somehow mind - bogglingly slightly different. It's all new. It's all surprise. If we see repetition, we can look deeper and see variation.

The more closely we understand reality, the more shockingly new it becomes. And yet at every instant it is the utter slave to law.

[um]

@ Appreciative reader

What separates us from the other animals is the mental capacity to recreate our original habitat wherever we deem fit to go or are forced to go due to changing circumstances.

So we are just using a natural tool, like all other species, to survive as an individual and as a species.

Our mental capacities are like the wings of a bird ... without the wings a bird is not a bird and humans cannot live in the artics without that mental capacity.

So it is not a matter of evolving into something better.

And to put it frankly, we cannot evolve .... like all other species we adapt to changing situations.. Even culture, the abstract environment humans have created for themselves, does not evolve ... it changes.like fashion but otherwise it remains as it is.

A crow is born a crow, live as a crow and will die as such .. one can paint its beak yellow but still it will not sing as the nightingale, give it glasses to see better, stiil it will not be an eagle.

Whatever humans have done to improve something has come with a price, a price higher than the original cost.

Yes, we live more comfortable, we made replicas of the sun, to turn the night in the day, we can eat whole day and go wherever we want, by means of replicas for walking, we invented horse riding, trains, cars etc but at what cost?

Idealism lives only in the minds and houses of the "happy" few. the rest .... the rest of humanity is born in misery, lives miserable and die that way.

That is what I get from the media..... there is no hope humans can change nature for the better.

[Spence Tepper]

Hi Um!
You wrote
"there is no hope humans can change nature for the better."

We are part of nature, no different. There isn't the tiniest fragment of you or I that is separate or something different.

The laws of nature don't change but nature is ever changing. Where there is death there is birth. If we are really all just a fragment of nature, then she never dies and is never born, yet she is dying and being born over and over again. Life is formed from clay over and over again and returns there. All the lives of the past make up the bodies and proclivities of all the life we see today in all its forms.

The more an engineer or a magician understands nature, the more fantastical and miraculous their creations seem. Yet the most miraculous are simply the most obedient to the laws governing all of us.

Learning to really see this is the greatest victory of life, and it is a victory, the victory of life over death, of understanding over ignorance. And everyone and anyone can enjoy it, if they wish to work for it.

Yet with each moment our old self dies. We die over and over, shedding the foolishness of our ignorance, when we learn. Learning changes us. Learning moves us into a greater realm, joins is to the greatest thinkers and brings us closer to the reality they contemplated and spoke if. In that moment the only real part of who we are is immortal. But it was always so. Yet we grew into our clothes by learning. This persona has already died several times and is meaningless. Our existence and connection to the creation never ends. We are always not simply connected, but part of it.

[um]

@ Spence
You and A.W. are eloquent thinkers and writers speaking the same language, things I miss.

So the difference of opinion might be just an linguistic misunderstanding.

That said, you wrote as answer:
>>We are part of nature, no different. There isn't the tiniest fragment of you or I that is separate or something different.<<

Just because of NOT being seperate and the laws of nature at work there is notching we can change for the better, neither our selves, nor nature ... we can adapt.

Whatever we can describe with language is using concepts according "set theory". There is no possibility to describe an thing in its uniqueness. All concepts contain an endless variety of the same and that "sameness", the essence of things can never be shown or described by words.

So with the same bricks, many different houses can be build. That difference of appearance does not make the bricks different.

We cannot be brought "closer" to reality ... such an expression speaks of separateness .a seperateness that doesn't exist. There is no difference between the seed and the full grown tree ...only appearance.

The description of reality, is not reality, it is a description. That description can be eloquent, that for sure and that eloquence can help to make an eloquent use of reality .. Einstein and friends used it to develop the atom bomb ... it is a complicated way of throwing stones.

If the laws not change only the appearance chances and that change is more complex following the complexity of description.

[Dungeness]

@ We cannot be brought "closer" to reality ... such an expression speaks of separateness .a seperateness
@ that doesn't exist. There is no difference between the seed and the full grown tree ...only appearance.

Right, but reality is "unfolding". It's not a static moment in time but literally timeless.
Trapped in the language of duality and discrete moments, however, we observe
only fragmentary appearance, never the innate reality.. I parrot these words of
understanding but even then I'm no "closer" to their actual meaning without
following an inward path.

The reality of life in time is death. But, thankfully for sanity's sake, we can say
as did Mark Twain during his lifetime: "the reports of my death are greatly
exaggerated."

[Uchit]

@um @Idealism lives only in the minds and houses of the "happy" few. the rest .... the rest of humanity is born in misery, lives miserable and die that way.

True, this world is made of religious/ cult leaders, the negative, that control the lives of many, the persecuted, the prisoners. There are old dinosaur religions and new shoots like RSSB, and GSD, who has rapidly expanded his cult over the last decade. This is the same negative, the spider, revising and refreshing itself and the rest are in his web of new set of lies.

@spenser @The laws of nature don't change but nature is ever changing. Where there is death there is birth. If we are really all just a fragment of nature, then she never dies and is never born, yet she is dying and being born over and over again. Life is formed from clay over and over again and returns there.

RSSB, and the current fake guru leader, Gurinder Singh Dhillan, the so called gods, place us innocent souls in these clay bodies , to play with us, to use us, to feed off us, and laugh at our misery. We are trapped, because we have forgotten who we are, and so lost inside, in ignorance, and they recycle us over and over again for eons and eons. If you were so wise spensor, you should be telling and warning the readers of this from your so called inner experience, yet you choose to paint pretty pictures, and to confuse the readers. Be careful what you listen to and trust on the inside. Question the entities.

[Spence Tepper]

Hi Um
You wrote
"there is notching we can change for the better, neither our selves, nor nature ... we can adapt."

All nature acts in the opposite way, moving forward.

If I could personify nature I would say she is desperate for improvement, unhappy settling for the way things are, constantly changing everything, seeking a better fit. And what she changes, like home remodeling, requires changing all the other rooms ' decor to match. She wants a home to be proud of, and if anyone never gave it rest, despite her husband's pleasing, it's her.

God: "I made the world in six days, girl, it's done. What's the matter with you?"

Nature :"Look at this mess! Just do me a favor and do not leave the house before I look you over. I couldn't leave you alone with our son. Really, the feng shue in this creation is completely wacked. You just take your rest and let me fix this."

A student of nature will be either an optimist of unprecedented conviction in improvement, obsessed with it day and night, willing to roll the dice to try anything new at all in the hopes of finding the next big thing, or even the next little thing. She is all improvements down to the sub atomic level, always rearranging the furniture or more.

[um]

@ Uchit

>>True, this world is made of religious/ cult leaders, the negative, that control the lives of many, the persecuted, the prisoners. <<

I do not understand why you go on hammering that point in general and related to RSSB in particular.

Whatever humans do is always both good and bad. There are people that benefit from religion as much as others have negative experiences.

The same holds for thoughts, dreams and the so called inner experiences. Having read some literature on mystisism, NDE's etc the writers deemed to benefit from those experiences.

The bricks in a house are held together by mortar. If that mortar is crumbling, in the end the whole construction of the house is at stake. Religion, like democracy etc etc form the mortar of society and culture at large.

Humans live in herds

[um]

@ Spence

If one is not able to accept life as it is one is doomed to find an solution and run for ever after the pot of gold at the end of the rainbows.

Read the history books to find some of the results of those endeavors. Read about the revolutions, the "idealists" that forced a new "solution" on the world and their fellow human beings. Read about science and its " inventions for the good of humanity" how that effected the welfare of the planet, the climate and humanity.

Is it not true that for every solution, 10 new problems do arise in its wake?

If I turn on the TV what world do I see? Is that any better than before? Have we not added more abstract problems to the already physical problems every species has? No anymal will die for a flag or something abstract as homeland or some weird ideology.

We live in the times of the globalization of problems and they cannot be solve by a creature that has senses with a limited range of some miles.

Of course we can marvel at the castles, the cathedrals and the skyscrapers of these days but they all come at a price ....people will rejoice the games in Qatar but how many poor people from Asia lost their lives in the construction of these modern Colosseums.

Delve for a while in the consequences of the solution companies like Monsanto offered the farmers all over the world and especially the the Punjab. .... you will shiver.

[um]

@ Uchit

You answered Spencer:
>>We are trapped, because we have forgotten who we are, and so lost inside, in ignorance, and they recycle us over and over again for eons and eons. If you were so wise spensor, you should be telling and warning the readers of this from your so called inner experience, yet you choose to paint pretty pictures, and to confuse the readers. Be careful what you listen to and trust on the inside. Question the entities.<<

[1] ... we have forgotten who we are.
You must be knowledgeable to give such an answer so ..."who are we Uchit?"

[2] ... they recicle us
How do they do that and for what purpose.

[3] ... what should we be told and warned against Uchit?

[4] ... "Question the entities"
What entities and what should be asked from them

[5] .. trust on the inside.
Obvious according your knowledge there must be entities that can be trusted and others not. Which are these entities and how can we know whether their answer is the truth or not.

[Spence Tepper]

Hi Um
You wrote
"Is it not true that for every solution, 10 new problems do arise in its wake?"

Yes, but it isn't a lesson Mother Nature has learned yet, in all her endless efforts we call evolution.

[um]

@ Spence

Hahaha .... you are funny ... and soft hearted.