Shamil Chandaria's talk on the Bayesian Brain and Meditation that I wrote about recently is a gift that keeps on giving. For on one of his slides there was a small image of a book by Rob Burbea, Seeing That Frees: Meditations on Emptiness and Dependent Arising.

I recall that Chandaria mentioned it briefly, but he certainly didn't dwell on the book. I figured, correctly as it turns out, that the book was in line with the ideas about the brain that Chandaria was talking about, so I decided to order a copy from Amazon.
It took a while to arrive, maybe because Seeing That Frees was published in Great Britain by Hermes Amāra Publications. I just looked up the publisher, which must be part of the Hermes Amāra Foundation.
The Hermes Amāra Foundation (HAF) was established in 2019 at the request of the late Buddhist Dharma and meditation teacher Rob Burbea (1965 - 2020). Its main role is as custodian of his extensive body of teachings, which exist in the form of audio talks, interviews, online seminars, podcasts and the book Seeing That Frees: Meditations on Emptiness and Dependent Arising. HAF also exists to support the teachers and community of practitioners (sangha) engaging with Rob's teachings.
Burbea died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 54. I feel grateful that he wrote such a magnificent book before he died. This morning I read the first 28 pages, which comprise the "Orientations" section. I've read many books about Buddhism, including several about emptiness.
Burbea's writing, thinking, and approach are exceptional.
I can tell that much already and am looking forward to making my way through the rest of the book. It definitely is a classic in the Buddhist genre. His foundation has many examples of his writings and talks, so that's another way to learn about his approach to Buddhism.
It's fascinating that the book (The Experience Machine) I wrote about in "Our brains don't see reality as it is, but as it's predicted to be," along with a couple of follow-up posts, is so compatible with the notions of emptiness and dependent arising in Seeing That Frees.
When modern neuroscience and ancient Buddhism end up with the same conclusions even though one has a scientific approach and the other a philosophical/spiritual approach, that gives me more confidence that both are pointing to something true about reality and the human mind.
Plus, in just the first 28 pages my own mind was blown by what Burbea said. Here's some excerpts from those initial chapters, which end with some mind-blowing passages that I found strikingly original, though solidly within Buddhist teachings. It just was a fresh way of looking at emptiness for me.
Revered in the tradition as the 'crown jewels' of the Dharma, the Buddha's teachings on emptiness and dependent arising point and pave the way to the most beautiful possibilities for us as human beings. Their realization brings a truly radical revolution in our whole sense of existence in a way that opens up a profound and extraordinary freedom.
Emptiness -- in Pali, sunnata, in Sanskrit, sunyata, which may also be translated as 'voidness' -- is deep and subtle, however, not easy to see or explain, and in many respects it is even counter-intuitive.
...It might also be imagined that voidness is some kind of thing that can be obtained, but it is not a thing. Nor is it a state of mind or a state of consciousness.
...We assume, in a way that involves no thinking, that our bodies or this book, for instance, exist independently of other things and independently of the mind that knows them. We feel that a thing has an inherent existence -- that its existence, its being, inheres in itself alone.
Believing then that this real self can really gain or lose things or experiences which have real qualities, grasping and aversion, and thus dukkah [suffering, discontent, pain], arise inevitably.
...We can, at least for now, define emptiness as the absence of this inherent existence that things appear to naturally and undeniably have... A thing is 'empty' of its seemingly real, independent existence. And all things are this way, are empty. This voidness is what is also sometimes termed the ultimate truth or reality of things.
...Unquestioningly but mistakenly then, we intuitively sense and believe in this inherent existence of phenomena in 'real' experiences of a 'real' self in a world of 'real' things. Now, in itself, this may strike some as a rather abstract or irrelevant piece of metaphysical philosophizing.
But as alluded to earlier, the complete dissolution of this error in our sense and understanding of things is the deepest level of what the Buddha calls the ignorance or fundamental delusion (Skt: avidya; Pali: avijja) that we share as sentient beings. We cling, and so suffer, because of the way we see.
...But we do not cling to what we know is not real. Thus when, with insight and wisdom, we realize that something is illusory in some sense, we let go of any clinging to it -- of chasing it, trying to hold onto it, or trying to get rid of it. Since clinging brings dukkha, in this release of the clinging there comes release and freedom from dukkha.
...A ferocious and hungry-looking tiger appears in front of you seemingly about to leap. The distress of a reaction of terror there would be quite understandable. But if you notice on closer inspection that this tiger is not real, that it actually is a holographic projection with accompanying sound recording from a nearby hologram projector, the fear and the problem simply dissolve.
...The Buddha's assertion that things are beyond existing and not existing is not easy to fully comprehend. One of the keys that can unlock our ability to realize, more than just intellectually, this mystical way things are is tied in with an important way in which our holographic tiger illustration is limited.
For that illustration gives no suggestion of a certain aspect of the illusory nature of things -- how all appearances are fabricated by the mind.
...A 'lie' is a 'fabrication' we say. And this is also the fullness of the Buddha's meaning. When he proclaims that things are fabricated, he is declaring much more than the simple fact that they were put together from other building blocks as causes and conditions. He is pointing more radically to their illusory nature.
...The world of inner and outer phenomena is, in some very important sense, 'fabricated', 'fashioned', 'constructed' by the mind, so that it is somehow illusory, not real in the way that we assume, and not independent of the mind that fabricates it.
...As the Buddha discovered, not even appearances, but the 'whole show' is fabricated, including the mind with its various factors and its consciousness. Thus he also declared the illusory nature of any and all awareness, any consciousness of anything.
...It is not that while everything else is fabricated by the mind, the mind itself is somehow real, a really existing basis for the fabrication. The mind, whether conceived as mental processes or 'Awareness' -- even the awareness that we can know as vast and unperturbed, that seems natural and effortless -- is also fabricated in the process.
We find, in the end, that there is no 'ground' to fabrication.
And as if that were not cause enough for amazement, we eventually also recognize, taking this exploration of dependent arising deeper and deeper still, that even this profound realization of the fabricated nature of all phenomena is only a relative truth.
Fabrication itself is empty too. Ultimately, it turns out we cannot say that things are fabricated, nor that they are not fabricated. We cannot even say that they arise and cease, nor that they do not arise and cease.
What we come to understand is that the way things truly are is beautifully beyond the capacities of our conception. Practicing with dependent arising forms a thread, though, that can be followed to such great depths. For in doing so, insights of greater and greater profundity are progressively opened, until this thread ultimately dissolves even itself. It leads and opens beyond itself.
...What the Dharma thus teaches, and what we will discover for ourselves as practice evolves, is that absolutely everything is empty, without exception.
The self is empty. So too is the body, and the whole material world, together with its constituent elements, its subatomic particles, fields, and forces. Also all our inner experiences, emotions, and thoughts, and even whatever experience we might have through 'bare attention' that so much seem as if they are 'direct experiences' of 'things as they are' -- indeed, whatever is perceived, as the Buddha said, is empty.
...While at first these may have seemed strange ways of looking at things, and still probably involve some effort, the mind begins to gravitate towards exposing the emptiness of this and that, of situations and perspectives that we would have solidified before.
To the heart is revealed a sense of beauty in the open, space-like nature of things. More able to shift ways of looking, less locked into any perspective, it wants to see the emptiness. Gradually conviction builds, based firmly on our experience.
For those following the comment game, Spence Tepper lost
For those who have been following the interesting exchange of views about consciousness and the brain in comments on a recent blog post, I'm pleased to present the final score on a debate about whether there's evidence that awareness can be free of filters and concepts.
Commenter Spence Tepper ended up without scoring a debate point due to his religious dogmatism. Commenters Appreciative Reader and myself scored numerous debate points because we used facts and logic. Tepper never actually played the debate game, choosing to ignore calls to produce evidence for his assertion.
Bottom line: you can't win a game unless you're willing to play the game. Calling out "I won!" from the sidelines is a spectator sport, not a genuine sport.
Here's how Appreciative Reader put it in his typically courteous and reasonable fashion.
Hey, Spence.
Most of what you say now, in this last comment, is reasonable, and I agree generally with most of that, I guess.
Except! Except, that isn't what this was about, was it. You'd claimed, originally, that meditation enables us to bypass the model-building thing of our brain, and bypass those mental filters to apprehend reality directly. That extravagant claim of yours is what Brian had flagged, and asked you to substantiate. And pre-empting exactly this kind of bobbing and weaving, I'd wondered if you could do that, without changing the subject etc.
(Here's your own words, that Brian had quoted there: "...if we can go to that place of awareness within ourselves free of filters, a place where filtering and conceptual reconstruction do not function, who knows what we may experience? Maybe God? But no label would work there. Maybe reality directly. Maybe pure experience of the moment. Maybe the moment is eternity." And you've said similar, often enough, other times as well.)
If you'd been able to substantiate that claim, then that would have been fantastic. I'd have been first to accept it, and change my mind and my worldview accordingly. If you hadn't been able to do that, even then, had you directly admitted that that isn't evidenced, but merely how it appears to you, personally and subjectively, and what some religious traditions teach, fair enough, no harm done. We'd then have known clearly where we stand. And nor would that have detracted from your experiences --- except we wouldn't be then looking at them as (allegedly) a "direct" apprehension of reality.
As it happens, you did neither. In your reply to Brian, you simply doubled down, with this further extravagant and unevidenced claim thrown in: "You have experience but it is often entirely beyond the thinking brain, and so without impression, zero memory. You think you saw nothing. But thinking is the problem. You saw something, you can't think of it. (...) You'll have to Grok it. Sartori it."
Once again, the claim that in meditation you experience something that is beyond the thinking brain. In as much as these words of yours are linked to what you'd said before, presumably you mean to imply that this is that direct apprehension of reality, that you'd referred to earlier.
In other words, all you did was to "substantiate" your extravagant claim, with yet another extravagant and unevidenced claim.
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And now, now you present to me very reasonable comments, very wise views on meditation, and indeed evidenced opinions on meditation. All of which I agree with. Except none of them have anything to do with that original claim.
The one part of your comment now that does directly deal with that original claim is where you say: “Part of that reality reconstruction the brain does all the time. We don't have to be a willing, mindless participant in that.”
That’s worded kind of ambiguously, but it seems to indicate that meditation allows you to go outside of the reconstruction, the model building, that the brain does. In which case it’s simply you repeating your original claim, yet again, in different words, instead of substantiating it. (And yes, like I said that's worded ambiguously. If you didn't mean to convey that by those words, then fair enough, I take this last back. But in that case, again, this has nothing to do with your original claim at all.)
As for the Mayo Clinic link, it’s a cool article, and I enjoyed reading it. But it’s simply a general article written by the clinic staff, a kind of overview of meditation, and it doesn’t come close to providing the kind of evidence we’re talking about here; and nor does it actually claim, either, that meditation helps you apprehend reality directly and minus the filters of mental model-building.
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It's a straightforward issue. You know my views on meditation. I'm a fan, and in fact a practitioner and aspirant myself. I agree that meditation is generally beneficient, in terms of what you've discussed here, and more. In general I'm interested in knowing more about all of that, sure.
But the issue we're focused on at this time is this: Can meditation enable us to bypass the model-building via which filter we apprehend reality indirectly, so that we might be able to apprehend reality directly? That had been your claim. Can you substantiate it? If not, then I don't see the issue with clearly admitting it, and retracting that original claim. (And nor do you need jettison that POV altogether. You can always present it, instead, and if you like, as a speculation, maybe, rather than as fact. We can speculate all we want, about whatever we want, why not, as long as we're clear that speculating is all we're doing.)
Not to force the issue beyond this! And apologies if any of my comments in this thread appeared less than fully courteous. Absolutely no offense intended, Spence. Cheers.
Posted at 10:52 AM in Comments, Neuroscience | Permalink | Comments (42)