A couple pics from my hike

The boulder in the top photo is probably about the size of two pickup trucks, just to give a sense of scale. The white column in the bottom photo is actually a frozen waterfall. (It was melting when I took the photo. Outside temperature was about 50 degrees at the time.)

More on death and impermanence

This past Saturday I went hiking, and on my way to the trailhead, I passed several signs which said "Jesus is coming. RU ready?" I think it would be better to rephrase it as "Death is coming. Are you ready?" Assuming you believe that Jesus is coming and will render judgment, causing some to suffer eternal damnation and some to enjoy eternal bliss, the fact is that you are far more likely to die before that happens than not. As far as I inderstand it, once you die, there is no way to make further spiritual progress in the Christian tradition. Hence you should live every day like it's your last. When death inevitably and unexpectedly comes, you're either ready or not. In the Buddhist tradition, we also use death as a spur to practice. Unlike in Christianity, after death, one still has the oppurtunity to practice in one's next life, but the problem is that if we don't live our lives virtuously, we will end up in a body with a lot of suffering (like hell, only with a very long, but finite extent), and will find it very difficult to get back to a body where we can practice spiritually. Thus we should live each day as though it were our last, practicing virtue, else when we die we end up suffering for eons before we finally get the chance to practice again.

Free will redux

The more I think about it, the more I don't like the way the previous argument is framed. One problem is that consciousness is not explicitly defined, and it's implicit that consciousness should be the `decision maker.' However, I feel this is wrong. When I meditate, thoughts just bubble up. I didn't explicitly cause them to happen. They happen spontaneously, and often I will have followed a long train of associations before I'm even aware of doing so. So I strongly feel that the origination of conceptual thought is not conscious. Similarly, I've been in many situations where I feel like a decision was made at the unconscious level before I became consciously aware of it. I think one should really refer to three distinct agents or processes in the brain:

1) the thought generator
2) the decision maker
3) the awareness

This third one seems to be the really special one. But anyway, the workings of the thought generator and the decision maker are not totally accessible to the awareness. Thus it seems that if free will operates, it operates at a level inaccessible to our awareness, at least in normal conscious states. The awareness perhaps can be thought of as a highly flexible tool that we evolved which can help focus our data intake which then gets fed into the subconscious thought generator and decision maker. But it feels like it's more than that. Like our awareness almost has an independent existence which we identify with our sense of self. That subjective experience is rather mysterious. In any event, the awareness can be focused on many things, and during meditation, we turn it back on the mind itself and try to uncover more of the normallt unconscious processes. I'm not an experienced meditator (I've only been meditating regularly for about a year), but my conjecture is that through meditation and diligent training of the awareness, one is able to reach the nonconceptual underlying our usual consciousness. Perhaps this means that through meditation we get to a place where we really have free will, not an unconscious decision process which the awareness perceives as free will, unless it looks deeply enough.

Getting back to Searle's argument, this leaves the question of why the "mysterious" subjective experience of the awareness has evolved. In this case, the argument hangs on whether the awareness agent in the brain could have evolved without there being personal subjective experience. If so, then one needs an explanation for why personal subjective experience evolved. If it is a natural byproduct of the awareness agent (which I visualize like a lamp or a flashlight that shines in different directions), then no further explanation is needed. But now Searle's argument seems to lead in a different direction. If the personal subjective experience part of awareness evolved separately, what evolutionary role does it play? As I have argued above, actual decisions (free or not) are normally outside the purview of our awareness, so it seems to play no role. Perhaps, and I say this hesitantly, this is a sign that there is something deeper about our awareness which is outside the standard scientific conception. In Buddhism, we believe that our mindstreams give rise to our bodies and to the world around us through the arising of afflicted emotions and concepts, and our karma. The mindstream is fundamental, the world around us more like a dream or an illusion. The above analysis is consistent with this, I think. It still requires investigation, the main question being can an awareness agent, which serves to select sensory input to feed to the unconscious decision maker, evolve in an animal brain without giving rise to personal subjective experience?

Free Will?

When I was growing up, I came to the conclusion, heavily influenced by various things I read, that the universe was effectively deterministic, and that therefore free will is an illusion. A thought experiment by Douglas Hofstader made the case even more convincing to me. "If you really have free will," says one person to another, "are you free to choose to kill me right now?" On one level you might say he is free to kill the questioner, but on the other hand, it's pretty convincing that since he is strongly predisposed not to kill him, that in fact, it is beyond the realm of possibility, and not a possible choice. An interesting wrinkle in the debate just came to my attention in an essay of John R. Searle, where he says the following:


Well, what's wrong with epiphenomenalism [the idea that conscioussness is not causally relevant]? As we come to understand better how the brain works, it may turn out to be true. In the present state of our knowledge, the main objection to accepting epiphenomenalism is that it goes against everything we know about evolution. The processes of conscious rationality are such an important part of our lives, and above all such a biologically expensive part of our lives, that it would be unlike anything we know in evolution if a phenotype of this magnitude played no functional role at all in the life and survival of the organism. In humans and higher animals an enormous biological price is paid for conscious decision making, including everything from how the young are raised to the amount of blood flowing to the brain. To suppose this plays no role in inclusive fitness is not like supposing the human appendix plays no role. It would be more like supposing that vision or digestion played no evolutionary role.


I find this argument simultaneously compelling and suspect. Clearly the brain evolved to "make decisions," but the question is whether there are genuine choices (the decision might turn out differently under the same conditions) or whether the decision is algorithmically determined. Now Searle would probably say, then why is there consciousness? The brain could do all that without being conscious, more like a computer. Well I know many computer scientists would argue that consciousness is an "emergent phenomenon" that just happens when the brain gets too complex. It's not that the brain evolved to have consciousness, it evolved to make decisions, and this has the accidental byproduct of producing consciousness. However, I can't say I like that formulation, because it doesn't really explain what consciousness is, or how it emerges from complexity. So Searle's argument may carry some force. If consciousness doesn't necessarily go hand-in-hand with brain complexity, then the consciousness must have evolved to have some survival value, and the only way that would seem to make sense is if it actually was able to influence the body. I.e. we have free will.

Medicine Buddha Mantra Card

I made this image of the Medicine Buddha mantra, which goes around the perimeter starting with "TAD." The seed syllable "HUNG" is the big blue symbol in the center. As part of a Medicine Buddha ceremony, one typically visualizes the seed syllable hung at the heart of the medicine buddha, with the mantra circling around it, radiating light to all sentient beings, purifying their obscurations and removing their sickness. One would typically chant the mantra "Tayata om bekhandze bekhandze maha bekhandze radzaya samungate soha" 21 times or more while doing this. Anyway, I made this and I figured I'd put it out on the web in case anyone can benefit from it. Feel free to reproduce the image. I also have a high resolution version which I can email to anyone who wants it.

Valentine's Day?

A friend of mine was lamenting to me today that he doesn't expect to receive any Valentines this year. (This may sound strange, but it actually makes sense in context, although, out of privacy concerns, I won't reveal that context.) In any event, this brought back some major memories for me. When I was in grade school, I never got any Valentines either. One time, one kid's mother made her give valentines to everyone, but she ripped mine open before she gave it to me and scrawled "I hate you" across it. Ugh. I was never popular in grade school, and I never could understand why. My best guess is that the other students couldn't understand my motivations or behavior, which somehow alienated them, and caused them to lash out, in what they felt was retaliation. In fact, I notice that to this day. Sometimes I'll be talking, making what I feel to be very serious and interesting points, and the eyes of the person listening will start to glaze over and I'll get the impression that they find what I have to say tedious and boring. I know people who I find very hard to deal with, and when they talk it bores me to tears, but seeing myself in the same way some people see me is hard for me to internalize. I guess when you're dealing with the world, it's a fact that some people will like you and some people won't. Some people will like what you have to say, and others won't. The fact that some people find me boring is quite different from being universally reviled, which, coming full circle, is basically the way I felt in grade school. At the current stage of my life, I've migrated to a situation where I'm not the odd man out. I fit in very well in my profession, which is known for idiosyncrasy, and I fit in well in my sangha too, which again, consists of beautifully idiosyncratic people.

May all beings have happiness and the sources of happiness.
May they be free from suffering and the sources of suffering.
May they not be separated from the great happiness that is free from suffering.
May they dwell in equanimity, free from attachment, aggression, and prejudice.

Clinging is a major problem

I haven't posted in a while, but I'd like to relate a breakthrough idea that I had today. It's not original, just me finally seeing some more pieces of the jigsaw puzzle fall into place. When we meditate, at least in many versions, we try to eliminate discursive thought from our mind stream. When thoughts arise, we train ourselves to recognize them, and then go back to the state of natural awareness. Doing this over and over, the spaces between the thoughts gradually lengthen, and I even had the experience of falling into nonconceptual awareness in the middle of the day as I was walking down the street the other day. Experienced meditators, I have heard, experience this state quite often during the day while not on the mat. My mentor in the Dharma Path program explained that it is very hard to let go of all conceptual thought because we've been clinging to these thoughts, which are essentially delusions or obscurations, for countless lifetimes. Our mind is simply in the habit of doing so, and it takes a lot of practice to undo it. In fact, it's quite remarkable how much progress it's possible to make, considering this. I can only think that I must have had practice in previous lifetimes as well.

I've also been reading a lot about death and impermanence. Basically, the Buddhist view is that you should contemplate death in depth now, so that when it actually happens, you won't be frightened or disturbed. (It will also be a spur to practice when you realize that death can come at any moment.) Part of what I've been reading is advice on what to do around a dying person. You're not supposed to cry, or grab onto the person, because that will create an emotional disturbance in them, and even induce them to cling to their body. If they have an attitude of clinging as they die, they will be reborn within the present state of existence (the world of suffering, samsara) and may even have a lower rebirth (i.e. more suffering), because the emotional disturbance will steer them that way. The best way is to let them leave their body calmly and peacefully. When Buddha himself left his body, he had eliminated all attachments, including attachments to his body. Thus he had achieved the state of not being reborn in samsara (complete nirvana).

An image from CNN.com

This gentleman biked to work 6 miles in some very cold weather (I believe in Minnesota). I have gotten ice crystals in my beard on occasion, but this picture is something else.