The Dharma, sutras, and commentarial interpretations of interest to American Buddhists of all traditions with news that not only informs but transforms. Emphasis on meditation, enlightenment, karma, social evolution, and nonharming.
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(Illuminato) Modern neuroscience suggests that we do not actually perceive reality. That is, the reality we observe is not incoming data (bottom-up processing) towards us from the outside world. Rather, it is a projection (top-down processing) going from our minds out and duping us into believing we are passive observers seeing what's real. We see what we expect to see even when it's not there. Therefore, we are projectors unconsciously projecting our implicit biases, sitting as the audience of the theater of the mind, thinking we are looking at an objective show on the screen.
CHAPTERS
00:00 What we see is not "real"
01:41 Predictive processing
05:13 Evolutionary argument
06:52 Psychological experiments
08:18 Psychedelics
The habit of predicting becomes automatic
Predictive processing states that our brain functions like a prediction machine, constantly predicting what it will observe next and only adjusting its model of the world when its predictions do not agree with the sensory input it receives.
This video tries to explain this concept as well as can be done in ten minutes.
I feel like I didn't really explain the last part about psychedelics all that well, so here is the study from which I pulled the information: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/article... (Corlett et al. 2009, "From drugs to deprivation: a Bayesian framework for understanding models of psychosis").
The researchers do not directly reference psilocybin (the entheogenic compound in "magic mushrooms") however. Instead, they refer to serotonergic compounds.
Dharmic religions know: It's all an illusion
The Word of the Buddha
Maya means "illusion" in Sanskrit, not always in a negative sense of errant and misleading but also of dreamy and fantastic. We live in a fantasy, in an unreality, in a world (loka) we are projecting rather than taking in the way we think. We think we are being objective and rational, calm, cool, and collected (coherent in mind). But, in fact, we are implicitly biased, predictably irrational, uncalm, overheated, and dissolute, dispersed, and distracted. Meditation (first to calm then to develop insight) is an excellent remedy to "wake up." Enlightenment (bodhi) is waking up to reality. And what is "real"?
Oh, I misunderstood! Now I get it.
Nirvana is reality, seeing samsara for what it is and has always been reality, no longer grasping and clinging and crying about the unreal and illusory is reality. It is for the good, for freedom from all suffering, but we fear it. In our distorted view (our "perversion" or vipallasa) we take the fleeting to be permanent, the painful to hold the promise of pleasure and ultimate fulfillment, and the impersonal to be personal.
Not seeing the Three Universal Marks of Existence, we keep behaving (karmically engaging) as we do and suffering the endless consequences.
"Today, make smiling an exercise" (Thay)
When we act out of ignorance or hate/fear or craving, there's trouble ahead. We could put it behind us, but we would have to first stop, breathe, relax, and begin to mindfully see (i.e., see what really is rather than what we constantly project to be there by dispassionate and steady observation without abandoning the present moment).
Thinking goes in circles. Seeing is direct. If we just see, just watch, drop the reactions, things will begin to become clearer. Life is an illusion, but it doesn't have to be. There is "clear seeing" (vipassana) born of the Ennobling (Enlightening) Eightfold Path.
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