What is Mind Transcript
with Scott Snibbe
- 20th June
- Jamyang Buddhist Centre London
Welcome
Thubten Drolma
So welcome, everyone, welcome everyone here in the old courthouse and Jamyang London and welcome everyone online as well. So we’re delighted to welcome Scott Snubby tonight. Scott is a longtime personal friend of mine and has been a contributor to Science and Wisdom LIVE since the very beginning. And first of all, let me introduce myself. My name is Drolma, I’m the executive director of Jamyang Buddhist Centre, and Science and Wisdom LIVE is a project of Jamyang London.
So, Scott, tonight has kindly travelled to London, it’s actually the first hybrid event that we’re holding for science and wisdom life. So we’re really, really happy to see some of the sideways community here in three dimension in the Old Courthouse. So Scott is going to lead a talk on what is mind and lead us into meditations as well. Scott is the founder and executive director of sceptic pastor enlightenment. And, his book is coming out at the end of the year. So we’re really excited about that. And, and, yes, Scott, throughout the last couple of years has moderated a number of talks and interviews and panel discussions for SciWiz. So I know you’re well known to the science community. So Scott, welcome. And thank you very much for joining us tonight.
Scott Snibbe
So what is the mind as I was trying to figure out this topic for a book that I’ve been writing, I ice I struggled with it, and gradually distilled and distilled it down. So it’s an experiment, I haven’t given a talk like this or led these very short meditations on the nature of mind. So come along on the adventure with me and see how it goes.
Meditation on the breath
So I wanted to start out just a little bit, actually, you know what to start out, I think it would be nice just to do a one-minute meditation, I find that that’s so beneficial before any talk. So I promise it’s just one minute. But if you can get settle yourself into meditation posture, whatever that is for you.
And you can establish this very nice motivation. You know what we learned in this tradition that the purpose of meditation isn’t just to relax, but to bring out your best qualities. And so bring your mind to your breath, we’ll just, we’ll just meditate on the breath for one minute.
You can either focus at your nostrils or at your abdomen as it rises and falls. And as you do, your mind will naturally wander away. And without any kind of bad feelings. Just steer your mind back to your breath without pushing away whatever was distracting you and also without pulling it forward, just let it pass. So just one minute on the breath.
Then you can come out of that and it’s nice to see just what one minute of meditation does for you, isn’t it? You don’t have to sit down for an hour.
The first time I tried to meditate
So I wanted to start out by telling you two stories about meditation. One was the very first time I tried to meditate which was kind of comically unsuccessful. And the other was a very profound experience I had. So the first happened in my 20s, before I was a Buddhist, I was reading a book by Thich Nhat Hanh. And the book made me really curious to try to read it, he was saying all these great things about meditation. So I thought, wow, I got to try this for myself.
So I put down the book, and I sat on my bed, and I just closed my eyes. And it was very loud, and it didn’t seem much different to me than then, you know, the normal kind of rumination and stress and other kinds of feelings that went through my mind. So besides those thoughts in my head, getting a little bit louder and more annoying, nothing much happened in that first meditation. And I soon just got off the couch off my bed, and went about my day wondering, what was I missing? Has anyone had that experience anywhere else? So then the second meditation was a couple of years later at Vajrapani Institute where Venerable Drolma and I first met, and it was my first meditation retreat with Venerable Rene Feusi, who is an extraordinary teacher of Buddhism, and particularly how to meditate.
So on the first day of the retreat, most of my experience was about the same actually, as I tried to meditate, it was very, very loud and distracting. But during the next afternoon session, somehow guided by Venerable Rene’s instructions, it was like a door opened up into another dimension. You know, it was, I felt myself at rest in a vast luminous space of awareness. This overwhelming feeling of peace and joy. And this expansive sense of being that I really didn’t want to leave it was, it was like, You discovered a new place, you know, discovered a new, a new place that, and I was so happy that, you know, I knew with my eyes closed, it was really like I was somewhere else. And then finally, I opened up my eyes. And I was really surprised because the whole meditation hall was empty. And I had no idea how much time had passed. So has anyone had that kind of experience? Okay, good. That’s good.
Knowledge: The meditation differentiator
Scott Snibbe
So what’s the difference between those two sessions, and you could say it was experience. And if you’re a Buddhist, you might even say it’s karma. But I think a big part of it is knowledge. It’s having a model of the mind that helps you to guide your mental experience. And that’s mostly what we’re going to talk about today is like the different Buddhist models of the mind. Now, the other reason that I mentioned these two meditation experiences, is because they’re also examples of the two different ways that Buddhists probe the mind. So the first is examining the contents of the mind called your mental factors. And that’s the different thoughts and the different feelings that arise in your mind. And, you know, you can do that in more or less skilful ways, the way I describe was very unskillful, because I was mostly just identifying with my thoughts, rather than being able to actually, you know, watch them with some distance.
Then the second type of meditation. That second experience I had with Venerable Rene was more of an experience of the mind itself. So meditation, where you look at the mind, as the object of your meditation, or consciousness, awareness, there are different words for it. And that’s the state or the space of awareness in which thoughts and feelings appear. And both of those kinds of meditations are important, you know, we learned we learned about both of them in Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism. And I think the main reason that the first amateur session I had was unsuccessful was because I lacked a model for the mind, I didn’t have any model for how to look at what was happening in my mind.
So like I said, I was experiencing my thoughts naively, and identifying with them thinking I am literally those thoughts. And using this term we often use to make it clear what’s the difference between just meditation and other types of focus, which is rumination. And that’s an important thing because we do have the ability to focus quite strongly on everyday things. But if we are strongly identifying with those thoughts, and especially letting them turn into disturbing feelings and emotions, that’s more reason to rumination than meditation. It’s good to learn that difference.
So one of the core Buddhist views is that a lasting source of happiness can be found within your mind. And if that’s really the case, then I think one of the first things that becomes important is to actually understand Buddhism’s definition of the mind if we can find happiness In the mind, what exactly is the mind? And what are the mental factors that pass through it? And there are very elaborate ways in Buddhism of enumerating these factors. In different traditions, there’s 51 or 56, you know, depending on schools, I’m going to talk about simpler models of the mind. And one thing also is, you know, I’m very interested in science. My wife is here, the neuroscientists. And what I’ve seen is there are some differences between the scientific models of mind and the Buddhist models of the mind. And one of the reasons is that, in Buddhism, the mental models are evaluated not only for their accuracy, not just for accurately describing the mind, but also for how much they help us to develop a happy mind.
Right, so the impact of the model on your happiness and meaning in your life is more important, I think, than the accuracy of the model, sometimes in a Buddhist perspective, although the Buddhist models do strive to be accurate, and in many ways, they’ve started to inform scientific views of the mind through these dialogues, like His Holiness has had between scientists and Buddhists. But I really like that reminder that the Buddhist model of the mind isn’t just to understand it, but to lead it towards being lead your mind towards a happier mind, having closer relationships, and also having more compassionate communities, you know, it’s not even just about yourself. So I personally found these models, the Buddhist models of the mind, not just helpful on a practical level, but also quite awe-inspiring, like that experience I had with Venerable Rene a long time ago.
So in this talk, I’m trying to give a taste of these experiences with several short meditations that we do as the talk progresses like I was talking about the one-minute Mahamudra. For people who know what that means, instead of one long meditation at the end, I’m used to leading very long meditations, and I’m going to try chopping it up today. So first, I’m going to explain some of the mental factors that Buddhism describes as ever-present parts of the mind. And then I’m going to explain these lesser-known techniques for experiencing your consciousness, probably some people today, these are new to you, which are referred in our tradition to in our tradition as Mahamudra. And traditionally, these nature of mind meditations are considered more advanced practices.
The door-opening effect of meditation
Scott Snibbe
But, I didn’t just go rogue on this idea of trying to teach it to beginners, some of my teachers have shared them very early on Venerable Rene was kind enough to do that with us. And the reason is because of the door-opening effect that these practices can have on your mind. And it does help to have an experience of meditation that you really enjoy, you know, meditation can be very difficult, I think it’s important to realise that I often talk about that, when I’m introducing people to meditation that, you know, watch out for coming to meditation, because it’s relaxing, because then you can start to compare it with other relaxing activities, like watching Netflix, you know, going for a walk, having a cigarette, whatever. And, actually, you might find those other activities more relaxing. So the purpose of meditation is a lot more than relaxation. And so, but it is nice if you actually do enjoy your meditation, and it needs to be relaxing to be successful.
So when I teach meditation, I have found that once meditators can get a glimpse of this, like subtle and very beautiful aspects of your mind, that’s waiting just below the surface, like that’s what’s amazing is that it’s inside you. It’s not something when I had the experience, you know, it did almost feel like it was outside of myself someplace else. But actually, it’s only inside yourself. That’s where you discover it. And once you have some experiences like that, it becomes easier to view yourself expansively as much more than the sum of your cravings, and aversions, which is definitely how I saw myself, you know, for a long time before getting introduced to these ways of meditating and thinking. Now, there’s another reason that I like to talk about these more advanced ways of viewing the mind this early on for non-Buddhists.
And that’s because there’s this idea of refuge in Buddhism someplace you turn to, especially in times of stress or craving, fear and so on. And for Buddhists, we have the Buddha Dharma and Sangha, even, the historical Buddha, right behind me, the Dharma, the teachings of the Buddha, and the Sangha, the community, which in a lot of ways, if you’re a Buddhist is the most important one because those are the people like supporting you day to day. But if you’re not a Buddhist, you know, I really struggled as I’ve tried to do As a way of practising as authentically as possible without being a Buddhist, and the topic of refuge was a really difficult one. And what I ended up coming up with those a couple of ideas, but one of them was taking that understanding that the mind itself can become a source of refuge that’s available to you whenever you need it, then you don’t need anybody else there to experience it.
So let’s start out by talking about these mental factors according to Mahayana Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism is part of the form of Buddhism called Mahayana Buddhism, which is the Buddhism that is very much focused on a feeling of love and compassion for all beings, you know, the beautiful ideal of a Bodhisattva, like a being who dedicates their whole life to that ideal. And according to this tradition, there’s a cascade of five ever-present mental factors that accompanies every moment of consciousness. And I was really interested in the mind, you know, as a college student, and so on. And so I went, you know, very early on into these topics.
But when I first learned them, I actually didn’t find them that relevant to transforming my mind. And it’s possible, you know, some of you have studied these topics, too, you know, because you can study quite academically in this tradition, I wasn’t quite sure why it was useful to learn these mental factors until I discovered how to use them in everyday life, everyday life from a couple of sources. And I’m going to give you kind of the Cliff Notes shortcut to that. So but just to quickly explain these five mental factors. And again, there are some experts here who know these very well. And they come in different orders, sometimes in different teachings. But the idea is that first, your senses make contact with some visual Sonic or tactile sensation. So you know, the way your mind or your brain engages through your senses with unfiltered reality, like whatever that might mean.
Then next there’s a mental factor called perception. And that’s when your wrap, when your mind wraps these, this bundle of you know raw data, as you might think of it in today’s language, and categorises, the names bundles of data as particular objects or experiences, then your mind has what’s called a feeling. And this is something quite precise in Buddhism, which is that some, some perception is either pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. It’s a very simple definition of feeling compared to ours of emotions. And then after that, you can see your mind moving toward attention, that there’s a huge amount of perception coming into your mind. And you can pay more attention to some and less to others. And a lot of that is automatic, of where your mind goes and where it flees from.
So then, finally, after perception based on feeling and what you’ve perceived, whether that’s a person or an object or an idea, you have an urge. I like the term urge, Alexander Berzin uses this term rather than these other terms, volition, or some other terms of use, but I really like the term urge. Because it’s understandable by everyday people, that you have an urge to do something about that feeling. So like, like many of the more intellectual teachings on the mind, I think it’s reasonable for people to say who cares? Contact perception, feeling attention, urge, you know, it’s just like, it’s another thing to learn. Why do I need to know this list? And there is a reason.
You know, obviously, there’s some reason they’ve been teaching this for at least 1500 years, and maybe, maybe back to the Buddha. But the reason I’ve found is that this sequence helps you to understand how your feelings are biassed by past conditioning, how your feelings are often exaggerated, and then how they lead to words and actions that you might later regret. So that kind of explains how our mind goes off the rails sometimes. But more importantly, it also explains how you can stop thoughts in their tracks, ones that you don’t want to be pulled along by. And so I’ll explain that by going through these in a little bit more detail.
Most of what we perceive is psychological
Scott Snibbe
One of the first ways to start analysing the mental factors is to look at the first two mental factors of contact and perception. And notice how most if not all of what we perceive is psychological. So the the idea that there’s an objective, reality becomes really problematic and questionable when you realise how everything you experience is genuinely in your mind. It’s not saying there isn’t anything out there that comes through yourself. senses. But the only way you experience them is through your mind’s interpretation, the mental model that you build up. The Buddhist of the model, the Buddhist model of the mind explains how none of us has direct access to physical reality itself, which is a scientific truth.
You know, it’s not, it’s not a, not a subjective point of view. But instead, what each of us apprehends are these process sensory signals that appear to our minds, and from them, we construct a model of reality in our heads. And so, I went and researched a lot about non-Buddhist points of view. Other scientists who’ve explored this and from the very early ages of the Western enlightenment, have many different thinkers like Galileo and Darwin have all said very similar things that, like light is just the vibration of invisible electromagnetic energy at different frequencies, like light, isn’t visible, right? It’s only our minds that create this illusion of some small fraction, some small slice of the electromagnetic spectrum, appearing as colours and forms and so on, when, when those vibrations beam through your eyes to stimulate your brain, you mentally construct the different colours that appear to it, there’s no red, there’s no orange, there’s no yellow, there’s no green, no blue that exists outside the mind.
And it’s the same with sound. You know, they say sound is actually for people that love music, and sound is just a variation in air pressure. But sound is silent. Sound actually doesn’t make any noise. It’s only your ears and your brain that transforms, you know, little variations in air pressure into all the mental constructs of noises, words and music. What you’re hearing right now, right? It only exists in your mind There isn’t. There aren’t real words, there aren’t real sounds. It’s constructed by your mind.
I had the pleasure of talking to this neuroscientist, and Neil Seth wrote a great book called “Being You”, a great book about consciousness. And he uses this great phrase, he describes the inner reality that we fabricate as a controlled hallucination. And so he, I like this, because he’s one of the foremost researchers on consciousness. It used to, you weren’t even allowed to study consciousness, really in science 20 years ago, 25 years ago, you know, like when I was in college, but now it’s a field with legitimate researchers and grants and so on good books. And what he says is that the brain synthesises, a virtual inner reality, with these incoming sensory signals, what he calls a controlled hallucination.
I really liked that, that term for what our inner experiences. And then there’s something else that comes about when we realise that perception is psychological, which is that our imagination, our memory, and our dreams, can feel just as real as the reality that perception constructs from our five senses. So that’s why Buddhism describes a sixth sense, there’s a sixth sense in Buddhism. And this sense, it’s not an ability to see ghosts, or predict the future, or anything like that. It’s the mind’s interior ability to produce images, sounds and thoughts without sensory input. So in the Buddhist model of perception, our mind has the ability to differentiate objects from one another, like bundling the constant stream of sensory and imaginative sense stimulation into discrete packages, that we label as objects or concepts, like this, is what we call perception.
And it’s a little disconcerting when you start to learn to think about this because when you realise that perception is just a mere collection of sensory signals, you start to realise that there really are no real objects out there in the world. This is actually a more advanced Buddhist teaching, but it falls right out of this, one of these first principles of the mind that objects are just convenient labels that we place on collections of sensory stimulation, imagination, and memory. So this collection of energy and particles is me. And that collection is Venerable Drolma over there, that collection of that delicious chocolate. That’s bitter medicine. That’s the sweet voice of my partner over there. That’s the annoying speech of the person I didn’t vote for, you know, all of these are their psychological constructs, none of them really exist intrinsically right on their own. So when we realise that perception lacks objective truth, here’s where it becomes useful, finally, is that it offers us a way to question the strong feelings and urges that we experience in relation to the objects that we perceive.
I think, is the first way that understanding the mind according to this model helps to chip away at the way we can be pulled along by our urges, and it gives us the opportunity to choose more beneficial ways to respond to them. So after perception after contact perception, we look at this mental factor of feeling. And that’s what we define as our immediate reaction of pleasant, unpleasant or neutral to the objects that we perceive. Whether they’re real or imagined, you know, you can have strong feelings about a dream or a fantasy, or delusion. So pleasant feelings make us want to repeat whatever experience provoked them. And then unpleasant feelings make us want to avoid whatever brought them about. And then there are also these neutral feelings that evoke indifference.
The mental factor of feeling and “urge”
Scott Snibbe
I really like Robert Thurman’s term for this, which he says numbness. Because it’s not, it’s not the most neutral, it’s actually not really devoid of a valence. Because you are a little bit numb. I think to experience when you’re, it’s like something doesn’t matter, you don’t care. That’s why I like that Robert Thurman talked about it that way. So, I was saying that the mental factor of feeling doesn’t equate with emotions, as we commonly understand them. And my understanding from a lot of, I’m not Tibetan, obviously. But my understanding is that the Buddhist psychological system doesn’t have an analogue for the Western term emotion. I’ve heard this teaching many times, even though I don’t, I don’t know though I don’t know Tibetan or Sanskrit. But from the Buddhist perspective, emotions are combinations of the more primal mental factor of feeling, combined with the thoughts that elaborate it, when you combine this pleasant, unpleasant neutral with all of our other elaborations, you start to get the type of emotions that we think about in the West.
So it could still be a little bit annoying to memorise these five mental factors, although I did find it quite useful myself eventually. But I do have a lazy shortcut to making practical use of them, which is to share the one place that it said that you can stop this, this cascade from contact to urge so they say it’s almost automatic, sometimes even say they rise simultaneously. But I mean, when I’ve dug a little deeper with, you know, very experienced teachers, you know, that generally, this order that I described kind of makes sense to us psychologically. So how do you stop that, that cascade from contact, to immediately doing something about it, is to pause that feeling, that feeling is the one place where you can start to control your mind according to this model. So if you can slow your mind down, right, as you’re experiencing the pleasant, unpleasant or neutral feelings, then you can constantly consciously choose how to respond to those feelings, instead of automatically following the urges that they provoke.
That was, I also got this out of a great book, Ben Connolly wrote, called Down Inside Vasubandu’s Yoga Chara that like, not the most obsessively named book, but there were some wonderful ideas in that and that he really emphasised that there that this mental factor of feeling is where if you can slow yourself down, you can stop that cascade. So then to go on to the next one about urge this next this next mental factor of urge is more commonly called intention, or volition, which I find a little bit inaccessible words, although you know, they’re accurate. I like Alexandria Robertson’s translation for this term, because this is the part of your mind that drives you to do things, or at least want to do things in response to your feelings. So or just get you up, up off the couch.
I remember one of my teachers saying that once I actually often think about that in the morning, you know, in your bed in the morning, you’re like, oh, I don’t want to get out of bed, I don’t. And then all of a sudden, you get out of bed, that I always think, oh, that’s, that’s that mental factor that gets me out of bed is like always, what is the thing that finally gets you out of bed. In Buddhism, it’s this mental factor of urge. And in Buddhism urges, also the dominant factor in the creation of karma. And so that’s for anyone unfamiliar with that term. That’s the imprints of actions from prior lives that affect experiences in this life. There are a lot of ways of experience explaining it, but that’s a simple way. But I’m always looking for ways to explain Buddhism without karma, because it’s very, there’s no scientific evidence for karma, you know.
So it’s, it’s something you have to kind of come to believe through different ways, and maybe over a long time if you weren’t raised in a culture with it. And so I like to say you can understand urge in a more practical way, without recourse to karma, because whatever the mechanism, both Buddhists and scientists agree that our current thoughts and actions, strengthen or weaken In our future mental habits, and science understands this as the principle of neuroplasticity, you know, this is like the mechanism from which we see that when we do something, when you have a thought or an action, we create, we slightly strengthen the neurological pathways for doing of for having that thought in the future.
So, in Buddhism, there are different ways for people who are really educated about this, this is a simplification. But in Buddhism, the middle, the mental factor of urges elaborated into dozens of different states of mind that drive us to action, like a resolve a wish, a grudge. But there are always things that move us toward mental or physical acts, whether we follow through on it or not. And so once the urge has been activated, both in theory and through my own personal experience, it can be hard to stop the nearly automatic follow-through, I think we all have that experience. And I’ve also seen scientific studies of this, like that a lot of what human beings do are loops that we get triggered by something like the first few words of an argument, you know, you’ve often had with your wife, for example, just to pick a pick a random example.
Or a, you know, an addiction that you have something, you know, eating, I talked to Dan Harris recently, and he described eating a sleeve of Oreos, you know, this is a very American kind of addiction. But Oreos come in these long cylindrical things that they call sleeves. So eating like 2020 cookies at once. But you know, once you, once you’ve even had that idea is very, all of a sudden, you know, 20 minutes later, you know, you don’t feel so good. So, when we slow down that preceding mental factor of feeling, with meditation techniques, particularly this technique of mindfulness, that allows you to see what’s going on in your mind without responding and without having to act on it, then you can pause.
And, you know, they say, and even, you know, my own experiences that you can pause urges even as strong as like addiction, violence, depression, I think you can find many people talking about how meditation and this type of meditation has helped them with those types of problems. In addition to the milder variations, like eating a sleeve of Oreos, or having a fight with your partner. So there’s another aspect of the mind. That’s, that’s a little thanks for getting through those five mental factors. Hopefully, that was slightly entertaining and useful.
The difference between harmful and beneficial states of mind
Scott Snibbe
When I first learned them, I didn’t quite understand why that was important. But so there’s a really interesting thing I wanted to talk about next, which is that when you probe your mind, in meditation, when you start to use these techniques, you often pay attention, not just to what’s happening in your mind, but whether the mental factors that arise there are harmful or beneficial. And then whether you want to let go of certain thoughts, or encourage other thoughts. Again, this is where it sort of slightly varies from science because you’re not just observing, but you’re really looking at how these things affect your mind and your happiness and the world.
So in Buddhism, harmful states of mind are referred to as delusions. So these are mental states that disturb you, rage, and addiction are good examples. And then beneficial states of mind are the ones that make you feel satisfaction, self-respect, and presence, and they can be gentle ones, like compassion and kindness. I’m a big fan of Venerable Drolma who’s a big fan of gentleness and a good example of it. But also forceful once you know there are forceful positive states of mind, like effort, and awe, you know, to that we learned about in Buddhism that that can be very powerful, and, and positive but also very strong.
So, when you’re meditating it can it can feel like you’re disturbing, and beneficial thoughts are equal opponents, you know, like fighting each other. Like, have you ever seen these cartoons where there’s a little angel and a devil on someone’s shoulders and like the angels telling you to do something good, and the devil is telling you to do something bad? And that’s that equal view? Like they’re, they’re both equals. And, you know, it’s our choice to choose between them. That’s a little bit like the Christian view. I think, too. Sometimes, it’s like, they’re both fighting and, you know, you have the choice.
And then some people, I think, would even assert that negative thoughts have the upper hand, you know, Venerable Drolma and I were talking about this, on our walk today, you know, the different views of reality and the great writer named Cormac McCarthy just died yesterday. He definitely had that view. He had this really real view that you know, violence, anger, oppression, are the dominant by the dominant forces in the human mind, and we, we ignore those, we ignore that what he says, I think is a fact about human existence at our peril.
But one of the most powerful claims that Buddhism makes about our mind is that the inner Angel, our inner angels and devils are not equal at all. And so despite how much you might have heard about how that Buddhism is focused on suffering, Buddhism holds this optimistic view that the mind is fundamentally good. This was one of the most amazing things I discovered about Buddhism. And when I first started studying it, and it said that beneficial states of mind are our deepest ones. Like that’s, that’s our fundamental nature. And then disturbing states of mind, even though they sometimes overpower us are superficial. And this is really interesting because it also says that we don’t need to fight or demonise our delusions, that we just need to let them pass by, without acting on them.
And then if you cultivate the intrinsic states of goodness, the disturbance, the delusions will just naturally disappear. It’s such a positive, constructive view of reality. And so, this claim of humanity’s fundamental goodness, is what Buddhists call our Buddha nature. I don’t think the Buddha called it that, you know, the Buddha didn’t call his teachings, Buddhism. All these things with Buddha came afterwards. So another term for what is the fundamental goodness of our mind, which I really liked, then was on gay casual uses that there’s scientific evidence for it. There’s a scientist in Berkeley, named Dr. Keltner, who has studied this a lot, and Robert Sapolsky also, both of them have written books about this. And they’ve probed this idea in their research and they found scientific support for Buddha.
I’ve been asking scientists a lot about this, because I do find it encouraging yet may be hard to prove, and, you know, arguing people, like people who have the same view as Cormac McCarthy, like how can you defend this idea that humans are fundamentally good. So some evidence comes from studies that show that people’s first instincts in a social situation are biased towards cooperation, they’ve tested people very carefully in the laboratory. And for the great majority of people, their bias towards cooperation is their first instinctual act, something might stop them from cooperating. But if you test people’s very, very first impulse, the majority of people have an impulse to help.
We could give a huge, you could give a whole talk or whole weekend seminar on this, I’m just giving a couple of sentences on it. But another form of evidence comes from analysing our bad behaviour, and finding that most of it stems from problems that we exaggerate or imagine. You know, this is Dr. Rick Hanson talks about this a lot. And if you actually get into a state of mind that’s aligned with how things actually are, you can relax and be happy. So of course, this research on human nature isn’t definitive. I know there are even scientists who disagree with some of those results. And also, you know, what I found is, there are Buddhists that are sceptical about this seemingly idyllic belief in our fundamental good nature, and there are different Buddhist traditions that take different views on this idea of Buddha nature.
And so, like, especially Venerable Sangye Khadro is so good about enumerating a lot of these different views. And so that’s why, you know, from what I’ve seen some schools of Buddhism limit their optimism to the more defensible claim that the mind is just changeable. You know, that’s another way of viewing the idea of Buddha nature, that’s a little bit more middle of the road, and that it can change for the better. Venerable Drolma and I were talking about this also, about Venerable Rene, today. He said once “What If life has no meaning, except what you give it?” Which is still a reason to do to take this view.
Meditation on the mental factors
Okay, so now we’re gonna do our first meditation this is actually the longest one which is still not very long, which is the meditation on the mental factors. So just get yourself into meditation position, I think this one might take four or five minutes or so. Mental factors are said to arise more or less automatically. They’re conditioned by our habits, our experiences, our upbringing, our culture, genetics, and anything else that strengthens or weakens the brain’s neural pathways and the most Since tendencies so meditating on the mental factors of perception feeling an urge can help us to understand how uncoloured perception turns into pleasant and unpleasant reactions and by slowing down this process and wholly accepting our feelings we can gain control over whether to release or to act out the urges that they normally provoke. Again, it’s nice to remember motivation so you can just set a motivation to gradually bring out the qualities of your mind that lead to happiness connection, and positive action in the world then maybe just focus on three breaths just to calm the mind very briefly.
Now bring your attention to the mental factor of perception. So let whatever sensory experiences naturally occur arise in your mind notice how your mind perceives that aeroplane flying by the hum of equipment statues and furniture in this room the tension in your muscles your back the heat of the air or the breeze across your skin.
Notice how you attach a mental label to these bundles of sensory information so that instead of a continuity you see mental experience bundled into separate clearly identified sounds, sensations objects just for 15 seconds or so watch your perception.
and also notice how your continuous experience of thought also gets broken into discrete bundles that’s a memory that’s a plan that’s a worry just for again just 20 seconds or so, look at thought through this lens of perception how your mind bundles thought into discrete packages.
Then without trying to control what arises in your mind. Now look at the mental factor of feeling. So just let whatever passes naturally through your mind. Come and go. Pay attention only to the feeling associated with each sensation that the siren that just passed by maybe you felt annoyance at that sound or a sense of comfort in your body or discomfort, a thought a memory whatever is going through your mind just notice whether a pleasant, unpleasant or neutral feeling accompanies it. Try to completely accept your feelings without overly identifying with them.
Then notice a component of your mind that wants to do something about your feelings. It might be wanting to shift your body to a more comfortable position, eat dinner, or check your email. So this part of your mind doesn’t just experience thoughts, perceptions and feelings, but it also has an intention to act. So whether it’s subtle or strong, see if you can notice a component of urge wrapped up with every moment of consciousness without needing to act on it.
Forgot to mention the biggest urge is probably to pull out your phone, the one that’s constant throughout our days now. Then at the end of this short meditation, you just dedicate any increased awareness of your mind’s mental factors, to gaining more control over how you respond to objects, thoughts and experiences in everyday life. I actually do this type of meditation a lot. While I’m not on the cushion, just in everyday life to try to slow down my own reactions. Sometimes it works.
Consciousness explained
Scott Snibbe
So now I wanted to move on to the second part of the talk, which is about consciousness. So I was really curious about this topic when I was in college. And I remember in the early 90s, I used to spend a lot of time at the bookstore. You know, I think quite naive when you’re young. I certainly was just like, oh, what happens when you die? You know, go to the bookstore. See what you can find. What’s consciousness? So one day I was thrilled, there was actually a brand new book called Consciousness Explained. Great. I had very little money, you know, I had, I think I only had like 100 extra dollars a month of spending money.
So I was like, I’m buying this book, I need to know what consciousness is. It’s by this guy named Daniel Dennett, a pretty famous philosopher. But you know, and I read through the whole thing. And I was really puzzled when I finished the book. Because at the end of it, his conclusion seemed to deny that we have any conscious experience at all. And I did not get it. I didn’t I was sort of like, you know, shaking them. Fuck, what, what is this? What does he say? He didn’t explain consciousness at all. And he basically said, you know, it doesn’t really exist. It’s just an illusion. And then later, I actually found out much, much later that a lot of other people shared my bewilderment. And that a lot of his critics joke that his book should have been called Consciousness Explained Away. And many people disagree with him, especially in the south, you know, this, this fantastic science, consciousness researcher.
So, denying our subjective experience seems really senseless to me for I think, quite obvious reasons, because it’s the one thing that each of us knows for certain is that we exist and we’re aware, right, in a sense, that’s the only thing we know absolutely for certain is that we have our subject subjective experience, because anything seemingly objective is coming through that senses, right? So it seems really ridiculous. I know he’s, you know, he’s sorry to call him out by name. But I really felt like that was nonsense. And lately, there’s much more subtle thought about this in philosophy and Western philosophy and consciousness research.
There’s a philosopher named David Chalmers, who has named this problem and he’s called it the hard problem of consciousness, which I bet some of you have heard about. And that’s the question of how certain processes we observe in the brain, like neurons firing and blood flowing, how those relate to our subjective, conscious experiences of colour and music and joy. And he’s very humble. He basically says we do not know this is like literally the hardest problem of consciousness is to explain that we have no explanation right now.
Buddhism and the Nature of Mind
Buddhism does have some explanations, though, which we’ll talk about. So, Buddhism relies heavily on subjective experience, to establish its models for consciousness. And one of the key reasons Buddhists want to understand consciousness is to gain access to its subtler levels. That’s, you know, that that experience I had, you know, with Venerable Rene, you know, that that meditation retreat, where you discover a non-conceptual sense of who you are, that lies beneath perception, thought, and even personality, certainly beneath you know, your job, and your and so on.
And so, you do this not just for the adventurer, it is actually quite quite a fun adventure, and not just have a curiosity. But because knowledge like this can leave you with a lasting wellspring of inner happiness, like a place you can go to, on your own whenever you want. To bring you the sense of joy and refuge as they call it in Buddhism. So there’s, I want to talk about a Buddha, there’s a concept in Mahayana, Buddhism of the continuity of mind. And that’s a conviction that your mind has existed forever, although it’s constantly changing. It’s not like an unchanging phenomenon. But your mind is, as it existed in this constant stream of change forever, and will continue to live on forever. And because of this, if you have this conviction, that you feel a responsibility to evolve, this ever-changing mind, toward happiness, and wisdom, and connection, and compassion also.
So, you know, as I think a lot of you know, I run an organisation called the Skeptics Path to Enlightenment that tries to take as much of the authentic Buddhist teachings, but share them in a secular way, like a way that you don’t have to have believing things that science can’t yet prove today. So, if you don’t believe in this vast, infinite timescale for your existence, is it still possible to conjure up the same sense of honour and responsibility? In your practice? I think this was because I actually almost skipped over this topic, when I started over, started it with my partner, Steven Butler. And he’s like, no, no, you really have to figure this out. And I, you know, talk to my teachers, and so on.
But one method that’s worked for me with non-Buddhist meditators is to look at the present moment, actually, instead of infinite, past infinite future infinite lives, to just look at the present moment down to its most subtle level, and to have an experience of the mind right now, without worrying about its existence before or after that moment. And there are many ways to break through to this subtler aspect of mind. And I’m going to this is the one-minute Mahamudra part of the talk, I’m going to share a few of them right now, each of them with a guided meditation. And as I mentioned, normally, these, like nature of mind practices are undertaken by advanced practitioners.
In fact, a lot of what’s taught in Buddhism was very secret. It’s where we live in a very fortunate era, where all of these teachings are so accessible, mostly because we were so worried about them disappearing completely, you know, so they’re trying to share them as widely as they can and document them in books. But as I mentioned, I found it curious that analytically minded people would come to a talk like this and respond really well to these many methods. And they often achieve very powerful direct experiences of the subtle nature of the mind very early in a meditation journey. And I don’t say that as some, you know, false promise or something, you may not have that experience.
But Venerable Rene and Rob Priest, an extraordinary teacher here in the UK, and Lama Yeshe especially talked about sharing the benefits of these practices early in the path for exactly this reason. So it wasn’t just wasn’t my idea. So I’m going to go through very brief explanations and meditations on these different ways of viewing the mind with the hope that making them so succinct, can make them easier to practice in spare moments during your day to get in touch with your deeper nature. You know, I think we can build up a big story of not being able to meditate or not finding the right place or I’m too tired and I’m too busy in the morning too tired at night, too busy during my day. But I’m actually going to show you one minute. You can find one minute you could stay in the bathroom for an extra minute.
Now afterwards or if you’re in your car or something like that, these are short enough that you can squeeze them into a minute that you might otherwise be, you know, reading your phone on Facebook or something like that. So one Buddhist definition of the mind is that it’s clear and knowing this is a very well-known model of the mind. And a simple way to explain this is that the clarity of your mind is its ability to model the world within your consciousness to create that model in your mind. And then the knowing aspect of your mind is its power to understand and engage with that mental model. There are other ways of explaining it, but that’s just a simple way of doing it. And so, as you start to recognise and observe these two aspects of your mind, you become more attuned to the encompassing awareness in which both of these aspects arise.
Meditation on clear and knowing
Okay, so here’s the first one-minute meditation on the clear knowing my so, just relax again. Just habit just focus on one breath, which helps you try to let go of thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. See if you can look at your mind without thoughts. See that it has clarity to it like the reflective face of a mirror or the transparency of a lens…
As thoughts and feelings and perceptions arise notice how they appear like reflections or refractions within this clear mind…
Then observe the mind-knowing quality, a direct way of knowing that goes beyond labels and concepts.
Allow yourself to relax and rest further into these clear and knowing aspects of your mind for a moment. However, they appear to you.
That’s a clear and knowing aspect of the mind. Of course, the words aren’t the experience, but the words can lead you to the experience
Now we look at a different model, the space of the mind. Not all people think visually. But for those people who do as you experience perceptions and thoughts and feelings, they might appear to come and go within some kind of mental space. So as objects arise in the space, they might seem to emerge from some sort of mental material that they dissolve back into like shapes oozed out of a 3D printer that melt back down. Or objects might seem to arise instantaneously like holographic reflections. So in this next meditation, we’re going to simply watch with an open mind to find our own metaphor for the experience, so, this is a short meditation on the space of your mind
Though first, relax your mind Let your thoughts and feelings and perceptions fade into the distance. And then steer your attention to the space in which they appear, even that siren outside is appearing in some space of your mind. Try to keep your mind on the space of the mind and not the contents of it. Being curious and open-minded?
Is the space of your consciousness dim or bright? Is it clear or obstructed? Does it stay the same? Or does it change?
Does the space of your mind have a size? Is it contained within your skull? Within your whole body?
Does it fill this whole room? And as you think about the neighbourhood, your country the planet? Does your mind grow? If you even think about the whole universe, does your mind encompass a whole universe?
And does the space of your mind overlap with other minds or does it feel separate from them?
Then we can watch how objects appear within the space of our mind. The signals from your eyes and ears imagination and memory transform into forms, sounds, and other perceptions that take shape in your awareness. Whatever texture and colour the mind has gets sculpted into the form of what you perceive. Just for a moment, try to see how mental objects rise and fall within your consciousness. How you can bring each appearance closer to examine it or just let it fade away.
And then you can come out of that short meditation.
The stream of conscious moments
Scott Snibbe
So there’s another Buddhist model of the mind that describes a stream of conscious moments in which thoughts arise, take centre stage and then diminish and disappear. So there’s a variation on this, which again is quite advanced. But you can observe how each new moment of consciousness seems to have a duration. Which means you could split that moment in two. And then you can do that again and again. Until you either arrive at a moment of consciousness that seems indivisible. Or maybe recede into something infinitely small. When I first learned this meditation, I was struck by how similar it was to calculus.
I don’t know how many of you remember taking calculus. But before calculus, mathematicians were only able to approximate the area under a curve by adding up little rectangles you had to slice, slice it into rectangles. And then what was it Leibniz, and at the same time, Newton, Newton and Leibniz came up with his idea independently, that you can keep shrinking those rectangles infinitely thin. And then when you add up an infinite amount of infinitely thin slices, you get the perfect answer to the area under a curve. Like, to me this was a spiritual moment. And I like saw this and like there’s so there’s actually quite a few moments because I studied you know, mathematics and computer science, certain things in mathematics and computer science that are totally transcendental to me like that.
So, this is just like calculus, this process, this meditation, is that as you slice moments of consciousness until they’re smaller and smaller, there can come this single, let’s call the singularity, where you realise that a moment is only a label that’s imposed by your mind. Where did the past moment go? Where is the future one coming from? Does an infinitely thin slice of time have no duration? Or does it somehow become an ever-present now? Which is very much like… We were talking about this today on our walks, I went for a few nice walks today with friends, and we talked about a lot of these things. So this breakthrough from the logical to the experiential, like that’s the essence of you know, what we call analytical meditation, which sounds you know, very technical type of meditation, but you use a conceptual process to arrive at a non-conceptual realisation about your mind and reality. In this case, that may be that all there is is the present moment.
Actually, I wish I had more time to talk about this would be great to do a whole talk about I just read a whole great Carlo Rovelli book about time, but I’m not going to start talking about that. So, meditating on the temporal aspect of the mind is this way of reasoning about your consciousness that can suddenly land you into a direct experience of consciousness itself. But none of this is meant to suggest that your consciousness actually is a series of time slices. I think it’s really important about all of these models that they are just models, in the same way, that no word is the thing that it describes.
Buddhism offers many paths to a direct experience of consciousness. And kids actually sometimes have easier access to it than adults. One night at dinner, I think my daughter was asleep there, in fact, but one night at dinner, I asked my daughter, she was eight at the time. What was her favourite time of the day, I said somebody What’s your favourite time of the day. And she said, My favourite time of the day is now now now now now. Just kept saying that. Totally spontaneous. So it’s a lot of different paths, it doesn’t have to involve talking about calculus and Mahamudra.
Meditation on the stream of conscious moments
Okay, let’s do this meditation on the stream of conscious moments.
Okay, first instruction, try to see your mind as a stream of conscious moments.
So notice how each moment has a beginning that touches the past and an end that touches the future and the middle with a duration.
To cut a moment of consciousness in half, then slice one of the halves again. Try and do that again. And again until you break through to a singularity of time-sliced infinitely thin.
Here, there’s no past because it’s already gone. And there’s no future because it’s not here yet. Try and just let go of the analysis and open yourself up to whatever direct experience you have the mystery of what the present moment might actually be.
The crazy thing about this meditation, we can come out of that meditation.
Time is a mental construct, according to Science
Hopefully, this makes you want to do these meditations. It’s actually really good to end meditations before you want to because it makes you want to come back. But this is really actually how science understands time, you know, the best that scientists understand time really is this that it is a mental construct. Should I leave a little time for questions at the end of the conversation? Yeah. Okay. So I think I’m gonna skip one of the meditations.
About today’s meditations
There’s another meditation, I’ll just describe really briefly that I’m going to skip for today. But the last place you can look for this direct experience of consciousness is the gaps between thoughts, just to notice that you know, for even your ordinary mind, there is a little moment between thoughts. And in your meditation, you can just dive into those and explore them however they last and then with that, whatever arises come and then just watch for another one of those gaps, so I won’t guide that meditation. So we have a little quick little time for questions. But that’s one last one. So you might have noticed that so far these meditations on consciousness haven’t asked, or even answered the hard question of how consciousness relates to the brain. And in Buddhism, consciousness is generally viewed as immaterial that it continues on in some form after the body dies, you know, that’s the Buddhist view.
And then there’s another, you know, very strong, opposite view. For Scientific, mature scientific materialists have the strong view that everything has a material cause which we don’t have a proof for that that’s also a belief today. And so for those types of scientists, they say that consciousness is just a side effect of neurons firing and that it disappears at the time of death, which is a totally reasonable perspective given you know what we understand about reality today. But without admitting to anything supernatural, some scientists take a position between these two extremes, particularly Anil Seth. And they say that the information that flows through neurons does have a reality apart from them. And this perspective, like when you say that, you start to get really critical, which is actually some people started to get very critical, which is totally fine.
Computer software and mental activity
But, it’s not saying that there’s something beyond outside of the neurons, like something separate from the neurons, that is your consciousness. It’s, I like to use the analogy of computer software. You know, I’m a software engineer and a computer scientist in training. And I like to talk about this because it’s quite, I don’t think there’s, it’s much different than saying that computer software is separate from computer hardware. Like we say that today, you know, we say there’s, there’s a software and the hardware. But software is completely dependent on the circuits and the semiconductors, and so on. And yet we have no problem, believing in Microsoft Word, and so on. We don’t say it’s some supernatural phenomenon. So I really like software as this analogy for mental activity, because no one debates whether software exists, like you laugh, right, but you don’t but you don’t laugh when you say, “Oh, does my consciousness really exist?” Or “Does it continue after life?” and so on.
So, yet software doesn’t have a literal material form. So it’s a lot like thought software is just a constantly changing stream of information that flows through computer hardware and input and output devices, the human minds that are perceiving and changing them. But we’d never say that software is merely the hardware it runs on or the memory that it’s stored in. We but and yet, we don’t get mystical and claim that software is a metaphysical phenomenon. Right? Software is just this dynamically changing immaterial information, like you don’t, you don’t have to get supernatural to say something’s immaterial. But the problem is that the word immaterial really can make a lot of people uncomfortable. And when we hear it, a lot of us assume that it refers to something religious, or super supernatural.
But, like Software and Information, science and psychology already accept many immaterial phenomena. And I like to give a couple of examples, you know, because we may not realise it. So mathematics is immaterial. Whether it’s arithmetic, algebra, or the equations that underpin reality, mathematics doesn’t literally exist. Mathematics isn’t on the worksheets that you did in school. And it’s mathematics also doesn’t exist in the fundamental forces of nature, even though we use mathematics to model them. But mathematics functions, it can solve problems, it can make predictions, it can describe physical reality better than words. And there’s a physicist I really love named David Deutsch, who argues this very forcefully, he says, the laws of physics are not themselves physical objects. It’s a very, very beautiful, profound image and a true quote.
Math is immaterial, but it’s real
So, you know, math is immaterial, but it’s real. And then on a sweeter note, you know, the people aren’t as much into math. We all believe in love. Right? Like, but love isn’t material either. Where do you find love? All right. Is it in your brain is in your body? Is it in a love letter? Is it in the sound of the words “I love you.” When a heart emoji pops up on your phone is the love in the red and pink pixels of that little symbol? So there’s no such thing as “a math”, I have to say maths in the UK. So, I think there’s no such thing as a mathematics detector or a love detector. Just like we don’t have consciousness detectors. Yet, we accept the existence of the immaterial phenomena of mathematics and love. Not just because they’re useful in understanding our world, but also because they feel real to us.
The saying that the mind has an existence apart from the brain doesn’t require a supernatural belief in a soul. I think it’s really important because I think it’s a lot of our culture, the way we were raised that makes us rushed to these supernatural ideas, it just means that the activity of the mind isn’t identical to the physical components of the brain. That’s all. It’s just that the mind is constantly changing immaterial information, and the brain’s hardware is interdependent. Like, that’s it, they’re interdependent in ways that we don’t yet fully understand. So some people sometimes use the word spiritual, to refer to these immaterial aspects of reality. And I really like this definition. And when I use the word spiritual myself, that’s what I mean. It’s defining spiritual, not in any religious or supernatural sense. But instead, as this common sense, understanding that there’s more to existence than material reality. That’s all. And if you like, you know, if you’re kind of nerdy, you can just call it information. But from this subjective perspective of consciousness, we find the spiritual reality in our minds. Okay, so that’s, that’s what is the mind? So I think we have some time for questions if you’d like.
Questions and Answers
Question1.
Thubten Drolma
Thank you very much, Scott. And thank you for taking us on this both intellectual and experiential journey. It’s, it’s wonderful to meditate together. So we want to open it up in case there are questions and temple and questions online. So maybe we’ll start is anyone online? If you have a question, you can put it in the chat or raise your little virtual hand. So there’s one in the chat, Jess? Actually, Martina is asking, but is software aware and self-knowing?
Scott Snibbe
I think most people would agree no, although people are getting more and more nervous or excited about it with artificial intelligence. But no, I mean, doesn’t trying to say that, you know, software is consciousness. But to use software as a metaphor for just to say that, when you search for software, you can’t find it in the software. Microsoft Word is not in your computer, it operates on your computer, but it’s constantly changing from moment to moment, and it’s dependent. It’s not just dependent on its instructions, it’s dependent on the input and outputs, the hardware, and so on.
So, it’s just trying to make that analogy that when you look at software, it really doesn’t have any materiality to it at all. It’s constantly changing information. So that was an analogy it wasn’t trying to say. But you never know that. If someone wants to ask that question, we can talk about it. Because I’ve, I’m curious myself as to whether, you know, with artificial intelligence, could software ever sustain consciousness? But I won’t answer that question. And let’s, or I won’t try to discuss that question unless someone asks it. But I think that was a better answer to the question, it was a metaphor. And no, I don’t think that software is conscious yet.
Question 2.
Thubten Drolma
And Jess is asking, Where do you perceive the mind to be located?
Scott Snibbe
So that’s, yeah, that’s like, that’s just a question to ask yourself. Right, from this tradition, I think that it’s something we gradually learn, especially studying Buddhism, that the questions are more important than the answers. And, not finding an answer is like the ultimate answer. When you fail to find any answer, that is actually the experience that ends up being the most profound one. So I think that your question is the answer. With that is just to keep asking yourself that question.
Thubten Drolma
Right. I think just that would make for a beautiful, one-minute meditation, more than one-minute meditation, but yeah, absolutely.
Scott Snibbe
It’s nice to ask yourself, like when you have time, like, we and I cheat myself, right? But we cheat ourselves when we rush to our phone, when we have a spare moment, like social media, the news and so on. Like, it’s really great to spend a little bit of time each day on these kinds of questions for yourself. And I think hopefully from a talk like this, nobody left during these 90 minutes, so you know, it’s interesting enough to think about it for 90 minutes.
Scott Snibbe
But the important thing is to not have the boundary of these thoughts be that door or you know, when you turn off this Zoom meeting, is to actually take them into your every day, hopefully, you’ve seen how brief these are, like 50-word meditations, some of them and you remember the ideas, right? You don’t even need to remember the words. I think that the thing is just to allow yourself that experience because they’re really accessible to everyone. And they’re not that hard to experience. And these kinds of instructions that come from, you know, great masters, and now it’s just translating it to a little bit modern language and form. Grid. So, yes, absolutely. Now. Go ahead.
Question 3.
Hello, thanks for the nice talk. Um, my question is about your analogy on mentioned software hardware. And less than psychology is quite a common belief that there is something called Super concessionaires or something, which is a collection of consciousness of different people or something like that, which is like a kind of source. And in something like spiritually, it is like, they can call it God or something. But is it the hardware is something like that or your analogy?
Scott Snibbe
Okay, so you’re asking whether there’s something like, super, super, like when many consciousnesses work to come to, like…
Question 3.
…interconnectedness? And then they combine together?
Scott Snibbe
Yeah. So I mean, I think there’s an experience we can all have. There are many experiences we can all have, like, certainly the ones with a partner, if you have a partner, or if you ever make love or things like I have a great conversation with someone you know, you do have that feeling that you will become you blend, like with another human being right. And when we all meditate together, I think you do notice, as they teach us that it’s exponentially more powerful to meditate together, which I find it’s amazing, sometimes in a room full of beginners, that’s completely silent for an hour together, like how did that happen? So I think, you know, subjectively, there’s some evidence for those experiences.
Scott Snibbe
But if you want to come at it, like more analytically the the way that phenomena emerge at different scales of reality. We don’t normally experience superconsciousness or interconnection, but so every once in a while we do. And there was this great analogy in the book about time, where Carlo Rovelli, who’s not a Buddhist, was just talking about emergent phenomena. And he was saying like, you know, let’s say 20 guys come together to decide they’re captains that each gradually choose people to be on their teams. And then after a couple of minutes, you have two teams that are gonna play soccer with each other. Where did those teams come from? Right. They weren’t there. You know, when everyone came there, and then all of a sudden, there were two soccer teams.
Scott Snibbe
Now. If you look at that, you don’t look at that and say like, oh, there’s no such thing as soccer teams. And you also don’t say soccer teams are intrinsic to the nature of reality, right? But everything is like that. Everything is like that, where it just comes together through like causes and conditions. So I think if you have an experience, we certainly have a collective experience of humanity, where our nations seem to have personalities of their own, groups seem to have personalities of their own. So to say that people coordinate their activities, feel a sense of connection, or even things like corporations, Buddhist centres and so on have a kind of personality to them. Again, it doesn’t have to be woo-woo and supernatural. It can just be like a soccer team.
Question 3
Yeah, it’s like a physical law and something like love theory of evolution and going beyond that and theory of karma, or like emergent phenomena. Yeah,
Scott Snibbe
yeah, exactly. But it’s so subtle. Like the way Carlo Rovelli explained it. It’s so sad. That example the soccer team I really liked a lot. Because people are very familiar with those and they really believe in them. So I think I just think it’s nice to look at things like that, don’t ever let yourself fall over the falls into like total supernatural. Like there’s something here beyond everything I understand. And also don’t fall into the extreme of like, things don’t exist and you know, that everything’s just atoms or something like that. But that middle way it’s so powerful to stay in that middle of like things are there but they’re in such a subtle, subtle, interdependent, like emerging and dissolving way.
Question 3
Okay, thank you.
Question 4
Question 4
Hi, Scott, thank you very much for this evening. And also for your wider sceptics path project, which I personally found very useful. You possibly have just answered my anticipated question. And this is an ongoing argument I have with my son. My son and I are students here and have this is an ongoing discussion among us, to what extent do you think? Or have you found that it’s possible to fully engage with the Tibetan path, particularly, while still remaining sceptical or uncomfortable with anything that feels a bit woo-woo? And particularly karma and a full-blooded interpretation of the continuity of consciousness? Is it possible to practice and engage without perhaps fully diving into a full-hearted belief of those things?
Scott Snibbe
So from my perspective, it’s not only possible, but it’s required, at least according to the Buddha, and this tradition that the Buddha taught and treat everything I say, with scepticism, you have to validate yourself. And every person in each new culture, each generation has to keep doing that. And if you find something isn’t valid, you know, put it on the shelf. Now, of course, a lot of people have found these teachings valid for over 2500 years. So, you know, there’s a lot going for them. And it would be kind of hubris stick to say, you know, my, my naive view of reality is, is more true than the Buddha’s.
But the Buddha himself said, do not take anything I said, on faith, he actually said, treat it like gold, you know, that you need to scratch it and bite it. And so, to test whether it’s true, and in this tradition, the Indo-Tibetan tradition that comes from Nalanda Monastery, really, they even force you to take the opposite position in the monasteries. For example, they force you to say, to take the opposite position of the Buddhist doctrine, so that you see for yourself, whether one of them really is true or not indefensible, in the old days, you also had to actually convert to the other person’s point of view, if they won the debate, it was that I love that it’s amazing.
So personally, I think like, not only is it possible, it’s required. And if you come to Buddhism, as a believer, you’re missing out on the genuine experience of, at least being a Buddhist, according to this tradition, like to unthinkingly accept the teachings on faith, I think would not be to, to learn them in the first place, because you have to, you have to pro them and ask the questions. And I think as you keep diving into the tradition, you see, like, for many things don’t actually have an answer, you know, what you find is something beyond answer or not answer that lies at the heart of a lot of these questions.
That said, I like to say, and I’m writing a book on Skeptic’s Path, the first sentence and sceptics path is my honest admission, I am a Buddhist. But then the second sentence is, but the purpose of this book is not to convert you into a Buddhist. And then I quote, Geshe Namdak in the third sentence. And I say, he says, the purpose of Buddhism isn’t to make more Buddhists is to make happy minds. And so I think going into it, scepticism is very good. And it’s reasonable if you can’t believe those things for this whole lifetime. And even if you don’t believe in past and future lifetimes, maybe just for this lifetime, you don’t believe.
Thubten Drolma
Thank you. We’ve got, let’s take one more question. And then I’m aware of the time so we’ll wrap up.
Question 5
Question 5
Thanks. Yeah, thanks for your talk. It’s really interesting. And I need to check out the Skeptic’s Guide, I was just wondering, I’ve been interested recently in, like, trying to learn about neuroscience and that kind of thing. And, you know, things like dopamine and serotonin and oxytocin. And then I’ve experienced a big change in some of the levels of those. And I’ve seen how they can influence me for different things. And so for example, I’ve, for example, through that, I’ve had a big increase in empathy, in how I relate to other people. And then also another thing is that you know, I used to have like a rational, reason, rational framework for why I was obsessed with the past, and analysing it, and also obsessed with the future and regretting and now I have a rational friend for why that doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.
And it’s not even possible for me, like, the thought process of I regret doing this is like, someone trying to think I regret that Tower Bridge was not built 100 metres down the road, because it’d be easier for me right now to cross it. Like, doesn’t make any sense. But I think that all of that is happening at a higher, a more superficial level than the hormones and that kind of thing. Yeah, so I think my whole worldview is just coming from the bounces of chemicals in my mind. And then also doing lots of like, yoga and walking. And I found, you know, that really processes things. So that again, the idea with that is, you subconsciously process that stuff, and your consciousness, only then sort of see some of it. So I was just wondering how you relate to those ideas because I sort of feel like my consciousness is just this little bit at the top. Yeah, everything.
Scott Snibbe
So like, one way to summarise your question is just what’s the relationship between neurotransmitters, and chemicals and our subjective experience, our urges and so on? So, one thing, I actually had this conversation with one of my high school teachers, talking about Buddhism. And I was surprised because he’s actually a very sceptical person. But he was saying to me, you know, he says, like, moving your hand is like an act of telekinesis. You know, like, somehow mind translates into movement, right? Just this act is quite extraordinary that somehow thought translates into action, right? So something really important, I think, and this is substantiated scientifically, is that this cause and effect of your mind causes neurotransmitters to be released, right?
There is some interdependence there like, of course, but the drugs that act many of the drugs that act on your body, actually have the same effect and can happen through thought or through feeling through their fantasy therapy and things like that. So it’s really important to realise like, and if you read science fiction, they talk about a future where, like, you could inject a drug, you can have the effect of a drug, just by stimulating your brain like you can do that too. De in primitive ways, but it’s important to remember it’s like, the mind controls the release of those neurotransmitters and chemicals in your body. There’s, it’s, it’s a simplification, what I’m saying, like there’s, you could debate this a lot when I’m saying, but it’s important to realise that they don’t just release themselves like dopamine doesn’t just go out by itself, it comes through having a feeling like you start worrying about money or feeling lonely or whatever.
And that has, it has a flood of neurotransmitters and chemical serotonin, dopamine, all that happens. But what happens first, your thought? So I think it’s very important and it’s okay. Like, you know, people take drugs, and so they there’s psycho-pharmacological drugs and things like that, but it’s really important to realise that they’re both doing similar, you can take a drug to force to change the balance of neurochemicals, but you have a thought, your, your thoughts, change that. So, again, whenever your mind goes to a very reductive perspective, I think it’s really useful to bring it back up and, and just analyse the situation. The neurotransmitters don’t release themselves, the biggest cause of the changes in your neurochemical, makeup and hormone design is your mind, your mind.
And sometimes it’s caused by something genuine, you know, a car rushing at you or something like that. But still, the car doesn’t cause them, what did they call it? What is the stress, the stress chemical? Yeah, cortisol, the car rushing at you doesn’t cause the cortisol to be released. It’s your mind interpreting that car rushing at you as a threat that then causes the cortisol to be released. So hopefully, that’s useful. That’s been the thoughts that have helped me a lot.
Ven Drolma
Thank you. Thank you. Second. And I’m, I’m aware we’re over time. And there are a few more questions. So, Jamie, we didn’t get to your question. But I want to thank all of you for joining. And for those of you staying online, it’s always harder when you’re online. Scott, thank you very much for joining us tonight. And, you know, I wished we had more time because I would have also wanted to share about people’s experiences with these meditations because it’s really incredible. You know, you see just in a few minutes, what you can experience about the mind is extremely inspiring. So I’m so glad you wove meditation into it.
Thank you Scott Snibbe
Thubten Drolma
And so of course, I want to do a shout-out that you’ve got an online course that’s available through Skeptics Path to Enlightenment. And there’s one module, one lesson that is just on exploring the mind. So covering some of the materials and the teachings and guided meditations as well was really wonderful. So we ran it here with Scott last year at Jamyang. And I know some people here in the temple took that class with you. So that’s that. And then for the community of Science and Wisdom LIVE, we’ve got a few events coming up. We’ve got one on July 8, and Scott actually is going to be moderating one of the panel sessions. And it’s a topic that we cover in some territory tonight because it’s on how meditation changes the brain neuroscience in Buddhism.
So that’s on July 8. And for those of you who aren’t aware, Jamie touches on some of the questions you’re asking actually online, but there’s an online course that we’re launching on September 1, Buddhism and quantum physics. And so it has dialogues of you know, Gish attends a Num doc and Professor Carlo Rovelli. And so that’s launching September 1. So we’ll follow up with an email with a link to the recordings tonight, as well as some links to some upcoming events and online courses, as well as a link to Scott your course on sceptics. But
Scott Snibbe
Yeah, the next session starts September 5 or something like this. So the next session, yeah, it’s nice because everybody gets can go through it as a cohort so we can experience all the stages together. Thanks for mentioning it.
Thubten Drolma
So everyone, here and online. Thank you so much for joining us and Scott. Please come back as it’s entered in a traditional Tibetan Buddhist, you request the teacher to come back, so please return. That was wonderful. Thank you.
Scott Snibbe
My pleasure. So nice to be here in person. Thanks. Bye, everybody.