We know, for instance, about mirror neurons, and that seeing some else's pain can light up some of the same parts in the brain of the observer. You can tune them out, or strengthen them.
We know that the right hemisphere has entirely non-verbal modes of thought and generally sees the whole without breaking things into pieces--we don't have to put together some mystical oneness, but just tune into those aspects of our own being.
Without understanding these things about the brain, I'd take pointing out the potential for transformation as just moralizing and conceptualizing, just a draining act to put on for all time. There's a solid foundation to build on--it will run on the hardware, it's not just emulation.
A lot of religious trappings seem partially to function as theater, show, or advertising. This generates some interest without understanding. The first understanding and further interest will probably come intellectually thereafter.
The Dalai Lama has characterized one of the strengths of Tibetan Buddhism as laying out a complete path, no "missing steps." In his Introduction to Buddhism, he describes how a beginner might start out with analytical contemplation before meditation, getting familiar with the idea.
I think that understanding this sort of thing can help the thing scale. Quite a few traditions hold that you must have living transmissions of sorts, or need a guru. I think that serves, in part, to show in a living being that it is possible and not an act...but we don't have 3.5 billion spiritual masters to mentor 3.5 billion other people, and I don't see anything wrong with replacing a little trip or roadblock on the path with intellectual understanding. The traditions, understanding, and concepts all exist to create a workable path. Scaffolding doesn't have anything to do with having a building in the end, but if you want a building, you'll probably find scaffolding useful along the way.
At the least bit, it's all incredibly ambiguous to the point of losing most meaning and lending itself to interpretation in any direction.
Not to say most religious do not have a similar nature, but that this particular view is incredibly easy to turn into what lever perspective or belief system you want that's just as dogmatic as traditional western systems of belief.
The 'you are IT' and everyone is "it" and perfect at nature is just too easy to reduce in literally any direction you want. From anarchy to magical thinking to justified narcissism. Hints the section mentioned in which watts and his swami guy argue over the exact point.
In what sense does the right hemisphere "see the whole without breaking things into pieces"? Especially when it's implemented on a distributed computing medium like neurons.
Your last paragraph seems to make a more concrete claim, which is that we can tell which kinds of cognition are more or less draining, analogous to native vs emulated execution. This makes sense to me, but it's not clear that we couldn't already tell roughly how draining different modes of thought are without neuroscience, nor that the main claims of Eastern spirituality depended on how draining these different states are to hold.
In any case, thanks for clarifying.
https://www.amazon.com/Master-His-Emissary-Divided-Western-e... goes into this a lot. It does that fairly literally. In split brain patients, if you have them, say, draw a picture using their left hand (right hemisphere), they tend to draw it impressionistically without much detail--you get the sense or form of the whole--it really doesn't see the "parts". The left hemisphere typically can't do this, and seems rather preoccupied with what it knows. If you ask a split brain patient to, say, draw an elephant with their right hand, they might draw a trunk, and ear, a tail, etc. and actually not have the ability to put them together in relation to draw an elephant. They might even draw skeleton, because they know about it--it really doesn't have a sense of the whole.
> I think mirror neurons are a good example. I still don't understand what difference it makes which neurons are involved in empathy. Pretty much every signal in the brain can be tuned out or strengthened, right?
I don't think it matters which neurons, but I think what the brain does matters quite a bit, like the difference between, say, someone who can work out a sum with a pencil and paper, vs someone who sees numbers and landscapes and just kind of squashes the images together and knows the sum (some people with exceptional calculation abilities have unusual synesthesias like that and can't actually tell you how they calculate at all). If Buddhism, say, makes a claim like "there's no difference between self and other", it makes a difference if, say, my brain just feels distress at seeing someone in pain, or if my brain has a representation of just exactly what that would feel like on my body in some detail. We know empathy is a thing, but neuroscience tells us in more detail by, say, various failure modes of the brain, that some people can't differentiate self and other, that seeing others, say, can invade their mental space in a very direct way that they can't tell from themselves. So to me, without knowing in detail by having already accomplished it, what the hardware could possibly do, then we can train it. Like, people run 4 minute miles all of the time now, but it was once considered not possible. Someone sets a new standard, and a kind of mental block of "that's impossible" seems lifted. Knowing just what various brain regions can do removes some mystery of what's possible--were some old spiritual masters spitballing theoretical possibilities, speaking perhaps metaphorically, or very literally describing something they achieved? It leans toward the possibility of the latter, and the ability to train the latter, if you know in detail that exactly some region of the brain does some thing exactly.
> Your last paragraph seems to make a more concrete claim, which is that we can tell which kinds of cognition are more or less draining, analogous to native vs emulated execution. This makes sense to me, but it's not clear that we couldn't already tell roughly how draining different modes of thought are without neuroscience, nor that the main claims of Eastern spirituality depended on how draining these different states are to hold.
I think my line of thinking on this is more of the same sort of thing. How would you know, say, that you're not emulating what's possible to run in hardware. Like you said, you could strengthen any signal of the brain. How would you differentiate between the thought that everything is one, vs the intuitive perception of it? So I tend to think that the reason they're pointing these things out is because of that sort of thing. Some claims of Eastern spiritually do depend on how draining a state is to hold. In Tibetan Buddhism, for instance, the recognition of emptiness is clarified as not being a matter of effort, and they use the metaphor of a bell. You don't continuously hammer the bell, you ring the bell and the tone simply continues to ring as long as it rings. If you notice it has stopped, you can ring it again, and eventually, recognition is continuous; it should not be a matter of effort, and effort would be one way to spot that you're not doing it right. So, I do have an unsupported suspicion that they're pointing alternative ways of being that aren't a matter of effort and that people often don't recognize.
Agreed and not agreed.
I don't see any mysticism in practice of Zen for instance in particular, but there's something mystical about just being a self-aware being I guess. It's just so normalized, we take it for granted, and the practice can uncover that. If you take it purely as psychology (which it is to great extent), you still somewhat have this rooted in the "world of ideas" and not the "absolute reality" that you perceive in the moment (at least as how it's taught in Zen for instance). I.e. like scientist could try to find what the consciousness is, but even if we do get a scientific definition for that, I would argue it's more important to find out what consciousness is at individual observer level - something that could only be perceived/experienced and not described.
Also with the practice itself, any idea can become a baggage - whether it is neuroscience or some Buddhist teachings. Like understanding how the right brain hemisphere works is of no importance to the practice, if for instance Zen practice is a lot about full body awareness, external awareness and being rooted in hara. I know that it changes neurons in my brain but I can't perceive that in my brain, I perceive that in the spatial awareness (which is generated by the brain - but that's just an information, just an idea that I comes to me, that I perceive), but it's important understand that those practices were developed by people who probably didn't even know the role of the thing inside the skull.
I do use some of psychology / neuroscience to aid my practice though. At the basic level I understand that everything is a habit and gets automated away, including any advances in the practice. I take quite an athletic approach to it. I also discovered that understanding of Pavlov triggers can be of aid when trying to integrate the practice into the daily life. I think that new methods and technology could be developed that would make Zen practice easier for instance.
So I agree that we have tremendous advantage now and this can improve further as technology develops. The knowledge can be as much of use, as it can be an obstacle - it just depends on how it's used.
I think they point toward the ability to shift one's way of being in the world using one's whole capacity as a human being. Generally, an interconnectedness or oneness counts as a fundamental insight; however, I think these traditions have doctrines like karma so that such an insight does not become a regressive excuse for lackluster moral behavior. For instance, the human frontal lobes give us distance in the world, the ability not to react, to take a different perspective. This enables the Bodhisattva ideal of Mahayana Buddhism using the highest faculties available to man--necessary distance to be guardians of the world, not merely to, say, become stoically un-reactive, or to distance one's self from moral responsibility.
The "supreme insight" preached by Alan Watts seems ironically potentially harmful if not well-understood and grounded, a flight crashed halfway so that it would've been better not to get on the plane--to let the original error of separation in through the back door, ethereal "insight" not bound together with the rest of relative existence. Spiritual traditions have these proverbial cracked jugs with real insight of a sort, like Chogyam Trungpa.