Does Modern science lend support to
Buddhist ideas about the human mind and to the logic behind Buddhist meditation
practice?
Based on
Modern science’s understanding, Natural Selection Design’s purpose for the
continuation of the species does not care about happiness. Its basis is to
create desire, greed, and agitation to
be motivated to move forward. As a result of changes in the environment at a
faster pace than the evolution of Natural Selection Design for the human
species, more and more humans are looking for a scientific understanding as
well as seeking a way to overcome our predicament.
Buddhism, a non-theistic religion, recognizes the foundation of Natural Selection Design and challenges it
by using meditation, as a tool to seek happiness. With its mindful meditation technique,
Buddhism teaching helps train the mind to be calm and content in order to
eliminate agitation and desire, which is the basis of the Natural Selection
Design.
Buddhist
teaching recognize suffering exists and clinging as the cause of suffering as
its first two noble truths. Scientists
have identified a part of the brain as the Default Mode Network, which they
have concluded is designed to take advantage of free time. Through study of brain scans, there is
evidence that when one starts to meditate, the Default Mode Network part of the
brain becomes active by filling it with thoughts. However, with continued meditation which
works to quieten the mind, Default Mode Network eventually surrenders and
becomes quiet. This results in detachment from thoughts and feelings and
elimination of desire as the path to end suffering, a logic that has
evidentiary support in modern psychology.
Another claim
that Buddhist teaching make is the concept of the Not-Self.
This doctrine rejects the existence of soul or in
essence, the Self. In fact, it claims the existence of five aggregates which make up
who we are. It further claims that these five aggregates are permanent, and we
cling to them which is the cause of our suffering. Using mindful meditation we
can recognize the five aggregates as fluid and impermanent and learn to detach
from them in order to be liberated. Buddhists claim that our mind’s eye is more
than its limited vision that Natural Selection Design supplies, and it allows a
meditator to see their thoughts without the thinker. The Self is then denied as
an ultimate sense and only exists as an abstract, relative sense.
In modern
psychology, based on the split-brain experiments specifically by Michael
Gazzaniga, there was conclusive evidence that questioned the existence of
consciousness and defined the existence of a sub-conscious. In these
experiments, each hemisphere reacted separately when the connection between
them was severed, one hemisphere buying into fabrication and creativity, while
the other honing into the detail and literal truth. These findings are in line with Buddhist
teaching of the question of non-self.
The Buddhist
claim that we are an illusion has evidence in modern evolutionary psychology in
the Modular View of the Mind. The seven sub-selves identified by Douglas
Kenrick in his book, “The Rational Animal” and further defined by Leda Cosmides,
endorse the Buddhist claim of no one conscious, and that a specific module is
triggered in our mind based on the environment. This view goes further to
explain that the modules in our mind choose us by what we express based on a
complex algorithm designed by Natural Selection. Furthermore, the psychologists
have determined that the modules gain power with victory. This is evident
in the case of addiction, which is in line with the understanding of the Natural
Selection Design to create motivation. As a result, mindful meditation is
prescribed by psychologists to help one become
aware of which module(s) is/are triggered and not allow them to become more
aggressive. The practice quietens the Default Mode Network while observing the
feelings without judgment. This allows us to let go of the sub-selves without
clinging to any one of them, resulting in positive behavior as perceived by the
environment.
Some may
argue that Natural Selection is a constant drive towards achieving perfection,
internal and external. However, while some may define perfection as gaining
competitive advantage in furthering our species to new heights, others seek
perfection in striving to eliminate suffering. While Modern psychology, through
brain scans and experiments, has been able to describe and offer the truth
about an unhappy mind, Buddhist teaching and tools have gone one step further
by showing the way to find that happiness.
Both
Buddhist teaching and scientific evidence lend themselves to accept that
Natural Selection Design hasn’t kept up with the changes in the environment and
that human species seek a deeper understanding of the mind. Meditation, a practice ingrained in Buddhism
since its inception as the means to a calm, content, and peaceful mind as a
path to happiness has become the prescription of choice by modern psychologists
for modern day psychological challenges of today’s human species.
