Okay, so in this lecture we've talked about two seemingly pretty deep meditative experiences. One I've called the exterior version of not self. The other one is called emptiness or formlessness and I've said that if you're among the many of us who have not attained enlightenment and you're kind of wondering well what would it be like and trying to imagine it. I think these two experiences would be good candidates for kind of basic elements of the enlightenment experience. And we, we've already talked earlier in the course about some other candidates for that. I would say that the the interior version of not self, that is, looking within yourself, seeing thoughts, feelings, and so on, but no, no real self. I said that's a good candidate for basic ingredient uh,of enlightenment.

And so is the apprehension of impermanence. The kind of deep sense that yes, impermanence and a kind of fluidity kind of pervade reality.

So I'd say if you were doing like a presentation on enlightenment, and I guess in a way that's what I'm doing now and you needed actual bullet points, you know, elements of enlightenment.

I would nominate these four. Now obviously, different people have different views about what enlightenment is. But I think if we're going to try to kind of flesh it out, wrap our minds around it, these are These would be for me, kind of the basic four dimensions, based on talks I've had with people who have had much deeper meditative experiences than me. And also based on, kind of my understanding of Buddhist doctrine. So, with these four in place these four elements of enlightenment in place, we can, we can now proceed to try to answer the big question. You know, is enlightenment enlightening? In other words, do these four, kind of, elemental experiences tend to get people closer to the truth? About things.

now, it probably won't surprise you that I'm going to address this question from a Darwinian standpoint, okay. That is to say, I'm going to keep in mind the kinds of

biases and perceptual distortions that natural selection seems to have. Endowed us with, and that's going to inform my conception, of what a truthful apprehension of the world would be. Now, to pave the way for that analysis, I'd like to get back to a theme that I brought up at the very beginning of the course. I said that in some ways I thought that, kind of the Buddhist meditative path, was a rebellion against natural selection, against natural selection's agenda against the values, implicit in natural selection.

so, I would like to look at these, some of these elements of enlightenment from that standpoint. And talk about the sense in which they are part of a rebellion against natural selection, and then I think that'll, that'll help us get clear on whether the rebellion is really on this of the truth. So let's start out with what I call the exterior version of not-self. Now as we've seen, that involves a kind of diminished sense of separation between you and the people and things in the world, right? In fact, there's such a sense of continuity that you begin to think that to harm others would be to harm yourself. In other words you start to doubt, that there's any real difference between kind of your interests and their interests. Well, you know from natural selections point of view this is absolute heresy. I mean if there's one idea that natural selection is kind of built into us,it's that, you know, this is my body, it stop right here, it has interest. They are not necessarily the same as the interests of other beings, and they're definitely more important than the interest of other beings, right? That just follows from the logic of natural selection. I mean if indeed inside me are these genes, that were selected because they were good at getting copies themselves. Into the next generation. Then, job one for these genes is going to be taking care of this vehicle for the genes, this body. And, that means they're very likely going to build into my brain the idea that taking care of this body is much more important than, kind of, any other bodies getting taken care of. In other words, my interests are paramount. I am, in some sense, special. Now this, this biases is kind of built into all animal life, and you see it in all kinds of ways. You see it in animals eating each other for example. In our species you do see it sometimes in people killing each other, sometimes in somewhat subtler ways, you know people Of vying to displace one another instead of hierarchies and things like that. Sometimes you see it in very subtle ways, you know. So if you're trying to hail a cab, right and, and you notice that someone, someone next to you is also trying to hail a cab, when you naturally reach your arm higher than their arm because you want to get the cab.

And you know, implied is the idea that well, it's more important than, that you get the cab, then that they get the cab. Even though you don't know like, this is some physician who needs to get to the hospital, and save somebodies life. So, this exterior version of not self, this perception of fundamental, continuity of interest, between you, and, and all of life.

really, it just, it involves transcending one of the most basic, kind of precepts built into us by natural selection which is just that we are special. Now I think that the, experience of emptiness or formlessness. Has this same property of, kind of, transcending or even, defying, you might say, the basic idea that we are special. But I think the logic, in this case, is a little bit subtler, so let me kind of go over it. Now, emptiness, it is the experience that things don't have essence, right? They don't have this strong, kind of, affective value.

there, they don't, you don't have strong feelings, distinctive feelings about these individual things. Well let's back up and ask what are feelings for in the first place? You may remember from an earlier lecture. That seems to be the case that the very beginning, you know, kind of the dawn of feelings,um, in the, in the, in the living world.

the, their mission, the mission of feelings, was to take care of the organism, specifically to get it to approach things are good for it, to avoid things that are bad for it, right? So in other words feelings are judgments about the environment from the perspective of that organisms interests. So, if some very simple, organism kind of feels kind of a bad vibe about something that is a toxin, then it shies away from it. That's good for the organism, but it's just not the case that that toxin is bad in an universal sense. It's not bad for all of life or anything. So that particular judgment, is only from the point of view of that organism, and it implies the fundamental mission of taking care of just that organism.

Now, that organism shying away from a toxin is not a matter of great, moral consequence. And, and, in fact, that's true of a lot of the kind of affective judgment's that a lot of his make in the course of everyday life. So, for example, I have kind of a good feeling about split level houses. They you know, there's like, a, an essence of split level house that, that, that gives me a good feeling. I assume that's because I actually lived in one. When I was six years old.

And then there are houses that I might look at. Kinds of houses and I, they might give me a bad vibe. Maybe I think they're ostentatious or whatever

in any event it doesn't matter all that much, that I have those feelings about houses and other people have other feelings. That's not a matter of great consequence. However, when we start making these affective judgement's about other people, when we start kind of attributing essence to other people. Then matters become more consequential. So, you know, I think that my friends are good. I mean, they, they give me a good feeling, you know. There's kind of, essence of good person that they seem to kind of exude. Whereas I think that my rivals and enemies are bad

and when you think about it, you know, I mean it feels like real. It, it feels like, like that, that's a, you know, there's, there's almost, there's objective truth to that.

But it really can't be the case that there is, right? Because, after all, my friends have rivals. And those rivals, look at my friends and they get this negative essence when they look at them, right?

And my enemies have friends, and those friends look at my enemies, and they, they get this kind of positive vibe, right? So, obviously, somebody is wrong here, right? We can't all be right? There's a, there's a contradiction somewhere. And the contradiction is really just built into, the system by natural selection. I mean, you know, if this planet is full of people whose kind of perceptual machinery was designed based on the premise that each of them is more important than all of the rest of them well, then, obviously contradictions will arise, right? Because that is itself an internally contradictory premise. It can't be the case that they're all more important than everyone else. Now, I would say this, this tendency toward essentialism, toward, you know, attributing essence to things. Becomes even more consequential when you move away from judgement's about individual people and start talking about judgement's about groups of people. Okay, so, for example, racism is a for of essentialism. It's like looking at an ethnic group and attributing just, some sort of bad quality to the whole group and having that feeling, about the group. Nationalism is a form of essentialism. You know, it's the idea that, hey my nation, my national group of people has this like good thing in them. Other nations, you know other national groups, not so much. And when there's tension between two national groups then, then the other national group is going to have you know, actively bad kind of essence, right? And the deeper the conflict gets, the more pronounced that judgement's going to be. The better your national group is, the worse the other national group is, right? And the same is true of groups in general, right? Whether it's you know, it can be racial groups and national groups religions, ideological groups, whatever. As tension develops and a conflict gets deeper and deeper, you know they seem worse, your group seems better.

this, this us versus them machinery is, is very powerful and it kind of governs our attribution of essence to groups sometimes in a very destructive way. I wouldn't say that, that we are by nature racists or, or anything like that, or even by nature nationalists or whatever. I would just say we are by nature group sets. Okay, we have this us versus them machinery. And it's been studied a lot actually by psychologists. And one of the best known, studies, and in fact, one of the best known psychological studies period of the 20th century possibly was initiated by a football game that took place, few hundred yards from where I'm standing. It was in Palmer Stadium Princeton University. Palmer Stadium is no longer standing because all things are impermanent but this was in 1951. It was a game between Princeton and Dartmouth and it was just kind of a famously rough game. Princeton had a, a nationally famous player, an all American, named Dick Kazmaier and he left the game with a broken nose and a concussion. Dartmouth had a player who left the game with a broken leg. There were lots of penalties. There was much discussion afterwards about who had been most who had been more culpable, which team and, and it became kind of a controversy and two psychologists, one at Princeton, and one at Dartmouth, decided to do a study. So, they got students who had actually seen the game, and then they also got some students and showed them films of the game, and with all of these students on the Princeton and the Dartmouth side. You know, they asked them to go through and, and fill out this survey about, you know, which team had been more responsible, you know, for starting the, the stuff, for sustaining it. Whatever. Now, they found that Princeton students tended to think Dartmouth was more responsible.

For the problems and Dartmouth students had a different view that of course does not surprise you at all you could have predicted it that's how universal this bias is. We just take it for granted, but what's interesting to me about the study is the way these two psychologists framed their findings okay? Because they emphasize that in their view the actual perception of the world, that the mere perception of the world

involves inherently imposing meaning on the perceptions.

Here's what they wrote.

It seems clear that the game actually was many different games and that each version of the events that transpired was just as real to a particular person as other versions were to other people.

An occurrence on the football field or in any other social situation does not become an experiential event unless and until some significance is given to it.

An occurrence becomes an event only when the happening has significance. And the happening generally has significance, only if it reactivates learned significance's already registered in what we have called the person's assumptive form-world. Okay. So, the, the very act of perception Seems to involve imposing meaning on things. Imposing form on them. And we've already seen, earlier in the course, one of the mechanisms by which we impose meaning in situations very much like this football game. What we've seen is that when our allies do good things, we attribute that to their natures, their essential natures, and when they do bad things, we have some other explanation for it, about why it doesn't really reflect on them. With our enemies, it's the opposite. They do bad things, we attribute that to their essential nature. When they do good things, that's not so reflective of them. so, there's this mechanism built into us, by which we maintain our beliefs about the essences of our enemies and our friends. Regardless of what they actually do. So it kind of makes you wonder about the reliability of our judgment's in these matters, right? And the authors of this study, were so aware of how much of the meaning in the world we impose on it in the course of perceiving it that they raise the question. Of whether in the absence of this process, the, the football game itself even really exists. In brief, the data here indicate that there is no such thing as a game. Existing out there in its own right which people merely observe. The game exist for a person and is experienced by him only, in so far as certain happenings have significance in terms of his purpose.

Out of all the occurrences going on in the environment, the person selects those that have some significance for him from his own egocentric position and the total matrix. So, it's almost as if they're saying that the real world out there is formless until we impose form on it, until we impose meaning on it. And, as we've seen, I think the, the imposing of that meaning involves attributing essences to things. Which in turn depends on our assigning kind of affective value to those things. Now they're not saying, the authors of the study aren't saying that you know, you can't if you're viewing things in a perfectly objective way, you can't like distinguish between different people on the field or even the, the, the colors of the different jerseys that the two teams are wearing. But I think they are saying that if you're truly objective, then the whole framework of meaning, that you use to see the world would kind of fall apart. Now, what would that be like, what would it be like if you like attained enlightenment?

And went to this football game. That would be an interesting experience, right? Let's look at two of the elements of enlightenment. Two of these things that we think of are, are elements of enlightenment,

and how they would effect your perception of the game. Well, first of all, the idea of, of formlessness, the experience of formlessness or emptiness, you know. That would mean that, you know, you just didn't sharply distinguish between the two teams. Certainly not in any significant way. You wouldn't you know, see even if you were a student at Princeton or Dartmouth, you know. If you had the feeling of, formlessness, emptiness, you would, you wouldn't see essence of good or essence of bad in either team. It would just be 22 people out there, doing what they were doing. Similarly, what we've called the exterior version of Not Self would pretty profoundly influence your perception. You would see a continuity between you and the the people on the field, right? So you, you would see basically suddenly two kinds of continuity between you and everyone else, and kind of among all of the players right? That's, I guess what it would be like to go to a football game having attained enlightenment. So, probably, if everyone attained enlightenment, it would be bad for attendance at football games because I don't know why they bother going. Doesn't sound like a very interesting experience.

On the other hand, if everyone attained enlightenment, there would also be lower tendency of wars. And genocides, and things like that. So maybe there is, there is something to be said for that. So this perspective, the enlightened perspective, does seem to be a more benign point of view in the sense that it leads to fewer wars and things in theory, or at least.

It's a separate question, I guess, whether it's, it's kind of literally a truer perspective, a more objectively true perspective. If you're sitting at that football game and you kind of don't see any difference between the teams is that, is that is that, is that kind of true in some sense, objectively true?

I think you could make that case. I mean, for one thing that would mean you had kind of removed yourself from the bias through which the game is viewed by either an ardent Princeton fan or an ardent Dartmouth fan right? In that sense, we have maybe more objective view of things. Interestingly you would also have removed yourself from the perspective of our species in a sense right? Because it’s in the nature of our species to choose sides, you know we see a conflict develop between people, and we immediately try to figure out who’s on the side of right? Who is the good person, who’s is the bad person? Which is another way of saying who should we side with? And that seems to be because during human evolution when there was a conflict within our society it really mattered that we kind of figured out which side it was in our interest to, to be on, but for whatever reason that seems to be part of our, the nature of our species. So in other words you know, to be a student at Dartmouth or Princeton means to choose Dartmouth or Princeton to favor. And to be a human being means to, to choose one side or the other to favor. It's just kind of built into our species, so the question arises, if you remove yourself from the very perspective of our species.

You know, have you gotten closer to the truth? Is that in some sense more objective? You know, I think you can make that case. I mean why should the perspective of any one species be kind of privileged as an objective truth. I mean after all, species have different views of things To humans you know, it's, a stagnant swamp is just not, not a nice place. It's just kind of got a, got a negative essence. To a mosquito, presumably, it's a very attractive place, right? Has a very positive essence. And, I mean, who's to say who's right? I mean, obviously it's true that for human beings a stagnant swamp is a place you might want to avoid cause you could get a disease. You could get didn't buy mosquito that carries the disease in fact.

So I'm not denying that but it's, it's the sense that, you know, our judgement, our perception of essence is, is objectively true, right? That's what I'm questioning. And yet people, people act all the time as if the essence is they perceive or true. People actually have arguments about which wine is better, right.

Now, there was a Buddhist philosopher in the seventh century, Chandrakirti. And one thing he said is that what to human being is water. Might be perceived by a certain kind of deity as nectar. And might be perceived by a hungry ghost as pus or blood. And it might taste accordingly to those three, kinds of beings. And the basic idea there is just that, you know, the, the meaning of something, the very identity of something, the essence of something. Depends on the, the particular perspective of the kind of being it is. And, I guess it's in that spirit that, that I would say that if, if these elements of Buddhist enlightenment remove you from the perspective of your species. yes, they, they may be moving you closer to the objective truth and so too if they're removing you from the perspective of your own individual history as they tend to do as well.

Now, in some cases these experiences might remove you from the perspective of species in general. We've seen that that, how they can, how a couple of these elements of enlightenment in particular the the idea of formlessness or emptiness and the exterior version of not-self, how they can undermine the very idea that you are special. And that is a, that is a bias that natural selection builds into, to all species, right. That this particular organism is the most important one, in the world. There's actually you know, an asterisk there. There's the exception is that, to the extent that other organisms share your distinctive genes, then yes, you may think they're very special, you know? You may think that your offspring are very special. That's because they're, carrying your genes. But by and large, the idea that you are uniquely uh,special is just a premise of natural selection. And so in that sense, enlightenment, could in theory, enlightenment, as we conceive it, could extract your perspective from the very realm of evolved life. Now, I think we're ready to return to that kind of enlightenment checklist. Those four, bullet points.

The kind of ingredient of enlightenment. So now let's add two columns to that checklist. The, the truth about the world, the kind of objective truth about the world, and moral truth. And let's go through and look at these four proposed elements of enlightenment. And see whether it seems plausible to say that their conducive to truth, in each of these sentences. Now I know that moral truth in particular, is kind of a famously hard thing to define.

And in particular when in, in the realm of Buddhism, there's sometimes questions raised you know. Wait a second doesn't ultimate enlightenment involve transcending? Even the kind of good bad duality. And it all gets very complicated. That's a very, that's a very good and important question, but it's also like a whole nother course. To grapple with it satisfactorily, so I'm just going to kind of glide over that and say that, you know, my rough and ready definition of moral truth is like, first of all free of obviously distorting biases on moral judgement. And also you know, if if it's a state of mind that is kind of less conducive to you know, killing people and starting wars and stuff. I would call that closer to moral truth, okay. That's kind of my rough and ready conception. So let's start at the top.

The exterior version of not-self yeah, I would say I would say that moves you closer to moral truth.

Even aside from the fact that it leaves you spending less time, you know, killing and tormenting other beings

it involves removing the manifestly untenable assumption that you are more special than any other organism on the planet. We've seen how it does undermine that, that bias.

I'd said much the same thing about the experience of formlessness or emptiness. We've seen how that too involves removing yourself from that assumption of your own specialness. And as a practical matter it involves not attributing, you know, essence of bad to people who happen to be, on the wrong team. And then justifying, you know, hurting, or killing them. Now, you might be able to argue that these two elements of enlightenment are also conducive, to, to apprehending just kind of the truth about the world, you know. The objective truth about the physical world. But that's a subtle matter.

that, you know, I don't think I'll get into it. I don't think I'll make that claim right now.

Now the interior version of Not Self is interesting because I think it actually gets a check mark in both columns. We've seen earlier in the course that it, it does bring you a perception of, of your mind that seems to accord with some findings of modern psychology.

Brings you arguably a, truer perception of just the actual reality of your mind.

But I also think, it can bring you closer to, moral truth, because it can give you this kind of critical distance.

From some of these feelings that embody, you know, kind of self-serving judgement's about the world, self-serving attributions, of essence about the world, you know.

Finally, in permanence I don't think there is, such a, a strong case that it has moral implications. You might be able to make the argument that it does. But, yeah, it's safe to say that yes, ultimately, everything is impermanent. ultimately, you look at a lot of things that we think of as things and they turn out to be processes and more in flux. Then we at first think, so, yeah, I think we can give that a, a check-mark in the, truth about the world column. So looking at the results of this analysis, I think I would say that in the end, there is a correspondence between Buddhist enlightenment, as we're kind of imagining, you know, not having attained it.

And what I would call Darwinian enlightenment. Which raises the question, what is Darwinian enlightenment? Well here's what I mean. You know, if, if you look at the influence of evolution on our way thinking, on our way of feeling, And if you look at the kind of vestiges of the evolutionary process that assumed the form of kind of biases and kind of distortions in our perception. Our thought. And you asked, well what would, what would life be like? What would experience be like if you removed all these biases?

I think it would look, something like, what we are imagining Buddhist enlightenment to, to look like.

And in a way, that's one of the, the main points of this course. Now, it may sound like a moot point, right? Because, again, most of us are not very close to, Buddhist enlightenment. Most of us cant realistically hope to get there but at the same time you know, as I’ve said, if your moving along the meditated past, you know, in the general direction of this, this thing that is said to light the culmination of the path called enlightenment Well then presumably, if enlightenment is ultimate truth, even if it's a totally theoretical thing and no one's every gotten there. if, if, if it in theory is ultimate truth, then presumably movement along this path is incremental progress in the direction of truth. Okay?

Now this is would be actually a pretty logical place to, to stop the course. Because, because this is a lot of what I've been trying to convey. But there is one question we've left, dangling. At the beginning of the course, I said I was interested in the question of whether what I called the naturalistic. Version of Buddhism you know, the version without reincarnation, deities, and so on. Could qualify as a spiritual world view or even a religion. So in the next segment we're going to spend a few minutes on that. And then we'll be done. [BLANK_AUDIO]

Buddhist and Darwinian Enlightenment

Buddhism and Modern Psychology

Meet the Instructors