Over the summer, I regularly attended a meditation class run by the
Cambridge Buddhist Centre. Unfortunately, it clashes with the category theory seminars so I've had to stop. Each class lasted about an hour, and consisted of a short introductory talk (to let complete newcomers like me know what we would do) followed by about half an hour of meditation. The meditation was of two kinds: The 'mindfulness of breathing', in which we tried to be completely aware of our breathing, and the 'development of loving-kindness' in which we pictured a variety of people and tried to feel love for them.
These practices came out of a Buddhist tradition (the good folk at the Buddhist Centre claim that they were developed by the Buddha himself, but it doesn't really matter either way). In order to explain a bit about what they are about, I shall show my complete ignorance of Buddhism by talking about it a little. The first surprising thing about Buddhism is its diversity. The first big split seems to have come a few centuries after the death of the Buddha, when the Mahayana school split off. When Buddhism (mostly Mahayana, as far as I can tell) spread across Asia it mutated and incorporated local traditions and pantheons wherever it went, getting mixed up with Taoism and Bon and producing anything from the paradoxical Zen to the flamboyant Tibetan style. Each of these schools, and the many others, are further subdivided, in a way reminiscent of protestant denominational fertility gone wild.
I've followed this trend by producing my own slant on what the Buddha (or at least those who came up with the words attributed to him) was on about. What follows is by no means orthodox Buddhism of any kind, though the ideas it is based on mostly come from the Theravada school. Think of it as an improvisation in a Buddhist key.
As human beings, we are subject to persistent and pervasive delusion. One of the nastier aspects of this is that it is built into the way that we think, reason and communicate so that any attempt to deal with it is liable to suck us further into the quicksand. Here are several specific areas where we are deluded:
- When we use language, we divide the world up into neat conceptual chunks. We'll see a building as a single entity, distinct from the rest of the world. This distinction is sensible, but it isn't as precise as we habitually assume. There are gaping grey areas. Is the furniture part of the building? What about the built-in furniture? The paint on the walls? The pictures on the walls? The hooks holding them up? The water pipes? The water? The limescale? The wiring? The light bulbs? The walls? The curtains? The windows? The holes in the walls in which the windows are placed? Some things (like the bricks in the walls) are a relatively stable part of the structure and change only rarely. Others (like the newspaper on the table) are replaced much more often and we don't count them as part of the building. In between it isn't so clear.
In a sense, there's nothing wrong with this world-chunking: To an excellent approximation our environment can be divided up in this way. The division itself is no more of an illusion than is Newtonian physics; both are great approximations (though quantum theory suggests that the ladder of approximations never bottoms out in precision: The world is radically and ineradicably approximate). The illusion comes in when we forget that that is all that is going on, and see the divisions as precise rather than approximate. We imagine, for example, that there is some kind of clearly delineated 'substance' of the building, to which the various parts stand in some clear relation. We even conceptualise entities with no sensible physical correlate, such as rainbows, in this simplistic way.
- The first problem is particularly serious for the way that we see ourselves. First, we are especially prone to seeing ourselves as simple coherent wholes, and to seeing our chunking of ourselves off from the rest of the world as exact. This is made all the worse by the fact that this approximation is much less sensible than many of the others that we make. I've discussed one aspect of this in a previous post. Essentially, the idea that 'me, right now' and 'me in a few years' correspond to different instances of the same self is no more than a useful convention.
I must pause at this point to explain why this ambiguity of the self unifies the idea of reincarnation with the golden rule. The trouble with the idea of reincarnation, as with many hypotheses about life after death, is that we typically identify beings by the continuity in time of the bodies to which they are associated. The death and decomposition of the body prevent such identifications being made, so identifications of newly born beings with past dead beings seems arbitrary and unjustified. On the other hand, we have a habit of identifying various beings with the beings associated to the same bodies at slightly later times, or after a good night's sleep. There is a strand of Buddhist thought which emphasizes the arbitrariness of this by talking about life as a process of continual reincarnation, with every moment seen as a small death and rebirth, sleep seen as a more emphatic instance of the same, and death itself as a qualitatively similar process.
This has moral implications. I've discussed morality already here, and this comment is an expansion on the third paragraph from the bottom. We have clear moral beliefs related to our own benefit; for example that pain is bad. In fact, these beliefs are mostly related not to ourselves as beings now, but to ourselves in the future: The beings that will in the future be associated to our bodies. But the identification of these beings as special is pure convention, and singling them out for special moral attention is so arbitrary that the conscience rebels against it. I've heard Buddhists argue that I should treat other beings ethically because (modulo reincarnation) they may be, for example, my mother. The perspective I have outlined is even more radical. I should love my neighbour as myself because (modulo a useful convention) they are myself.
- Closely related to the above two problems is the way that we think about the words we use. We imagine that each word captures a clearly definable concept with some correlate in the world. A major activity in philosophy is exploring to what extent this is true. Alarmingly, many of the words we use (such as 'self', 'be', 'know', and so forth) don't have sensible definitions corresponding to the way that we naturally use them. This hasn't stopped some from mistakenly trying to find out what, for example, knowledge 'really is'. I'm told that pointing out and avoiding such mistakes was a big part of what Wittgenstein was doing later in his life, but this may be just a rumour; I've never checked.
- Very often we find that the world is not as we wish it to be. Such problems are exacerbated by our habit of fooling ourselves into thinking that the world could be other than, in fact, it is. For example, if I break my arm, then I am likely to find myself imagining a world in which my arm is suddenly no longer broken as if it were possible, when it is not. Most of our desires (not all: Hunger and thirst are almost always free of this) are of this illusory form; when we desire a thing we imagine a world in which we possess that thing without undergoing the sacrifice necessary for that possession (if it is even possible).
- Sometimes we desire the world to be different in a way that we can legitimately bring about. For example, you may want to own a TV, and be able to afford one. Even in these circumstances, however, our desires often fool us by presenting as possible a world in which we obtain the desired in an ideal way. You may ignore the fact that the television will break down soon enough, or that the image will jump when old motorbikes pass your house, or that the television will bring disappointment through expectation of programmes which you miss or which are over-hyped. When we desire a thing we imagine a world in which we possess that thing without the inconveniences (both trivial and serious) that follow from the nature of that thing.
- We have the same blinkered attitude to the things that we already have and take joy in. We can not recognise without effort that they are transitory: Gone before you can say 'where moth and rust doth corrupt'. It is hard to enjoy a thing without imagining a world in which that thing is enduring and innocent of the inconveniences (both trivial and serious) that follow from the nature of that thing. There's a neat story illustrating a good attitude here: A man had a beautiful glass which he would often drink from. One of his friends asked him 'aren't you worried that if you use that glass all the time you will break it?'. Holding the glass up so that the light sparked intricately through it, the man replied 'I know that it is already broken. That is why I make such use of it.'
- This mistake is also particularly serious for the way that we see ourselves and those we love. We do not recognise that we are transitory. Tomorrow we will not be the same as today, and the pleasure we have now will have passed. In a year or two we may be embarrassed by who we were, just as now we would be embarrassed at who we will become. As we grow older, our bodies and minds will gradually break down, until sooner or later they fail catastrophically in death. After that, we will be inaccessible to all who seek us. Those who love us will be left with small reminders of us which mock them with false hope. It is painful even to consider these things, and we typically simply ignore them. This cocoons us from seeing how precious our passing bounties are and multiplies our grief when they are inevitably lost.
These are just a few of the veins of illusion running through our minds. Even in talking about them I've had to use words and concepts, which introduce their own mirages. This all seems pretty hopeless and gloomy. However, the Buddha was extraordinarily optimistic about our ability to overcome all of this.
He claimed that it is possible to become free of all of this illusion, and to see the world as it is. So, for example, we would not see ourselves as simple unified souls, or distinguish ourselves fundamentally from other people. We would go beyond words by not attributing to them any power to divide up the world. Since the delusions we suffer are so fundamentally part of us, and form much of the way we conceptualise ourselves, this freeing can be thought of as a kind of loss of self, like the blowing out of a candle: An unlightenment, if you will. On the other hand, since much of what would be lost is associated to the 'autopilot' systems in our brains which guide us unthinkingly through daily life, there is also a strand of thought which sees this as a kind of awakening.
He also made some particular claims about the way to achieve this unlightenment, all of which were thoroughly practical. Over the years, Buddhists have come to think of this Way in sufficiently exalted terms to merit a capital W. Much of the Way consists in a particular style of living, modelled on how a person would live if they were unlightened. Much of this corresponds to sensible ethical teaching. Other bits of the Way concern meditation, and in particular meditation of the two kinds mentioned above.
The first good reason to do the 'mindfulness of breathing' meditation is that it is a simple context in which to attempt mindfulness; that is, a direct awareness of how a thing is without use of the usual mental filters and shortcuts. The breath is so comparatively simple and regular that it is a good place to start in attempting to see things as they really are. The second good reason comes from one of the direct effects of making such an attempt: Namely that you fail, and fail in a particular way. The mind becomes distracted, and thoughts of unrelated matters slip in unnoticed. Observing this process allows you to see how busy the mind is, and (to a small extent) in what its activity consists. Not only does this allow you to see how automatically illusory thought patterns are produced, it also reveals how inadequate our ideas of the self as simple and continuing are. Hume put it very well:
For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception. When my perceptions are removed for any time, as by sound sleep, so long am I insensible of myself, and may truly be said not to exist. And were all my perceptions removed by death, and could I neither think, nor feel, nor see, nor love, nor hate, after the dissolution of my body, I should be entirely annihilated, nor do I conceive what is further requisite to make me a perfect nonentity. If any one, upon serious and unprejudiced reflection, thinks he has a different notion of himself, I must confess I can reason no longer with him. All I can allow him is, that he may be in the right as well as I, and that we are essentially different in this particular. He may, perhaps, perceive something simple and continued, which he calls himself; though I am certain there is no such principle in me.
The second kind of meditation is aimed at dealing particularly with the issues mentioned after the second bullet point above. The first part of the meditation (once you have settled down and relaxed) consists in regarding yourself, and exploring how it is that you love yourself. Then various other people are brought to mind (a friend, a passer-by and an enemy) in turn, and for each person you take the time to recognise that they are a person in the same way as you are, and explore how this allows you to love each of them in the same way. Finally, you regard all of these people together, and try to equalise up the love that you feel for them (and, of course, yourself) which of course involves seeing the distinctions between these various beings for the conventions that they are. This second meditation is therefore aimed at a particular illusion only, but one which there are strong ethical reasons for overcoming.
That is the theory, at least. Do these practices work? That is, do they lead people towards unlightenment (and, along the way, love of neighbour)? I don't know. The theory sounds plausible but so do many false theories. Tests so far have established that there is something going on (that is, meditation involves real structural mental change), but as far as I know they have not shown that these changes are as claimed. Since the claims seem perfectly testable, however, I'd be very much in favour of tests exploring whether meditation does what it says on the tin, and whether any other strategies are equally or even more effective.
