The Spotlight of Awareness

Last week, I wrote about the flux of experience, which is a continuous flow of mental impressions that somehow brings about the cumulative effect of a 'self' that is the source of everything.  No-self or anatta is one of the 3 characteristics of existence that all Buddhists have to realize on their path to Enlightenment.

The concept of anatta is a difficult one for most people to grasp because almost all religions of the world have the concept of a soul that transcends the body. If there is no substance, spirit or soul that is permanent, what then is there? And Buddhists believe in reincarnation don't they? If there is no soul, what is it that is being reincarnated?

Let me put it this way: the concept of a soul is a simplistic way of viewing an on-going chain of causality. There's only energy or karma being transferred from one thought moment to another. And that's all there is. A conscious moment is like the momentary illumination of a strobe light, and we see karma in freeze-frame, exposed in all its nakedness.

You experience it, but you cannot hang on to that thought moment, no matter how seemingly pleasant or unpleasant it is.  This is where the 2 other characteristics of existence come in: impermanence (anicca) and suffering or unsatisfactoriness (dukkha). 

Experience is a process and being a process, one moment is different from the next. The laws of statistical mechanics dictate that entropy shall increase, simply because order or perfection is an unlikely circumstance.  So, unlike anatta, the concept of impermanence or anicca is a relatively easy concept for people to understand because we see it everyday in our daily lives. Things breakdown, decay and die. Nothing lasts forever. 

But why this emphasis on dukkha? Can't we just accept the impermanence of existence without this rather pessimistic view of suffering or dukkha? 

Yes we can, but unfortunately we don't. And this is simply because we cling or attach ourselves to these impermanent moments of experience. Each moment has a feeling of 'unsatisfactoriness' because of its transient nature. If it is at its intense peak, then the moment is 'over' before you knew it. If it is rising, then it is 'not there yet'. If it is falling, it is 'slipping away'. It is never ever achieving the ultimate state of perfection because it never stays the same. 

Hence dukkha is baked into anicca and the resultant illusion of anatta frames the entire system as a finite region of suffering--a life, an incarnation.The 3 concepts are interlinked and self-perpetuating. 

Occasionally, when allowed to do so, moments of insight arise, and the system untangles itself ever so slightly. Part of our mind is a semi-autonomous faculty called 'awareness'. Awareness is dumb, like a spotlight. It can point and illuminate certain views of the on-going process. This pointing of awareness is all the self-less 'you' is capable of doing. 

Each time an area of darkness is illuminated by the spotlight of awareness, some illusions will be dissolved. So all you can do is continue pointing that spotlight. 

But how do we know if we are pointing at the correct spot? Well, you'll know it when you see it. It's called insight. And they only come when you meditate with the spotlight of awareness.

The Flux of Existence

 I usually start off a blog article not knowing what I'll be writing about. Which is why I  usually ramble on a bit just to get my writing juices flowing. I've probably written about this before: it is always important to get things started first, and the rest will follow. Once I start typing these words, a torrent would usually follow.

Daniel Kanhneman in his famous book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, talks about the 2 modes of thinking in the human mind--which he labelled simply System 1 and System 2.  System 1 is instinctive and happens almost instantaneously whereas System 2 is logical, methodical and slow. The interesting thing is that System 1 will always form a 'conclusion' about any problem or situation and that is what we usually take as a default, if System 2 is not invoked.

System 2 is more expensive in terms of brain CPU time and so we usually hesitate to go into that mode unless it is absolutely necessary. So for most situations in our every day life, we form instant opinions about the news we hear, the people we see in the streets or the food we eat.  System 1 works incessantly and can never be uncoupled. Thus a constant stream of impressions and opinions drive our consciousness forward.

System 1 is a form of embedded intelligence, shaped by our past experience. Buddhists talk about the fetters of the mind, which bind us to suffering (dukkha). These are like 'bugs' in our System 1 thinking that are constantly leading us astray. What are these so-called fetters? The Pali Canon gave  a whole list of them: ten to be exact.  Among them are doubt, illwill, conceit, ignorance and restlessness.  

The fetters influences all our thoughts and actions. If they are not detected and eliminated at its roots, they drive our System 1 and possibly System 2 thinking too. They are the imperfections in our soul...but er hang on--Buddhists are very suspicious of the word 'soul'.  In fact, one of the first fetters mentioned is our tendency to belief in a self or soul.

Anatta, is the Pali word for no-self or no-soul, which is considered one of the truths of existence that a meditator needs to see clearly. It is in fact a sine qua non for a Buddhist to achieve Enlightenment.  Like many neuro-scientists today, Buddhists do not believe in a kind of intangible substance that exists independent of the body and the mind. You can talk about a stream of thoughts or consciousness but that's all there is. The individual feeling of self which we cling on so dearly to is actually an illusion, or 'virtual'. 

What about the mind then? Isn't that a kind of independent existence? No, the mind with its System 1 and System 2 modes of thinking are like software running on the hardware of the brain. It is only a matter of convenience to use words like mind, consciousness and even soul to talk about existence, because we always need a noun to point to something. 

A big part of the feeling of 'self' is caused by the pattern-recognition tendency of System 1. We see forms and patterns everywhere because evolution has honed our brains to look at the world that way.  We see some dark coiled object in front of us, and immediately think: snake! Our physiology changes in an instant, putting us in a fight or flight mode. But on closer inspection, System 2 kicks: it is only a piece of rope. 

Thoughts and feelings arise, some are interpreted as pleasant and some unpleasant. Some 'self' is experiencing that. But look closer: the self is like a fountain which appear like a solid object from a distance, but it is actually made up of particles of water moving very quickly in a concerted fashion to form a beautiful shape.

Look closer at your computer screen now. There are no words or pictures--only individual , ever-flickering pixels. But you in your 'ignorance' see objects that stir you emotionally. This stream of pixels could be a movie with a beginning and an end, with characters that love, hate and fight over non-existent causes. It excites and touches you emotionally. But look again, what it is that is 'you'? More pixels of thoughts, arising and passing away?  

So where is the self in this flux of experience which we call existence? Is the movie on the computer screen more real than the movie in your brain?