OK, another reply here. This means you are definitely asking great questions. THANK YOU.
I think what enlightenment leads to is not the elimination of any concept of 'you' - but the new concept is much more lightweight and flexible, something much more like 'this body'. Lots of people talk about 'false self' and 'true self', or 'small self' and 'big self.'
I think what happens is, you first learn _some_ conception of yourself, but because your brain can only use symbols, you mistake the 'you symbol' for 'you'.
What I think enlightenment leads to is, rather than a single symbol that represents itself as you, a bunch of different processes represent different sub drives. 'You' then shift from being a singular symbol in your mind, to something like, a view that can be applied to the bundle of processes all trying to predict your sensory experience.
So it's not a destruction of the 'self', but a changing it from a ~single~ symbol (as a static object) to something like, a thing that cognitive processes can do, to varying degrees of intensity, by drawing a boundary through "voluntary" and "involuntary" actions. Effort still happens, but you don't feel identical with 'the thing which is causing the effort.'
Great question! I don’t think the space can be navigated indefinitely without the self. I think you end up needing the self when the environment becomes sufficiently complex that it’s unpredictable. In a monestary, with no kids, no responsibility for anyone else, yeah, it may indeed be unnecessary.
So enlightenment is maladaptive in real world scenarios? I mean, it might be, but that doesn't mesh with what the mystics are saying (Zen in particular).
I should start by saying i'm shaky here, these are more hunches and areas where i want to evolve.
This is, i think, a key difference between the eastern and western mythologies. Both talk about this state of unitive consciousness. But I think the western mythos - Christianity in particular - says something like, your goal isn't to avoid suffering, but to love more fully, and live from that place of love. The point of dropping the false self, in the westesrn path, is to recognize the true self.
If you know that image of 'is it two faces, or a candle', i think the eastern path teaches you to identify as the candle, whereas the western path says something like, recognize that you are continually face to face with God at all times - you're called into a personal relationship with being itself, rather than trying to 'erase' yourself.
There were a bunch of Games Buddha refused to play. I suspect he did so because you can't stay in that state of 'not having a self' if you're in dynamic situations that involve, among other things, the motion of your body in response to unpredictable stimuli.
I think there's something unnecessarily esoteric about the Eastern approach? The Western approach uses symbols to induce metanoia but that doesn't really require dropping the self, more just... relinquishing control? And making the self small enough. It's a mental movement that's hard to explain. And the philosophical framework is a rough guide how to get there, in a finger-pointing-at-the-moon way, working backward from the visible signs (what does it mean to truly love your neighbor?). The _actual_ mass metanoia as observed in history mostly worked through personal example and charisma. Words can only take us so far, and I'd expect Jesus has preached plenty of flower sermons. I still remain unconvinced whether one of Jesus and Gautama Buddha has seen the truth and the other a corruption of it, or it's as you said a kind of figure-ground inversion where you can personify God and yourself or just realize the nature of the "background".
And games are fun, I'll pass on enlightenment without them.
IMO our broad, universal purpose is to alleviate unnecessary or unconstructive suffering. After much navel gazing, it occurred to me that the overwhelming majority of that suffering appears to be entirely necessary and constructive.
"That's all well and good, Dave, but now... Wat do?!"
"No matter what you are doing, ask for guidance. It saves time and energy and often a lifetime of misery. All suffering comes from the violation of intuition. Unless intuition builds the house, they labor in vain who build it. Get the habit of hunching, then you will always be on the magic path."
Alleviation of suffering seems to me like it’s in the right direction but falls short, because we could end all suffering by just killing all life. Shooting up a school full of kids would surely end all of their suffering for the rest of their lives. So the word “necessary” is doing a ton of work there.
The thing you are saying about intuition is, I think, a clue. Intuition comes from evolution, which comes from organisms propagating their structure forward through time. Asking for help and hunching is, I think, equivalent to asking God (ie the root cause of reality, the thing that did all of that natural selecting) to guide you and then trusting the guidance revealed by means of your intuition. That’s what I think the magic path is: a road that leads your structure to continue existing in the distant future.
Really interesting ideas here and mostly rings true. There is one part I'm stuck on...isn't the fact that we have evolved these hardwired drives to act (avoiding risk, pursuing rewards, etc.) pretty strong evidence that the territory is NOT contoured to meet our needs? The very presence of these drives seems to be evidence that they are needed for survival (though, not for happiness/contentment/enlightenment so maybe there is some kind of tradeoff there where you marginally reduce your gene survival likelihood in exchange for greater peace of mind?)
EDIT: hoping you can point out a flaw in this idea, because otherwise I really like the concept outlined in your post.
This is clearly something I have to articular better. By 'the territory is contoured to our needs' I mean "you can use a greedy algorithm to navigate the territory effectively."
In other words, what you _don't_ need to do is spend a bunch of time thinking about how the next five years will play out, anxiously trying to predict and plan future consequences. You can, instead, do something like 'aim for a point at t=infinity where all the best outcomes and more have happened' and then try to do the best you can _today_.
Yes, we still have to act in the world in order to survive. Unless you are a monk living in a monestary where routine meets all your needs, this also includes the need to do things like plan, prepare etc.
But what you _don't_ need to do is simulate a large number of future hypotheticals while in a state of mild fear, and then run some code that's like "but what if some OTHER bad thing happens" and then have this code trigger a 'present danger' flag.
IF the territory had a certain shape - say, if there were only a very narrow path that you had to follow for your family to survive, and this path required purchasing a weird set of spices which had no value and tested terrible, and then keeping them in a jar that you sung a weird orcish incantation to every third thursday - well, that world would be a much scarier one.
What i'm claiming is that there's a deep structure to the world that's orthogonal to the "it's all made of atoms" structure. Not that the atomic structure is _false_, but more that it's an implementation detail that, for the most part, is only relevant when you make it so. There's _another_ deep structure that's intuitive and simpler to follow - you just have to _both_ trust reality, and then also humbly obey a narrow path that says something like, 'keep aiming for that point at infinity, rather than prioritizing pleasure and comfort now'. If you follow _that_ path, what happens is, opportunities and good things just sort of fall into place for you. Things get better for you at an exponential pace, and relationships deepen. This doesn't have to be magic if you understand it as something like, "every brain already contains multiple personalities, and 'the kingdom of heaven' spreads virally, as long as you keep feeding it from the source."
I agree with a lot of what you've said here, but I think you focus too much on the "experience" of not having a self. I think that an experience of not-self is almost entirely unrelated to not-self as the Buddha taught it — that's why short-lived experiences of not-self that one may have while on psychedelics don't tend to lead to actual enlightenment as most people would understand it. Those experiences can be useful, healing, and helpful, but they are (usually) something different. Those are what I would consider trance experiences, as they function by keeping the mind entranced on a specific experience, and then once the experience changes, the trance ends.
Not-self could be better described as tacit knowledge in relation to experience, which I think is similar to what you're saying, but you seem to frame it as an experience itself. I guess depending on what exactly you mean by experience, you could say that it is an experience of some sort, but the point I'm trying to get at is that you can have the experience of thinking "I have a self, I am me, and this body is mine" while simultaneously still understanding that as not-self. It seems more along the lines of shifting the "transcendental basis" that orders experience itself, so a layer/level below experience. That's why the Buddha speaks in apparent opposites, like saying that an arahant is one who does not suffer amongst suffering or does not grieve amongst grief.
Again, I don't know how you actually mean the terms you've said here, but generally, this is why one of the first directives is to understand suffering, not to take our default conception of suffering as what suffering actually is. So becoming ok with suffering leading to less suffering, as you described it, would in some sense be stopping short of the actual goal, which is the complete elimination of the possibility of any suffering by understanding what dukka actually is. Being in a trance state sounds like operating on the level of experience, which is fundamentally opposite to what the Buddha taught (as I understand it, at least).
One other thing I found interesting is your usage of the word womb, as yoniso manasikara is sometimes translated as "womb attention" (at least by Hillside Hermitage).
Serendipitously apropos and a really fun read. I'm curious if you've expanded elsewhere on this thought:
> Why do we feel an “I”? I think it’s because computation has a cost. The “weighing valence of different paths” process is metabolically intensive. An “i” symbol which carries out the task and experiences the consequences can be the energy pump that resolves the paradox of escher’s staircase. ...
I am wondering if the correct interpretation of this passage might be that qualia accompany metabolic action and coalesce into an "I" through temporal patterns so that the "I" is energized through recognition of repetition; or that the "I" symbol serves to reduce the energy needed to organize action and therefore creates a metastable equilibrium.
Thanks for the kind words. I think i mean... maybe... both?
The first part - that there's some qualia for metabolic action, yeah, I definitely think that. Intentional effort's probably related but maybe not the same - something something mid anterior cingulate cortex over there.
But I would think that some notion of an 'i' - i.e. a 'body controller' would _also_ be useful for organizing all kind of actions; you'd remember repetitive actions in terms of 'what i did' in a way that's independent of context. That might also suggest that an industrialized world where we do lots of repetitive actions might end up increasing the sense of a 'separate self' which is not part of the world - the more often you repeat similar physical routes, maybe you end up 'learning' that pattern.
If the space can be navigated without the self, why does the self exist in the first place?
OK, another reply here. This means you are definitely asking great questions. THANK YOU.
I think what enlightenment leads to is not the elimination of any concept of 'you' - but the new concept is much more lightweight and flexible, something much more like 'this body'. Lots of people talk about 'false self' and 'true self', or 'small self' and 'big self.'
I think what happens is, you first learn _some_ conception of yourself, but because your brain can only use symbols, you mistake the 'you symbol' for 'you'.
What I think enlightenment leads to is, rather than a single symbol that represents itself as you, a bunch of different processes represent different sub drives. 'You' then shift from being a singular symbol in your mind, to something like, a view that can be applied to the bundle of processes all trying to predict your sensory experience.
So it's not a destruction of the 'self', but a changing it from a ~single~ symbol (as a static object) to something like, a thing that cognitive processes can do, to varying degrees of intensity, by drawing a boundary through "voluntary" and "involuntary" actions. Effort still happens, but you don't feel identical with 'the thing which is causing the effort.'
Great question! I don’t think the space can be navigated indefinitely without the self. I think you end up needing the self when the environment becomes sufficiently complex that it’s unpredictable. In a monestary, with no kids, no responsibility for anyone else, yeah, it may indeed be unnecessary.
So enlightenment is maladaptive in real world scenarios? I mean, it might be, but that doesn't mesh with what the mystics are saying (Zen in particular).
I should start by saying i'm shaky here, these are more hunches and areas where i want to evolve.
This is, i think, a key difference between the eastern and western mythologies. Both talk about this state of unitive consciousness. But I think the western mythos - Christianity in particular - says something like, your goal isn't to avoid suffering, but to love more fully, and live from that place of love. The point of dropping the false self, in the westesrn path, is to recognize the true self.
If you know that image of 'is it two faces, or a candle', i think the eastern path teaches you to identify as the candle, whereas the western path says something like, recognize that you are continually face to face with God at all times - you're called into a personal relationship with being itself, rather than trying to 'erase' yourself.
There were a bunch of Games Buddha refused to play. I suspect he did so because you can't stay in that state of 'not having a self' if you're in dynamic situations that involve, among other things, the motion of your body in response to unpredictable stimuli.
I think there's something unnecessarily esoteric about the Eastern approach? The Western approach uses symbols to induce metanoia but that doesn't really require dropping the self, more just... relinquishing control? And making the self small enough. It's a mental movement that's hard to explain. And the philosophical framework is a rough guide how to get there, in a finger-pointing-at-the-moon way, working backward from the visible signs (what does it mean to truly love your neighbor?). The _actual_ mass metanoia as observed in history mostly worked through personal example and charisma. Words can only take us so far, and I'd expect Jesus has preached plenty of flower sermons. I still remain unconvinced whether one of Jesus and Gautama Buddha has seen the truth and the other a corruption of it, or it's as you said a kind of figure-ground inversion where you can personify God and yourself or just realize the nature of the "background".
And games are fun, I'll pass on enlightenment without them.
IMO our broad, universal purpose is to alleviate unnecessary or unconstructive suffering. After much navel gazing, it occurred to me that the overwhelming majority of that suffering appears to be entirely necessary and constructive.
"That's all well and good, Dave, but now... Wat do?!"
Well... Recently, I came across this (h/t: https://runesoup.substack.com/p/no-matter-what-you-are-doing-ask )
"No matter what you are doing, ask for guidance. It saves time and energy and often a lifetime of misery. All suffering comes from the violation of intuition. Unless intuition builds the house, they labor in vain who build it. Get the habit of hunching, then you will always be on the magic path."
Makes sense to me.
Alleviation of suffering seems to me like it’s in the right direction but falls short, because we could end all suffering by just killing all life. Shooting up a school full of kids would surely end all of their suffering for the rest of their lives. So the word “necessary” is doing a ton of work there.
The thing you are saying about intuition is, I think, a clue. Intuition comes from evolution, which comes from organisms propagating their structure forward through time. Asking for help and hunching is, I think, equivalent to asking God (ie the root cause of reality, the thing that did all of that natural selecting) to guide you and then trusting the guidance revealed by means of your intuition. That’s what I think the magic path is: a road that leads your structure to continue existing in the distant future.
Really interesting ideas here and mostly rings true. There is one part I'm stuck on...isn't the fact that we have evolved these hardwired drives to act (avoiding risk, pursuing rewards, etc.) pretty strong evidence that the territory is NOT contoured to meet our needs? The very presence of these drives seems to be evidence that they are needed for survival (though, not for happiness/contentment/enlightenment so maybe there is some kind of tradeoff there where you marginally reduce your gene survival likelihood in exchange for greater peace of mind?)
EDIT: hoping you can point out a flaw in this idea, because otherwise I really like the concept outlined in your post.
This is clearly something I have to articular better. By 'the territory is contoured to our needs' I mean "you can use a greedy algorithm to navigate the territory effectively."
In other words, what you _don't_ need to do is spend a bunch of time thinking about how the next five years will play out, anxiously trying to predict and plan future consequences. You can, instead, do something like 'aim for a point at t=infinity where all the best outcomes and more have happened' and then try to do the best you can _today_.
Yes, we still have to act in the world in order to survive. Unless you are a monk living in a monestary where routine meets all your needs, this also includes the need to do things like plan, prepare etc.
But what you _don't_ need to do is simulate a large number of future hypotheticals while in a state of mild fear, and then run some code that's like "but what if some OTHER bad thing happens" and then have this code trigger a 'present danger' flag.
IF the territory had a certain shape - say, if there were only a very narrow path that you had to follow for your family to survive, and this path required purchasing a weird set of spices which had no value and tested terrible, and then keeping them in a jar that you sung a weird orcish incantation to every third thursday - well, that world would be a much scarier one.
What i'm claiming is that there's a deep structure to the world that's orthogonal to the "it's all made of atoms" structure. Not that the atomic structure is _false_, but more that it's an implementation detail that, for the most part, is only relevant when you make it so. There's _another_ deep structure that's intuitive and simpler to follow - you just have to _both_ trust reality, and then also humbly obey a narrow path that says something like, 'keep aiming for that point at infinity, rather than prioritizing pleasure and comfort now'. If you follow _that_ path, what happens is, opportunities and good things just sort of fall into place for you. Things get better for you at an exponential pace, and relationships deepen. This doesn't have to be magic if you understand it as something like, "every brain already contains multiple personalities, and 'the kingdom of heaven' spreads virally, as long as you keep feeding it from the source."
I agree with a lot of what you've said here, but I think you focus too much on the "experience" of not having a self. I think that an experience of not-self is almost entirely unrelated to not-self as the Buddha taught it — that's why short-lived experiences of not-self that one may have while on psychedelics don't tend to lead to actual enlightenment as most people would understand it. Those experiences can be useful, healing, and helpful, but they are (usually) something different. Those are what I would consider trance experiences, as they function by keeping the mind entranced on a specific experience, and then once the experience changes, the trance ends.
Not-self could be better described as tacit knowledge in relation to experience, which I think is similar to what you're saying, but you seem to frame it as an experience itself. I guess depending on what exactly you mean by experience, you could say that it is an experience of some sort, but the point I'm trying to get at is that you can have the experience of thinking "I have a self, I am me, and this body is mine" while simultaneously still understanding that as not-self. It seems more along the lines of shifting the "transcendental basis" that orders experience itself, so a layer/level below experience. That's why the Buddha speaks in apparent opposites, like saying that an arahant is one who does not suffer amongst suffering or does not grieve amongst grief.
Again, I don't know how you actually mean the terms you've said here, but generally, this is why one of the first directives is to understand suffering, not to take our default conception of suffering as what suffering actually is. So becoming ok with suffering leading to less suffering, as you described it, would in some sense be stopping short of the actual goal, which is the complete elimination of the possibility of any suffering by understanding what dukka actually is. Being in a trance state sounds like operating on the level of experience, which is fundamentally opposite to what the Buddha taught (as I understand it, at least).
One other thing I found interesting is your usage of the word womb, as yoniso manasikara is sometimes translated as "womb attention" (at least by Hillside Hermitage).
Serendipitously apropos and a really fun read. I'm curious if you've expanded elsewhere on this thought:
> Why do we feel an “I”? I think it’s because computation has a cost. The “weighing valence of different paths” process is metabolically intensive. An “i” symbol which carries out the task and experiences the consequences can be the energy pump that resolves the paradox of escher’s staircase. ...
I am wondering if the correct interpretation of this passage might be that qualia accompany metabolic action and coalesce into an "I" through temporal patterns so that the "I" is energized through recognition of repetition; or that the "I" symbol serves to reduce the energy needed to organize action and therefore creates a metastable equilibrium.
Thanks for the kind words. I think i mean... maybe... both?
The first part - that there's some qualia for metabolic action, yeah, I definitely think that. Intentional effort's probably related but maybe not the same - something something mid anterior cingulate cortex over there.
But I would think that some notion of an 'i' - i.e. a 'body controller' would _also_ be useful for organizing all kind of actions; you'd remember repetitive actions in terms of 'what i did' in a way that's independent of context. That might also suggest that an industrialized world where we do lots of repetitive actions might end up increasing the sense of a 'separate self' which is not part of the world - the more often you repeat similar physical routes, maybe you end up 'learning' that pattern.