We are all different

This essay focuses attention on the concept and experience of ‘mindfulness’ as I presently understand it. My inclination is to let the unconscious part of the mindbrain do the hard work. The conscious and the self conscious parts can serve as editors. So – ideas will be written, grouped and labelled as they appear. They can be reordered later.

Conditioned by unconscious moods

The first noble truth suggests that, “In life there is suffering”.  There have been periods when I was subject to depression and to anxiety and panic attacks. That process is now visualised as due to ‘the unconscious’ channelling powerful but negative streams of thoughts, moods and feelings into the attention centre. These days there tends to be equanimity.

Note: ‘the unconscious’ has been conditioned (encultured, brainwashed) by nature, nurture and serendipity in much the same way as ‘consciousness’.

Note: ‘conditioning’ suits individuals to fit in with family and tribal groups (50-100 people) in a given socio-economic relationship (hunting and gathering) within a specific physical environment (African savannah?).

The exact details have varied through history and geography but the foundation is the distinction between ‘I’ – ‘us’ – and ‘them’. The default is parochial xenophobia with a virile thread of zealotry.

History has witnessed a never ending stream of small minded dictatorships built on an imaginative range of myths and magic. Nowadays we have the myth of globalization and the magic of free market capitalism – to which there are no alternatives?

Beyond parochial xenophobia

When younger I had the option of staying in my rural village as a parochial xenophobe. But serendipity brought early experiences of other ways of living and I became committed to searching for ‘better ways to be human’.

Briefly the experiences included Archaeology, city living, Zoology, teaching, education management, and plain language editing. And this was spread across seven countries – mostly tropical. Along the way there were five year-long retreats for formal and informal study. They were objective (academic and intellectual) in the early stages but became more subjective (mystical and spiritual) as time went on…

… An interlude while I attended a PPaP meeting - and I have lost the thread of the story. But there are at least three ways of re-engaging the unconscious - (a) by re-reading the above paragraphs, or the email that inspired them, (b) by sitting quietly for 20 minutes and thus letting the mindbrain settle and find focus again and (c) by dosing and leaving the energy of the unconscious to develop and implement its intentions.

Subjective mindfulness 

For many years I dealt with meditation as an intellectual construct. I understood its long history from the outside but I did not practice it. But slowly, perhaps driven by the dis-ease of cognitive dissonance, I began to practice and thus had glimpses of what was involved and what resulted – in particular from Mindfulness Meditation.

There were three variations on the theme of mindfulness when sitting – (a) focus on the breathing and gently go back to it when attention strays, (b) count the breaths up to ten and then begin again, and (c) be a non judgemental witness to the stream of thoughts and feelings. Watch them arrive, hang around and then go. Know the impermanence of all mind created things.

But, as well as sitting, there was flat-backing, standing, and walking - on my own or in more or less like minded company. When awake to the beginnings of a dumping from the unconscious it became possible to remember to take three deep breaths – and this had a calming effect. The calmness gradually expanded. It became equanimity and the peace that passes all understanding.

Beyond ‘truth’

But there were also intellectual results. Wisdom. Mind expanding views of the environment led to an appreciation of interconnectedness (Thich Nhat Hahn calls it Interbeing.) The concept is easily appreciated in terms of the many biogeochemical cycles.

Such insights created an appreciation of deep ecology: an increasing marriage (consilience) between biology and Buddhism:  and a new path towards happiness and compassion via the neuroscience of meditation.

I take refuge in the dharma

I take refuge in the dharma (aka the ‘truth’). It is an interconnected Oneness. It can be approached from any direction and once inside there are billions of pathways that may be trod. But there is ongoing churn and change. There is no real reality. It (the world – the cosmos) is all mind stuff. “I am not my mind”.

“The mind has a mind of its own.” Mindbrains are products of evolution. Their key function is to scan the environment using sense organs that are limited in range. The sense organs code their outputs which are decoded in modules of the mindbrain and churned with information in memory so as to perceive things and events that are good (move towards), neutral (ignore) or bad (move away from).

Some memory is genetic. It contains information that has aided the survival of the ancestors and it is passed on from generation to generation. Some memory is due to nurturing - especially that which is rooted in early childhood experiences in the family and the community. And some of the stuff will be serendipitous.

Note that what matters is not what is ‘true’ but rather what works. Tales of ancient myth and magic may seem silly to modern people but most of today’s individuals are as messed up as most of the ancestors. But the ancestors created the descendants so their beliefs systems worked. Proof of concept. Is our new globalised and computerised system fit for purpose?

I like to believe that humanity is at a turning point. During the last 3000 to 4000 years there have been a few enlightened individuals who have known the peace that passes all understanding. But they were too few to make a huge difference.

Note: the trick of enlightenment is not to gather anything from outside but rather to expose that which is already within. Our ‘true’ nature is the same thing as Buddha nature. We presently suffer because our true nature has been buried by the stuff of modernity. So we must blow the dust off the mirror, draw back the veils, and make sure that the witness is awake.

There is the notion of negative streams of thoughts and feelings being pumped into the attention centre. Might this not be viewed as a positive thing? Could it not be viewed as a form of feedback indicating that all is not right about the mindbrain’s relationship with its body and its external environment? Insanity is the only sane response to an insane world!

You’ll find plenty question masters
making quagmires of their brain
the man said, ‘there is no answer’
they said, ‘you are insane’.
(Clark)

In a recent post I quoted the first three of the 14 precepts of Thich Nhat Hahn. He proposes the countervailing thought of not taking our points of view too seriously. It is ‘my’ point of view but there is no ‘I’. It is a vain attempt to describe reality with dualisms when there is only the Onenesss.

SO what is to be done? Listen to the stories of the other with non judgemental openness and compassion. Be a living expression of equanimity and peace.

I take refuge in the Sangha

I take refuge in the Sangha of like minded souls, of those who think differently, of the plants and animals, of the rocks and stones. Everything can be a call to mindfulness and the numinous.

Note: we need many calls to mindfulness because it is easy to be busy and to forget about it.

A psychology of perception

It is now the morning of yet another day. I have read and edited what is written above. It is based on my latest view of ‘common sense’. I like to think that it is built on (a) my understanding of the discoveries of those at the cutting edges of evolutionary science, and forms of meditation that are Buddhism lite and (b) my interactions with the various members of the Sangha.

A sound bite that has been around for a long time is that, “Buddhism is a psychology of perception rather than a religion”. I have been thinking of comparing the five skandhas (form, sensation, perception, impulse, feeling) with Francis Crick’s description of visual consciousness as set out in his 1994 book, “The astonishing hypothesis”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astonishing_hypothesis

Note: On one of my older websites there are some thoughts about the five skandhas being empty. http://www.srds.co.uk/begin/skandhas.htm

BUT – I notice that I am drifting into intellectual and academic mode. And that is an existential cop out. “Of making many books there is no end; and much study is weariness of the flesh.” Ecclesiastes 12:12.

The slavery of doing

It is now the morning of another day. And there is another set of thought trains.

When I got out of bed there was busyness. Activity. The drive to DO things.  For example, amongst other things, ‘I’:

• ·         Washed the grass clippings off the boiler suit and put it out to dry
• ·         Cleaned the grey basin that lies beside the outdoor tap
•           Corrected the phone numbers in my hacked email signature

·          

The ‘agency’ for the doing is the ‘vital churn’. The ‘intention’ is in the unconscious. It is not ‘I’ that makes the decisions. The source of the decision making process is hidden from ‘my’ view. But ‘thinking’ goes on all the time. The churn of facts and feelings never stops. Fixed patterns are developed but do not last long, and only a small number of them are passed into the attention centre that feeds consciousness.

A social animal

I keep aspects of the thinking/feeling process to myself. But this happens in a social context. Other aspects are introduced by family and friends, and even others by the culture in general and the 9-to-5 job in particular. The individual mind is a social mind.

When I was a teacher my workday was divided into 40 minute chunks with a bell to ring the changes. In the evening there were lessons to prepare and student’s written work to mark. No time to stand and stare.

The concept of slavery, perhaps wage slavery, passes through mind at this point. Civilized people are programmed automata till retirement when they experience boredom, depression and an early death. But it need not be like that. There is neural plasticity. By taking thought the mind can change the brain which can change the mind – within and between individuals.

In Monty Python’s ‘Life of Brian’ the crowd is chanting ‘We are all different’ but a lonely soul at the back of the crowd mutters to himself, ‘I’m not’.

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Two of me

While flat backing this morning the attention centre was preoccupied with the home improvement project. To change the focus I tried a breath count to ten - but there were many restarts.

There was an unconscious cognitive hijack.

Part of the mindbrain (conscious and rational) would rather that the topic be dropped but another and more powerful part (unconscious and intuitive) ensured that the topic remained the centre of attention. It was thus very clear that there were at least two of ‘me’.

And I am not alone with that duality. It is now well established in behavioural psychology as part of the “Heuristics and Biases Approach”.

“In psychology, heuristics are simple, efficient rules, (rules of thumb) learned or hard-coded by evolutionary processes, that have been proposed to explain how people make decisions, come to judgments, and solve problems - typically when facing complex issues or incomplete information. …These rules work well under most circumstances, but in certain cases lead to systematic errors or cognitive biases.” (Wikipedia)

Daniel Kahneman won a Nobel prize in economics for his work in this area and his 2011 book “Thinking, fast and slow” is an international best seller. He recognises two ways of thinking – System 1 (fast and automatic) and System 2 (slow and reflective). Thaler and Sunstein use the dual system in their 2012 book “Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness”. The following table lists some key features of the two systems.

SO – this morning, System 1 was holding attention on the home improvement project while system 2 was trying to shift attention to the breath. Neither won. I got up, washed, dressed, took breakfast – and, as usual, a wide range of other thoughts and feelings flitted through the attention centre.

Then I sat down at the computer and attended to the email and social networks. And, while dealing with the routine stuff, the theme for this blogpost came to the attention centre. Since then there has been writing in peaceful but productive, non-egoic flow.

Most of the ideas came from System 1 and System 2 acted as a heavy duty editor. The mindbrain will now turn to other things - maybe the home improvements project! But I will leave this file open so that it can be fine tuned before publishing.

Exploratory talk

Beyond the idle chat of ordinary folk lies the exploratory talk of super-ordinary folk.

When the hubble and bubble of idle chat fills the attention centres of the talkers and listeners then nothing important is likely to be said. And there will be no rocking the boat of parochial enculturation.

When the considered cerebrations of exploratory talk fills the attention centres of the talkers and listeners then new thoughts and feelings will arise. And there will be cracking of norms and shifting of paradigms as new cultural forms are created for the spiritual journey.

So how might the balance be shifted? By promoting stillness and seclusion?

Virginia Woolf (1882 – 1941) famously said "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” I feel inclined to upgrade this to, “A person must be of independent means and have a room, if not a house, of their own if they are to write about what passes through their attention centre.”

But cognitive bias is in action! I live alone and work from home. I enjoy my solitude. I thus perhaps deviate from the norm. Other people live with other people and travel to their daily 9 to 5 jobs. They have limited freedom from idle chat other perhaps than when attending to their ablutions and during the anonymity of commuting.

But I am not alone. Blaise Pascal (1623 – 1662) reckoned that “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” It is perhaps no coincidence that Pascal also reckoned that “The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing about.”

Earlier, in Ancient Greece, Socrates (c. 470 BC – 399 BC) had reckoned that "An unexamined life is not worth living". And this linked to an aphorism inscribed above the door to the temple of Apollo at Delphi – “Know Yourself”. Aristophanes (c. 446 BCE – c. 386 BCE) responded, "And you will know yourself, how ignorant and stupid you are."

But that kind of talk is old paradigm.

These days we have the new sciences of evolutionary psychology and behavioural economics linked in consilience with the fast expanding field of neuroscience and the concept of neuronal correlates of consciousness (NCC)

It gets increasingly obvious that “The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing about.” This can now be restated as “instincts and intuitions which are fast and adaptive can manage reactions to external stimuli using only the unconscious - and it is some time later that the conscious operator gets to know about it”.

My mindbrain works well on its own. It flows while finding ideas and writing them down. I am increasingly easy about trusting that the unconscious will generate sensible ideas and join them into stories.

But I am not in numinous flow all of the time.

Sometimes the ‘self’ comes back into focus complete with low self esteem and the associated depressing thoughts and feelings. The attention centre is flooded with negative stuff. The ruminations slip into their habitual ruts and the downward spiral into depression is upon me.

But the downturns are not as deep as they used to be. When the ‘witness’ is awake the storm clouds can be sensed approaching and this helps to defuse them. Three deep breaths bring the mindbrain back to equanimity in the present moment - more often than not!

But, whether or not I am equanimous, the idle chat v exploratory talk continuum takes different forms depending on whether I am talking to myself, with one other person or with a group.

There can be self talk when I am alone. It can be anywhere on the continuum. Sometimes it is amazing and inspiring – at least to me. Sometimes it tripples with trivialities. It is useful to think of two ‘agencies’ – (a) the ever busy ‘unconscious’ which is the source of the stuff that appears in the attention centre and (b) the unattached and non judgemental ‘witness’ who calmly notices what is going on and knows it to be just mind stuff.

Talk with other individuals tends to be trivial at first but it can quickly get heavy – especially with like minded souls. But ‘those who know do not speak’. Sometimes there can be a sitting silence.

Things can get quite difficult when communicating in groups. Even when the group is broadly like minded the individuals will have different world views - and it can therefore be tough to log in to what they are all saying. There is the danger of creating a ‘crowd’ driven by group-think with rituals and nick nacks. On such occasions it is better to ‘go lonely as the rhinoceros’.

Another agentic variation involves the media – text, audio and video. Most of that stuff does not involve mindfulness of the present moment. Instead there is rationality that promotes the intellect rather than stillness. Such talkers thus miss their subjective experience of peaceful compassion and the beginnings of wisdom. They would do well to heed the Diamond Sutra:

Thus shall ye think of this fleeting world:
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream;
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud;
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.

And Thich Nhat Hahn fleshes out the implications in his Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings – the first three are:

The First Mindfulness Training: Openness

Aware of the suffering created by fanaticism and intolerance, we are determined not to be idolatrous about or bound to any doctrine, theory, or ideology, even Buddhist ones. We are committed to seeing the Buddhist teachings as guiding means that help us develop our understanding and compassion. They are not doctrines to fight, kill, or die for. We understand that fanaticism in its many forms is the result of perceiving things in a dualistic and discriminative manner. We will train ourselves to look at everything with openness and the insight of interbeing in order to transform dogmatism and violence in ourselves and in the world.

The Second Mindfulness Training: Non-attachment to Views

Aware of the suffering created by attachment to views and wrong perceptions, we are determined to avoid being narrow-minded and bound to present views. We are committed to learning and practicing non-attachment to views and being open to others’ experiences and insights in order to benefit from the collective wisdom. We are aware that the knowledge we presently possess is not changeless, absolute truth. Insight is revealed through the practice of compassionate listening, deep looking, and letting go of notions rather than through the accumulation of intellectual knowledge. Truth is found in life, and we will observe life within and around us in every moment, ready to learn throughout our lives.

The Third Mindfulness Training: Freedom of Thought

Aware of the suffering brought about when we impose our views on others, we are determined not to force others, even our children, by any means whatsoever – such as authority, threat, money, propaganda, or indoctrination – to adopt our views. We are committed to respecting the right of others to be different, to choose what to believe and how to decide. We will, however, learn to help others let go of and transform fanaticism and narrowness through loving speech and compassionate dialogue.

 >>>>>

AND SO: Beyond the idle chat of ordinary folk is the exploratory talk of super-ordinary folk. And there will be cracking of norms and shifting of paradigms as new cultural forms of stillness and seclusion are created for the spiritual journey.

Slow communication

Recently I have noticed a problem with focusing attention when I am with more than one other person. For example:

(a) While sitting in committee I tried to add comments to a form while several conversations were going on around me. Attention was given to the conversations rather than the form. I have lost the knack of rationing attention when in company.

(b) While sitting in a group of three attention was with one at a time but, while I listened to A, I forgot about Bs point of view and vice versa. It was a fast moving conversation and I had a hard time keeping up. I paid attention to point X and spend time thinking how I would respond to it but this meant that I failed to pay attention to points Y and Z. I have the impression that my ability to pay conscious attention to 7 (+/-2) items at a time is getting less.

(c) While with only one other person I do not have a problem paying attention to what they have to say. I am a good listener but I do not often remember very much. I practice what might be called conceptual listening. I remember that they are angry or joyful or whatever but the fine details drift away.

The inspiration for thinking about attention comes from Goleman’s “Focus – the Hidden Driver of Excellence, and Kahneman’s  “Thinking, Fast and Slow”

Goleman noted “That focus in the midst of a din indicates selective attention, the neural capacity to beam in on just one target while ignoring a staggering sea of incoming stimuli, each one a potential focus in itself.”

He also noted that “This is what William James, a founder of modern psychology, meant when he defined attention as “the sudden taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one of what seems several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought”.”

Kahneman’s “book's central thesis is a dichotomy between two modes of thought: System 1 is fast, instinctive and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The book delineates cognitive biases associated with each type of thinking … From framing choices to substitution, the book highlights several decades of academic research to suggest that people place too much confidence in human judgment.”

My present ‘problem’ is that I have lost confidence in human judgment – particularly my own when I am being self-conscious ... But, simultaneously, there is increasing confidence in the effortless productivity of the unconscious (wu-wei).

I have an ongoing interest in the source of agency with intention. What is the purpose in life? Why do I bother getting out of bed in the morning? The answer lies in my conditioning – nature, nurture and serendipity acting to integrate, harmonize and channel the unconscious, conscious and self-conscious entities that make up ‘my’ mindbrain. The environment is scanned continuously to identify food (approach) and predators (retreat). People who make the correct decisions survive those who don’t don’t. So has it always been.

My childhood norms have been cracked and now the paradigm is shifting. This is probably due to a combination of factors which include retirement, old age, meditation, Parkinson’s Disease and its medication, exposure to the media, living alone and working from home, being a member of local groups, and keeping a journal.

These days Kahneman’s cognitive biases in systems 1 and 2 are less on automatic than they used to be. But they are noticed more often than before. I am inclined to audaciously claim that the ‘muse’ has commandeered the unconscious elements of system 2 and that the stories that are produced are insightful and robust despite, or perhaps because of, their being subjective in tone.

But anyway the result is that fast and automatic mindbrain activity is now less and there is more thoughtful slow communication. Praise be.

Homage to ICT

In 1984-85 I wrote a Biology Textbook and Teacher’s Guide using a typewriter and the limited set of references that were available in the South Sudan at that time.

In 1985/86 I wrote a set of dissertations using Locoscript on an Amstrad PCW, and the resource materials available as hard copy in the University of Sussex.

From the late 1980s onwards my word processing was by Word Perfect and then MS Word - and my research was limited to what was locally available in Portsoy, Belize and Lesotho.

The move from typewriter to word processor was a sudden, radical and greatly appreciated technological innovation. But the computer was a large standalone box that took up a lot of space on my physical desktop.  This hard technology problem was to be solved by first laptops and now tablets.

But – the real earth shattering innovation was online access to the internet. For me this happened in the late 90s and it has been growing ever since. This morning, however, I noticed that I take a huge amount of stuff for granted. So this blogpost is my homage to a few individuals and organizations whose visionary technology have facilitated and changed how I work and play in the knowledge industry.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google (1998)
"to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" and "Don't be evil".

Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia (2001)
“the free encyclopaedia that anyone can edit.”

Chris Anderson of TED (2001)
“Fostering the spread of great ideas”

Is human nature Buddha nature?

This essay was inspired by a sharing session at the Sangha. This question arose - Is human nature the same as Buddha nature? My gut reaction was that the two are the same. But this raised issues. 

What about the nasty stuff - exploitation, genocide, warfare, anger, lust, greed etc Are these built into human and Buddha nature or are they due to aberrations in post hunting and gathering  social systems where the essentially ‘good’ nature is buried?

I was inspired to approach the topic from several different directions. I have not yet figured how to tie all the loose ends but the process of writing has helped to clarify things.

>>>>> 

The mindbrain of a particular human being is conditioned in part by its nature, in part by its nurture and in part by serendipity. (for optional patterns see here )

The conditioning process ensures that the individual grows and develops in a way that fits him to behave appropriately in a particular physical and social environment.

‘Nature’ provides some hard wiring in the form of instincts and intuitions – eg the adrenalin based fight or flight syndrome. In many cases this allows a person to react quickly and to delay thinking about it till afterwords. He who hesitates is lost! 

More, and more sophisticated, instincts and intuitions are being identified daily (see the work of Kahneman et al). The date of evolutionary origin of particular examples is not always clear but, given neural plasticity, there is likely to be a lot of tweaking of old patterns to suit us for life in the globalised and fast changing computer age.

‘Nurture’ provides learning experiences. It puts environmentally appropriate flesh on the hard wired skeleton – eg it is in our nature to learn a language but it is our nurture that determines which language we learn. 

Other names for the nurturing process include enculturation, programming, indoctrination, brainwashing, education, training, and coaching. At issue is the creation of a pattern of belief and actions that ensures survival of the individual, her family and her hunting and gathering group. The group would have been made up of about 50 individuals that were ‘us’ as opposed to ‘them’.

Evolution is a tinkerer for whom good enough is good enough. ‘Truth’ is not part of the early pattern of believing and acting. There are records of many myths and patterns of magic that are farcical by our modern standards - eg human sacrifice to the gods; virgin births etc - but they served particular cultural groups well enough to survive into the 21^st century.

The enculturation process can be viewed from two sides. On the positive side it allows for the preservation of useful cultural products - eg stone hand axes, young males organised in bands as warriors. On the negative side it tends to reify ‘tradition’ and thus to limit the conceptual horizons of its members. Humanity was very conservative for most of its history of hunting and gathering.

The limited horizons of ‘them and us’ thinking is alive and well in our present times. There are zealots who are parochial and xenophobic and who are fairly easily and quickly convinced of the demonic qualities of the enemy (ie ‘them’) and the need for genocide and thus a holocaust.

SO – what is human nature?

Human nature is demonstrated as patterns of beliefs and associated actions. Anthropologists have tried to isolate and classify these to determine which are common to all human cultures and are thus likely to be due to nature rather than nurture. The following table is based on Kluckhohn and Strodbeck (1961) (for later developments see (ref ‘culture and values’  ))

variations in value orientations

A useful metaphor is of a huge mass of unconsciousness modules topped by a small lump of consciousness modules and by an even smaller lump of self-consciousness modules. This image supports the notion that the ‘I’ concept is not all that it was once cracked up to be.

The concept of ‘Flow’ is now well accepted (ref Csikszentmihalyi). It links to the idea of the musician in the groove, the athlete in the zone, and the poet being a channel for his muse. Time, space and self consciousness fade away and the mindbrain is in a creative and non-egoic state. No self, no problem. Excellent work gets done. Something apparently comes from nothing.

But flow is not magic. It is just the conditioned unconscious involved with tasks that are deemed culturally important. But this need not always have desirable outcomes. The prison guards at Auschwitz and the warriors of Genghiz Khan  might well have been in flow. At best this might be viewed as a branch capability of the mindbrain.

A common Eastern theory is that there are 8 consciousnesses. The storehouse consciousness is the vast foundation upon which the lesser consciousnesses rest.

• Five sense-consciousnesses
•  Mind (perception)
•  Manas (self-consciousness) 
•  Storehouse-consciousness

Thich Nhat Hahn uses the image of store consciousness. This contains many seeds. Some good and some not so good. There is the option of watering the good ones so they expand and keeping the not so good ones relatively dry and wizened.

The word ‘mindbrain’ helps us to remember that there are always neuronal correlates of consciousness (NCC). These can be thought of as a range of special purpose modules linked by neural pathways. BUT - very little is set in stone. There is neural plasticity – it is never too late to change your mindbrain.

So we now have an image that could be referred to as ‘human nature’ as well as ‘Buddha nature’. The  human mindbrain has evolved with a set of thought/ feeling/ action seeds (its nature) whose flourishing depends on focusing attention on specific modules of the physical and social environment (its nurture).

Throughout human history there has been a minority of mindful meditators who for some reason came to realise that there were better ways to be human; better ways to inhabit the planet. But they were limited to using particular languages with distinctive vocabularies and their thought about patterns and agencies were in many cases linked closely to myths and magic. They served their immediate communities as shamans and witchdoctors who provided treatment and sometimes cures for physical and mental health problems.

However, around 600 BC, there was a global ‘awakening’ when several of the founders of key religions were active. Characters such as the Buddha and Mahavira began to sit quietly and notice what they were noticing and to think about what and how they were thinking. Their activities were precursors to what in our present times are the scientific disciplines of evolution, psychology, and neurology. 

The foundation of the practice is to look inward and thus to know that your cultural conditioning sets unnecessary limits on your manner of ‘being’ in the world. The practice of ‘mindfulness’ is becoming more popular in the West. And, given ICT, the potential for its expanding, even for going viral, is enormous.

SO – is human nature Buddha nature?

YES – warts and all!

And in both cases there is need to practice using your mindbrain in a sometimes counterintuitive way where the principle is to promote the positive and demote the negative so as to generate compassion,  wisdom and peace in your self and in others.