When taken at face value, it’s no major surprise that we’re so dismissive of religion, particularly those of the Abrahamic variety. The apparent existence of some all-powerful deity that will either save us and let us into paradise/heaven or send us to hell when we die doesn’t exactly seem plausible.

Therefore, it seems folly to live our lives in accordance with some shaky doctrine that sets our moral codes. Nor does it seem comprehensible to a rational educated mind that people have waged and continue to wage wars over these beliefs.

The Perennial Philosophy

With that said, an overlooked aspect of religion is its use as a set of symbols for realizing greater truths about the nature of existence. In his exquisite 1946 book, The Perennial Philosophy, English writer Aldous Huxley elucidated what he felt was the common truth behind every religion.

According to Huxley, the perennial philosophy—the single metaphysical truth that ties together religions as disparate as Taoism and Islam—is nothing other than the realization of man’s true nature as equivalent to the nature of divine Reality. You can substitute divine Reality for Tao, nature, Brahman, God, Logos, or whatever term you deem suitable.

Huxley goes as far as saying that the ultimate reason for human existence is to come to unitive knowledge of the Divine Ground.

Coming to this realization, however, is no mean feat. We, humans, have a proclivity towards ego-centered desires that is incredibly hard to shake. As the Buddha said in his Four Noble Truths, the cause of suffering is selfish craving.

The people who have grasped the truth of the perennial philosophy have been so few in number that they’ve taken on the mantle of certain titles, whether that be Buddha (awakened one), sage, prophet, or saint.

According to Huxley, knowledge of the truth pointed at by many religions can be achieved only by the annihilation of the self-regarding ego, which is the barrier separating the “thou” from the “That”. (In reference to that old Sanskrit phrase, Tat Tvam Asi: thou art that.)

In fact, exponents of the perennial philosophy, when forming some of the teachings of the world’s religions, have insisted that man’s obsession with being a separate self is the most formidable obstacle in knowing God.

My Thoughts on the Perennial Philosophy

As an agnostic, The Perennial Philosophy was a profound book that definitely caused me to view religion in a different light. My agnosticism tends to veer towards taking materialism as the ultimate truth, but I’ve always had a nagging feeling that this might not be the case. Hence my openness to ideas such as those espoused in Advaita Vedanta, Buddhism, and other non-scientific pursuits of truth.

As an aside, if something is non-scientific, that doesn’t mean it isn’t valid or real. Science is only concerned with systematically studying phenomena in the physical world through observation and experiment. What can science ever truly know about abstract, subjective feelings that arise within consciousness like love and empathy? You might come up with an incredibly detailed set of metrics to measure how much love someone feels, but the metrics and their measurements aren’t the same things as the feeling of love.

This is why we all need to become scientists of our own minds and consciousness if we are to really get the full picture about the nature of who we are and how we relate to the universe. Self-inquiry and meditation, both ancient methods arising from a time before the Scientific Revolution, essentially ask us to conduct experiments on our own consciousness.

I think it’s easy to shit on most religions when we take their teachings at face value (perhaps with the exceptions of some Oriental religions). We forget that words are symbols and that many religious teachings were meant to be taken as analogies rather than literal truths. Sadly, the priests, rabbis, popes, bishops, imams etc all forget the analogical nature of religion too.

With regards to me attaining the realization of my own being as equivalent to the divine or the Tao, well, I have a strong sense of identity as a separate self and I’m very attached to all the egoic manifestations of that separate self: my love of football, my anxiety, my enjoyment of spicy food, hell, even my enjoyment of books about the nature of reality!

I feel like realizing the type of mysticism Huxley talks about in his book is something quite beyond me at this point in time.

The intellectual and spiritual appeal of this perennial philosophy is undeniably strong, though. How beautiful it would be if this feeling of separation from other beings and from the universe itself was ultimately an illusion. How nice it would be to let go of the fear of death in the knowledge that dying is simply walking home, to paraphrase Ram Dass.

Meditation and Psychedelia as Ego-Tamers

The chasm between the appeal of this perennial philosophy and my own identity as a separate self is too large right now but I am open to the possibility of it narrowing. I am too absorbed in the details and problems of my ego-driven existence to even want to part with that identity, despite the suffering it often causes. It’s like I want to realize this perennial truth, but I don’t want to let go of who I think I am.

Even a self-centered Average Joe like me has had glimpses of that transcendental selflessness that is hinted at by the perennial philosophy. While meditating deeply, I’ve sporadically had experiences in which there was no “me” as a separate self at all. There was just consciousness.

I have never taken psychedelics, but I have researched them extensively. And if I’ve learned anything from my research, it’s that a high enough dose of the right psychedelic is like strapping yourself to a rocket that launches you away from your ego identity, whether you want to be launched or not.

Ultimately, I believe Huxley himself felt similar to me. He was a smart and open-minded person and he was attracted by the perennial philosophy but perhaps too stuck to his identity as a giant of the world of literature.

This ego attachment was, I would hazard a guess, a large part of what Huxley tried to overcome when he took mescaline and detailed his experiences with such vividness, clarity, and poetry in the Doors of Perception.

I fully intend one day to take a large enough dose of psychedelics so as to temporarily abandon my identity as a separate self and see where it takes me; whether I can glimpse the perennial philosophy.

Even a glimpse of truth is better than never seeing things as they really are.

The post Does The Perennial Philosophy Reveal the True Purpose of Religion? appeared first on Cerebrotonic.

Literal and Symbolic Immortality

According to Ernest Becker, all human activity is driven largely by unconscious efforts to deny and transcend mortality. He set this idea out in his Pulitzer-Prize winning book, The Denial of Death. I’ve written about this book in another post on how the coronavirus pandemic gives us the chance to make peace with death.

Elaborating on Becker’s idea, the authors of the 2015 book,  The Worm At The Core, say that humans try to achieve immortality in two main ways:

1. Literal immortality—any efforts to beliefs that we can physically overcome our annihilation through scientific efforts to stop ageing and prevent death or religious beliefs in an eternal soul that doesn’t die with the body.
2. Symbolic immortality—efforts to leave an enduring mark on the world that persists long after our own physical death.

It is with the second of these attempts to transcend mortality that this post concerns itself. Having kids enables us to continue living through our offspring symbolically. This symbolic immortality plays a huge role in every single person’s choice to have children.

Of course, not all children are born in circumstances in which there was a conscious decision made to have kids. But for those that make the choice in advance of conceiving a child, transcending death is probably the most significant and largely unconscious factor in doing so.

The most obvious way we continue living through our children is that their DNA is 50% ours. We can better come to peace with the finality of our own lives when we know that a part of us will continue physically by their very existence.

A more subtle yet equally powerful means of achieving symbolic immortality is that our kids live on through taking on our mannerisms, behavioral quirks, and personality attributes. Dads feel proud as punch when they note their kids have a particular affinity for football, not just because of the shared enjoyment. They also feel all warm inside because they see concrete evidence that a part of who they define themselves to be will live on through their offspring.

Is Having Kids Selfish?

Given the influence of our own mortal fears on having kids, the old debate inevitably arises as to whether having kids is selfish or not. Viewed through the lens of an attempt to achieve symbolic immortality, then yes, having kids is a selfish decision. You can’t come to any other conclusion if you’re honest with yourself. And I say that as someone who has a one-year-old daughter.

However, while the decision to have kids might ultimately be a selfish one, it takes enormous selflessness to raise a kid. Conceiving and delivering a child does not make a good parent. (Although I doff my imaginary cap to all mothers who go through the process of childbirth.)

It takes huge self-sacrifice for both mother and father to properly nurture their child so that they flourish and develop into independent, well-mannered, educated adults. Hectic social lives are not possible unless you’re privileged enough to afford childcare, hobbies are halted or dramatically reduced; career progression is stymied for one parent; usually the mother but not always.

To say that having kids is selfish is not to say that having kids is immoral. This distinction comes down to accepting selfishness in the face of mortal fear as an intrinsic part of the human psyche. The desire to beat death is inside all of us, and it doesn’t make us bad people that we want ourselves to continue in some way after our death.

What makes bad people is having kids and then being a shitty parent to them or not helping to raise them at all.

Human Selfishness and Context

Philosophy, from Plato’s Republic to John Locke, has argued that human beings have an inherent capacity for selfishness. As you can probably see from the above discussion, context is key. It’s typically a self-serving decision to have children, albeit one influenced heavily by the mortal fears everyone faces. But it’s a selfless act to raise your kids properly.

Not everyone has kids, of course. Many people don’t ever want to have children. Some are unable to conceive. In one way or another, though, everyone tries to achieve symbolic immortality.

Whether through military or political action, economic or scientific achievements, athletic feats, or artistic prowess, history is littered with examples of people searching for symbolic immortality in ways other than having kids.

Most of us harbour dreams growing up of becoming famous actors, musicians, football players. Modern examples of ordinary people seeking fame through YouTube channels, going viral online, and reality television shows are so plentiful, they need no further elaboration other than to say, the desire to become famous is itself a manifestation of a desire for immortality. For people to know who we are and speak about us after our deaths.

Ultimately, all humans are selfish in the context of contemplating our own deaths. But selfishness in that context is completely understandable. If the big decisions we make in life are ultimately motivated by selfishness, we can still imbue the execution of those decisions with altruism. Our scientific achievements benefit humanity, our athletic prowess entertains people, our books thrill and delight, our kids learn from us how to conduct themselves in the world.

The post How the Fear of Death Influences The Decision to Have Children appeared first on Cerebrotonic.

Countries closed their borders, airplanes stopped flying, bars and restaurants shut, and millions of people lost their jobs. “Social distancing” and “self-isolation” rapidly entered into our lexicon, even though most of us had never used those terms four weeks ago. Over a third of the world is on lockdown, as of writing.

But perhaps the most significant change of all is that coronavirus has led so many of us to confront our own mortality head-on. This is a unique opportunity to make good of a really shitty situation.

The Immortality Project

It was Ernest Becker who first brought the idea prominently into contemporary mainstream thought that everything we do as humans collectively and individually, is underpinned by the terror of our own death. This idea is not new, but modern psychology somewhat neglected it before Becker.

In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Denial of Death, Becker postulates that humans create shared cultural worldviews and projects of personal significance to give our lives a sense of order and meaning. We do this to escape the fear of our own deaths. Becker calls these our immortality projects, and they apply at both the individual and societal level.

An immortality project is something we create or become a part of that is bigger than us or we think will outlast our own lives on earth. Examples are:

• Creating works of art
• Performing scientific research
• Passing on our genes
• Participating in religious practices
• Doing work we find meaningful
• Paying taxes to help run the country
• Contributing to society through work, volunteering, sports, etc
• Being part of a functioning society and/or nation
• Accumulating wealth that we can pass on

The coronavirus pandemic has rapidly and ruthlessly exposed the utter fragility of the human societal constructs that we cling to in order to escape the terror of death. Not since World War 2 has such a large chunk of the planet been confronted with their mortality simultaneously.

Everyday activities that imbued our lives with a sense of order and meaning have ground to a halt. Many of us aren’t working. Governments have imposed widespread restrictions on what we can do. We watch news reports of overwhelmed hospitals and see people of all ages succumbing to this virus. Order has quickly turned to chaos. Immortality projects are collapsing.

There Was Never Any Permanence

By creating shared cultural constructs and feeling like we’re personally contributing to them, we play a psychological trick to convince ourselves we’re doing something permanent in life.

These constructs are now in doubt and many of our personal contributions halted. The societal game we were playing is on pause. With a contagious, dangerous viral illness on the loose, the deep existential fear of death faces all of us.

Anyone familiar with Buddhist philosophy will tell you there was never any permanence in life to begin with. Accepting the flux of life is arguably the whole point of walking the Buddhist path.

The British writer and lecturer Alan Watts, who is best known for popularizing Eastern philosophy in the Western world, summed up the impermanence of life brilliantly in his book, The Wisdom of Insecurity:

Man seems to be unable to live without myth, without the belief that the routine and drudgery, the pain and fear of this life have some meaning and goal in the future. These myths give the individual a certain sense of meaning by making him part of a vast social effort, in which he loses something of his own emptiness. But you cannot understand life and its mysteries as long as you try to grasp it. Indeed, you cannot grasp it, just as you cannot walk off with a river in a bucket.

The subtitle of Watts’ book is “A Message for an Age of Anxiety”. It was written in 1951 when the Cold War brought about severe anxiety at a societal level due to escalating tensions and the threat of nuclear warfare between global superpowers.

Almost 70 years later, ‘an age of anxiety’ is exactly how you’d sum up what the world is going through with the coronavirus pandemic.

How to Accept Our Mortality

Confronted daily with the reality-check that is the fact of our own impermanence and mortality, is there a way to make good of this situation? How can we accept our mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic?

I don’t have all the answers, but here are some suggestions:

• Accept flux as an inextricable part of existence — no living thing, no relationship, no government, no society stays the same. Make peace with the fact that living means changing.
• See the good side of flux— life wouldn’t have evolved without changing conditions, scientific advancements wouldn’t be possible without change, reading the article on the Internet is the result of flux. Crisp autumn mornings, long summer evenings, comfy winter nights in front of the fire-they are all made possible because of change.
• Engage with the present — the present moment is all we really ever experience. Many of the societal constructs we create and participate in depend on thinking about and planning for the future. Reframe your attention to engage much more with the present and your mortality becomes less of a problem.
• Practice self-inquiry —spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle says “the secret of life is to die before you die”. What he meant was to investigate the nature of your own consciousness and see what you find out. You don’t have to like Eckhart Tolle or be religious to practice self-inquiry. Ask yourself who you really are underneath the ego—the set of images and thoughts you construct to give you, as a physical organism, some meaning in this world. You might be surprised at what you find out.

The post How Covid-19 Gives Us All the Chance to Accept Impermanence appeared first on Cerebrotonic.

Buddhism is not only a religion. Buddhism is a philosophy; a way of approaching life and dealing with its ups and downs.  The beauty of Buddhism is in its universality. You don’t need to be a practicing Buddhist to get something of value from it. I’ve decided to write this blog post highlighting what I believe are the best Buddhism books that you simply must read. These books will give you an amazing understanding of what Buddhism is about and how you can apply it to your life.

What Are The Benefits of Buddhism?

The benefits of Buddhism are how the philosophy addresses the nature of human suffering and how it teaches us ways to train our minds and live our lives so that we can overcome this suffering. More specifically, learning about Buddhism can bring some positives to your life such as:

• Buddhism can improve your mental health by reframing how readily you attach to your thoughts.
• Buddhist meditation can help you achieve inner peace and tranquility of mind.
• Buddhism teaches mindfulness, which enables you to become more present in your life.
• Buddhism is secular; it doesn’t depend on believing in a higher power.
• Buddhism teaches the value of compassion towards our fellow humans.

With all of these great benefits in mind, let’s now move on to some of the best Buddhism books that encapsulate what Buddhism is about and how you can apply it.

1. The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh

Thich Nhat Hanh is a Vietnamese Buddhist monk and a prolific writer. His bibliography includes over 70 books, all of which are marked by a wonderfully poetic use of language. The Heart of the Buddha’s teaching is an excellent book and it serves as a wonderful guide to how you can apply Buddhist philosophies and ideas to your life.

The book covers important Buddhist teachings like the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path. Hanh, who is known affectionately by his followers as Tai, presents the ideas of Buddhism with excellent lucidity. I think this book should be on any list of the best Buddhist books.

2. Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki

This little gem of a book is a compilation of teachings from Shrunryu Suzuki, a Zen master. One of the reasons I like Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind so much is that it focuses mostly on the benefits of meditation. In Zen, which is a school of Buddhism, the practice of sitting and letting go of attachment to thoughts is known as zazen.

Zen monks and practitioners often talk about the virtue of maintaining an attitude of Shoshin (初心). This is a mindset in which one approaches a subject, no matter how much knowledge they have about it, with the eagerness and lack of preconceived ideas that a beginner would. I like to think of it as approaching a topic like a child would; with that eagerness and curiosity to learn and listen. One of the important ways to cultivate this mindset is to meditate.

As Suzuki says in the book, “If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything, it is open to everything. In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.” I like this quote because it is so relevant in the modern world of divisive online discourse. Everyone has an opinion, everyone expresses those opinions strongly, and everyone thinks they are an expert. But an untrained mind is always clouded by preconceived notions.

3. Buddhism for Beginners by Thubten Chodron

This is perhaps the best Buddhist book that gets across to the reader the fundamental ideas behind Buddhism. The beauty of its book is its use of language and a Q&A format that answers common questions on Buddhism with impressive clarity.

I also like how Buddhism for Beginners answers more general existential questions in relation to Buddhism. This is not a dry book based on acquiring theoretical knowledge. Some of the questions you’ll get answers to (from a Buddhist perspective) include:

• How can you deal with fear better?
• How do you establish a regular meditation practice?
• If the world is emptiness, does nothing exist?

Buddhism for Beginners provides essential Buddhist knowledge for people who aren’t interested in reading dry, strictly theoretical texts. Therevada Buddhism, which is practiced widely in Thailand, Cambodia and Myanmar, is filled with thousands of discourses aimed at improving understanding of its ideas. This is a Western-friendly Buddhist book that knows what its aim is and sticks to it well.

4. Buddhism the Religion of No-Religion by Alan Watts

Self-proclaimed spiritual entertainer Alan Watts is one of my favourite people to read and listen to. His lectures have gained prominence on YouTube recently, with thousands of videos uploaded by different channels, some of which are mixed with questionable music. As a person who enjoys reading as much as listening, I am grateful Alan watts was as talented at writing as he was at public speaking.

This book is actually taken from a series of lectures Watts gave, so it is not actually his writing, but these lectures translate beautifully to text.   The great achievement of this book is how well it conveys Buddhist ideas and the evolution of Buddhism through both Watts’ impressive knowledge of the Orient and his classic British wit. The great achievement of this book is that it manages to be an excellent self-help manual, which pretty why Buddhism is so important.

5. The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh

Thich Nhat Hanh’s second appearance on this list. But I couldn’t write about the best books on Buddhism without including this all-time classic on mindfulness.  If you were to distill what aspect of Buddhism is most secular and most applicable to everyone’s lives, it’d surely be mindfulness.

Other than how applicable it is, mindfulness has also been rigorously studied by scientists. An intriguing 2015 paper entitled ‘The Neuroscience of Mindfulness Meditation’ delves into the intersection between mindfulness meditation and neuroscience. Tons of brain changes are discussed, including changes in areas that regulate emotions, self-awareness, and attention.

The Miracle of Mindfulness is essentially a manifesto on mindfulness and how to apply it to our daily lives. Life seems to fly by and part of the reason for that is we are not ordinarily present enough throughout each day. Each activity, every second, provides an opportunity to be present. What Tai conveys beautifully in The Miracle of Mindfulness is that by focusing our entire attention on whatever we happen to be doing, we can achieve a state of mental calmness.

The profundity of this book is how it can transform a simple act like shaving or washing the dishes into something meaningful that we appreciate and are fully present for. This approach to the apparent mundanities of life contrasts sharply with how must of us in the West are conditioned to approach mundane tasks. We always worry about the future and think about the past, so that we miss the present, which is where life actually happens.

6. Siddhartha by Herman Hesse

The only fiction book on this list and it is an absolute corker. I read Siddhartha in one sitting at my local library while waiting for my mother to undergo a routine medical procedure in a nearby hospital. The book is essentially a riff on the true story of Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism.

Gautama Buddha was a wealthy Indian royal whose father sheltered him from death, disease, hunger, and destitution for the first 28 years of his life.  Siddhartha then left the grounds of the palace in which he had been sheltered on his 29th birthday. He encountered everything his father sheltered him from and he was left wondering what is the meaning of life if such suffering exists in the world.

Gautama Buddha renounced his worldly possessions and became an ascetic who depended on the kindness of others to share food with him. But extreme asceticism didn’t provide the meaning that the Buddha strived for. He then underwent a serious study of the nature of his own mind by meditating continuously under a Bodhi tree for 49 days. After 49 days, the Buddha became awakened. (Buddha means awakened one).

Hesse’s Siddhartha is an exquisite book both in terms of the depth of its themes and its simple use of language to convey complex ideas. It is the ultimate book on finding meaning and it is a profound example of the Buddhist idea of finding The Middle Way between outright asceticism and being a functioning member of society who embraces the world. Siddhartha is one of very few books that is bound to stick with you even if you only ever read it once in your life.

Closing Thoughts

Whether you want to read one of these books or all six, I believe there is something in here for everyone. My personal favourite from this list of best Buddhism books is Siddhartha even though it is the only book here that doesn’t directly explain Buddhist ideas.

I firmly believe that Buddhism is by a long way the most relevant and interesting of the world’s religions in terms of providing plausible answers to the important questions in life. At the very least, learning about Buddhism makes you reconsider who you are and what you deem important in life.

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Do Babies Know Anything?

Having recently become a father for the first time, certain questions about human nature hit me that for some reason I had never contemplated in my daily life. One of those questions was related to life’s absurdity, which I wrote about in another post.

Seeing my daughter absolutely captivated by seemingly mundane things in the world is a joy to behold, but it is also bewildering.

It’s like life is being rejuvenated all over again through what Zen Buddhists would call Shoshin (初心), which translates as beginner’s mind. The term is normally applied to students of Zen Buddhism who are encouraged to approach their studies with openness, eagerness, and a complete lack of preconceptions. To me, it looks like that’s how my baby’s mind works when learning about life in her early months.

Thinking about this stuff then led to the following interesting question:

Does a newborn baby have innate knowledge about anything in this world?

If the answer is no, then everything any newborn child learns about the world is solely based on living and taking in data through the five senses, and genetics are irrelevant. It turns out that this is quite an important debate in Western philosophy that traces its roots back to Aristotle.

According to Aristotle, who is sometimes described as the Father of Western Philosophy,

“What the mind thinks must be in it just as characters may be said to be on a writing-tablet on which as yet nothing stands written.”

John Locke, an influential British philosopher, elaborated on this idea and formulated the blank slate theory, or tabula rasa.

What is the Blank Slate Theory?

The blank slate theory says that knowledge and reason arise in the human mind only by forming memories from experience. There is no prior knowledge embedded in the mind. Locke explained his theory using a blank sheet of white paper as a metaphor for the mind that has yet to formulate memories and learn things.

Quoting from locke’s famous text, “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding“:

“Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this, I answer, in one word, from experience.”

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The viewpoint posited by Locke favors nurture in the famous nature versus nurture debate. Taking the position of nature—a combination of genetic and biological factors—one argues that these factors influence human behavioral traits.

Proponents of the blank slate theory argue that external factors alone—experience and learning—determine human behavior, and no prior knowledge or behavioral proclivities are embedded in the human psyche.

Eastern Thought and The Blank Slate Theory

I am far from a philosopher or an intellectual. I am simply a writer who enjoys exploring and sharing ideas on my blog, so I am not going to make an effort to resolve these debates between empiricism (nurture) and innatism (nature) in the manner of a philosopher or an intellectual.

In fact, I’ll most likely be talking out of my arse at some point in this post, although believe me, I do my best to avoid talking nonsense and I research the hell out of everything I write.

What I want to do is approach the blank slate theory from the perspective of, say, Eastern ideas, to see what kind of answers we get from thinking about the fundamental question differently. To me, the beauty of Eastern thought is that it always provides a new way of thinking about the problems and big questions of life.

Buddhism and Biology

Within Hindu and Buddhist schools of thought, the body-mind, or Namarupa, and consciousness, Vijñāna, both carry with them remnants of a previous existence. Latent dispositions are embedded into us from birth and they influence our behavior toward actions motivated by ignorance and desire.

It is the goal of Buddhist liberation to escape the continuous cycle of death and rebirth by understanding the Four Noble Truths and following the Noble Eightfold Path. Among these noble truths is the maxim that life is suffering and that the causes of suffering are craving (or desire), ignorance, and hatred. 

Both of these Eastern religions use the concept of Samsara, which is a continuous cycle of birth, existence, and death. It’s a merry-go-round that doesn’t stop until liberation. 

It can be difficult for the Western mind to get on board with the idea of Samsara, particularly when it is imbued with less credible ideas like reincarnation as alternative life forms, beneficial and protective forces (Merit), and an afterlife. 

However, when it’s couched in terms of evolutionary development, Samsara becomes a credible concept.

Evolutionary biology states that we are all descendants of creatures who behaved in such a way as to reproduce most successfully. We now inherit and embody those characteristics as living beings.

Humans are dynamic processes but we are also historically conditioned and born with physiological structures that are expressed in tendencies to behave in certain ways. Don’t we have an ingrained proclivity for certain behaviors, like the desire to reproduce and the drive to survive?

You might say you don’t want to reproduce, you don’t want kids, but I know you have the desire for sex. If you want to separate that from reproduction, that’s your choice. Still, it appears that sexual/reproductive desire is biologically ingrained. Is this not a form of knowledge and a way of behaving that is innate in us? Is the mind’s blank sheet of paper ever truly blank?

From an excellent paper titled Beyond Nature\NurtureBuddhism and Biology on Interdependence, the writer W.S. Waldron has this to say:

“They (Buddhist ideas) point toward a vision of evolutionary development in which not only are organisms inseparably intertwined with their surrounding environments but the attempts to separate certain dimensions from others – whether nature\nurture, seems an artificial exercise that obscures as much as it edifies.

A full recognition of this radical interdependence, this inseparability between mind and world, genes and environment, individual and society, arguably helps ameliorate rather than exacerbate our sense of alienation or separation from the ‘natural’ world.”

Evolutionary biology says that human beings in form and structure are a result of past actions over countless generations. Early Buddhist ideas say we are the result of karma (action) and we now experience manifestations of those actions as behavioral tendencies. To me, these sentences are the same.

However, in light of the constant flux of life and each individual’s interdependence and interaction with our environment, it seems to me like there is no fixed human nature at all; it’s always changing.

And if there is no unchanging human nature, there’s no pure nurture or blank sheet of paper to compare it to. That blank sheet of the mind is already influenced by evolutionarily acquired structures that predispose us to certain behaviors.

As the not-quite-blank sheet of the mind is increasingly colored by interacting with the environment and acquiring knowledge, nurture influences future nature, if we’re redefining human nature as a continually flowing and changing process.

It seems to me that Buddhism says there’s no intelligent way to distinguish between nature and nurture because the two always influence each other, so the debate is pointless. Everything is relationship. 

The Uncarved Block of Taoism

Pretty much everyone is familiar with the above symbol. It is the yin-yang of the Ancient Chinese philosophy of Taoism (or Daoism).

A really interesting idea in Taoism is that of the uncarved block, or pu (朴). This pu is the original nature of not only the pure mind in its natural state, but of the Tao itself; the rhythms and way of the universe.

It is a state of being and perceiving without prejudice or dualistic distinction. It is experiencing the world and flowing with life without reifying what we interact with. It is spontaneity in all its glory. Pu is the ideal state of how I imagine my newborn child’s mind to be in but that doesn’t necessarily mean it is like I wish it to be; it’s just a nice thought.

Returning to the Blank Sheet of Pure Mind

What all of this says about my the contents of my six-month-old daughter’s mind as she laughs for ten minutes at a red apple, I’m not entirely sure.

Perhaps it should be a goal for all of us to temporarily return to that pure mind, child-like state where everything around us is vibrant and wonderful and hilarious and spontaneous. Whether one can pursue that child-like wonder through meditation, asceticism, or psychedelic substances, I can only speculate. It might not even be possible to get there, although many sources claim it is.

I hope you at least found this an interesting and stimulating read. Please check out my recommended further reading suggestions for more on these topics. Thanks.

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According to Albert Camus, the French author who popularized the philosophy of absurdity, the fundamental question in life is whether man should commit suicide or not.

In his famous essay, The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus describes absurdism as the contradiction and disharmony between man’s constant search for meaning and universal order and the inability for our chaotic, uncaring universe to provide that meaning. Therefore, Camus asks, is killing yourself the answer to ending this contradiction?

Pretty much every human has at one time felt a deep sense of the absurdity of life. What’s the point of it all? Why are we here? Why do I and my loved ones have to die? Personally, such thoughts often hit me like a train out of nowhere. 

According to Camus, suicide is not optimal because the absurdity should be lived through. Do the things you enjoy in full knowledge that none of it really has any ultimate meaning and nor will you ever find one. Revolt against this contradiction. 

Camus describes the adoption of religious or spiritual beliefs as a form of philosophical suicide. To him, people who recognize the inherent lack of meaning in the world and who choose to believe in religious ideas of meaning anyway are intellectually lazy, unable to accept the truth, or both.

The Philosophy of Alan Watts

It is only in light of reading Camus’ work on life’s absurdity that the ideas of the British philosopher Alan Watts have taken on more poignancy for me. I believe Watts was trying all along to help us all make sense of chaos and close the separation we feel between ourselves and a seemingly cold, uncaring universe.

One of Watts’ most quoted metaphors is the comparison between apple trees and the universe. Just as an apple tree produces apples, the universe produces people. 

Is this then another possible answer to the problem of absurdity? It seems to me as if Watts is saying that the absurdist’s starting position is all wrong—the conflict between our desire for unity and ultimate meaning and a seemingly uncaring universe that can’t provide any meaning only exists because we feel separate from the universe we inhabit.

Wouldn’t absurdism dissolve as a dilemma if the starting position we took as humans was that we are a process of the universe itself? Watts seems to suggest that we are the meaning we are looking for from the world. 

Alan Watts once said that “The meaning of life is just to be alive.” I think this perfectly encapsulates his philosophy. 

The problem is that man doesn’t feel himself to be an intrinsic part of the universe. Our default condition appears to be a constant sense of separation from the world around us.

We look up at the night sky and are awed by the infinite space we see, the vastness of things that aren’t us, and we feel smaller and more isolated. We can’t even relate to other humans as we log into social media and feel alienated from rather than connected to people.

Alan Watts was most concerned with how we can feel ourselves as united with the universe rather than how to intellectually understand that unity. Through fusing his Western background with a passion for Eastern spirituality, Watts brought a different way of thinking to the West that influenced the hippy subculture of the 1960s.

He was fascinated with Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism. After religiously studying Eastern concepts, ideas, and philosophies, Watts came to the conclusion that the West needed to hear about these ideas to perhaps stimulate us into looking at life differently.   

The Way of Zen, The Wisdom of Insecurity, and The Joyous Cosmology are three important books Watts wrote that try to get across this idea of life as a flowing process that started with the big bang and that we, as humans living in the universe, are playing a fundamental part in.

“There was a big bang at the beginning of things and it spread. And you and I, sitting here in this room, as complicated human beings, are way, way out on the fringe of that bang. If you think that you are only inside your skin, you define yourself as one very complicated little being, way out on the edge of that explosion. 

And then we cut ourselves off, and don’t feel that we’re still the big bang. But you are. If there was a big bang in the beginning–you’re not something that’s a result of the big bang. You’re not something that is a sort of puppet on the end of the process. You are still the process. You are the big bang, the original force of the universe, coming on as whoever you are.”

These are profound words, and they cut to the heart of absurdism by seemingly overcoming the notion that we humans are helpless creatures cut off from a cold, infinite universe that provides no answers as to why we are here. 

If we feel that our lives are a continuation of a universal process, questions about where we came from and why we are here both become much less important.

Camus might argue that feeling unity with the universe still doesn’t ultimately answer why the big bang happened in the first place and thus doesn’t satisfy the desire for ultimate meaning and truth. But I’m just playing with ideas here. 

Alan Watts makes us rethink our relationship with life and with the universe. But is it ever possible to feel that unified relationship he alludes to with every fabric of our being and thus cease to see ourselves as existing in a purposeless chaotic universe that spans infinite space?

Psychedelic Experiences 

The psychedelic experience seems to provide a possible solution. Common among experiences on LSD, ayahuasca, and psilocybin are feelings of cosmic consciousness. Such experiences have been written and spoken about with profound lucidity and clarity by Watts himself and by people like Aldous Huxley, Terence Mckenna, and Albert Hoffman. 

A brief visit to internet forums like Reddit and Erowid presents you with vast swathes of psychedelic trip reports, and common among them are similar feelings of unity with the universe as were described by the aforementioned authors and thinkers.

It’s worth also noting that studies recently conducted at Johns Hopkins research centre have noted a profound impact of the psychedelic experience on terminal cancer patients who are approaching death. The reduction in death anxiety was staggering—people became much more comfortable with their own mortality. 

Ego Death

It appears Watts may have been on to something. The existential angst that encompasses the human experience seems to dissipate somewhat when our brain chemistry and consciousness is temporarily altered. 

Psychedelics reduce activity in a part of the brain known as the default mode network. As Michael Pollan wrote in his excellent book, How to Change Your Mind, if there was a specific brain location for the ego, the default mode network is its home. 

Reduced activity in the default mode network is likely responsible for the famous ego death so common to intense psychedelic experience. If our consciousness is capable of such a drastic alteration so as to reshape our relationship with the universe, one might wonder why that is not our default mode of consciousness. 

My own guess is that it wouldn’t have been very conducive to evolutionary progress if humans spent all day in awe of our own existence and unity with everything around us. It is perhaps a cruel product of evolution that we are destined to feel separation, isolation, and conflict with the world.

Shamanic rituals involving various plants have likely been performed for thousands of years. There’s a good chance they led to the development of many religious ideas that we are familiar with. Besides the cosmic consciousness, ingesting these substances often comes with dazzling hallucinogenic states.

But do we all need to eat a mega-dose of magic mushrooms to feel one with the world? Not everyone can handle something like that without proper therapeutic guidance (or for some individuals, even with such guidance).

Meditation offers another path. Many experienced meditators report a feeling of dissolution of the self and oneness with the world when they go sufficiently deep with the practice. Zen Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta are spiritual practices that also describe the experience of ego death, and meditation plays a prominent part in both.

Dissolving Absurdity

Tying this back to Camus’ absurdism, if we find out that there is no I that needs to seek meaning from the world, then doesn’t the problem of absurdity cease to be? After all, Camus said that absurdity needs both the human search for meaning and a cold, uncaring meaningless universe that can’t provide an answer. 

If people realize their true nature as one with the universe, as the universe in flux, then we don’t need meaning outside of our own existence. By living this life, we are the meaning we seek. 

I don’t know if the realization of the true self as a universal process is the answer to the absurd condition, but it is certainly worth pondering. And I hope you got something from this post; because I certainly got something from people like Camus and Watts who eloquently described and tried to offer solutions for the absurd human condition.

Check out my recommended reading material for much more on these intriguing topics.

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