Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment

by Robert Wright

The closest thing to a self would be the algorithm that determines which circumstances put which modules in charge.

So if the conscious self isn’t the thing that changes our channels, putting a new module in charge, what is? Well, the activation of modules is closely associated with feelings.

when you let go of a feeling by viewing it mindfully, you’re letting go of something you had previously considered part of your self;

Feelings aren’t just little parts of the thing you had thought of as the self; they are closer to its core; they are doing what you had thought “you” were doing: calling the shots.

It’s feelings that “decide” which module will be in charge for the time being, and it’s modules that then decide what you’ll actually do during that time. In this light, it becomes a bit clearer why losing attachment to feelings could help you reach a point where there seems to be no self.

jealousy is, for a time at least, your mind’s unquestioned ruler. Certainly anyone who has been in a jealous rage can attest that, whoever was in charge of your behavior at that moment, it wasn’t the ordinary you.

The feeling of jealousy is so powerful that it may be hard to imagine resisting it. But resistance, strictly speaking, isn’t the mindful way of dealing with jealousy anyway. Rather the idea would be to observe the feeling mindfully as it begins to emerge and so never become firmly attached to it.

Observing feelings without attachment is the way you keep modules from seizing control of your consciousness. Easier said than done, I know.

And even when jealousy isn’t in its rage phase, it has a conspicuously obsessive quality, compelling your mind to take particular trains of thought over and over.

But even subtler emotions, with less obvious effects, can bring enough little changes to usher in a whole new frame of mind.

the fact that men who see women they consider attractive tend to discount the future more steeply than they did only moments earlier.

There is good reason to believe that during evolution men with access to resources (such as food) and with high social status were better able to attract mates.

So if there is indeed a mate-acquisition module, you’d expect it to feature the following algorithm: men who see signs of a near-term courtship opportunity take advantage of any near-term resource acquisition opportunities, even if that means forgoing more distant opportunities.

Of course, the men in these experiments didn’t see real mating opportunities; they just saw pictures of women. But in the ancestral environment there weren’t photographs, so any realistic image of a woman would have signified the actual presence of a woman. That’s why the minds of the men in this experiment could be “fooled” by mere pictures, even though the men “knew,” at a conscious level, that these women weren’t available.

In one study, psychologists had men fill out surveys about their career plans; some filled them out in a room where women were also filling out forms, and some filled them out in an all-male room. Men placed in the presence of women, it turned out, were more inclined to rate the accumulation of wealth as an important goal.

But if so, the men’s conscious selves don’t seem to be privy to this strategic logic. After all, these men were conveying these bold plans via a questionnaire they had no reason to believe the women would read.

you can see why it’s tempting to think that a module—or a “subself,” as Kenrick and Griskevicius put it—takes control of the mind when people are in the presence of a potential mate who strikes them as attractive.

At the same time, we should stay mindful of the mind’s messiness and not get overly enamored of the modular metaphor.

If, in light of the misleading neatness of the module metaphor, you prefer the phrase I just used—“state of mind”—to “module that’s taken control,” that’s fine. Either way, two take-home lessons hold: (1) This isn’t a state of mind that the conscious “self” “chooses” to enter; rather, the state is triggered by a feeling, and the conscious “self,” though it in principle has access to the feeling, may not notice it or notice that a new state has been entered. (So much for the idea of the conscious you as CEO.)

(2) You can see why the Buddha emphasized how fluid, how impermanent, the various parts of the mind are, and why he considered this flux relevant to the not-self argument; if the self is supposed to be some unchanging essence, it’s pretty hard to imagine where exactly that self would be amid the ongoing transitions from state of mind to state of mind.

Some illusions are harmless, and some are even beneficial. Far be it from me to try to talk you out of all your illusions. By and large, my philosophy is Live and let live: if you’re enjoying the Matrix, go crazy. Except, maybe, when your illusions harm other people in your life or contribute to larger problems in the world. And that can happen.

On the other hand, this tendency to exaggerate the hostility of certain kinds of strangers could keep you from having a constructively friendly interaction with someone of a different ethnicity.

Politicians activate this same mental tendency to get us to “overread” threats in ways that lead to war or ethnic antagonism.

And this deflation of rivals is no closer to the truth than the self-inflation that is also high on the agenda for that particular conversation. But the deflation is heartfelt; we tend to believe the bad publicity we give rivals, the better to spread it.

So what do we do about all this? If our mind keeps getting seized by different modules, and each module carries with it different illusions, how do we change the situation?

Feelings don’t just bring specific, fleeting illusions; they can usher in a whole mind-set and so alter for some time a range of perceptions and proclivities, for better or worse.

Buddhist thought and modern psychology converge on this point: in human life as it’s ordinarily lived, there is no one self, no conscious CEO, that runs the show; rather, there seem to be a series of selves that take turns running the show—and, in a sense, seizing control of the show.

If the way they seize control of the show is through feelings, it stands to reason that one way to change the show is to change the role feelings play in everyday life. I’m not aware of a...

Here’s the saying: Zen is for poets, Tibetan is for artists, and Vipassana is for psychologists. Like most stereotypes, this one exaggerates contrasts, but it does contain a valid point: Mindfulness meditation, the main vehicle of Vipassana, is a good way to study the human mind. At least, it’s a good way to study one human’s mind: yours. You sit down, let the mental dust settle, and then watch your mind work.

if this modular model is truly an accurate picture of the mind, and if Vipassana meditation—insight meditation—indeed gives us insights into the workings of the mind, then you might expect this kind of meditation to give us glimpses of a modular mind at work.

to see that your mind is wandering is to see part of what the Buddha meant when he challenged conventional conceptions of the self; if a CEO-self existed, then presumably the mind would obey its commands and focus on the breath when told to.

observing your mind in this unruly stage—trying to watch it as the default mode network rages on—can do more than suggest that the conscious “you” isn’t running the show; it can shed light on what is running the show, revealing a picture of the mind strikingly consistent with the modular model.

To see what I mean, just follow these four easy steps: (1) sit down on a cushion; (2) try to focus on your breath; (3) (this step is the easiest) fail to focus on your breath for very long; (4...

There are three recurring themes here. First, these thoughts involve the past and future, not the present; the one thing you’re not doing while having these thoughts is paying attention to what’s actually going on in the real world at this moment. Second, all of these thoughts involve you.

Third, most of these thoughts involve other people. This too is unsurprising, given what social animals people are. Indeed, it turns out there’s a fair amount of overlap between the default mode network and what brain scans have identified as the “theory of mind network”—the part of the brain involved in thinking about what other people are thinking.

Though the trains of thought that carry you away from direct experience can take you to lots of different places, pretty much all of those places seem to lie within the province of one of the sort of mental modules I’ve already described. Which is to say, modules that make perfect sense in evolutionary terms: modules that deal with attracting mates, keeping them, enhancing your status (which can mean derogating rivals), taking care of kin, tending to your friendships

The one glaring exception—the one thought in the list above that doesn’t seem to fit naturally into a major module—is number 5: looking forward to that beer you so richly deserve.

But another way to describe it is to say that, actually, the different modules are competing for your attention, and when the mind “wanders” from one module to another, what’s actually happening is that the second module has acquired enough strength to wrestle control of your consciousness away from the first module.

you do go on a Vipassana meditation retreat and slowly, haltingly, get better at focusing on your breath, you will probably lean increasingly toward the second hypothesis: it will seem more and more like your mind isn’t wandering within its own terrain so much as being hijacked by intruders.

And eventually these won’t seem so much like hijackings as attempted hijackings. Thoughts will arise, but they won’t hold your attention for quite so long before you return to your breath; they’ll fail to carry you away; the train will pull into the station, and you’ll watch it leave without ever getting on it.

My typical experience is more like getting on the train and then, after it’s left the station and is picking up speed, realizing I don’t want to be on it and jumping off.

One way to get the idea, Goldstein said, is to “imagine that every thought that’s arising in your mind is coming from the person next to you.” How would you be relating to these thoughts then? His point was that you wouldn’t be identifying with them. “The thought itself is appearing and disappearing like a sound, but being identified with it is something we’re adding.”

He seemed to be saying that thoughts, which we normally think of as emanating from the conscious self, are actually directed toward what we think of as the conscious self, after which we embrace the thoughts as belonging to that self.

I think some of our more generic illusions—including, perhaps, the idea that “we” generate our thoughts—are pretty deeply built into us by natural selection; though they’re influenced by life experiences, they’re on balance closer to being instincts than bad habits, which explains why uprooting them is so hard.

Though these teachers are inclined to say that “thoughts think themselves,” strictly speaking, I’d say modules think thoughts.

Still, you can see how, while observing the mind during meditation, it could seem like “thoughts think themselves”—because the modules do their work outside of consciousness, so, as far as the conscious mind can tell, the thoughts are coming out of nowhere.

the modular-mind model: the conscious self doesn’t create thoughts; it receives them.

Escaping this drama—seeing your thoughts as passing before you rather than emanating from you—can carry you closer to the not-self experience, to that moment when you “see” that there is no “you” in there doing the thinking or doing anything else, that moment when what seems like a metaphysical truth is unveiled.

but as a pragmatic strategy: regardless of whether a self exists, by jettisoning parts of what you think of as your self, you clarify your view of the world and become a better and happier person.

“When we have that basis of wisdom about the nature of thought, then we have more power to choose, okay, which thoughts are healthy . . . which thoughts are not so healthy—those we can let go.”