No Self, No Problem: How Neuropsychology Is Catching Up to Buddhism

by Chris Niebauer

the individual self is more akin to a fictional character than a real thing.

it is the process of thinking that creates the self, rather than there being a self having any independent existence separate from thought.

Practically every function of the mind has been mapped to the brain with one important exception: the self.

The left brain was simply making up interpretations, or stories, for events that were happening in a way that made sense to that side of the brain

Ramachandran found that the left brain's role is one of beliefs and interpretation and that it had little regard for reality in making up its interpretations.

the left brain was simply making up a story about reality without any regard for the truth.

several additional studies have shown that the left side of the brain excels at creating an explanation for what's going on, even if it isn't correct.

When the mind mistakes the map for reality, the result is that we carry on blindly in a world of language-based stories created by the left-brain interpreter.

the left brain mistakes the map for the

believing wholeheartedly in the fiction of self—in effect, making the left-brain interpreter the master instead of the servant—has unintended consequences—suffering being one of them.

The old Zen saying of “Right and wrong are the sickness of the mind” points to this dilemma precisely, as “right” and “wrong” are only beliefs that become a sickness when we take them so seriously they become “the way things are.”

the self is more like a verb than a noun. It only exists when we think it does, because the process of thinking creates it.

Our definition of self depends in part on our difference from others. There is no “me” without “not me.”

Rather than dividing things into categories and making judgments that separate the world, the right brain gives attention to the whole scene and processes the world as a continuum.

Metaphor is also the very heart of poetry. As Emily Dickinson writes, “Hope is the thing with feathers.” There is no hope in taking this literally, but the right brain sees the unusual way in which hope and feathers are connected. In this sense, perception itself is like poetry and our most basic conscious experiences are like writing a poem.

the left brain is considered the “master” of reality, and the right brain is portrayed as unconscious. I hope that you are now starting to realize that this is simply not the case. Rather, the right brain is a form of consciousness that does not rely on words.

Zen Buddhism has a teaching called prajnaparamita, which is typically translated as “the perfection of wisdom.” It's important to point out that the wisdom referred to here is not the same as intellectual knowledge, but a type of insight into the nature of reality that is beyond language and reasoning.

William James wrote about a nonsensory type of intelligence he called “fringe consciousness,” which according to James describes a vague “feeling of knowing” that doesn't seem to have a direct sensory or perceptual content to it.

Intuition Merriam-Webster's Dictionary defines intuition as “immediate apprehension or cognition without reasoning,” and “gaining direct knowledge or cognition without evident rational thought and inference.”

Perhaps this is intuition in a nutshell: the right brain senses information that isn't available to the left-brain interpreter and sends it over in the form of what is described as an inspiration or gut feeling that the left brain can't quite put into words and so it has reached the end of its ability to understand how it knows what it knows.

In Zen, there is no such thing as a wrong emotion, and therefore nothing to strive for or fight against. My students know very well not to tell me to “have a nice day”

complaints turn into the belief that there is something wrong with reality.

gratitude is a reflection of the right brain. To be clear, being grateful goes beyond simple acceptance of reality into the realm of being thankful for it. For instance, if the right brain could speak, rather than saying “I accept the fact that it is raining,” it might say, “I am so glad that it is raining.” Research has determined there is greater activity in the right brain when subjects experienced the sensations of gratitude,13 and another study found that subjects who were more grateful actually had more gray matter in certain parts of the right brain.

There is a section of the right brain called the right temporoparietal junction (RTPJ) that does nothing else except to think about other people's perspective.

right brain has more and longer fibrous connections both within itself and also to the rest of the brain.18 This greater neural connectivity allows the right brain to make novel connections between diverse ideas, and because of this it is often labeled as the creative side of the brain.