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

by Chris Niebauer

The brain is the subject and the mind is the verb, or as cognitive scientist Marvin Minsky put it, “The mind is what the brain does.”

Harvard neuroscientist Sara Lazar has shown that long-term meditators have a thicker cortex—the area of the brain that specializes in high-level decision-making.

fiftyyear-old meditators had a prefrontal cortex that looked like that of a twenty-five-year-old.

In other words, the self that you think you know is not real.

“Why are you unhappy? Because 99.9 percent of everything you think, and of everything you do, is for yourself—and there isn't one.”2

When the stories it creates don't evoke as strong a mental or emotional reaction, our suffering lessens as a result.

left brain is the dominant center for language.2 Importantly, this includes the inner speech we use when we talk to ourselves.3

When someone approaches you with a “this is the way it is” attitude, you can appreciate that this person is dominated by the left brain, that they are a servant to its master. As a result, there is no need to take their actions or attitudes personally; it's a biological function that they have not yet recognized.

we are not our thoughts and beliefs.

The left brain is dominant for dopamine, whereas the right brain is dominant for serotonin and norepinephrine.

Another interesting thing uncovered in pattern-perception research is how a participant's tendency to see patterns increased when the researchers threatened the participant's sense of self.

This is consistent with my view that 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.

An interesting experiment to find out might be to give AI all of the qualities of the left brain and then turn it loose. I believe that eventually it too would look within and believe that it has a self.

To live in a world of abstractions—based on language, concepts, beliefs, patterns, labels—is to live in a dream world rather than reality.

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. —Albert Einstein

the student couldn't and explained that it wasn't within his control to produce it at will, but rather it just happened. The master replied that if it wasn't within his control, then it was not part of his true nature.

another study found that subjects who were more grateful actually had more gray matter in certain parts of the right brain.14

When Sacks was facing his own death, he wrote a short book called Gratitude.16 In it, he wrote “I cannot pretend that I am without fear. But my predominate feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return. Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.” Being grateful is a choice that brings us away from the left-brain interpreter and into better alignment with the powers of the right brain.

that there is no place to go and nothing in particular to do, because you are already there and already doing it.