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

by Chris Niebauer

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.

When you are heavily identified with your left-brain interpreter where your beliefs are housed, it can seem as if they are no longer a constructed perspective created by thinking, but simply “the way things are.”

Experienced meditators describe how in meditation, as the mind begins to still and the voice in the head speaks less frequently, there is often a rush of thoughts that are most important to sustaining the self-image. This is how meditators can notice what mental stories and thought patterns are their most prevalent preoccupations, as the mind reverts to replaying these topics as a defense against slowing down. Some Eastern teachers explain that the mind “keeps talking” in this way because it's the only way it can exist. 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.

What say experienced meditators

The trick is to become less identified with your thoughts, to not take them so seriously, to see them as “happenings” rather than “the way things really are.”

Experiencing Right-Brain Consciousness So how can one become more conscious of the right-brain system? Well, in one sense you already are quite conscious of it, but the bias of seeing the world mostly through the lens of the interpreter only makes it seem like you're not. Of course, when I say “you,” I don't mean your ego, because the ego genuinely cannot experience the right-brain consciousness even if it wants to, as it is a left-brain construct only. Although there are many ways to access consciousness of right-brain activity, due to the lack of labels and words it can be difficult to express this form of consciousness. Still, let's look at a few of them quickly.

The practice of meditation in its various forms also brings you into right-brain consciousness. Zazen, or the seated meditation practiced in most Zen schools, often instructs beginners to become conscious of their breath, which brings their attention into the present moment. Another thing to note here is that for most people, breathing happens, but we aren't “conscious” of it in that we pay no attention to it. There's nothing to “think” about when we breathe, and that's another reason why so many meditation practices may accentuate it. Also consider the moving forms of meditation: tai chi and qigong.

It may be that right-brain consciousness is also what happens when one is “in the zone.” Basketball player Michael Jordan popularized this phrase because it is how he described making basket after basket without thinking about it. Others may find this state naturally while engaged in certain activities that don't rely on conscious thought, such as playing a musical instrument, engaging in physical activity, being creative in some form, praying or meditating, or even fixing a motorcycle—as in the classic novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig. Being in the zone is very similar to what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has called flow, using this term to describe the experience that someone has while being totally absorbed in the doing of something. He defines flow as: “Being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost.”4 On a side note, it is funny that he picked jazz as an example because as the great musician Louis Armstrong put it, “If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know.”

Finding meaning isn't just about improving your memorization skills, of course. Finding meaning may be the purpose of life itself. In one of the most powerful books showing the importance of meaning in the human condition, Man's Search for Meaning, psychiatrist Viktor Frankl describes his experiences in the Nazi death camps during WWII.4 He begins with a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” Frankl contended that an inmate's sense of meaning and purpose was a factor in his or her ability to survive in the camps. Frankl concluded that meaning is more important than happiness and called his form of therapy logotherapy because logos translates as “meaning.”

Most intelligence tests measure verbal ability and reasoning, so if your vocabulary is extensive, you will be at the top of the traditional IQ food chain. Of course, you could lack social intelligence, empathy, and even self-awareness, but these are largely unmeasured on such tests in a left-brain-dominated culture. You may even know someone who seems “so smart you can't have a normal conversation with them,” which speaks to the way we currently measure intelligence. Fortunately, this all began to change in the mid-1990s when Daniel Goleman popularized the idea of emotional intelligence or EQ (emotional quotient) in his book of the same name.9 EQ is defined as one's ability to recognize, understand, and manage their own emotions, as well as recognizing and understanding the emotions of others. In Goleman's more recent book, he looked at EQ and the brain and views EQ as consisting of four parts or elements: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management.10 He also references four areas of the brain deeply involved

In the absolute acceptance of all emotions, they no longer have control over you because you have given up trying to control them.

As you can imagine—and numerous studies have confirmed this—complaining leads to increased levels of anxiety and depression.

Next, consider this. What if the way to “win” the game of life is to discover experientially that it's all a game in the first place and that you are the creator of the game? I emphasize the experience of this discovery, and I suggest that this is what happened to the Buddha, Laotzu, and other ancient masters from the East so long ago. In their case, identification with the self collapsed, and so did all the mental suffering that went with it. If mental suffering has any benefit, perhaps it is to help you wake up to the game, to the grand drama that is this existence. As it is put in Buddhism, “when there is no mud, there is no lotus flower.” The Buddha was supposedly protected from suffering early in life, and if he had never ventured out to explore suffering, he would have never had his insights. If not for your suffering, you would not be where you are right now.

One way to play the game is to dismiss or forget the ideas presented here and continue to believe that the left brain is in fact you. You keep your identity and keep playing a role in this theatrical world we call modern society. In this realm of categories and interpretations, there are good days, but there are also bad days; there are friends, but also enemies. In this left-brain world, you can win, but sometimes you will lose. There is the thrill of victory but also the anxiety over defeat. The game is played with a dreadful sense of seriousness and urgency, as if it isn't a game at all.

Of course, there are some downsides in this approach. Life is viewed as short. Death and disease are the enemy, and you must work as hard as you can for as long as possible, trying to win with the most possible credits, be they material or spiritual. Like most of us, your actor ego is likely cast as only an extra in the background of the world's stage, but there is always the chance for stardom, and for that chance, many accept the suffering. There is nothing wrong with this choice, and currently and historically it is the most popular option on the planet. In a way, for those who are totally ignorant of all these ideas, we could say that they are playing the game so well that their left brains should be congratulated.

Going to the other extreme, another option would be to wholeheartedly pursue activities associated with the right side of the brain, in a search for what many refer to as enlightenment. Taking this option to the fullest means following a path similar to the saints, masters, and monks of the world's great spiritual traditions, and of course, the Buddha. Meditation, mindfulness, prayer, yoga, and maintaining a focus on compassion, gratitude, and the interconnected nature of all existence are all great places to start. Ultimately how to “get there” is largely a mystery and certainly something that cannot be articulated ...

A third option is what one might call a middle path, where you have one foot in each of the other two options. In this option, you take the game just seriously enough that you cheer when your kid wins a soccer game and feel sad when you don't get a promotion at work. Of course in either case, you don't take either the victory or defeat too seriously, because behind them both you maintain a hint of a smile and this smile symbolizes your understanding that without losing there can be no winning and that every win ultimately depends on a loss. In this middle path, you might look at a trashy magazine in the grocery store and simultaneously see it as gossipy nonsense and an expression of human creativity and spirituality. You might feel a surge of anger when someone cuts you off in traffic, while at the same time be laughing internally at the sillines...

No matter your choice in how to play, my hope is that by reading this book and becoming familiar with the left-brain interpreter and how it works, you can start to take it a little less seriously. Doing so will most certainly lessen your suffering. You may even stop trying so hard to change certain things in your life, or to become this or that in the future, because you begin to notice that the problems you are trying to overcome are mostly creations of the left-brain interpreter and you see how once they are overcome the left-brain interpreter will simply create new ones. This can also be true even for those pursuing a strict spiritual path, as indicated by the words of former Harvard professor Richard Alpert (now known as Ram Dass) when he said, “All spiritual practices are illusions created by illusionists to escape illusion.”