Do you think this is could be akin to a deliberate, extended attentional blink? Or something to do with being able voluntarily to press an attentional ‘master switch’ ? Maybe the meditator is able, with enough practice, to sufficiently flatten the phenomenological landscape such that no one thing has any greater importance/weight than any other thing and can then go one step further and voluntarily ‘de-attend’ to the landscape altogether? Or the consequence of achieving complete parity of all phenomenal experience is to trip the switch? Could the blue spot locus coeruleus-noradrenaline be involved?
Yes for sure, that’s why I started following your work:) I read it with huge interest and from a practice perspective it makes perfect sense to me. To the extent that it is possible to ‘feel’ a cognitive process, it ‘feels’ as if the locus of who we are as subjective observers - that which attends - stabilises to an unwavering still point at the centre of a limitless field of possibilities which can all be held without preference (although it is possible to choose how we construe that field so we could choose to give it an overall context of loving kindness or the ‘here and now’ or ‘consciousness’). I suppose I think of choiceless awareness or pure mind as a state of suspended decision making or action less, non-preferential probability. Our attention is completely ‘free’ to
move in any direction at any time and yet there is no uncertainty - moksha - but uncertainty inevitably reappears the instant a choice has to be made - dukkha. I haven’t yet been persuaded that non-dual awareness is a necessarily beneficial state to attain or remain in though. I know that attention isn’t a single mechanism in the brain but wondered whether in your recent research with the ‘hibernating’ meditator, you had been able to identify any kind of ‘master switch’ which might ‘turn deliberate attention off’ altogether and I was reading about attentional blinks and the blue spot and wondered whether it could be linked to that mechanism. I am a little obsessed with the idea that the capacity to attend deliberately is indivisible from agentive self at the moment:). But I can wait for your next paper!!
Thanks for the article Ruben and spreading nirodha. The five aggregates can also be formulated the other way round as refractory stages of awareness, posing a view that nirodha might be akin to experiencing the non-refracted advaita notion of the "Self", unclothed of illusory forms.
I am skeptical of a brain shutting off. Even hibernation doesn’t do that. Neurons rely on spiking for survival as well since they exchange many necessary resources when they do. I guess a primitive state that just refreshes the state of all neurons isn’t unlikely but I am left wondering when and how do they wake up from this state. Thanks for the essay , I will check the pdf as well.
I find your research fascinating and come at it from the point of view of a Buddhist and a scholar of the Prajñāpāramitā literature. I would add that nirodha is cessation and the subsequent state is variously called "extinction" (nirvāṇa) or "absence" (śūnyatā). Nirodha is a process, nirvāṇa is a resultant state.
The skandhas are tricky because they are never really defined. I've proposed an epistemic reading.
Its most basic sense, rūpa is to the eye as sound is to the ear (and as touch is the body). Rūpa-skandha refers to the *appearance* of any sensory experience. To translate this as "body" is wrong, and as "matter" is grossly wrong.
Vedanā is what Lisa Feldman-Barrett calls *valence*. The positive or negative hedonic quality of experience that occurs before we even identify the experience
Saṃjñā in ordinary Sanskrit means refers to identification and naming. As a skandha it refers to recognising that we are having a particular type of experience.
Saṃskāra is a term drawn from Vedic religion. A man has various rites of passage (saṃskāra) in which a priest performs a series of ritual actions (karman). Ergo, in Buddhism, a saṃskāra is an opportunity to perform karma, which is also associated with conscious intentions (cetanā).
Vijñāna refers to discriminating the object of the sensory experience.
Thus the skandhas reflect a process of objectification of experience (an epistemic process, not a metaphysical process). If the acme of Buddhism is precisely the cessation and absence of sensory experience, then objectifying experience is missing the point. It only leads to proliferation of concepts (prapañca).
The skandhas are concerned with sensory experience and they are entirely absent in the general absence following cessation. There is no sensory experience to objectify. Note that I don't say that the skandhas don't exist. Rather, we are unaware of the processes that contribute to sensory experience, because sensory experience itself is absent.
Thanks for these thorough reflections. I would add that the resultant mind that follows cessation is important, since at least in Buddhism the aim seems to be freedom from the fetters in ordinary life.
In terms of tradition, the key is *intention*. The Buddha defined karma in terms of conscious intentions (cetanā). Undergoing cessation and extinction leaves one feeling that one's actions are spontaneous and not linked to conscious intentions. Such people talk about feeling that they become "egoless" or "selfless". If actions are not linked to intentions one does not create karma and one will inevitably be free of rebirth.
One has to remember that "ordinary life" is inherently painful and difficult and ends in death. Ordinary life is not perfectable. The awakened may enjoy a sense of freedom, but they are really waiting to die one last time in order to be completely free.
Do you think this is could be akin to a deliberate, extended attentional blink? Or something to do with being able voluntarily to press an attentional ‘master switch’ ? Maybe the meditator is able, with enough practice, to sufficiently flatten the phenomenological landscape such that no one thing has any greater importance/weight than any other thing and can then go one step further and voluntarily ‘de-attend’ to the landscape altogether? Or the consequence of achieving complete parity of all phenomenal experience is to trip the switch? Could the blue spot locus coeruleus-noradrenaline be involved?
Wow, have you by chance read our paper? We pretty much make this argument:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014976342100261X
Yes for sure, that’s why I started following your work:) I read it with huge interest and from a practice perspective it makes perfect sense to me. To the extent that it is possible to ‘feel’ a cognitive process, it ‘feels’ as if the locus of who we are as subjective observers - that which attends - stabilises to an unwavering still point at the centre of a limitless field of possibilities which can all be held without preference (although it is possible to choose how we construe that field so we could choose to give it an overall context of loving kindness or the ‘here and now’ or ‘consciousness’). I suppose I think of choiceless awareness or pure mind as a state of suspended decision making or action less, non-preferential probability. Our attention is completely ‘free’ to
move in any direction at any time and yet there is no uncertainty - moksha - but uncertainty inevitably reappears the instant a choice has to be made - dukkha. I haven’t yet been persuaded that non-dual awareness is a necessarily beneficial state to attain or remain in though. I know that attention isn’t a single mechanism in the brain but wondered whether in your recent research with the ‘hibernating’ meditator, you had been able to identify any kind of ‘master switch’ which might ‘turn deliberate attention off’ altogether and I was reading about attentional blinks and the blue spot and wondered whether it could be linked to that mechanism. I am a little obsessed with the idea that the capacity to attend deliberately is indivisible from agentive self at the moment:). But I can wait for your next paper!!
Thanks for the article Ruben and spreading nirodha. The five aggregates can also be formulated the other way round as refractory stages of awareness, posing a view that nirodha might be akin to experiencing the non-refracted advaita notion of the "Self", unclothed of illusory forms.
Thanks
you're welcome!
Interesting read
I am skeptical of a brain shutting off. Even hibernation doesn’t do that. Neurons rely on spiking for survival as well since they exchange many necessary resources when they do. I guess a primitive state that just refreshes the state of all neurons isn’t unlikely but I am left wondering when and how do they wake up from this state. Thanks for the essay , I will check the pdf as well.
I guess one could argue that what we are left with in terms of brain activity during such cessation is neural noise.
I find your research fascinating and come at it from the point of view of a Buddhist and a scholar of the Prajñāpāramitā literature. I would add that nirodha is cessation and the subsequent state is variously called "extinction" (nirvāṇa) or "absence" (śūnyatā). Nirodha is a process, nirvāṇa is a resultant state.
The skandhas are tricky because they are never really defined. I've proposed an epistemic reading.
Its most basic sense, rūpa is to the eye as sound is to the ear (and as touch is the body). Rūpa-skandha refers to the *appearance* of any sensory experience. To translate this as "body" is wrong, and as "matter" is grossly wrong.
Vedanā is what Lisa Feldman-Barrett calls *valence*. The positive or negative hedonic quality of experience that occurs before we even identify the experience
Saṃjñā in ordinary Sanskrit means refers to identification and naming. As a skandha it refers to recognising that we are having a particular type of experience.
Saṃskāra is a term drawn from Vedic religion. A man has various rites of passage (saṃskāra) in which a priest performs a series of ritual actions (karman). Ergo, in Buddhism, a saṃskāra is an opportunity to perform karma, which is also associated with conscious intentions (cetanā).
Vijñāna refers to discriminating the object of the sensory experience.
Thus the skandhas reflect a process of objectification of experience (an epistemic process, not a metaphysical process). If the acme of Buddhism is precisely the cessation and absence of sensory experience, then objectifying experience is missing the point. It only leads to proliferation of concepts (prapañca).
The skandhas are concerned with sensory experience and they are entirely absent in the general absence following cessation. There is no sensory experience to objectify. Note that I don't say that the skandhas don't exist. Rather, we are unaware of the processes that contribute to sensory experience, because sensory experience itself is absent.
Thanks for these thorough reflections. I would add that the resultant mind that follows cessation is important, since at least in Buddhism the aim seems to be freedom from the fetters in ordinary life.
In terms of tradition, the key is *intention*. The Buddha defined karma in terms of conscious intentions (cetanā). Undergoing cessation and extinction leaves one feeling that one's actions are spontaneous and not linked to conscious intentions. Such people talk about feeling that they become "egoless" or "selfless". If actions are not linked to intentions one does not create karma and one will inevitably be free of rebirth.
One has to remember that "ordinary life" is inherently painful and difficult and ends in death. Ordinary life is not perfectable. The awakened may enjoy a sense of freedom, but they are really waiting to die one last time in order to be completely free.