For him who both inwardly and outwardly does not delight in sensation, consciousness ceases.
Name and shape are totally stopped by the cessation of consciousness.
Name and shape are, in brief, the body and spirit that give shape to individual humans.
In other words, the Buddha rid himself of all desires. There was no comfort or discomfort; he did not gain pleasure from any sensation; and he stopped himself from distinguishing things, thinking “this is that,” and “that is this.” He achieved a state of nothingness. A state where one does not even think to desire, or think to give up a desire. A state of nothingness where even thinking about such things was unnecessary. In the West they’d call it an absolute nothingness, more absolute than emptiness. One is not attached to anything. Those who achieve that state do not return to the endless cycle of death and rebirth. They are outside the process of samsara. They live in a state of nothingness far removed from comfort or discomfort. To rephrase this, they can find no need to be reborn. They have achieved salvation, or a state of nirvana. Nirvana is the absolute state one achieves after abandoning all desires, eradicating sensation, and not distinguishing between things. It is nothing. It is also a final state where one does not even recognize oneself as nothing. How terrifying! And what comes after salvation? That’s what I start to wonder. But maybe not thinking is itself “salvation.” Buddha was not conscious of becoming a god after escaping samsara, and one gets the impression that he never even considered that possibility. All that’s left is a state of ease. How about that? Would that make him the world’s strongest man, or what? He was freed from the burdens of the world, and no longer even cared about the gods. In a sense, he surpassed the gods, didn’t he? He was free from their demands, their claiming things should be this way or that way. Buddha was totally free. A human had, on a spiritual level, surpassed the gods. At least I think one could say that.
This is what one man thought almost twenty-five hundred years ago. Of course the teachings of Christ are amazing, but the Buddha was also quite the man.
Let one not be with a natural consciousness, nor with a mad consciousness, nor without consciousness, nor with consciousness gone; for him who is thus constituted form ceases to exist.
“Nor without consciousness, nor with consciousness gone.” These words can be written down easily enough, but they are difficult to comprehend, right? How does one interpret them? Maybe one could say that nirvana is also a state that surpasses the logic of written words. Or one could say that when one reaches nirvana, only then can they understand these words.
These words may make one think of Uchoten, the Heaven of Nothingness. Some say the Buddha flew off to a different world. But at this time, the buds of the “Middle Path” had sprouted, but had not risen to the foreground. Many teachings, like that of the “Three Worlds,” had not appeared yet either. Those thoughts stem from the Buddhism of later ages.
You have all already started to wonder, I suspect—in the end, how could this ‘religion’ grow?
Exactly. In this form, it would be difficult. Everyone would have to live without romantic love. No one would have children. Humanity would go extinct. One can’t imagine a world where normal people strive to reach Nirvana. Thus, Buddhism was transformed. But I don’t mean to say that Buddhism now has completely strayed from the Buddha’s teachings. I’ll touch on that again at the end.
Do you remember the words of the Buddha that I mentioned at the beginning of this talk?
One must sever oneself from the root of delusion, the thought that thinking brings wisdom.
Those words that contradicted Descartes’s famous claim two thousand years before he made it. I’m an amateur intellectual, and recently I’ve been researching the brain. The brain and consciousness. What is this thing called consciousness that we’ve come to use to think about ourselves? During my research I realized that the Buddha’s words closely resemble some of the most recent theories of neuroscience.
4
Matsuo-san’s Lectures, I, Part 2
Our brains are composed of over one hundred billion neurons and the synapses that connect them all. It is amazing to even imagine. Over a hundred billion! That’s an absurd number.
The human body is made up of countless atoms. Another tremendous number.
Let’s look at proteins, for example. They play an incredibly important role in building the human body.
It’s said that the fifteen or sixteen million kinds of proteins in the human body are made by the combination of just twenty-four different kinds of amino acids. Amino acids make proteins, which in turn serve as the building blocks of the human body. If we look at just one of those amino acids, alanine, we see it’s made up of H3C, NH2, OH, and O. It’s a chemical compound comprised of different atoms. And of course the brain is also comprised of countless atoms on the micro level. Atoms are made up of even smaller parts: protons, neutrons, and electrons. And protons and neutrons are in turn made up of quarks, which are even smaller. The smallest object the average scientist currently believes to exist is the quark. When we measure the size of an atom, we use angstroms (Å), and one angstrom measures one ten millionth of a millimeter. You can see that they are extremely small. All of the human body is comprised of chemical compounds. And every time I repeat this it amazes me, but the hundred million neurons in our brains are likewise made up of these chemical compounds. Neurons are made up of atoms, and function through micro-level chemical activities and the firing of countless electric signals. This is amazing to think about. But it’s really how the brain works.
So how is consciousness born out of all these chemical reactions? It’s quite strange, isn’t it? What is consciousness in the first place? It’s the “me” that thinks this or that. But what is this “me?” “We” think on our own, and act on our own, right? I’m talking now because I am willing myself to talk. But, in actuality, there has been some startling research.
A scientist by the name of Benjamin Libet conducted a famous experiment. According to his results, before humans are conscious of trying to do something, the parts of their brains responsible for those actions are already activated without their even noticing. What does this mean? Basically, before you are conscious of trying to move your finger, the neural circuitry in charge of moving that finger has already been activated.
According to the results of Libet’s experiment, .35 seconds after your brain tries to move your finger, your consciousness—in other words, “you”—become aware that you are trying to move it. Point two seconds after your consciousness, or “you” becomes aware of trying to move it, it actually moves.
And plenty of neuroscientists agree this is correct.
There is no one part of the brain that controls consciousness, or “me.”
Consciousness and “I” are born out of the broader work of the brain.
Without brains, consciousness and “I” would not exist.
The activity of the brain reflects consciousness and “me.”
But consciousness and “I” have no causal effect on the actions of the brain.
What does all this mean? Of course there is the possibility that consciousness and “I” have no agency at all, and my existence is merely a “mirror” reflecting the activity of my brain. When “I” and my consciousness are thinking this or that, I am not actually deciding what I will do or what I am thinking about. I am just convinced that it is me deciding those things. In actuality, our brains are working in some realm we can’t sense, and we are simply following behind, tracing our brains’ decisions. This is the true nature of consciousness and “me.” It’s as if “we” are all just sitting in seats called the “self,” watching our own lives pass by.
Huh. The crowd’s gotten a little noisy. You must be thinking, How ridiculous! Yes, it really is ridiculous. We’ll come back to this once more at the end, but first, let’s go on.
Now, I want you to reme
mber the Buddha’s words.
One must cut oneself from the root of delusion, the thought that thinking brings wisdom.
This may mean that without doing any science experiments or dissecting anyone’s brain, just by staring at his own consciousness and meditating, the Buddha discovered that his consciousness, his “I,” didn’t have any true form. And that’d be truly impressive. He might have discovered that what’s working is not “me,” but these chemical compounds that comprise my brain. What starts any activity is not “I,” but a “brain” made of “chemical compounds,” which “I” cannot even see. “I” simply follow along. But how did the Buddha observe this?
I mentioned earlier that the human body is composed of countless atoms. And since we eat food, and then relieve ourselves, within a year the atoms that make up our bodies are completely replaced. In other words, the atoms that make up this finger of mine will all be replaced. My finger maintains the same shape and qualities because of DNA, and because the atoms are made to recreate the same specifications. The atoms must be replaced because all materials, and this includes those that make up humans, must obey the second law of thermodynamics. To put it very simply, on the atomic level, if you just leave something alone, it will grow disordered. Even solid objects eventually break down. To prevent that, living organisms must continually replace the atoms that make up their bodies with fresh ones. If they didn’t, their atoms would move toward disorder and their bodies would fail. So eating serves another necessary role besides nutrition. DNA, deoxyribonucleic acid, is also a chemical compound. It’s kind of scary, right? To think the Buddha might have seen the world that way.
Even looking at people, maybe he could see them not as “humans,” but rather as “loose collections of atoms that are constantly changing but maintain a solid form.” Or maybe even as “bodies that are constantly changing, yet somehow convince themselves that there’s such a thing as the ‘self.’” Maybe when he saw someone bump into someone else, he saw nothing more than one loose collection of atoms bumping into another loose collection of atoms. Because he did not find pleasure in sensation, he didn’t feel anything when his brain showed him the world “the way people see the world.” Of course he wouldn’t consider the meaning or value of it. He would just remain in a calm state where countless atoms moved through space, flittering all around.
To tell the truth, when I meditate in this garden, that is the state of mind that I try to achieve. Well, that’s a lie. In truth, I want to achieve a state of selflessness while maintaining my interest in women. [Laughter.] Don’t you agree? Women are just so wonderful! [Laughter.] But there’s a contradiction between trying to abandon all desires and wanting to hold on to my desire for women. In a sense, that would be a harder state to achieve than the one Buddha did. [Laughter.]
Well, that’s it for the major points today, but let’s talk about the brain again for a moment.
Earlier I said that when “I” and my consciousness are thinking this or that, I am not actually deciding what I will do or what I am thinking about. That I am just convinced that I am deciding those things, and in actuality, my brain is working in some space I can’t sense and I am simply following behind, tracing my brain’s decisions. So, then, why does this thing called consciousness appear in our minds? Do we need it?
This has something to do with evolution. According to one explanation, lower-level consciousness without the conception of self, a proto-consciousness, was born somewhere along the evolutionary path from reptiles to birds, and also from reptiles to mammals.
At this stage of the evolutionary process, a complex two-way circuit between the part of the brain called the thalamus and the part called the cortical layer was formed, leading to proto-consciousness. Why? It seems that consciousness allows response to all sorts of situations, and is thus beneficial for living things. The brain is reflected in the mirror of consciousness, and it becomes easier for the activity of the brain to understand itself.
Furthermore, it is said that the reason “I” came to be is because this system grew even more complex. High-level consciousness arose at a more advanced stage of the evolutionary process. It is said that humans and maybe orangutans have “higher consciousness.” I think dolphins and chimpanzees may have it as well.
Apparently, the reason consciousness becomes an “I” at higher levels is deeply related to memory.
To maintain a large memory, it is necessary to have a sense of unity, an idea that one being experienced all these remembered things. Without that, there’d be confusion. That’s why this being called “me” was born of the “loose collection of constantly changing atoms that maintains a solid form.”
The brain decides all, and my consciousness and I just follow along. However, one mustn’t think, “Well, if it’s all just my brain, it doesn’t matter what I think. I might as well just destroy myself.” This is no good because if you think that way, your brain will come to think that way as well. (Properly speaking, you are your brain, after all). So it does matter if you try to destroy yourself. I will say it again, if you think you should just destroy yourself, your brain will become self-destructive as well.
Of course what I am saying now is not verifiable neuroscientific “truth.” But there is an argument that the brain is the device that runs things, but our consciousness has veto power. It’s convincing, but it’s not one of the leading theories. There’s also an old explanation that our consciousness can alter the state of our brains. Consciousness is agency. We cannot say for sure if either theory is true. So just remember that there are several arguments for why you shouldn’t think negative thoughts.
There’s no need to worry about this in your day-to-day life. Besides, it might all just be erroneous scientific conclusions. However, if you ever find yourself questioning your consciousness, thinking, “Maybe I’m not actually deciding anything,” or “Maybe I’m really just a spectator,” then the clashes within your ego, the fights and wars, appear truly hilarious. You may be able to see your wallowing (and don’t worry, wallowing itself is a good thing!) from a different perspective. You could think to yourself, “Ah, my brain is upset again! This collection of atoms is such a pain!” And then one thing becomes clear: how unbelievably incredible the system of the brain that produces “consciousness” is. One hundred something million neurons working nonstop at unbelievable speeds and intensities. Any being with that sort of system of consciousness within itself is truly incredible. Without consciousness and “me,” the brain wouldn’t be able to grasp its own functioning. In other words, it’s the same as saying you are your brain. And when I say “you are your brain,” both “you” and “your brain” are unique. I’ll talk about this again later.
However . . . If this is true, it leads to a terrifying conclusion. Souls may not exist.
That is, if one defines a soul as the way your consciousness goes on existing after you die, that wispy thing that climbs its way up to some heaven . . . If consciousness is just the product of the mechanisms of the brain—simply a mirror that reflects the functioning of the brain—then there’s a good chance souls don’t exist. Without the systems in the brain, consciousness wouldn’t exist. When the brain dies, consciousness also vanishes.
In physics, the existence of the soul is generally rejected. But . . . I think they exist. Souls. And I think they exist without contradicting physics. I will discuss this some other time.
Finally, I’d like to mention the Buddha one last time. Obviously, I cannot know if the Buddha I’ve described here actually existed. I’m just an amateur intellectual, and I’ve just put together lots of different information and facts. I don’t care if you think I’m trying to start a new sort of Buddhist sect or cult, some sort of religion. But, as I said before, what I’ve mentioned about the brain does not contradict Buddhism. I’d like to end by quoting Hajime Nakamura again.
“I find the fact that the content of Shakyamuni’s (the Buddha’s) enlightenme
nt, the starting point of Buddhism, has been passed down differently in different traditions to be both a serious problem and one of the defining qualities of Buddhism.
“First of all, there is no singular teaching in Buddhism. Gautama himself (the Buddha) did not want the content of his enlightenment to be explained formulaically. He explained it differently depending on the circumstances and whom he was speaking to.
In other words, the Buddha said many different things depending on whom he was teaching. To quote further:
“With his gracious and calm attitude, the Buddha managed to include even heretics in his teachings. I think part of the reason Buddhism was able to spread so widely in later years and provide that warm light to human hearts was because of these aspects of the personality of the founder Gautama (the Buddha).”
What a beautiful way of thought Buddhism is! The Buddha may have been quite eccentric, but he was a good guy.
Well, this talk went all over the place. Let’s end here.
Mineno went out to the porch.
It was already dark outside, and a gentle breeze stirred the trees. So calm, Mineno thought. When I’m here, time passes slowly. Even though my consciousness pains me so much. Even though my consciousness shows me all these things.
Had he finished watching the DVD? The talks were complicated. She didn’t always get them.
She heard the sound of footsteps behind her, and felt herself automatically tense up.
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