Meditations of a Buddhist Skeptic: A Manifesto for the Mind Sciences and Contemplative Practice by B. Alan Wallace

B. Alan Wallace is among the foremost practitioner-teachers of Buddhism today. He reports “while brought up in a Christian household, and even though I found great meaning in the teachings of Jesus, some of the church’s doctrines made no sense to me”. (Kindle Locations 71-72). He grew up in California, Scotland, and Switzerland. He started as an undergrad at UC San Diego and then he transferred to Göttingen in West Germany, moving from an ecology major at UCSD to a primary interest in philosophy and religion at Gottingen, where he studied the Tibetan language and Tibetan Buddhism. Then, instead of finishing his degree (great message for the parents, no doubt), in 1971 (I’m just transitioning from high school to college), he heads to Tibet. For the next 13 years he studied and meditated in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition in India and Europe, and he came to serve as a translator for the Dalai Lama. After this phase of his life, he returned to academia to complete a degree at Amherst College in physics and philosophy of science. After another meditation retreat, he entered graduate studies in religion at Stanford University. He completed his doctorate, focusing his studies on “the interface between Buddhism and Western science and philosophy”. (B. Alan Wallace website). Since then he has taught, written a number of books for both academic and popular audiences, and he continues to teach meditation. Having read several of his works and now in the midst of listening to podcasts of his meditation retreats, I find him one of the most intriguing, no-nonsense, and persuasive teachers of Buddhism active today. 

This book, his most recent “academic” book (2011), addresses topics important to him. One of the attractive aspects of Buddhism to me and to many others, especially those of us coming from Western traditions, is its radical empiricism and willingness to undergo scrutiny. Wallace scrutinizes the Buddhist tradition, but the main target of his skepticism is Western materialism. Wallace is especially critical of academic psychology for its abandonment of the legacy of William James, who valued and promoted introspection as important source of data about the mind. (Indeed, James is obviously in intellectual hero to Wallace, as well as a great many others—including me.) Instead of following the lead of James, psychology turned to Watson’s behaviorism (no mind, just observable behavior), which was wedded to the ideas of 19^th century physics. Wallace is uniquely qualified to challenge the citadel of materialism from his background in physics and philosophy of science combined with his experience in Buddhism. 

While critical of Western materialism (we’re just stuff & consciousness a mere by-product of brain activity), Wallace unabashedly asserts the traditional Buddhist view, which includes an emphasis on mind and consciousness as more than just brain activity and where the paranormal (not magic) exists. Wallace makes these assertions as one who has been on the other side of reality from the majority of Western scientists and philosophers who adhere to the simple materialist paradigm. Wallace also notes the importance of ethical behavior in Buddhism and its effect on our perception of the world. This, too, contrasts markedly with the value-free attitude of Western science. Wallace discusses phenomena like “the placebo effect”, which Western science shunts aside without addressing the implications that physically inert substances can effect with body when combined with the non-physical world of information (even false information). Many in the West know to reject Descartes’s dualism of mind and body, but they attempt to go around it by going all body, no mind. But mind—as in the form of information—is a part of our reality. 

In addition to criticizing the materialists, Wallace also criticizes those who sell “mindfulness” as simply the practice of observing what passes through the mind. This is not Buddhism. Buddhist mindfulness involves mindfulness of right conduct, effort, and livelihood, among other things. It’s not just “whatever”, but an attempt to monitor the contents of the mind. 

All of this simply touches the surface of all that Wallace addresses and argues. His appreciation of the history and enterprise of Western science, Western philosophy and psychology, and traditional Buddhism make him a formidable author. Yet, for all of the depth of his analysis and argument, the book is well written and argued so that it’s easy to follow. In short, he’s an outstanding teacher whom I can’t recommend highly enough (this comes from listening to his podcasts as well). If you want to come into the deep end of the pool, you not find many guides as worthwhile as Wallace.

The Master & His Emissary: The Divided Brain & the Making of the Modern World by Iain McGilchrist

Growing up in America as a member of the Baby Boom generation, I know that I’ve lived in the best place and the best time in the history of the world—or at least very close to it. Canada, some European countries, Australia, and later Japan can lay some claims to being the best places ever, but suffice it to say that I’ve been lucky. Yet, despite all the material comfort and security that my country and culture have allowed me, there’s still a sense that things aren’t as they should be. The twentieth century is full of contradictions: untold wealth and prosperity interrupted by horrific wars; deep economic depressions despite the existence of all the ingredients of prosperity; the threat of nuclear annihilation; a culture that sometimes seems alien to human concerns; and civilizations that degrade the natural environment with wanton indifference. Thus, despite my good fortune, I’ve been sympathetic to critiques of contemporary culture. My introduction to such a critique came from Theodore Roszak’s The Making of a Counter-Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition (1969), which I was assigned to read in my freshman year in college for my course “Introduction to Political Theory.” From that introduction, I went on to read the likes of Hannah Arendt, Lewis Mumford, Jacques Ellul, Phillip Rieff, the Frankfurt School, Jürgen Habermas, William Irwin Thompson, Wendell Berry, and others. I’ve found resonance with critiques of contemporary Western culture. And much of Asia and other developing regions have adopted Western culture, especially its economics and technology. I hasten to add that I’m well acquainted and sympathetic to the champions of our contemporary world, too, and as this is also “the best of times.” I appreciate the positive perspective as well as the negative.

I mention all this because now I have now encountered a new diagnosis and critique of many of the problems of Western culture that strikes me as uniquely insightful and truly ingenious.

College literature professor turned psychiatrist, Iain McGilchrist, has written a two-part book about the anatomical split in our brains and how that split in functions affects how we perceive the world and creates our culture. According to McGilchrist, we can consider our culture from the perspective of the different functions of the two different hemispheres of the brain. (For some further background, see my earlier post about McGilchrist’s RSA Animate presentation and the book he wrote as a follow-up to this masterwork under review here.) In the first part of the book, McGilchrist focuses on anatomical and functional details of the brain, with the well-known but often misunderstood division of the left and right hemispheres. The split is not, as first thought, a neat division of language and logic on the left versus vision, music, and feeling on the right. Functions for each of these skills draw on both sides of the brain. However, the brain is divided and is different on each side. In fact, it doesn’t even sit symmetrically within the cranium: it’s torqued (Yanklovian torque) as if someone had twisted it slightly from the bottom so that the right front is slightly larger than its left counterpart, and the left posterior just a bit larger than its right counterpart. Also, the two sides are joined by a bridge, the corpus callosum, which serves as the gatekeeper that regulates the traffic between the two halves. This (rather narrow) bridge provides a clue about the division of functions within the brain. The gatekeeper often performs its most important work when it inhibits traffic between the two halves. Why? Because each half has its own outlook or way of perceiving the world.

McGilchrist spends much of the book examining the two different ways each side of the brain perceives the world: the right deals with living, dynamic, unique, and context-dependent portions of the environment. The left side deals with (and creates) the static, still, and minutely focused parts of our attention. Each side has evolved to deal with two different needs. The two hemispheres of the brain cooperate, but their perspectives are mostly separate. Thus, language involves both sides of the brain, but the left side, with its emphasis on static, detailed information dominates vocabulary and syntax issues. Thus, while an impulse toward speech may originate in the right brain, those impulses must pass to the left side to obtain full expression. Here is where stroke victims and the subjects of split-brain surgeries (severing the corpus callosum to alleviate epileptic seizures) provide amazing clues about the different functions of the two hemispheres. McGilchrist wades through this research to deepen our understanding and appreciation of these issues.

But if the book were only a catalog of “our amazing divided brain!” it would prove exciting but not profound. The profundity value of the book comes from McGilchrist’s ability to trace the effects of this division of the brain into daily life, especially into a portrait of its influence on the formal culture of the West. (He doesn’t address Eastern culture, begging off for lack of acquaintance.) McGilchrist’s knowledge of Western culture, chiefly literary and philosophical culture, is impressive. McGilchrist argues that Western culture since the Enlightenment, and especially after the Romantic reaction to the Enlightenment, has been dominated by a left-brain perspective. The left-brain focuses on the static, the manufactured (i.e., the not living, not organic), and that which we can manipulate and control and which therefore pays easily identifiable dividends. The left-side also prefers the literal to the metaphoric and the artificial to the natural. 

McGilchrist finds this especially true in the 20th-century when examining contemporary literature and philosophy, as well as the broader cultural milieu. McGilchrist locates times in Western cultural history when attitudes, beliefs, and practices reflected in the two different perspectives and functions of the brain were balanced, such as in Periclean Athens and the Renaissance. Problems arose early, on the other hand, when the pre-Socratics, such as Heraclitus, with his emphasis on flux and change, were shunted aside by Plato and Aristotle, who preferred the static and established  “reason” as the ideal. Indeed, from Plato through Kant, Western philosophy emphasized the left-hemisphere perspective (with some exception for Spinoza: “Spinoza was one of the few philosophers, apart from Pascal, between Plato and Hegel to have a strong sense of the right-hemisphere world.” McGilchrist, Iain (2010-08-16). The Master and His Emissary (Kindle Locations 3804-3805). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.). In the broader culture, religion offered a good deal of counter-balance to the left-sidedness of philosophy. McGilchrist argues that with Hegel, philosophy begins to take a corrective turn. McGilchrist, following Leon Sass, agrues that modern culture displays many of the traits of schizophrenia. Publisher’s Weekly writes of Sass’s book Madness and Modernism: Insanity in the Light of Modern Art, Literature, and Thought:

Does the schizophrenic's chaotic inner world resemble modern art and literature? Sass, a clinical psychologist and Rutgers professor, argues that schizophrenia and modernism display striking affinities: fragmentation, defiance of authority, multiple viewpoints, self-referentiality and rejection of the external world for an omnipotent self or, alternately, a total loss of self. While the parallels he draws often seem superficial, there is much to ponder in Sass's notion that schizophrenia's core traits are exaggerations of tendencies fostered by our culture. 

As this quote suggests, McGilchrist, following Sass, finds striking resemblances that McGilchrist identifies as a manifestation of a left-brain perspective run awry. Identifying and counter-acting this trend is a defining part of McGilchrist’s project. He writes:

Hegel, along with Heraclitus and Heidegger, has a particular place in the unfolding story of the relationship between the cerebral hemispheres, in that, it seems to me, his philosophy actually tries to express the mind's intuition of its own structure – if you like, the mind cognising itself. His spirit is like an unseen presence in this book, and it is necessary to devote a few pages to his heroic attempts to articulate, in relation to the structure of the mind or spirit (Geist), what lies almost beyond articulation, even now that we have knowledge of the structure of the brain. 

McGilchrist, Iain. The Master and His Emissary (Kindle Locations 5477-5481). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

Along with Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein, among German-language philosophers, receive extended and sympathetic treatment (demonstrating that McGilchrist willingly suffers through some dense and challenging prose to retrieve nuggets of insight). Also receiving favorable treatment and consideration are lesser-known figures like Husserl, Scheler, and Merleau-Ponty: each gives voice and insight into the function of the right brain. Finally, McGilchrist considers the American pragmatists, John Dewey and William James, for their useful perspectives on philosophy and the organic nature of reality.  

My choice of the Nietzschean fable of the Master and his emissary suggests that right at the heart of the relationship between the hemispheres I see a power struggle between two unequal entities, and moreover one in which the inferior, dependent party (the left hemisphere) starts to see itself as of primary importance.

Id. at 5481-5483.

Is all of this worth the effort? I think so. It’s a very valid and live issue, I believe. How we view our world, what perspectives we take, will change the course of our actions. If we do in fact give predominance to the left-brain perspective, we will reap consequences that will likely backfire on us. Like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, we have loosed its magic on the world, but we have lost control. We need the Master, the living world of the right brain, to come to the rescue.

Better Than TED Talks? RSAnimate & The Divided Brain

Two topics here:

1. Is RSAnimate better than TED talks? Of course, it's not a contest, but this type of presentation I find very lively & engaging. The visual (a skill that I deeply admire, probably because of my lack of talent) really adds to the presentation without dumbing-down the presentation.

2. The brain & neuroscience research is a fascinating topic & one that continues to grow and give us insight. The idea--a flawed one I believe--that divides Reason & Passion goes back at least to Plato in the West, with a big boost from Descartes along the way. But while it has some metaphorical value, taken too literally it's false. This view, better than the old Left Brain-Right Brain exact division of function, gives us a new view of ourselves that should prove very useful and practical.

Found courtesy of a Jonathan Haidt Tweet.

Daniel Kahneman: Thinking, Fast & Slow

Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast & Slow was a delight to listen to. Kahneman, the psychologist who won a Nobel in economics, shares his insights from years of research and study about why we do what we do. He describes our brains as having 2 separate systems, one fast and one slow (among other characteristics). These different systems lead to quite different outcomes, depending on which one we use in any given situation (and "fast" of course, always arrives first!). Read (or listen) to this book and you'll have a better understanding of yourself and those around you. Really delightful, and told in some measure through autobiography. 

John Horgan: Rational Mysticism

John Horgan's book is a tour through the intersection of science and mysticism. Of course, defining "mysticism" is not an easy task, and neither scholars nor the public have any sense of agreement of what this terms should mean. For Horgan, it means non-traditional, perhaps esoteric (an older term), views of reality. Horgan begins his tour with the doyen of religious studies, the venerable Huston Smith, and then moves on the the grand-synthesizer, Ken Wilber. Both of these men are big picture thinkers. From these high-altitude views (although both are practitioners as well), Horgan tours various thinkers like James Austin, Andrew Newberg, S. Grof, Susan Blackmore, and others. Each as a different take; none can provide a final, definitive answer. It's all too big, in one sense.

Horgan's tour is worthwhile, as he is at once inquisitive and skeptical; scientific (he's a science writer) and a seeker. In the end, he gives us no final answers, but more important and worthwhile questions. In a sense, we leave this book as much seekers as when we started, but with a few more insights.

The Culture Code by Clotaire Rapaille

I finished this book recently. I read it on the recommendation of Karl Rove. Karl Rove! Well, yes, in a sense. I attended a seminar for plaintiffs' lawyers recently, and the speaker told how an Atlanta attorney discovered that his beach house neighbor was none other than the prince of darkness. Discussing tradecraft (did Rove know that he was talking to the enemy, a trial lawyer?), Rove revealed his admiration for the work of Rapaille. The trial lawyer looked at Rapaille's work, specifically, The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy as They Do
(2007, 224 p.). Rapaille has two main ideas that he works from:

1. The theory of the triune brain developed by Yale neuroscientist Paul Maclean, which postulates that humans have, in effect, three brains. The survival-oriented brain of the reptiles (eat, sleep, fight or flight, and sex); a limbic brain for emotions that we share with other mammals, and the neo-cortex, which provides our distinguishing reason. Rapaille believes that when fear is in the air, the reptile brain, motivated by fear, takes over and guides our actions, reason be damned.
   
2. Rapaille, who trained as an anthropologist and psychiatrist, has done a sophisticated form of group testing to discover deeply held attitudes toward food, sex, doctors, nurses, hospitals, health, cars, the nation, and so on. These are the "culture codes" that he says predominate in a society and that differ from one society to another.
   

The book makes a lot of sense and provides what I believe to be very insightful perspectives on group attitudes here in the U.S. (especially important for jury work), as well as differences between the cultures of different nations. This was a fun and interesting read. If you want to know more about the attitudes of your fellow citizens, as well as obtaining a sense of how we differ from others, I highly recommend this book.