Misperceptions of Being Separate

There is a fundamental discrepancy between Western and Eastern perceptions of the way in which each of us exists, relative to the rest of the universe. While those of us in the West tend to view ourselves as individual entities that stand apart from creation, people in the East see themselves submerged into a unitary whole. While we in the West are comfortable with our unique separateness, those in the East take comfort in feeling connected to it all. While we prize our distinctiveness, they value their community.

This sense of distinctness and independence is strong within us Westerners. We absorb it from our culture and come to accept it as a given. The concept permeates our social and political lives. We come to see ourselves as distinctive and different individuals. We are oriented toward personal goals of success and achievement. We seek equality in personal relationships, or, alternatively, to be in a superior position in hierarchical relationships.

In contrast, people in the East do not like to stand out from the crowd. Rather than seeking personal accomplishments they value harmonious social relations. For example, there is no word for “individualism” in Chinese; the closest the language comes is the term for “selfishness.”

This significant difference between Western and Eastern perspectives is largely responsible for how a Westerner struggles with Eastern religious perspectives that describe a oneness to everything. Buddhism expresses our Western feelings of separateness from the universe as an illusion. Some in the West might talk about being “one with it all,” but that often comes from a limited, new-age interpretation.

I became a student of Buddhism a few decades ago, and have benefited from bringing meditation and mindfulness into my life, but I still struggle with understanding how I may let go of my Western image of being separate from it all. It's just too ingrained within me. It’s too easy to convince myself that I may intellectually comprehend my unity with it all, but deep in my gut I can't help but feel separate... often even isolated.

A recent idea came to me in meditation, that may help me feel more a part of it all, but it may well take a while for me to own the concept. All of my perceptions of myself or the world—my very understanding of existence—culminate in electrical signals in my brain. When I view a tree, photons enter my eye, impinge upon receptors on my retina, which send electrical impulses to my brain.  My total perception of the tree is that set of signals.

Similarly, sound wave vibrations are funneled into my ear canal, tickle three little bones in my middle ear, which induce vibrations on my cochlea, which then get transformed into other kinds of electrical signals in the brain. It's the same with my other three senses—taste, touch, and smell. All of them create certain specific electrical signals in my brain. Thus my view of the world is in reality nothing more than a complex field of neuronal impulses in my cerebral matter. It's literally all in my head.

So, am I really separate from that bird I hear singing outside? I know its song is “out there,” but my perception of it ultimately culminates in those electrical signals in my brain. That's all I really know about the bird. Even if I see what seems to be a separate feathered being perched out on that limb, that sense of vision ends up as yet another set of electrical signals. I own those signals. In a sense, that bird is now inside me... is a part of me. Is this fundamentally any different from a tingle I feel in my toe—a sensation that ends up as just another set of neuronal impulses? All I can know of either my toe or the bird's call is how my brain interprets those signals. Aren't they all a part of me? Am I not a part of it all?

Ameliorating Evolution—Part 2

Many religions have offered messages that are useful for our predicament, such as the counsel to love, be peaceful, and nurture compassion for others. The encouragement to adopt a healthy diet and overcome tribalism (as described in the previous post) is often not in the purview of religion, however, so we must look elsewhere.

Science can help. Certainly, the message that overindulging in some foods has been brought to us by science. Evolutionary psychology—a science—has helped us to understand these behaviors. And even common sense can go a long way to help us change. Aren't many of these behaviors obviously problematic? Does it make sense to binge on junk food? Shouldn't I care about the suffering of people in war-torn regions or the dire poverty that exists most everywhere?

Eastern philosophy can also offer help—such as Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. I use the world “philosophy” to describe these traditions, because I view them not so much as religions—which consist of belief in a super being and of faith and worship of that being—but as philosophies, which seek an understanding of fundamental reality, so as to guide our behavior appropriately.

An integral part of the Chinese traditions of Confucianism and Taoism is that we can change our behavior by cultivating and understanding our deeper nature. We are not captives of any essential or permanent quality of who we are, but instead we are flexible, malleable beings who can modify our behavior for the better. There is no basic, inherent, specific self that we are destined to be. Life is not about digging down to that core self and then behaving in consonance with its seemingly enduring nature. To do so is to trap ourselves into behaving in a manner that locks us into a distinct, fixed identity. 

Instead, these Chinese philosophies encourage us to view our true self as a range of many possibilities, some of which we can cultivate to become far more than we ever dreamed. This potential to become a fully realized being can definitely free us from the inherited fetters of psychological evolution, such as destructive hedonic behaviors, unnecessary fears, aggression, and insular thinking.

Another particularly relevant tradition for countering our unhelpful—if not dangerous—evolutionary behaviors is Buddhism. A core message of Buddhism is very compatible with the message of evolutionary psychology. This is the central point of a recent book by Robert Wright: Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment. Wright is a visiting professor of Science and Religion at Union Theological Seminary in New York.

Using the insights of modern psychology and neuroscience, Wright shows that Buddhist meditative practice can transform us into moral and happy beings, who can leave behind our inherited, unhelpful evolutionary behaviors, such as fear, anger, anxiety, distrust, and hatred. Through meditation we can arrive at a far better understanding of reality, as well as our true nature. We can come to see that our responses that are habituated by society and that cause us and those around us pain, can be changed to actions that promote health, happiness, and peace.

As just one example, an intensive Buddhist meditation practice can help us realize that the boundary between our being and others is not a fixed, tribal partition, but a permeable zone that we can learn to extend indefinitely outward, to eventually encompass the entire universe. We can grow and change. The possibilities are unlimited.

What I've tried to describe here is that, while biological evolution has brought about an incredibly complex and wondrous world, our cultural evolution has in some ways gotten too far ahead of us. Our bodies and minds—forged a few million years ago in the cauldron of genetic progress—are struggling to cope with cultural realities that they are not often capable of. Humans are suffering from a widespread case of cognitive dissonance—wherein our thoughts, beliefs, and responses are often inconsistent with the world we live in. We need to get serious about fundamentally changing and bringing our feelings and emotions up to date. This will require much more than simply forging laws or tweaking our behavior.