Activity

Varela contended that anatta has also been corroborated by cognitive science, which has discovered that our perception of our minds as discrete, unified entities is an illusion foisted upon us by our clever brains. — Xian

Your links are not science. Pointing out that we are made of water doesn’t prove Buddhism. The Valera thing was interesting, but in the end, it’s a legitimate scientist who also liked Buddhism and found it interesting to try to connect the two. I found his Mind & Life Institute, which has been around for a long time. What scientific proof of Buddhism has come out of it? The idea of Mindfulness has gained acceptance and has some value, but that doesn’t mean that it defines life or is a path to removing all suffering or finding some other true version of reality.

I randomly picked one video  and the cat jumped on my lap so I ended listening to a lot of it. Most of it is random connections that are unsubstantiated. And if you listen carefully, when he quotes Einstein about the “optical delusion of consciousness”, Einstein says we can’t free ourselves from this completely. The quote is on a slide at 46 min 20secs. He’s talking about being compassionate and embracing our world, not disconnecting from it.

A finer point is made at 23min. You might want to start a little earlier, but he makes a joke as an aside. He’s talking about those who think they are enlightened, think they have risen above their base humanity, “anyone who says they have transcended the self”, is fooling themselves. He laughs, and everyone in the audience gets the joke. He says he would challenge them with, “And who is it that is claiming that?” This is an MIT scientist who has been doing this stuff all his life. He is your scientific proof. And he’s saying you can’t transcend the self. The self may be an illusion, but it’s part of who we are. We understand ourselves better by recognizing that and deepening our relationship with the world, not by trying to escape it.