No Self, No Problem: How Neuropsychology is Catching Up to Buddhism (The No Self Wisdom)

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It is the process of thinking that creates the self, rather than there being a self having any independent existence separate from thought. Drawing on the field of neuroscience, he explains how everyone can discipline their brain to follow their lead, thus achieving greater happiness and inner peace. Since we now know that the self is an illusion created entirely by the left side of the brain, we can explore the myriad ways this revelation can change the way we experience the world.

They are mental representations that don’t exist ‘out there’ in the world, but rather they are only in the human mind. She also determined that the world would be a better and happier place if more people cultivated the growth of their right brains. The left brain as a mapmaker to reality, and language is the pen with which the left brain draws… but the left brain also becomes so dependent on language that it mistakes the map of reality for reality itself. The No Self, No Problem Workbook is a bit of a paradox in that a book full of words is intended to get us to stop using our words so much. But toward the end of the book, the conversation suddenly shifts toward an idealistic interpretation of reality; namely that consciousness is singular and the idea of separate consciousnesses or selves emerging from individual physical brains is an illusion.

For those of you not familiar with the previous version, a very short summary is that we love to use the thinking mind for everything, and it is the thinking mind that manifests much of our suffering.

So, as she sought a way to regain some use of her left and brain and bridge the gap, she found that there must be a type of “middle way,” a means of existence that avoided relying too heavily on either the left brain or the right brain. For example, if someone tells us to go sit in a chair, we rely on language to understand that “chair” denotes that thing with a seat, a backrest, and four legs. In the 1960s, neuropsychologist Roger Sperry performed a series of radical, experimental surgeries on patients with epilepsy. They also discovered that a clear understanding of these different sides and their functions is crucial for developing an understanding of the self. When we curl our fingers around the handle of a coffee cup, our spatial awareness is responsible for our accurate hold on that object.While there’s nothing wrong with seeking to make sense of the world — certainly, all people are trying to do that! In those moments when I’ve been able to do so fully, I begin to understand what Niebauer means when he explains that “the original nature of drama is to play. Pretty much anybody would observe those patterns and assume that your coworkers are talking about you behind your back and that they’re definitely saying unkind things. But, I’m not a professor, philosopher, psychologist, sociologist, anthropologist, scientist, mystic, or guru. The root of the problem is that many of us do not see language as a representation of reality, but confuse it with reality itself.

Awareness, something that is integrally connected to the present moment, and therefore the right brain. One result is that takes it a jumble of likes and dislikes, memories and perceptions, and creates the pattern that determines our construct of “I. When this connection was disrupted, however, it became possible to study the job of each side of the brain in isolation.The left brain mistakes the map for the territory … The left brain becomes so dependent on language that it mistakes the map of reality for reality itself. If you’re familiar with one sentence from the annals of Western philosophy, it’s probably this one: Cogito, ergo sum – I think, therefore I am. For example, until this connection was disrupted, scientists relied on either brain damage or indirect methods to test for differences between the left and right brain.