Beyond The Self - with Matthieu Ricard & Professor Wolf Singer

[Music] so I'm very very excited and slightly humbled and frightened about the prospect of trying to chair a conversation with these two eminently wise figures and I'd like to start first of all by introducing two men that really need to need no introduction but on my immediate right here Matthew has been with us very generously I think for three previous events and of course has written wonderfully and taught wonderfully on the subjects of happiness and altruism and this whole idea of the self and going beyond the self for many years so we're delighted to have you back not here and wolf it's a great pleasure to have you you know your first actually happiness event and we're so excited to be helping to spread the word about your work wolf is a an eminent neuroscientist and and has spent many years studying the sort of scientific aspects of the mind and consciousness and many of the topics were going to be hearing about this evening so before we delve into this unique mix I think of Eastern and contemplative wisdom and modern Western science I wanted to invite mature to perhaps set the scene for all of us to be more tuned in and a waking aware of ourselves and what we're listening to and what we're doing by perhaps leading us in a very short mindfulness meditation exercise if you've been happened to join us for that matter so thank you so much what's interesting when we say we're going to meditate everybody start sitting straight as something there meditate like me you just have to say the world and everybody thought so but before I forget because no aging brains are like that I want to thank my dear friend Laura and Matthew Liam sulfur and the whole action for happiness team and what is wonderful endeavor that and then for your dear friendship and always so warm welcome so it's always a great joy to be with you so I don't know rather than doing this kind of boring meditation of the kind of empty your mind and relax did you try to empty your mind ever does that work anyone anyway so I think since we are starting some dialogue and action for happiness and for true human for everything you know when you get up the first few steps just take usually takes you east north west south so extremely important the motivation that's basically oriented the whole journey and if it's a lifelong journey you better get the right direction before you find too late that we are being sort of going with some weird place so that's why so what better motivation can you have than what I'm doing that we are doing now tonight and what you came here is it just for myself or for others if it's for others as well you don't have to neglect your sacrifice your centers or doesn't work is it for this moral number the greater number and is it for the short-term and the long-term as you can easily realize the best outcome is for the greater number for the long-term so that means that what what we are going to start here let's sort of feel that whatever you know the discussion we have whatever we take away from here but I read my inspire us to do or not to do may that somehow be instrumental in transforming ourselves so that we can better be of service and country to society to me happier more altruistic more cooperative society a better world and you know basically nobody wants a worst world but we don't always sort of realize that we can do it together so for that of course we need is what we call meditation that means a more stable clear and calm mind because the ways the motivation will be like a restless monkey like everything else so let's yes in a way just let our mind be more clearly more stable and become filled with its artistic motivation what we are going to do together and as well as many other projects we might have may that be dedicated or oriented to other momentary and ultimate good of our fellow sentient beings including sort of eight million species of other species why not not forget them as well so let's spend a few moments to field our mental landscape with this benevolent motivation thank you what's so nice meditation is you don't have to say anything Thank You Matthew so I had the great pleasure of this weekend of reading this wonderful new book called beyond the South that wolfin that you have written and I wanted to really start before we delve into the content ready to maybe ask you both what is it then led you to write this is obviously an interesting combination of perspectives how did it all begin yes well I think when we first met it was actually London something like 10 years ago so the small symposium the massif discovered that we are both experts in very differently complementary fields he is an expert in the discovery and analysis of mind but using tools that you apply from the first person perspective introspection contemplation trying to analyze the working of the mind from within and my speciality I'm a neurologist it's very different we use experimental tools we look from outside into the brain also trying to understand the working of this wonderful organ because I think both of our assumptions agree in the fact that it is the brain that creates the mind we will see so because it was mainly an epistemic interest it was an adventure for both of us to see to which extent these two approaches are complementary are converging or whether we come to very different conclusions whether they're in compatibilities and so we thought we should talk about it and then the incentive came from an editor this will come additionally Germany who realized that we have this plan somehow very vague E and said well if you talk about these interesting things they were of course having other interests than me why don't you tape it and then you couldn't make a book out of it and then we said why shouldn't we tape it I didn't know how much work was following after that and so we got going and it took us for eight years I'm not intense working we bet in nice places facing the Himalayas twice for fifteen days one in the jungle in Thailand good life so we set our own agenda and those who read the book will probably realize that sometimes it can be a little bit repetitive and the reason is that when we met after another year or so we had forgotten what we had already been talking about so we knew they'd decide from a different perspective but on the whole yes here it is but you know there are quite a few neuroscientist and quite a few Buddhist mom but there was also a special affinity and friendship that we when we first met and so as we keep on meeting again and again we very much enjoyed our conversation and it's not just about you know to staunch ideology that confront each other and it's really we learned so much I think by discussing and even the title of the book came out of some kind of inside that all about the self we have sort of similar ID which is counterintuitive in the West but neuroscience and Eastern perspective of the self being a dynamic process and there was no central post come on in the brain there's a study that struck me incredible we sort of basically on the same sort of approach and so there was moments of course aware we had but we still have as you probably see some some kind of difference but mostly I would say that more than antagonistic approach the complimentary and sort of the third and first-person experience how you experience that and how you studied with the tools that are given by science that what analytical and with them you know equipment that allows to probe in the workings of the brain so it's really more complimentary and on some occasions yes we don't have the same view but it's not entrenched in dogma is because we believe that our own insight and experience leaders two slightly different views is not just okay that's the view that's the way it is you don't like it too bad you know I think in Buddhism we don't have this kind of intense meant in dogmas that take the example of Buddhist cosmology which was prevalent in India 2,500 years ago with the mote mirror in the mirror and the Sun and Moon strung around and not that Rama said arts nonsense to imagine the Pope saying the creation in six days doesn't make any sense that would make a little news in the only way is they are moving as well so in any case it's mostly again confronting experience ideas coming from different perspective and that's what it was which was very enriching so one of the things that you start off in your in your dialogue in the book is is well one of things that came out for me was a reflection that we put so much emphasis in the West into learning skills of all kinds but something we've never really had a great tradition of is looking inwards and learning the skills of developing the mind and it struck me that in many ways what we think of as the scientific discipline in the external world of observing and measuring and coming up with models and theories about the reality of the external world is really what people have been doing for thousands if not many more years inwardly and so I wanted to ask you much it around this contemplative science this ancient wisdom if you like what if we what are we learning or can we in fact learn from perhaps many many millennia of practice is almost missing in the West and does that then lead us into sort of enlightenment in terms of the Sun I think it's not fair to say it's missing in the way some of the many contemplative orders I remember going with the Dalai Lama to the the crown chakra which was the initial cartesian order and they spend their life in contemplation what I would say is that Buddhism making is not a question of you know who is better than and but more a kind of specialty about these various ways of investigating dhamma whether is first analytical and then what they call valid cognition how you bridge the gap between appearance and reality and then going deeper and deeper in more contemplative or say direct experience of the basic components of the mind so this sort of method emphasizes indeed not only that but also on training the mind you know prayer contemplation openness to some no higher sort of absolute entities or whatever is found in all religions but I was struck for instance I just come from a place which as unlikely to do meditation but not they do the World Economic Forum of Davos you know what the meditate yes every morning for half an hour and there was an evening with a representative of the various religion and so at the end they asked me what everyone was doing something to do a family meditation on loving-kindness and I did go in step by step how you begin with a beautiful child will unconditional love and then you extend why not stopping to that child and we're talking at 13 years old and extending to know more and more and more the circle and to bloody dictators for will you wish murder cruelty and indifference and hate that is that persons might be dispelled so step by step and one of the wonderful Imam which I know for a long time one of Ayatollah was in the States he said I have to come to the part to see you because you know we may did it on love but we don't have this he was struck by this idea of a systematic gradual process and I was also amazed that he thought that something sort of I don't know knew but something that was interesting enough that the Ayatollah is going to come to a monastery we'll see but I mean it was interesting to see that Buddhism really has a systematic approach of training the mind and and that almost implication of that is that through that training of the mind that it is possible to make really substantial changes to your own lived experience and of course your behavior but is that what the the science is showing as well wolf that actually when you when you study people you've been practicing in this way for many years that you can see really visible external changes yeah I think now the the basis of evidence is very good it's not surprising because they spend so many hours on the cognitive control doing something specific to their brains it's as much investment as you invest when you learn to play the violin or learn to travel and there we know that this leads to structural changes in the brain and the same is now demonstrated with long-term meditators you see certain reaches in the brain that you need to employ when you meditate which is not just as you said at the beginning is just sitting down and relaxing it's a very intense act on the strong cognitive control this is why it cannot be performed easy device by small children so you have to engage your attentional mechanisms you have to target certain sub functions of your brain if you want to cultivate something like a feeling of kindness and all this engaged in certain networks in the brain that if you engage them repeatedly and under the control of attention will change the connectivity among those centers you form new networks this can be done in the about because the efficiency of connections between nerve cells remains adaptable this is the substrate of learning you can increase or decrease the gain of these connections you can't grow new connections had any large scale beyond the age of 25 and also you don't lose them normally if you are not afflicted by a brain disease but you can change the dynamics of the networks by changing these the efficiency of the connections this is what they do and this is what you can see functionally networks forming you can see it structurally not postmortem nowadays one can look into the brain with high-resolution imaging and you see that the cerebral cortex grows a little bit bigger in places that are very better trained because the contact surfaces between the neurons grow a little bit this is what we do every day when when we collect to explain this the brain grows a little bit then we have to sleep in order to renormalize and shrink things that should not stay the way of those that have growth so it's a normal learning process we call it procedural learning it's not like one trial learning you understood how meditation works it now if we have it it is like learning a practice learning a skill you have to repeat it repeat it repeat it I like the phrase that your your friends Dan Goleman and Richie Davidson use in their most recent book about Olympic level meditators he put in these many thousands of hours now I suspect we aren't many of us in this room would not consider ourselves to be Olympic level meditators but I'd be keen to know just by show of hands how many people here would say they have some kind of contemplative or meditative practice in their lives a sort of part of the regular procedure so that's pretty remarkable in anywhere in the world and certainly if you'd ask that same question in in London even maybe 10 years ago you would have seen a different different answer but one of these has struck me and what you've both been saying there is given that we know he can make change and of course there's this age related a clear implication seems to be education what are your feelings about what this means for how we should be approaching education however before turning into that I want to mention that when we speak of cognitive control is yes it's some ways to be in charge of your own mind instead of this restless monkey when your mental FM or something but it's not like this kind of control or larger stances is the mind don't move you know that's not going to work so it more it could be a very you know mastery with ease you know like a skillful I mean a great pianist of twenty years of actually he doesn't have to think much using the kind of flow interesting effortlessly and well so the the culminating point of having achievers master the skill is that we to do it well will ease and so and also there's another aspect to meditation that can also be trained is there are two aspects let's say one is to cultivate and train some skills and qualities basic human qualities could be attention of course indispensable beginning to do anything else but I think it's even more fruitful for yourself and for society to Train it's a altruistic love compassion freedom not to be the slave of your own thoughts emotion balance resilience all those can be trained but this another aspect that is somehow more subtle which is to become underst the same word from sanskrit and tibetan can be trusted also as familiarization so that human it could become familiar first of all with the better knowledge of how your mind works it's more like understanding but also familiar with something that you may not always see know if this sky is filled with clouds and birds you may forget the blue sky immaculate sky that's always behind that so become more familiar with what always there beneath the screen of thoughts this kind of pure awareness which is a key component of what contemplative practice yet something like to become familiar not in the exhaustion active control but investing in that recognition so there's all those nuances and in some way they also translate as as skills and they should also change the brain so now education I think we think also it's very important it ok this was one of the topics we dwell a lot on the question whether it is possible through contemplative practice to really change personality traits and how deep can you change a personality once it's a adult and I think this is still an open question it needs experiments it needs controls societies have different experiences with changing the behavior of adult people by reward and Punishment certain constraints can be set but we still ignore I think by and large to which extent really basic personal traits can be changed also the psychotherapy struggles with this problem now what we know for sure is that early in development when I probably have to make a parenthesis and tell you how we see the development of the brain shapes architectures in the human being we develop our brains until age 25 roughly by the time of birth neurons are nearly all there but most of them are not connected yet and then start the process of breaking and making of connections neurons start to talk to each other because they grow out new connections until age 25 but while this process of proliferation of growing connections is on the way connections are also removed all the time usually sixty percent of the connections that have been formed at one moment in time will be removed a little bit later and this making and breaking is occurring under the control of activity and this activity in turn is controlled by a track Hewett environment by education by a trial and error by the sensory organs everything that influences the organism is changing or is influenced in this process of architecture formation so you have two factors one is the genetic instruction that sets up the basic blueprint of the brain but then experience comes and molds this blueprint according to personal individual experience there is shaped by X education and has a lot of embedding in cultural context so an individual is formed is imprinted we say by pruning by cutting away connections that are not useful not identified as useful until it crystallizes around the age 25 and this is the developmental phase where you really can change personality traits because you really change the function architecture of the brain that is the reservoir for all the knowledge we have for all the programs we use in order to apply this knowledge there is only this architecture and this architecture is molded by experience to a fantastic extent in human beings also in animals but we are the most immature early born animal if you take the longest time unduly mature which gives a great chance to culture to influence this process and I think it will be difficult to reverse something either by psychotherapy or by meditation I am a little bit more skeptical than you are that has been imprinted in very early yes and so as I say it's an empirical question we have to find out but for sure education plays a pivotal role in this both in this process this is where we have to invest in our societies because in mind you we are born with a lot of artistic programs because we are primates and we have learned that it is good for survival to make a distinction between in-groups and out-groups to defend the in group member to fight the out group member we have learned to be competitive this is now genes we have learned to retaliate we have learned to be aggressive all this is in our genes and if you look at little children you see that's all there so we try to change the balance in favor of the pro-social inclinations to which extent this is successful I think we still don't know there have been so many educational regimes tried out throughout the history of mankind I am not in a position to say which ones work in which one don't whether Summerhill or the Richard Sherman family father this is certainly an important element and we have to do science on it not just guessing the other one is to find societal interaction dynamics in structures that reduce the triggers that make us wake up these artistic traits and these triggers are obvious it's injustice inequality humiliation and all these things that we do to each other because our structures are such if we can reduce these incentives to display our artistic behavior would be nice as well so we have to work on all fronts it's a lot of work to be done in the future one of the things we've be funding ourself saying with actually fact is a lot recently is that there are these different fundamental aspects of human nature one of which is very self-interested in one of which is actually much more naturally compassionate and cooperative and sadly so much of one society exacerbates the former and promotes the former and I think what you're really both showing is the importance of promoting this more self-aware more compassionate way of if I'm a little bit oh it's yes the earlier the better that's clear everybody agrees on that so any form of Education you're making helping to good human beings to flourish as good human be earlier the better everybody agrees on that now about the early age about yes of course before four years old kids don't have emotional regulation but that's the maximum act of of throwing beating and so forth if they were adult it will be a mess that's true because they don't have the physical strain but it's also the age with maximum unconditional cooperation now this beautiful works by people not Tomasello and others showing that if you Confederate you know drops a pen 95% of kids rush to leave even their toys to get an and pick it up and if the guys just rolled it obviously doesn't need help they don't go and that's changed after five years old they become starting off maybe not everyone is nice with me so why should I do that and then later on around twelve they have a more abstract perception of others they can feel something for children other side of the world which are in difficulty so this all those construct but as social animals also the fact that we are sort of a poor disposition as well for pro-social behavior otherwise would be all these little selfish brute and as some people have said and we just behave nicely so to get some gains from society some theories like that as you might know I've been saying that but it's it's kind of clear that also young children do prefer people a little bit purpose that behave nicely to each other even six-month-old the gays intensely do the nice puppet when they are show you show the both of them another nice experiment is you give sweets to two kids and at some point when you about to give to one you give to the other you ask him shall I give to the other and when he says yes yes you feel me this big smile and when he says I want it a little like this so somehow does it brings more positive effect to be kind with others that's one thing now about changing traits you know don't be too worried about this 25 limit I think there are few of us here were above 25 so I felt I started to change that 25 little bit ago I was at a reputation of being a very grumpy teenager through 20 and no matter or this guy doesn't talk to people and all that so but of course there's limits to that but training so basically what from outside say contemplative so-called we believe trades are is basically you know you have thoughts and emotion and emotion don't last much I mean you can be angry several many times but the facial expression this clearly when you say oh this guy is angry doesn't last more than a few seconds or hardly more but then the accumulation of those thoughts and emotions leads to moods that may last for a few hours and you can be in depressed mood in joyful mood it depends from the day one day to the next and then again this accumulation these two traits well at least as far as adding to the your genetic inheritance of the epigenetic part how you gene will be expressed according to environment according to your own intervention on your own mind so of course then there is no magic bullet traits will not will be very stable unless you do something about it if you just leave it like that you know the guy this was grandpa 10 years ago is likely to be grumpy again so and if you made it for 10 years and people say oh you're the goodtime registers you can be as ever and probably something wrong with your meditation what's the point you know just having like being in a spa and settle this thing out and you still the same so I think it's just it takes time because it has to go to the same thought after thought emotion after emotion mood after mood it's not like possible intervention but is knowing how to free thought of anger as it arises and it doesn't leave too many traces like a bird passing through the sky learning to free no obsession and jealousy and arrogance and let them undo as they form like when you trace a letter on surface of water so all those skills that are part of the meditation training at least in the Buddhist tradition I personally you know believe and sort of convinced equity of that that with time just as a violinist can still learn the violin after 25 years even is so much better to learn early there's a lot of room to become say a mind that is function in a more optimal way for all those skills so sorry that works play something well I think one of the strategies that I took away from our conversation was that if you learn about the nature of perception and the way you you perceive the others as you learn that actually it's you attributes qualities to them that this helps you step back a little bit both from your own emotions and emotions you develop towards the other until this decline sets in and then you can handle the problem much easier on the other hand there may also be these these one-shot learning events we call them catharsis we know that it happens in post-traumatic stress disorder and we also know that it happens with the other way around people come home from certain experiences and they say they have been enlightened and that the life has changed all of a sudden so there must be also the possibility of frames to go through phase transitions that are sudden this is not surprising we we know this from psychiatry more and more that we learn to consider the brain as a highly complex system with nonlinear dynamics in these systems while they can stay in in stable attractive spaces for quite a long time they can also all of a sudden undergo a phase shift like whether converting into a thunderstorm all of a sudden and vice versa becoming quiet again so this is a characteristic property of highly complex nonlinear dynamics systems and brain seemed to be of that kind people wake up in the morning after they have been going to sleep find and are deeply depressed and they came also out of depression as quickly in some good cases you can give an electroshock which is a rebooting of the whole system and all the symptoms that you had before are gone for a while so that can also be with sudden changes in both directions which is not very much explored question is is this used for example in your culture they must have come across those things yeah - beautiful example I try to make them short one was a convicted murderer he had already committed towards him murder outside and in the jelly committed two or three but he was for life anyway so what could they do more because there was a place where there was no death penalty it was one of the states in united states where they abolished death penalty and then one day someone offered a meditation course so he was bought because it was therefore he was sentenced to 250 years or something so he attended that and he sort of made him sort of you know think deeply about you and then he said until then yet entirely been relating to others in terms of violence domination of submission you know all this only that and then taking revenge and be merciless absolutely and then at some point he said the other after you know going to a few weeks to this mutation suddenly he said it was like a wall collapsing and it completely fell how could have been functioning so far only under the power of hate and it seemed almost unbelievable and then it became much more trying to solve conflict and this and that after one year he was killed it was a long term revenge but for that whole year it was totally different and have a story very briefly of a veritable famous Tibetan master from the 19th century twentieth century he was a hunter not very good profession in Tibet isn't considered very good but son so I've been hunting and he was in his late 40s and one day he came to a he had a wounded dog and as he came to the other door he saw the door as she was dying giving birth and as she was dying and giving birth she was just leaking and taking care of them of the little how do you call in English okay and so that seemed just completely done is that mine upside down completely ever he became a monk he started to study with incredible determination and he became one of the greatest scholars of his time and a great meditator so just like suddenly so maybe something also due to some past condition that's like bit like a you know an apple when it's not right you can pull it and the branch would break if this why you just do like this and Apple phones on your hand so it's difficult it would be nice to study if there was something almost written in the bag that makes this sudden shift happens so those two process can happen long term training that you see change in Buddhist practice we say this is more reliable you know that the arms of a clock if you stare at it is not moving but if you look from time to time or it has moved and we say that sudden change be dubious usually it's like fireworks or mist in the morning it will not last but some of them do last because they are complete shift of perspective from the different predictability if you train you know for what you train and you probably can predict the result with these phase transitions you can't predict they can go either way and this makes them a little bit dangerous so I wanted to move us on to an area of your dialogue which I found both fascinating would also sort of slightly out of my depth to sort of take in what you were looking at were you in a moment I think I'd like to move on to the title of your book and ask you to and what we mean by the self and whether or not maybe the Buddhists and neuroscientific perspectives on that are aligned or not but you talk quite a lot in your conversation about the nature of perception and even this idea of what is reality you know in a world of fake news and misses some students and people interpreting the world in very different ways what do we know about the nature of perception and what is reality well this was one of the point of agreements that we had there both the the Buddhist philosophy because I think they don't consider themselves as as a religion they don't need this transcendental belief systems it's a pragmatic way of dealing with life they came to the conclusion by introspection that what they perceive in the outside world is something that is not the qualities are not attached to the objects but you attach your own attributions to what you sense organs signal to you there is no permanence out there and this is very much related to what neuroscience also makes us believe that how we perceive the world is to a large extent the construction that we are able to make because we have a huge amount of a priori knowledge stored in our brains knowledge that has been acquired during evolution is in the architecture of the brain knowledge that has been complemented by these early developmental processes and knowledge is complemented by normal learning the first two sources of knowledge endow us with knowledge that we are not aware of heavy because we weren't evolutionary knowledge we haven't been there when it has been required historians genes in the early acquisition of knowledge during childhood we are not aware of having this knowledge and how we acquire it because their childhood amnesia you can't remember what you learned when you two years old this is a new huge amount of knowledge that is stored in the brain and that allows us to do such miraculous things like reconstructing this extremely rich visual world these four moments just a Gedanken experiment you imagine that on your on the Agena of the eyes all you have is a continuous distribution of electromagnetic waves that differ slightly in amplitude and wavelength that's all there is nothing more on the surface of your retina and from these few data you regenerate a very rich world like being able to segment the scene into many persons identify faces get 3d views attacks emotional connotations to all this all this is made up all this is synthesis based on a priori knowledge and these are priori knowledge I just gave you the sources it's a large extent implicit which means you don't know that you have it but you use it in order to shape your perceptions and in this sense I think the eastern philosophy or at least Buddhist philosophy and what modern neuroscience tells us it's very much related it's and it differs from quite a number of Occidental schools of perception where it has been claimed for a while that the world is really the way we think it is because we perceive it as such which is not the case it's all constructed and this is an interesting concept and also raises a number of interesting questions because we are so much convinced that what we perceive is reality in this as it is that because we don't know that we interpret this because we have no access to the knowledge required for interpretation we take it for granted but now go one step further and this is another point of convergence here just told you how important cultural imprinting is on the formation of the architecture of the so perception of cultural realities of social interactions is of course also determined by a priori knowledge which is culturally specific so people raised in different cultures will see the same social interaction and perceived in a completely different way but as convincingly and if you as you perceive this environment here so if those people meet each other and they look at the same social interaction or whatever situation they come to different conclusions because they perceive it in a different way and there's no way for them to convince the respective other that what he perceives is false and in this case there is even not a measurement instrument to prove who is right and this creates a completely new concept of Tolerance because you cannot continue saying what the majority considers this correct and true is the truth everybody has the right to at least perceive and take what he perceives as his own personal truth and then we have to think how we get away with conflicts that arise from these different perceptions and I think you have the same view but coming from a completely different side and what I took from you but you contradict me if this is wrong you said one of the major reasons for suffering in the world is our distorted perception of what you call reality yes constructive so so first of all it's interesting that if you look at the Buddhist scriptures they actually treat it is a theory of perception no which like you know a thousand years old and they're not small like hundred page and so to make it short it's pretty similar they said the organs have a very raw and process perception that actually you don't really record as such and then they said er is it creates we don't have the idea of them the brain doe in the world but we do say it creates a man image and by then vanity has already changed even it looks the same but in fact if you are going at a macroscopic level in terminus never stops it's never nothing in the universe is identical to itself at two consecutive moments it's always change I mean if you were going at the atomic level you will see a we are full of things happening so you never perceive directly because the mental image is already ours at the next instant and that's not enough then the conceptual mind will come on to that and attach values neutral Pleasant and pleasant whatever so it has a qualia to that but that's already at construct now what happens is in that process if you man was totally devoid of those propensities and distortions then you start distorting reality you say oh that is very attractive or that's repulsive as if it was belonging to the object and not the not only purely the projection but the result of the interaction of your particular type of consciousness with all its baggage and the particular set of phenomena that are not self defining in terms of beautiful ugly Pleasant and pleasant friend enemy so there is a crystallization due to this interaction so in that sense yes it is a super imposition and it's well known and the dilemma was struck when the one of the founder of cognitive therapy our own back told him that when someone is angry is 80% of the perception is protection so this is very close to the Buddhist view now this being said there's a contention from the Buddhist side that there's other aspect of reality that doesn't depend on this deformation and distortions and that comes through what we call valid cognition or the analytical investigation of reality if I establish and briefly mentioned that phenomena impermanent whether you understand it on that you would never find permanent and anywhere totally permanent so that is not a question of whether you perceive a mirage and you think it's water when it's not it's nothing to do with that is the result of proper investigation and so far you know nobody has been able to come with a valid argument to say no there are things that are permanent that things are not existing autonomously completely on their own by the as you say from their own side that everything is interdependent due to thousands of causes and conditions so that's also you can establish that to valid reasoning and there's nothing to disprove that so when you come to that you somehow wish to some extent the gap between the nature of things and your understanding and that's not subject to the perceptive distortion because it's not going to do about the way I perceive things this is the result of a process and if it's proven wrong then you can also change that but at some point when impermanence is impermanence and the so far nobody has been proven that there's something that are permanent what is the cause of suffering because if I believe that I cannot live without this bottle and then I'm really in trouble when it's not there or I cannot stand is a cannibal it has to disappear from this world and then of course this completely super important fabricator and this is the cause of suffering or if I think that this watch is really mine intrinsically minded I will suffer when I lose it so these kind of things are cause of suffering why because they are at all reality this is not really mine so if I believe it at the end I will suffer at some point so it's not innocuous it's not just a theoretical philosophical water with no rate as it is it has implications in terms of suffering well I want to come on towards the end of our conversation about the implications because I think all of us here what we came to know what we think some of your discussion means for us as individuals and so for us as a society but just before we did I'd like to come back again so that the title of the book and I think linked to what you've just been saying what do we mean we talked about the self and what do you mean in particular when you when you talk about going beyond beyond the self so actually you know the first done it yes yes please go no no so when we first discuss we say okay let's call it something up beyond the self that looks nice but then we didn't change the title usually you'll crush your hair to find a good title but actually it was it it came to some insight I think mutual insight no in West not the cut surface military autonomous singular no like an entity almost I'm not a specialist but it looks like that well neuroscience I mean hopefully explain but from the briefs perspective no there's no such thing I mean I won't go into the detail and the deconstruction of this of the self but you will be very hard to find such entity anyway it's not in the body here or there or everywhere if he says in the mind by the experience the past thought is gone the future or not yet the reason the present is ungraspable how could that a solid unitary self suspended between something that doesn't exist anymore something does not exist yet and a present that isn't grasped ever how can you have a such entity so clearly is a concept attached it's a convenient illusion attached to a dynamic stream that has a continuum my consciousness is not yours we don't belong to a cosmic consciousness but it's a continuum is that something that is traveling there's no boat on the on the river is just a river so that concept of a dynamic stream of experience on which you conveniently attached for simplification the notion of of Ganges of matthew of all for anything you want is a kind of convenient construct so in a way I was happy to know that is closer to in the Rose has than the Western view of intrinsically Hahnemann singular self discovered by accident at the conference we're about to party because in the Occident the catty teen view is still very very strongly rooted the idea that we have a ontological dualism that the world is composed of two different realities one material the other a material material one the soul the self the intentional ego his house and even those who have a more naturalistic view and i think the cost at a certain moment felt that yeah if you put this self somehow into the brain because he realized it has to do with each other but silly he postulated a single Center in the brain and there are graphical reconstructions of this he took the pineal gland as the seat of the self the observer in the brain because it was so deeply rooted concept that if you observe something if you decide something if you say me if you are considered as an intentional ancient as we all consider each other there must be the center of command somewhere in the brain and neuroscientists also looked for it because we thought this is plausible this is how we feel so if we analyze the entrance to the system from sense organs into the into the higher levels we will finally find the throne where this ego is sitting and from there we can descend into the executive structures until they get out of the system again on the motor side and then we will have understood the system and as we try to do this and I'm sure one of those who started that way in a good behavior is the tradition it became more and more clear that this is a completely wrong concept a concept that is still pursued in artificial intelligence these systems are built exactly that way but our brain is complete differently organized you have to consider this is a very very complex network that is mainly a horizontal structure where a very large number of nodes are interconnected to receive locally important job creating an extremely complex dynamics it's impossible to pinpoint any locus in there any node any neuron or area where you could say if you perceive a barking dog this is what is always represented know what the only thing you see is a spatial temporal that especially temporarily structured clouds of activity that is extremely complex that is unstable it's a trajectory changes all the time what you say what PA would tell stars so it's it's non stationary it's distributed it's not graspable in any material way it's a relational construct defined by the activity of these interconnected neurons and this is what is the substrate of all our perceptions and eventually all of our self perception so there is no point in the brain where the self could be located and I think this is what seduced us to have this working title somehow beyond the self I don't know what we found there but for sure it was a deconstruction of this simple notion of this intentional self determined self that is somehow existing next to our neuronal machinery and making this machinery be what the self wants and if I may add this not just again curiosity how things were do we have a self or is it distributed it has also consequences so that's why Buddhism has been cleverly trying to deconstruct that notion and so the idea we cannot help but thinking that you know the little boy was this summer me grown or the fat whatever you wanted so 72 and that was three not Freeman three but five six I remember so I thought no it has to be me I mean that's not a different person so it's tempting to consider there's a constant which they're sort of me quintessence of yourself other audio being and then of course if you do that and could have to protect that to please that have to know sort of discard track to that so it becomes a very sort of focused on polarization so and that visually leads to attraction repulsion and then it develops into a trail into desire into pride and so all kinds of say afflicted mental state that cost almond basically to you and others so that's what we didn't want into big learn to analyze that was okay then if it's somewhere where no in the heart is it everywhere then if I do not my legs okay I'm very sad and I'm feel diminished but still finish myself so myself without legs terrible is very tragic sometime but it's not as it the self has lost half of it and then also a with the body but so when you say you push me for then the body but then you say you got my feelings so now suddenly it's the several gone from pushing me to feelings which not the body and then you say my feeling that means now suddenly you are the owner of all that so you shift constantly perspective but English are incompatible so when you think like that then it's sort of liberating and why it has sort of consequences is because we react so much differently if we have the strong grasping to this self entity and give you an example that if you are on Sunday afternoon on one nice Lake somewhere taking a nap on the little board and another boat rams into us bang anyone you get up and say what is this guy no not careful and you see it's a empty boat I was drifting and you love why you have been awoken in the same time but you realize that nobody is targeting yourself okay so there's only difference oh you you shout at the cliff you are just a pastor I met you and it come back and you love you don't think so if the same voice same pitch same disability says that next to you and is someone else saying that and you mind so much why because you feel the self is the target and then from the self from the mind there's a beautiful experiment done with students the experimenter give them a little gift or something and they asked them to evaluate the value okay carpenter watch and they say okay basically there's something like five dollars and they will agree then we do other things for half an hour and at the end the experimenter say well we know we are willing to buy it back from you and the average price that people are willing to sell it back is ten dollars so that's the mind added value tax is another thing is mine so it becomes almost double the price but if you want to get rid of all these attributions like in this case you get rid of the attribution of intentionality the boat didn't do it intentionally but if you get rid of this you also take away all responsibility and this is getting dangerous so there is some virtue in attribute a intentionality to the actions of the other because this is the only thing that you need this in order to to judge the actions of others little kids until age of four cannot attribute the quality of intentionality to particular motor acts this is why crazy digital tears are afraid of children because they cannot distinguish between the the tricky action and the intentional action while you as adult you can and you have to because this allows you to differentiate between and intentional versus behavior some other reason behavior so you have to have these attributions and this is the problem I always head with you you want to get rid of certain traits which I agree are aversive antisocial and they should be moderated but these very same traits also have an extremely high survival value and are pro-social in the sense that they allow you to differentiate between reasons for actions so I can't have the one without the other I fully agree that you should not let guy a guy who I'm into your boat every single how but this being that this mean this being said it's interesting to see what is the target and in many cases you know if it was desirable not the target to be overexposed and highly sensitive in I mean if you cannot stand any criticism and if you become like so bloated with conceit when the slightest praise again you are in trouble this is the other T sense we had on the definition of what is a strong ego here in the Occident or therapeutic attempts are aimed at generating an autonomous strong ego that is not easily humiliated not easily gulnur ated not easily hurt so it will retaliate and I think that's a virtue in it to create an ego when you roll and there somebody else pumping it you like to say okay everything is a strong ego yeah I call it transparent ego well I would call a week ago an ego that is easily hurt easily humiliated easily losing its value system because I think that this is one of the major sources for for becoming radicalized for in just retail etc so so I'm call it a exacerbated ego so you see yeah yeah we have different words for probably the same thing but one should watch out for that yes so on a related note really I think what you've both highlighted in different ways is that if we can be slightly more detached in the way that we think about self and perception and so on that that potentially liberates us from traumatic experiences and less helpful ways of being but I think the other strong implication seems to be that that enables the basis for more altruistic and compassionate behaviors that is that is that shown by both sort of contemplative and the scientific way this is that an implication of this slightly broader view than justice no just two very simplistic perception of it is if you are exacerbated sense of self-importance and always focus on me me me in the sense other could this be a threat and the whole world becomes arises enemy or could this be something that benefit meet or you sort of start to instrumentalize everything in terms of threat or benefit then you are highly vulnerable because the world is the universe is not a mail-order catalog for what you want it doesn't work so in a sense you become sort of vulnerable and therefore also so self-centered because everything is has to be related to that so if somehow it becomes less an obsession then suddenly because not everything is either a threat or an object of be instrumentalize then you have some space and you are available it's the kind of sense of readiness because you are not feeling vulnerable for Hyper protecting so concerns and you can suddenly look around and see other beings and then be more available for them because you don't fit so vulnerable secur so I think that freedom from excessive self-centeredness is a need for opening to the others and sort of valuing others be concerned by their faith and expressing our tourism and compassion we'd add the next five addendum to the book you know but the the ideal of being less self obsessed one of the I think incorrect perceptions often in in the west of contemplative traditions is how can it be that if I'm to sit quietly and look inwards and find inner peace how can I be a force figure I am I being selfish and baby that's so easy few years ago someone at the BBC asked me that it's selfish to spend that many years in your heritage now if the goal is to get rid of selfishness how that can be selfish not really I mean when you build a hospital for two three years you know the same inferred atrocity where the plum tree doesn't kill anybody but when it's ready so much more powerful so this is a you know the if you really you know become entirely focused on one task is to get rid of afflicted mental state at the root of which is this very strong self-centeredness the outcome is just that you much more able to serve others and now that I am being involved for like seventeen years a humanitarian work I can tell you that what derails good intentions is you know clashes of eagles were scale is corruption alter the human shortcomings so the best thing you could do for before starting an NGO project stood to some extent gained that inner freedom and would not be so sensitive to things I remember one of my friend when we were working in Tibet no it was difficult because she was a woman and Western Tibet the eastern Tibetan are stronger with much older on the so it was difficult and so one of my teachers told her you know your goal want you to go there is to build a school or clinic is not to make everyone perfect that's the job of the Buddha so if we get obsessed but everyone has to be perfect because we come to help them then we are in trouble so this kind of vast mind and everything comes from from training so I think it is a necessary step to better be at the service of others so I'd love to in a moment open up for some questions from the audience we do have some microphones but before we did I I think I feel and I'm sure many people in this room who do so much to contribute to creating a happier more compassionate world we're always on the lookout for the action components of what can we take out of the wisdom that we're hearing from you this evening so before we open up for minor questions I'd love to invite you both just to reflect on what's emerged from this dialogue that's obviously reflecting huge amounts of wisdom and experience that we can apply in our in our own lives and also that might apply for example in how we should think about our organizations our schools our political priorities what are some of the big takeaways in terms of action yeah well I do basic sciences as you know the way from basic science to application is a long long way unfortunately but it has to be that because if we act without understanding and being able to judge the consequences we act irresponsibly so there's some luxury as much luxury as sitting in a cave and working on yourself this is the moment where we don't contribute to society but prepare for further contributions I think one important issue is education and understanding the mechanisms of critical periods of how to instruct these growing brains so that they become resilient against all the temptations that they later have to face the second is of course outreach activities in social structures in politics we can't avoid this in order to generate structures that reduce the probability of having triggers that get us going on these artistic traits we have to keep both things in mind and in parallel all this cannot be done without understanding having a deeper understanding of social dynamics so there are Sciences now evolving in economics and social sciences who really become empirical disciplines because I think it's nice to be been evolved but since at the end you have to act you need to know what these actions cause and we know also that what has been thought of being a very kind and very violent action can have detrimental effects if you don't understand the dynamics of the system so I encourage people to continue both on the basic sciences to understand the world and then to take to take the conclusions and then act so we need all sorts of activities which is not so different from what you say you have to understand yourself first if this is done you can act in the more responsible way in a more controlled way just in a bracket I remember that some of your colleagues told me that even sitting in a cave alone has an effect on all the others who are not sitting in that very moment if they still still relevant yes well because you know that's how we become better human being and and as long as doesn't happen was to use going out and try to mess around to not really help people it's like cutting the wheat when he still cross and dream we are going to feed the village with green wheat it has to match you so premature activity is no use at the same time you know when I I went when I was first exactly 15 years ago I went for the first time to to India I'd seen some documentaries on the great Tibetan masters who had sought refuge in Indian side the Himalayas and of course I was immensely inspires the living example of wisdom and compassion which was quite different from what I'd seen before of great intellectuals artists know the figures of her father artists mother and and and there was the scientist myself so working with eminent scientists but you know it was difficult to connect correlate the human qualities with the particular knowledge of skills or with they had well you know a spiritual teacher you know if you say oh it's a great spiritual teacher what a pity is so angry all the time that doesn't work it could be true for philosopher I'm afraid to say oh all very good people as well but there's no correlation so that was one thing so then after a number of years F is my PhD Institute to stay there and then for twenty-five years a hardly you know only episodically returned completely out of this world and then in 97 and 20 years ago I did this book with my father the mock and for survey and the suddenly boom projected me back to the scene and then I remember very clearly a journalist asked me is there something that you know all you have done that is still unfulfilled and I felt yes you know I've been trying to society for that long with the enlightening teachings of my masters to really certainly try to grow more altruism and compassion but I haven't been really able to put it in action because I have given up everything I was living on the equivalent of I don't know 30 points a month that was perfectly enough of the way I was living in a small Hermitage without heating without water without electricity it didn't cost very much but you know I could not I could see the situation there were a lot of things to being true but as nothing I could do except they're not good wishes which are of course nice so then when I saw resources coming my way that's okay now this possibility to fulfill that aspiration to actually no pure heart and dirty hands you know so then we started imagining projects and by the way do you know this evening is also dedicated to to these projects and now after after starting them you know 20 years ago now almost by you know organic growth without a much huge planning and with the wonderful friends now we have reached the point where we do hydrant a thousand people every year in India and Nepal and Eastern Tibet in the health education and social services and it's just cool like that by goodwill and generosity and interdependence and suddenly we find ourself in this situation when we have quite some impact so that is a great fulfillment but in my innermost I will attribute that as the maturation of all these 25 first year of going deeper and try to gather the best of human qualities and most of our friends work with us within the Karuna no organization the same kind of vision and and also the the very book that you might read no Volf and currently also dedicated all the procedures where it is of his power and mind to this project so it gives us a great satisfaction to be able to put this aspiration of compassion into action that translates into less suffering in the world is wonderful thank you much I hope you've all found a little belief that about the wonderful work of crooner sessioned on each of your seats and and so I think as much you were saying the author both generously donating any proceeds from the book to support the wonderful work that matter and his colleagues do so if there's any anything any of us can do to help support that further that we I'm sure you want more information also I dear friend Oh Sharon as a resident and you can ask dimple now we have just over ten minutes left with some questions I'm sure you would love to ask questions of these two it's obviously being an in-depth complicated topic if you would like to ask question I just asked if you could try and keep it relatively short and actually anyone the question that we fantastic it's always happen so come on by show of hands would anyone like to start us off pace and gentleman here moving who's got microphones folks Adam there's a gentleman down here here's one here thank you so gentle in the check shirt then it was in the hand up I think somewhere over here as well yeah so Adam Jonah give the mic into this one so that gentleman there so don't yeah thank you Matthew there's a very good and inspiring talk I've been reading another book called against empathy where you had a discussion with someone called professor Paul bloom about the difference between empathy and compassion tell us a little bit more about the difference between empathy and compassion yeah so yes I met briefly Paul bloom and I stole him few things but actually if you want and there's quite a few chapters dedicated to that and I especially is another example of a wonderful collaboration with Wolves daughter Sonia singer who is the kind of world species of empathy if you may say and in the process of working together we I also you know I was not clear but there's no word for empathy in Tibetan to start with so I was not sure you know I remember friends asked me do you suffer with the people when you do compassion or not and sometimes I say yes sometime not I was bit confused until I went in the fMRI and Tanya said no we had real-time ephemera we could see what's happening in the brain real-time and so she said well do what you do so I I try to generate unconditional love and compassion and after Tamra you say what are you doing look like what we see for empathy so they come out of the fMRI we'll talk so we did talk I said can you just do empathy no resonating with the suffering of others could be with joy but in descoth what with suffering try knows that what we didn't do that so I had seen a documentary on the BBC on Romanian orphans that were in it in the absolutely appalling condition just the night before and so I know so it was coming back from Tibet where there was a I've been an earthquake and we have been helping there and it was we did all those scenes so forever now I mean you just don't do you do blocks of neutral state for 30 second empathy for one minute and the like that fifty or hundred times so I just she said don't bring your compassion in just empathy so I did that and even a complete burnout total emotional exhaustion no the burden of that resonating with suffering suffering with the suffering so I would imagine a nurse or caregiver a social worker who just his left only with empathy stand alone empathy no wonder that this burnout or the distance themselves for all kinds of things so then Tanya said you know was 11:30 in the morning you don't have a break for lunch or you want to go to your compassion meditation said please let me do it for another half an hour one hour and then it was a such a complete change I mean a much perspective like breaking a damn open of just instead of not knowing what to do with those children you know in my mind of course I mean how can I handle them they're so fragile then it was like like a mother embracing with love and very different and somehow empowering and also a constructive mental state courageous mental state the more suffering the more determination it was very different and so Tanya did much further work with that and she could show that our different networks in the brain and in fact that there's no compassion fatigue as sometimes we see in the medical literature Ampata fatigue and compassionate which is a very warm artistic you know moved what the others is actually an antidote to burnout or empathic distress so anyway that to cut the story short would publish some paper about that and I think it's a very crucial distinction for you know health workers and everything because there should be a training in compassion and not just in empathy so we got the letter Tania and I from a guy said how you dare to say so I am the chief empathy officer in this company now you are with my job so we reply that you know if it was just a question of vocabulary so what but if it has real consequences just rename yourself chief compassion I think it's check for never hears but I might friend is that right yeah yeah it's really interesting to hear two people from two very different backgrounds talking about the same thing the mind and the self and I noticed that you to have dressed yourselves very differently and I wonder just what if anything does that say about the South it was an observation that the the the Buddhist monk of the neuroscientists were dressed rather differently what does that say about the way you perceive yourself oh this is their working clothes this is what the society attributes to me and also to him of course if he had changed clothes she would be confused you know here is like a being a working flag but in some places there are quite a few like that so people don't pay attention and I'll give up my blue jeans some 130 years ago and that's all I have I'm sorry thank you then there's a lady down here on the front where with a question as well I did I work with teenagers and young people moving in the difficult process from education and such a transition to the workplace and listening to your stories I think they faced a very difficult time for them to host space for themselves to go through what may be a slow and unpredictable process of maturation so I have two questions really one which is the individual the young person struggling and the other one is what do we do what couldn't what are some ways in which we as a society as a larger community can help to hold space for these young people who are facing less space than ever before to be honest and that's getting worse this is a really big problem that I face and I'd love to hear your points of view there is indeed a big problem if you look at the maturation of the brain in this particular period late adolescence when they transition into adulthood there is a dramatic reorganization of function networks in the brain that one can know now show with non-invasive methods that is as impressive a certain distortions you see in psychiatric diseases so this transition from a proto Network that keeps kids so nicely and lovingly around until they go through puberty and then right after puberty networks reorganize dramatically the reason being probably that the lately developing improved to cortex this is where the the master control centers are sitting where the social imparative are residing because education puts them there where the the social bonding is taking place these centers have to take control over the other already existing centers in the brain and this requires for them to give off autonomy and during this critical phase they usually move away from their parents house they get into completely different social environment they are unprotected and they are fragile because of this reorganization there is a very dangerous transition phase where we know that the disasters tend to happen now I'm not in this field I can't give you any recipe of what to do except what my instincts as a father tell me but this is exactly where science needs to come in we now know why this is so difficult and now we have to find strategies to cope with it in very important phase probably the most important phase in education you know just few days ago I was a deed that was coming forum and there was a handle and I don't listen brain and by the way 95 percent of the attendants were women's so I think they cared quite a lot but yes it's a period of as Vall says of an ability to have emotional controls not in place so with taking extreme behavior but also for opportunity to twerk because there's a strong curiosity which is unimpeded to explore and so and then the adolescent somehow as now more years than before you know poverty start earlier and the adolescent you know where do you stop it you know 25 is something we still behave like adolescents somehow so it has stretch before no when kids were put to work immediately you know as in Tibet normals the kids already very protective because they yes but in any case now it has extended so more risk and more also opportunities for you know growing and fashioning your own sort of values and things like that so it's a critical very malleable period so that's why it's so important to take good care just one last quick question before we close let's come to this sort of him lady with a stripy top there thank you these kind of connects to the previous question so starting with other lessons but also applying to grown ups moody hold of the self and the construction of the self in times where we are constantly mediating ourselves by social networks and our perpetual online presence and engaged and meshed in this in hyper-connected world investing technologies with hyper social media connection what does this mean to what we know the self and how we might get ourselves into difficulties and and especially sorry I just wanted to add especially since it's basically doing labor for free we're an extracting effect from its consumers what do you hold of the self in this in such such precarious conditions I'm not a psychologist and not a psychotherapist but from what I read is that attachment early on is a very important ingredient for the development of what later becomes Sigma s journals yeah emotional attachment to two figures that you look up to and that you have confidence in and if this confidence is reciprocity reciprocity basic okay then you have good chances to develop what what I call healthy said a healthy self let's call it the healthy but on the other hand do not to counter any misunderstanding there are now Studies on our attachment and the attachment theory that everybody knows because it has been published in 68 by an American psychologist has been established after the analysis of a typical American family with father mother and a child and it turned out that all the tests for good safe attachment or label attachment or no attachment they failed in children that are socialized in different homes like in tribal structures they would all fail this attachment test but they are perfectly fine so there is a strong cultural Convention on what attachment means and what we all discusses attachment the safe and fragile remind you that this comes out of a single paper that has been published in 86 and is true for a special case of sociology and not generalizable so you can have you can be raised by several persons at the same time and attached to them very well and it works beautifully but you would fail all the classic attachment tests yeah well there are many things to say about that you know like in say it's some tribes in Africa and you born within 24 hours is held by 18 people and so that's an incredible richness of emotional communication and also in collective society like I'd seen in the nomads in Tibet there are several families are usually camping together or throughout the year and moving from and then all the children usually he because there's a rough conditions or many died in yoga so usually a five or six children and very early the children get involved not like for children labor but they simply participate in life so in this context you know this polarization on Minoo parental family would secure attachment or avoiding attachment news very much and also there's notice kind of thing of the USO special UI princess totally unknown absolutely zero so of course it shapes the you know it's totally normal to entrust the ten years old with the with the three years or four whole day and they will do it very very well responsibly not try somewhere in America yes I'm afraid folks we're out of time and I'm delighted to say that Martin wolf their book is here they'd be on the self book we even have copies of Mafia's previous book altruism here as well which has been referred to they very generously agreed to stay and spent a little bit of time signing books if people would like to do that but they both need to get away having been on a bit of a whirlwind tour so if you could do anything you can to help make that happen as efficiently as possible so we can allow people to see them I just wanted to say a huge thank you to all of you for being here and again for your contribution to to this evening and to our movement but most importantly to Wolfram that here for a fascinating conversation so much insight and less let's keep up this exploration run encourage each other [Applause]

Channel: Action for Happiness

Views: 32,019

Keywords: altruism, happiness, wellbeing, consciousness, meditation, neuroscience, compassion, beyond the self

Id: 8_nuI1cNBgc

Length: 90min 34sec (5434 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 05 2018