Being Open-Minded

In 1997 in their song “Nutopia”, Pigface described a generation of people that is “Alive to the universe: dead to the world.”

What does it mean to be open-minded?  What does it mean to be skeptical?  

Generally we think of these two qualities as opposites.  We describe people as being open-minded if they seem generally agreeable when presented with new ideas.  And we describe people as skeptics if they challenge new information and are generally argumentative.  These are bold misuses of the terms, and I’m not just making a semantic statement here.

                                                      

Nearly everyone entertains and accepts new ideas that conform to or align with the views and beliefs that they already hold.  Psychologists call this confirmation bias.  So I don’t define this behavior as being “open-minded”.  It’s just expected; it’s the default.

Likewise everyone is a “skeptic” when it comes to new ideas that contradict their views and beliefs.  This is because of cognitive dissonance, not because of genuine, active skepticism. 

It’s pretty easy, I think, to see a perspective where confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance are really just two symptoms of a single underlying psychological tendency.  One is the positive aspect; the other is the negative.

Someone who is truly open-minded is willing to accept the possibility of ideas that defy his/her current understanding.  And a true skeptic is one who looks for flaws in new information regardless of value judgments, and even seeks to introspectively challenge his/her current understanding.  When stated this way, skepticism and open-mindedness sound like two steps in the same mental process.  They are two sides of the same metaphorical coin.

Open-mindedness and skepticism are not passive attributes of a person, but behaviors that critical thinkers actively perform to overcome the problems of cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias.

Skepticism/open-mindedness is an intellectual, or rational mental process.  What is one to do, when confronted with ideas that can’t be rationally assessed?  For example, I have friends that use intuitive abilities to arrive at conclusions.  But even if you assume that intuition can lead one to a valid conclusion, you have to accept that the process could fail for a number of reasons.  What should one think if two people, who are accepted to have strong intuitive abilities present conflicting conclusions?  For that matter, how does one assess the validity of one’s own intuitively reached conclusions?   For another example, ff one accepts a given idea as a “spiritual truth”, how does one determine if it is or is not also an empirical truth (assuming there is no empirical or logical means to assess it)?

Rational type people tend to disengage from these questions pretty quickly because we don’t know what to do with them.  The natural inclination is to ignore the possibility that non-rational processes can lead to empirically valid ideas non-arbitrarily.  But that response is derived from cognitive dissonance, not skepticism.  And people that are intuitive by nature don’t typically engage in serious critical thinking.  As I write this, I can’t think of anyone that displays strong intuitive ability and is highly open-minded/skeptical.  Maybe intuitives could do something with those questions, but they don’t ever ask them.  And even if they did, could they explain their thoughts in a way that a rational person could understand?

I know that Buddha acknowledged the importance of both rational and non-rational faculties.  But I have not heard of any instruction on reconciling the two.

Thank you for reading.  Use the comment tool to post any thoughts or questions.  And please share my blog with others who might find value in it.  May you be well and happy.

-Andy

Contemplation on Meaning

Existence cannot be revealed in symbols, and knowledge cannot be revealed without.

Throughout human history, the search for meaning is a constant.  We ask the meaning of almost every characteristic, object, and event, from the profound to the mundane.  What is the meaning of life?  What does it mean to be a 34 year old white male in the United States in the early 21^st century?  What is the meaning of the dietary information on this pint of ice cream? 

What is meaning, and where does it come from?  Meaning simply comes from us, from our own individual and collective psychology.  “Signs and signifiers can be appropriated and reappropriated in an endless chain.  Thus meaning is rarely predictable and never fixed.” –Diane Raymond,

People with theistic beliefs may protest and say that some type of fundamental meaning can come from God.  But even if that is true, and certain things have divinely granted inherent meaning, we have no access to it.  To illustrate my point, assume that the fabled Holy Grail is real, it has been found, and it has inherent meaning endowed by God.  Now assume that a Christian recognizes its meaning.  The Christian is not observing the inherent meaning of the object.  He is only observing the meaning attributed to it by his religious texts, his culture, and his own beliefs.  The fact that his meaning of it matches the inherent meaning is an arbitrary coincidence.

Now some might protest further, citing that the Grail may have supernatural properties that are empirically evident, communicating the object’s inherent meaning.  But this does not contradict my claim; it only transmutes the object of the question.  The old question, “what is the meaning of the Holy Grail?” becomes the new question, “what is the meaning of its supernatural properties?”.  Some people might believe that the supernatural properties mean divinity.  Meanwhile others, believing it is a false grail, might believe the supernatural properties mean witchcraft, conspiracy, or hoax.

We constantly create, alter, annihilate, and recreate meaning.  The human brain seems to have an overwhelming, if not compulsive, hunger to find (or create) meaning.  We endlessly create, disseminate, and consume stories of all sorts, from fairy tales to sports reporting.  We do this because narrative is the vehicle for meaning.  If you ask me, this quest for meaning is part of what it means to be human.  Along with things like survival and procreation, meaning is a fundamental driver of human activity.  Also, meaning and narrative can provide context for our suffering and give us comfort when we face obstacles and hardships.

Conversely though, I’ve been learning that, meaning and narrative are the causes of much suffering.  If a house is destroyed in a fire, does that cause me to suffer?  No.  But if that house belongs to me, then the answer changes.  I’m not upset because the house is lost  I grieve because of the meaning that I’ve attributed to that house in particular, as opposed to the thousands of other similar houses nearby.

I’m learning the practice of mindfulness, to observe things as they truly are, without the baggage of the meanings that the mind wants to attach to them.  As I do this, I keep coming back to some fundamental questions about this path and its destination.

Can we take advantage of narrative's ability to give us hope and comfort when facing adversity without creating attachment and identification (ie. without suffering the negative consequences)?

If the pursuit of meaning is a fundamental part of ‘being human’, what does it mean to let go of or see beyond meaning? 

According to many spiritual teachers, mindfulness leads to a “higher” consciousness.  But how is this higher consciousness different from a simpler animal consciousness?

Even if equanimity or englightment is achieved, I don’t think meaning ‘goes away’.  So what is it like to see meaning for what it is and still engage with it, without attachment to or identification with it?  Or to rephrase, how does one’s relationship with meaning change as one becomes enlightened?

I want to understand things on an intellectual level.  That is my natural inclination.  But it is not lost on me that these questions are likely flawed, due to the very paradox of their nature.   As Lao Tzu so eloquently put it, “The Tao that can be described is not the true Tao.”  The true Tao transcends not only language, but rational thought.   In that sense, maybe the true Tao is the ability to discern the meaning inherent in a thing, at least in the case of existence.  But if it can't be put into words, I don't think it will answer any questions.

Thank you for reading.  Use the comment tool to post any thoughts or questions.  And please share my blog with others who might find value in it.  May you be well and happy.

-Andy

On Mystical Experiences, or the Lack Thereof

I've been on my spiritual journey for about six months now - probably not long as these sorts of things go.  But it's easily long enough to lose what little faith I started out with.

I've learned a little bit from my experiences, and I've learned a lot from books and from discussion with others.  But I often find myself questioning the benefit of it all.  I have trouble incorporating the knowledge into my daily life.  And I struggle to understand things on a non-intellectual level, which is very important for practices like Buddhism and Taoism.  Many days, I feel I'm still in the exact same place where I started.

A friend of mine, knowing that this whole endeavor feels quite unnatural to me, said that he was surprised I've kept on my spiritual journey.  But partially, I keep on because I have nothing better to do.  I keep walking this path, because I don’t see another that looks any more promising.

I've read accounts about and heard people describe powerful mystical experiences had during prayer, meditation, and other spiritual practices.  They've found great pleasure and bliss from these experiences, and I hoped that I might find the same.  Indeed the Buddha explained that all can and will experience joyful epiphanies during meditation on the path to enlightenment.  But I don't think it's that simple.

It seems clear to me that some people are naturally oriented toward the mystical and spiritual.  I hypothesize that these tend to be the sorts of people that fall in the ‘Sensing’ and ‘Feeling’ areas of the Myers-Briggs spectrum.  For these people, I'd imagine that strong mystical experiences are relatively likely to occur.  For those, like myself, who are naturally oriented toward reason and analytical thought, I believe that such mystical experiences may be less common and/or more subtle.  I've experienced moments of joy during meditation, but they were orders of magnitude less intense than those I've heard described.  Maybe I just need to get further along the path.  And maybe by healing and empowering the third-eye (Ajna) chakra, I and others like me can open ourselves more to the mystical dimension.  But I've not experienced this and cannot say.

I believe that people who have profound mystical experiences use them to fuel their spiritual journeys.  During difficult times, they can find comfort and encouragement as they remember the bliss they had once felt in their practice.  For the agnostics - for those for whom the experience is subtler, I think the journey will be much more difficult.  When we are overwhelmed by obstacles, we must find the inspiration to continue from external sources or from grit and raw determination.  For this reason, I highly recommend that any skeptics travelling a spiritual path find a community to share in and support their practice.  I am thankful to have such a community at the Indiana Buddhist Temple.

A spiritual journey can be overwhelming for a true believer.  For a skeptic, it is even harder

Thank you for reading.  Please share my blog with others who might find value in it.  May you be well and happy.

-Andy