[Jared K. Jones]

Hello everyone,

I am considering a late session today. If anyone would like to join, I’m going to get going at 10:00PM.

I know it’s last minute. Join if you can.

I think next week we can try for Friday and Saturday both.

[Jared K. Jones]

Looks like we’re still in negotiations for the best times.

What evenings are best for everyone?

[Jared K. Jones]

Excellent,

Given everyone has different needs, commitments, and schedules maybe we could start with 3 days a week?

Mon, Wed, Fri @ 9:00 pm?

We can do 30 mins of study, contemplation, or meditation together, and then call it an evening.

Warmly,
Jared

[Jared K. Jones]

Hey there,

Would you be interested in an early evening session? If we get together at 9:00 PM my time, this will be 4:00 PM your time.

Warmly,
Jared

[Jared K. Jones]

Hello friends,

Is this still going on? If so, would anyone be interested in making it a daily gathering at a particular time? Say… 7:30 or 8:00 AM?

I’m usually doing individual practice around this time, so if anyone would like to join me, I’d be happy to help by way of camaraderie.

Warmly,
Jared

[Jared K. Jones]

Hi Libuse,

These are some very good thoughts. I often think about the continuum of body-mind and karma in this way.

Here the body-mind is now, experiencing and being the results of past karmas. For simplicity, we will call this state ‘A’: body-mind experiencing and being the results of past causes and conditions. As we experience these results and exist as these results, we generate all sorts of new causes and conditions, let’s call these ‘BCD’: new causes and conditions existing in potential form.

Technically, these causes and conditions would be described as being established by way of non-disintegratedness. They are not actively ripening, but they have not gone away. They are the sound of an echo before it has hit the mountainside–before it has hit your eardrum. What is that sound? It’s not a sound, but it’s also not gone: it’s non-disintegrated. These echoes are carried on the ‘mere I’, maintained even between lives. The ‘mere I’ is the misperception that there is a ‘real me’ who is unchanging, self-existent, and independently controls the body-mind. This ‘real me’ either pervades the body-mind, is among the parts of body-mind, or is somehow beyond the aggregates of body-mind. In any case, we have this misperception that our body-mind is controlled by this self, somehow existing within or apart from the aggregates.

So, here you are:

A-BCD

You are suddenly hit by a bus. All that remains of A dissipates, and B gets triggered. Now, you re-arise as a shrimp:

B-CD. There is a ‘Mere I’ seeing the shrimp body-mind ‘B’ as ‘MINE’. The continuum of mind is also carrying unripened karmas ‘CD’.

You start performing actions, creating further causes and conditions (not too many though, because you’re a shrimp):

B-CDE.

You get eaten by a fish. B dissolves.

You re-arise as C-DE: you’re human again, and this goes on and on.
You accumulate many karmas as a human:

C-DEFGH. Death and rebirth. D-EFGHI. Death and rebirth. E-FGHIJ. Death and rebirth. F-GHIJKLM.

So, there is no unchanging essence or core that continues onwards as you die and are reborn.

Does this help?

[Jared K. Jones]

Haha! Yes, there are notes at the bottom of the paper… a few things I still mean to address.

I’m still a baby in terms of understanding and practice.

[Jared K. Jones]

Oof… I wrote quite a lengthy reply but the Studen Forum didn’t accept it. I think because I copy and pasted a link.

There are several stages to the realisation of emptiness. There are two main presentations at the Sutra-level.

1. 5 Stages Bodhisattva Path, that incidentally map to the mantra in the Heart Sutra:

1. Gate 2. Gate 3. Pāragate 4. Pārasaṃgate 5. Bodhi Svāhā

2. Ten Bodhisattva Bhumi.

In brief, long before we gain a direct realisation, there is a process of going from doubt tending towards non-emptiness, equal doubt, doubt tending towards emptiness, correct assumption, and valid inference. Each of these stages represents a gradual process of cleaning up, deepening, and intensifying our conceptual understanding of emptiness. Correct assumption is 100% correct, but still subject to doubt due to lacking intensity. Valid inference is 100% but no longer subject to doubt due to intensifying the correct conceptual understanding in a state of meditation. This is a debate point, but some argue you can gain a valid inference at the 4th level of shamatha, and that once attained you cannot have an unfortunate rebrith. You’re on your way out.

Also, properly contemplating emptiness counteracts everything dysfunctional in your mind and reinforces everything positive in your mind. So, even just the correct conceptual understanding of emptiness is quite powerful. It’s also not quite so far off as the direct perception. Though, the direct perception arises due to wearing out the need for the correct conceptual image. The direct perception isn’t somehow ‘more correct’ about emptiness, but rather dramatically increases spontaneity. So, rather than needing to go through the lengthy process (even just a few moments is lengthy… my mentor used to say ‘This small time gap is wide enough to drive the full mack truck of samsara through’) of generating a correct conceptual image, you look directly and see the emptiness. Also, there is a difference in intensity between seeing emptiness directly and holding a correct conceptual image of emptiness in meditation. That said, I’m at the limit of my knowledge on this aspect. There are many more here who have some experience to back up their words, unlike myself.

[Jared K. Jones]

Hello again!

What do you mean by ‘the language of cognisance’?

We start saying things like: ‘The robot believes that’ and ‘It thinks such and such’. We start using the language of the mind to talk about the robot because its the most convenient, even though it is not accurate. I think I copy and pasted the example of computers being equivalent to human minds in the comments above. Though, there are several more ‘Objections’ which are addressed in the document I put together.

Except when emptiness is directly realised? If so, is this disconnection an all-or-none or a gradual process? Meaning: could it happen in one sensory modality but not others? Could it arise in response to particular situations (say when you’re overwhelmed with strong pain or stress) but then subside? What I’m getting at is: could this be a plausible framework for studying dissociative episodes?

I don’t think I understand the question fully. Realising emptiness does not somehow make things fragmented nor separate subject-object. It seems to me that even in a dissociative episode the mind is at the creative centre of reality. However, it has temporarily lost its ordinary sense of orientation–disjointed from its ordinary sense of self-identity in an unhelpful manner. I’m not a psychologist, so my understanding of abnormal psychological states is fairly limited.

[Jared K. Jones]

First, your mind is far from fragile or simple! Your three-point formulation is correct. Then, I’d add:

4. There is a host of evidence from physics, past-life recall in children, memory formation in the absence of brain activity (during a heart transplant), and other realms of science that are better explained by a non-physical mind hypothesis.

A) How does your argument help us understand the possibility of rebirth?

The gap from ‘the mind isn’t generated by the brain’ to ‘the mind comes from somewhere else before birth’ is a rather small one. As you strongly imply in point B, causes are similar in nature to their effects. Therefore, a previous moment of mind is the most logical and plausible explanation for a mind arising in your mother’s womb. A collection of material components that share no properties in common with the mind is not a plausible explanation. I would go so far as to say it is an incoherent explanation.

Of course, the correlation between mind-brain activity needs to be explained, but that is explainable within the framework of Neutral Monism or Participatory Dualism (or Soft Dualism), as explained in the paper. These two views are, in my humble estimation, compatible with Buddhist ontology: co-dependent arising, non-dualism, sunyata (emptiness), and, in particular, the higher understandings of emptiness inseparable from awareness.

B) Is it not plausible to assume that for MI to be effective… [that] they ought to be generated precisely in accordance with the attributes/components/laws of the physical world?

Mind and matter do share some properties in common. Arguably, at the level of conventional experience, both are momentary or impermanent phenomena. Both are subject to forms of cause-and-effect from moment-to-moment. More on this below.

That MI is created specifically based on the physical attributes of the word “apple”… Therefore effective manipulation of that MI (e.g. for recognition, or labelling) requires a match between that non physical knowledge (MI) and the presence of the physical components that enabled its generation (someone saying “apple”)

You’re getting very close to the definition of a ‘generic image’. Generic images are a blend of every experience you’ve had pertaining to a socio-linguistic concept. For example, when you think of ‘apple’, what comes to mind is a blended image of thousands of things related to apples. This includes odd things like plastic knives (because grandma cut up apples with a plastic knife).

For us, there is a non-physical cognisance that generates and experiences this image. The image is also non-physical. For the robot, this no one is observing nothing. It’s just 1’s and 0’s dancing. Eventually, this dance becomes sufficiently complicated that humans begin using the language of cognisance to speak about the robot’s behaviour, but there’s still no one home. This is very much like the ‘image on my phone’ example. It is simply effected by the electrical impulses generated by the camera, and then does what it was programmed to do based on those impulses. However, the robot never even generates a physical image on a screen. So, there doesn’t seem to be an equivalence between MI and the robot dance.

It is only at this point that we can assume that, although non-physical, mind must mimic the laws of the physical world because its MI are generated thus.

To get a little subtler, mind and matter are inseparable: mind-matter. The mind is primary in the relationship of mind-matter. It is the aspect of a non-dual reality that is the characteristics, identity, structure, patterns, relationships, meaning, and purpose. Physical things are undifferentiated and uncharacterized when (hypothetically) disconnected from the mental aspect of reality (per sunyata and Quantum Mechanics), although such a disconnection is impossible. So, the very things which you are instantiating in physical reality are imputed by the mind. This may be going too deep down the rabbit hole, but it’s an important point. Physical reality doesn’t have any properties without mind imputing them, so how can mind follow after the properties of physical reality?

As they say in Zen, ‘Show me the cup!’ Paraphrasing Dharmakirti and Khedrubje, a conceptual mind knows its object through negation and not affirmation. The concept of an apple is not a set of ‘apple properties’ because there is no such thing. An apple is made of non-apple properties: redness, roundness, sweetness, firmness, and so forth. These properties are generally highly variable, which is why it is so difficult to program an AI to recognise an object by going through a process of affirmation. Every specific instance of an apple is different. It has unique causes and conditions. It changes from moment-to-moment: so, it is not self-similar through time. There is nowhere for appleness to hide.

Rather the concept of an apple is the ‘opposite of non-apple.’ Apples are known through inference rather than identification, i.e. what is appearing is not excluded from being an apple despite the visual appearance not being specifically apple-like. This inference by way of non-exclusion from the category, when validly applied to some percept, constitutes ‘an apple’, though no apple can be found. As Ven. Nagarjuna said in the opening of the Mula:

Neither from itself nor from another,
nor from both, nor without a cause,
does anything whatever, anywhere arise.

Due to no apple being found, the causes and conditions which bring apples about also cannot be found. They cannot be found in the apple, nor the conditions, nor within both, nor does the apple spontaneously arise from nothing. Further, the apple is not utterly non-existent, given that it performs functions in our experience. Non-existent things do not perform actions, so there must be an explanation for the apple’s existence. The explanation is mental labelling. When labelled, the apple comes into existence. Further, the causes and conditions which bring apples about also come into existence. This should sound similar to J.A. Wheeler’s Gedanken experiment in the opening of the essay. Particles have no history until measured. Once measured, the history occurs. It’s also like that with the apple.

While we are a few years away from both Mind and Mental Factors and Emptiness teachings, I add this to merely say that there are robust answers to the questions you’re asking, but as Geshe Namdak said of the Kadampas: ‘You must have teeth!’

[Jared K. Jones]

Dear Sarah,

Please do use it. It was originally intended as an organisational tool for my own thoughts; it is a reflection of my inner debate about the status of consciousness. That said, I have subsequently taken each of these positions and tested them in public debates. So, these stand up to most of the modern challenges we face in rationally accepting (what, as non-cultural Buddhists) are counter-intuitive notions.

I am so interested in the idea of the idea of the conscious and unconscious observer, interpretation and meaning. All the links you provide to further reading and works are brilliant, I am busy following them now and reflecting on them.

I hear you. I go back and forth on this myself. Personally speaking now, I think ‘unconscious’ observaters in the QM sense only appear to be so. These come about when consciousness is not bracketed into the analysis, as explained in the article that talks about ‘are the rocks part of the mountain or not?’

AI in the classic Lycan idea of robots and minds

AI is another interesting subject. I didn’t include it in the essay because it was slightly off the subject, by my estimation. However, there is no reason to think that even robots that convincingly pass a Turing Test have a mind. ‘The Chinese (sp) Room’ argument seems to debunk actually intelligent (knowing, luminous, clear) artificial intelligence. The way that the programmers of the future intend to get around this is by integrating actual intelligence (using brain materials already instantiated with a non-physical mind) in concert with microchips and software. These kinds of ‘hardware-soft mind’ interfaces are likely to produce some very interesting results.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/#ChinRoomArgu

[Jared K. Jones]

I go on to handle some objections that have come up in personal debates. The most common of these is that ‘the brain is like a computer and the images in the brain are like those projected on a computer screen’. I encounter this frequently when debating with ‘new atheists’.

Objection: mental images are exactly like images projected on a computer screen. Your brain stores the data and your mind sees the images when that data is accessed.

The image that appears on the screen of your phone or computer right now, here in front of you, is composed of physical events and chemical events from top to bottom:

1. The memory storage is made of protons, electrons, and neutrons.

2. It sends electrical signals through a physical medium to the video chip or chips.

3. From there, an electrical signal is sent through a physical medium to the screen.

4. The screen’s pixels emit photons in a specific pattern based on a series of on-off commands.

5. These photons are absorbed by the rods and cones your eyes, which are also made of particles.

These can all be measured in a lab. They can be independently observed by anyone who looks through the appropriate measuring or observational device. The memory storage device, video chips, wires, electrical currents, photons and so forth are made of particles and physical forces.

The apple-image in your mind is not findable anywhere in physical reality, at all. It can not be independently observed in any lab on the planet, using any type of device whatsoever. Even though it occurs at the same time as the movement of electrons, glucose, and so forth in your head, the image itself is not made of any particles or physical forces. If it were, we could find them, and they would have all the ordinary properties of matter: mass, velocity, spatial extension, and so on. There is no equivalence between the actual image of an apple appearing on a computer screen and actual apple-image appearing in your mind. The digital image is entirely composed of physical particles and the mental image is not.

This analysis of the image, rather than the mind itself, is quite useful because the properties of the mind are quite subtle: knowingness, luminosity, and clarity. These aren’t immediately apprehendable to direct experience. However, they can be discerned from the analysis of the apple-image. The phenomenon which is aware of or cognises (knowing) the apple-image also gives rise to the apple-image (luminosity). Upon inspection, the phenomenon giving rise to the apple is like the apple itself: it does not have any physical properties (clarity). So, this kind of analysis can be quite helpful.

[Jared K. Jones]

Hello again!

Here are a couple of excerpts from my own investigations. See the full document attached my above reply.

The Hard Problem: A Phenomenological Inquiry

According to theories of classical physics:

“the world of matter is built out of microscopic entities whose behaviours are fixed by interaction with their immediate neighbours. Nothing needs exist except what can be deduced, by using only the precepts of classical physical theory, from the existence of these microscopic building blocks. But the defining characteristic of consciousness, namely its experiential quality, is not deducible from these elements of classical physical theory, and that is all that classical physical theory entails.”

https://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0101118.pdf

The question is how do protons, electrons, and neutrons – hard physical things – which have no internal, personal experiences, give rise to mental images and qualia which are internal, personal experiences? Mental images appear to share no properties in common with the neurological activity to which they, generally, reliably correlate. My favorite way to demonstrate the Hard Problem is as follows. Take a moment to do this mental experiment. Visualize an apple in front of you.

Red apple.
Brown stem.
Green leaf.

If you do not like apples, then choose your favorite fruit and use that instead. Take a few moments to really observe this apple in your mind. After about 30 seconds, when it’s relatively clear in your mind, continue to the next experiment.

Now, take some time to inspect this apple. If you reach out and touch the apple mentally, it is firm. If you flick it, it makes a sound. When you smell it, it has a smell. Take a bite mentally, and it has a taste. Take a moment to perform these actions with your visualized apple before continuing.

Now, physically, where is this apple located?

The image itself cannot be located anywhere in the physical universe. It has no location. You might be thinking, ‘You’re wrong. That apple is in your head.’

Certainly, we can hook you up to an fMRI, MEG, or EEG to measure the movement of glucose or electrons in your head and then map the mental apple-image to this movement of particles. These two things correlate in terms of time. However, the apple itself – that image – is not made of electrons, neutrons, protons, and so forth. If we were performing brain surgery on a person, there would be no virtual image of an apple inside their skull.

If you still object to this, then take me to a lab and show me the protons, electrons, and neurons making up a red apple, with a brown stem, and a green leaf. If that image itself were physical, then this apple in front of you – the one which you can see, hear, touch, taste, and smell – would have various physical properties:

Relative location in space.
Relative extension in space.
Relative Mass.
Relative Velocity.
Relative Energy.
Interactive capability with other physical objects extended in space.
A causal chain of events in physical reality which brought it into being: an apple tree, an apple seed, a previous apple, and so forth.

So, where is this apple located in physical space?

Where does it extend?

How much does that apple-image weigh?

What is its velocity?

What other object or objects is it moving relative to?

What is its total relative energy?

What photons are bouncing off this apple and lighting it up?

Where are those photons coming from?

What eye are those photons being absorbed into?

Where does it go when it ceases to exist?

Finally, if you were going to book a plane to the orchard where a progressive causal chain of physical events gives rise to this apple – to what location would book that flight?

The apple-image in your mind is not locatable anywhere in the physical universe, has no mass, no velocity, and no energy. It is not lit up by photons and not seen through the absorption of light in an eye organ. It is not heard through the compression of air being absorbed by an ear organ, etc, and yet this apple image can be seen, smelled, tasted, heard, and touched. It did not require a concordant set of previous, physical causes and conditions (like an orchard), in order to arise. Its parts not go anywhere else when it ceases, as would the parts (atoms and subatomic particles) of a physical apple.

Now say “apple” in your mind. Take a moment and say “apple” mentally for 10 seconds.

Now, which lungs did you fill up with air?

What air did those lungs breathe in?

Which vocal chords, throat, tongue, teeth, and lips did you use to vocalize the sound?

What air carried the vibrations or compressions of that sound, and which eardrum detected those vibrations or compressions of sound?

This internal world we experience is not composed of the same things as the physical universe, nor does it obey the same laws and rules. So, you have to ignore at least 50% of your direct personal experience to believe that mind and mental images are composed of physical particles. Therefore, the position that the physical world is all that exists runs contrary to direct observable evidence. This remains one of the most enduring and directly accessible methods for all people to conclude that the mind is non-physical. Now, let us handle some objections.

[Jared K. Jones]

Hello friends,

This is an area which I have wrestled with considerably. After many years of contemplation and genuine inquiry, I think the position that minds are non-physical is the most reasonable and best-evidenced position. Further, given that consciousness did not arise from the brain in the womb (but rather arrived from somewhere else), this indicates that rebirth is a very likely possibility after death. Please see my full thoughts here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KAJIglKfU1Tx7xhpVMbdZrGw2KGckt7d2rNn2VcqoyM/edit?usp=sharing

If questions arise from reading the document, please reach out to me. There’s a little something for everyone here.

Kindly,
Jared K. Jones

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