Book Review of "The Science of Enlightenment" by Shinzen Young

Shinzen Young's new book The Science of Enlightenment comes with 8 pages of recommendations from various Western meditation teachers, and they are not kidding. The book really is a great read, in that it summarizes Shinzen's teaching in 230 pages. If you would rather not spend time browsing his extensive collection of YouTube videos and the material on his web sites, then by all means get this book. Or get it as a reference. But don't expect to learn anything about science, though he does talk extensively about enlightenment. A disclaimer: I studied with Shinzen for two years and attended a couple of his residential retreats, so I'm familiar with his teaching from that angle as well.

Shinzen teaches that the goal of meditation is to develop better skills at achieving sensory clarity, concentration, and equanimity on the cushion, but also and more importantly, off, in everyday life. He recommends mindfulness meditation together with some amount of concentration. One of the hallmarks of Shinzen's teaching is that he has systematized and categorized the mindfulness or vipassana teaching in a way that is inspired by science and technology. Where most vipassana teachers who use Mahasi-style noting will tell you to note the arising of various sensory objects, they don't tell you what to use for the note. For example, you experience the arising of some feeling in your leg and you need try to figure out what to note. Is the feeling twisting, throbbing, or something else? With Shinzen, it's easy, you note the feeling as "feel out", in other words, feeling associated with the body, and then go on to the next sensory experience. "Feel in" is feeling associated with emotions, and so forth for the other two sense modalities (see and hear). Shinzen presents his system in a concrete and no nonsense manner.

He also talks about Flow and Gone. Flow happens when mindfulness of sensory objects becomes more or less constant. Shinzen's definition of Flow is a bit different than the definition in the the positive psychology community, where it is used to indicate the rewarding feeling that comes from entering a highly concentrated state. He does talk about that, but he doesn't use the term "Flow" for it. Flow for Shinzen means impermanence present in your sensory experience. In that sense, impermanence becomes something that you actually experience, and not an abstract philosophical concept.

Whereas Flow is about continuing, Gone is about ending. Gone is when some sensory experience suddenly comes to an end. The experience may not end for very long, but it must end. A vague impression doesn't count. Gone is really everywhere, even when you move your eyes from one scene to the next, a Gone happens as the scene shifts. As Shinzen says, one Gone is as good as another, and All Gone is the equivalent to a Therevada Path Moment, which counts as an enlightenment experience of which there are four: stream enterer, once returner, non-returner, and arhat, with the arhat being full liberation. All Gone is when your experience vanishes completely for some period of time, then returns. This may sound as if you've passed out or something, but it's not. When experience comes back online, you feel a tremendous burst of energy and positive affect, sometimes lasting for days.

Perhaps the least accessible chapters are the last two. In the second to last, Shinzen discusses his everyday experience now, after having undergone several of the Theravada Path Moments (he doesn't say how many he has experienced but its clear he's experienced several).  His specific way of looking at experience involves what he calls expansion and contraction.  In this view, experience expands out of what he calls the Source (most Buddhists would call it emptiness) and contracts back into that. He tends to agentify emptiness in a way that I think is inconsistent with the Madhyamaka and would probably be frowned upon by Nagarjuna but fits into his overall program of trying to find parallels in mystic traditions worldwide, including the theistic traditions, such as Christianity and Islam where emptiness is a Person. He provides a considerable amount of detail about this view, but the detail could be confusing and perhaps somewhat offputting for someone who hasn't experienced a Path Moment.

In the last chapter, he describes his vision about the merger of science, technology, and spirituality. He uses a particular brain disease, athymhormia, that occurs for people who have a stroke or otherwise have a brain lesion in a particular part of the brain, as an analog for enlightenment. They lose their sense of agenticity and just sit around, waiting for someone to address them. If you ask them to do something or pose a question, they do what you ask or provide a perfectly logical answer, but then relapse into silence. To me, this seems the weakest part of the book. As Shinzen notes earlier in the book, people who have profound enlightenment experiences tend to have rather strong personalities, and don't sit around like dishrags waiting for someone to tell them what to do.

What I think Shinzen misses here is that science and technology is all about mechanism, first discovering the series of cause-effect steps behind some natural or man-made phenomenon, in the science, then figuring out how to harness those steps for human benefit, in the technology. Nobody has a clue what the precise sequence of cause-effect steps are behind consciousness, to say nothing of enlightened consciousness. While real progress is being made, neuroscientists are far from understanding the whole picture, and it will likely be many years before they've worked it out.

So, overall, a definite two thumbs up, written in Shinzen's informal and entertaining style. If you have an opportunity to practice with Shinzen, I would definitely recommend it, especially if you want to practice in the hard-core or pragmatic Dharma style. His practice is definitely pragmatic and his retreats can be hard-core if you want to practice that way. He'll meet you where you are, whether you are just looking to improve your baseline everyday mind state or you want to go all the way to enlightenment.

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Belief or Faith?

 I've been thinking over the last couple days about the difference between faith and belief. Somehow, I get the feeling that these are two different things, though they are of course connected. 

The way I understand it, belief is basically a cognitive thing, in which you hold that a set of properties, for want of a better word, about the world are true. Belief isn't entirely based on facts. Emotions and biases, which are ingrained emotional predilections towards particular beliefs, can play a big role, as can other beliefs. In fact, social science research has shown that many people won't change their beliefs when presented with evidence to the contrary, for example with global warming deniers. They will make up all kinds of excuses to cling to their beliefs.

Faith, on the other hand, is somewhat trickier. Basically, it seems to me to be a purely emotional thing, a feeling that something feels right, a connection. So it might be part of a romantic relationship, that you have faith that your partner will treat you fairly and so you feel comfortable extending him or her unconditional love. Or it might be part of the relationship you have with a teacher, that you have faith they will guide you well on your path to awakening. For a Christian of course, faith in Jesus is important, that Jesus will stand by them and help them in times of trouble. Or it might, as in Theravada, be part of your relationship with yourself. In Theravada, faith that you have the capacity to wake up is an important part of achieving the confidence to practice meditation, to put in the effort every day needed to walk the path. 

Where the two connect seems to me to be when you hold a belief that then leads to faith. This is the classical Christian situation. In order to have faith that Jesus will stand by you in times of trouble, you need to believe that God actually, in some way or another, exists, and that what the New Testament says about Jesus is true. This belief is based on the 2,000 year old teachings of the Church, if you are Catholic, or, if you are fundamentalist, on the teachings in the Bible, or, if you are a charismatic Christian, on your own experience of the Holy Spirit. Similarly, for Theravada Buddhists, if you have faith in your capacity to wake up, you need to believe that waking up is possible. That belief is based on the Pali Canon which contains the Buddha's teachings, that he walked the path and woke up, and therefore you can too. For many Buddhist mediators, their faith in their ability to wake up is based on the experience of actually having done it, and having talked with others who have done it.

Holding a belief that doesn't lead to faith is of course possible and vice versa. You can believe that global warming isn't happening or that it is, and not have any emotional connection to the belief. In that case, the belief is a loosely held view and probably isn't connected to any strong emotion. Faith in people tends to be based on one's experience with them over the years. Experience with a teacher leads to faith in them, without any specific belief, except maybe an acknowledgement of their competence in Dharma.

In the Pali Canon, the Buddha cautions against holding fixed views, in other words, not holding strong beliefs. Not holding strong beliefs seems from the above cited research to be quite contrary to the basic human psychological tendency. In order to get motivated to do something - vote for a political candidate, change jobs to a new company, etc. - you need to have a strong belief that your actions will somehow change your situation or the situation of others. Otherwise, people find it difficult to take action, and if they don't take action, then often a situation continues that really needs to change. 

But maybe, instead of strong belief, what you need instead is strong faith in the power of your actions to cause change. Then you can set your intention, take action, and not be attached to the consequences. Naturally, you and others will have to live with the consequences, so it makes a lot of sense to align the intention with wisdom and compassion, rather than greed, hatred, and delusion. In the end, I think all you can do is have faith that your positive intentions will somehow lead to positive results, then act.
  

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