When we are identified with our thinking it seems to be natural, reasonable behavior to adopt ideas, and decide they are true. Certainty seems solid, something that we can grasp, something that puts solid ground under our feet. The problem with this is after we adopt ideas and decide they are true, we discontinue being open to new information, and we become open only to information that confirms our bias or “truth.” And once we have adopted an idea and become certain about it, we need to build walls against any challenge to our certainty.
Good evening and welcome to Monday Group Meditation. We will be sitting from 7:30 to 10:00 PM EST. It is not necessary to sit for the entire extended time, which is set up to make it convenient for people in four North American Time Zones; sit for as long as you like and when it is most convenient for you. Monday Group Meditation is open to everyone, believers and non-believers, who are interested in gathering in silence. If you are new to meditation and would like to try it for yourself, Mindful Nature gave a good description of one way to meditate in an earlier diary, copied and pasted below:
"It is a matter of focusing attention mostly. In many traditions, the idea is to sit and focus on the rising and falling of the breath. Not controlling it, but sitting in a relaxed fashion and merely observing experiences of breathing, sounds, etc. Be aware of your thoughts, but don't engage in them. When your mind wanders (it will, often), then return to focus on breath and repeat."
|
This week there was a diary on the recommended list that claimed the recent gluten free diet fad is without reasonable foundation for anyone not diagnosed with Celiac disease. When I first ventured into the comments it was not so much a typical pie fight, but two echo chambers interacting in relative isolation from each other, one side was people who experience gluten intolerances, and on the other were people who were certain the experiences of the people who claim sensitivities were not real.
My interest here is not the specifics of the disagreement, but with the nature of the human beast to cling to certainty, and deny the potential of new ideas or information. Collectively we build up conventional wisdom and create whole orthodoxies with our very human desire for certainty. On the personal level we seem to take great pride in intellect, claiming our concepts are derived with reason and logic, sometimes claiming we are based in reality. These concepts become very solid in our minds, and any challenge to our position, belief or “truth” is perceived as a very personal challenge to our very selves. When we think we are our thoughts, how could it be otherwise?
With some recent experience coming up against the certainty of others in my own life, and noticing the conflict engendered by certainty in the diary mentioned above, I’ve been holding all this lightly in mind and wondering at it all. Why are people so frequently willing to expend large amounts of energy and time arguing about things with which we do not have real knowledge, or any experience? Or why, in some cases, do we continue to hold opinions or beliefs which evidence quite clearly refutes? Why is it so difficult to shift conventional wisdom, even in the face of real invalidating evidence?
It reminds me of an idea I’ve seen mentioned around here paraphrased as, “You cannot change someone’s mind with logic, if they have not reached their position through reason.” But what about cases in which we claim to have reached our position through logic and reason, and we still deny contradicting evidence?
For example, the orthodox practice of western medicine is exceedingly hard to shift, even in the face of disproving evidence. My doctor once shared his frustration with me regarding a Swedish medical study he had seen published which proved using thyroid hormone to treat patients with thyroid function testing in the low normal range dramatically decreased the incidence of heart disease, and increased life expectancy. The double blind study had taken place over seventeen years with thousands of people. In other words it met the gold standard for medical studies.
When he called the nearest teaching hospital and asked them if they had begun changing their treatment protocols, he was told they weren’t paying any attention to that study because it wasn’t done in the US. He followed up by asking when they might begin their own study and was told they weren’t going to bother with it. He was fuming, “People are going to die for no good reason, this just makes no sense!” (You might think that this example is so far fetched it tests belief, but when you consider that thyroid hormone is extremely cheap to produce and sells for very little, there’s not enough money to be made from it, so no one is willing to fund the study.) So in the US, it is still not an accepted protocol to treat people with this inexpensive method that could decrease the incidence of heart disease and save lives.
So wondering about all this, I ran across a quote from this French philosopher Gilles Deleuze who turned reason and logic on its head. He rejected the conventional philosophical ideal that a disinterested pursuit results in a fixed truth, “an orderly reason of common sense.”
…Deleuze rejects this view as papering over the metaphysical flux, instead claiming that genuine thinking is a violent confrontation with reality, an involuntary rupture of established categories. Truth changes what we think; it alters what we think is possible. By setting aside the assumption that thinking has a natural ability to recognize the truth, Deleuze says, we attain a "thought without image", a thought always determined by problems rather than solving them. "All this, however, presupposes codes or axioms which do not result by chance, but which do not have an intrinsic rationality either. … Reason is always a region carved out of the irrational—not sheltered from the irrational at all, but traversed by it and only defined by a particular kind of relationship among irrational factors. Underneath all reason lies delirium, and drift."
This concept probably doesn’t surprise anyone familiar with Buddhist practice; when it is applied to people who are identified with their thinking, it strikes me as being on point. Underlying human nature and all of our thinking, is our basic confusion about the nature of reality, and the nature of our minds. However, I suspect it might miss the mark when applied to someone like His Holiness the Dalai Lama who has deeply examined the nature of his own mind and reality. At least it gives my mind a place to rest after all that wondering. His assertion that setting aside the thought that thinking has a natural ability to recognize the truth almost sounds like he is in touch with Beginner's Mind. It just makes sense to me that conventional human reason and logic are born out of confusion, although I’m sure Deleuze’s concepts must have seemed outrageous to his peers.
Enough rambling. We are preparing to meditate, so I’ll simply leave you with the quote that originally led me to Mr. Deleuze in the first place:
A concept is a brick. It can be used to build a courthouse of reason. Or it can be thrown through the window.~ Gilles Deleuze