Mindfulness and the brain
Some readers may find it curious that a book about NeuroFluency would have a section about Buddhist philosophy. This initial confusion might be caused by the idea that Buddhism is a religion like Islam, Judaism, or Christianity. In fact, the teachings of Buddhism center around an understanding of the workings of the brain and mind based on two thousand years of meditative self-observation. I believe that Buddhists are the experts on human consciousness and how the body, brain, and social relationships lead to the emergence of the mind and the construction of conscious experience.
Most forms of psychotherapy rely upon the expansion of self-awareness in the service of being freed from self-destructive patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior. The core beliefs of cognitive-behavioral therapy, the unconscious determinants from early childhood experience of psychoanalysis, and the existential dilemmas of the humanistic therapies are all incorporated into the teachings of Buddhism. Western psychotherapists tend to focus on the differences among the conceptual schools rather than appreciating their similarities. This is likely because we are so desperate to feel like we have an understanding of the mind instead of being in awe of its complexity.
The Buddhist’s goal, like the goal of any therapist, is to decrease suffering. Liberation from suffering. In the last century, these teachings have spread around the world and are most evident today in the various schools of meditation and the mindfulness movement in the Western hemisphere. We don’t have to leave our own beliefs behind or become Buddhists to benefit from Buddha’s teachings. In fact, I don’t even consider him to be the founder of a religion, but rather, one of the world’s first psychologists.
Although neuroscientists have yet to figure out the origin of consciousness, they are beginning to develop a model of its various contributors. Western scientists are in the process of slowly evolving from a view of consciousness as a rational process generated by the executive functions of the mind. They are discovering, as evidenced in the work of Antonio Damasio and Steve Porges earlier in this chapter, that there are many implicit and unconscious processes that come to shape it. In Buddhism, the five aggregates are seen as combining to give rise to consciousness. The five aggregates are:
The physical world, body, and sense organs (visceral and somatic experience)
Experiencing an object as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral (appraisal)
Perception and cognition register if an object is familiar (memory)
Mental formations, impulses, volition habits (thought patterns and habitual behaviors)
Consciousness - that which discerns (the observing self and metacognition)
Together, the five aggregates give rise to our experience of consciousness. The ability to appraise the value of the people and things around us (amygdala & OMPFC), leads us to be dissatisfied with what we have and want something else. The existence of memory creates the possibility to obsess about the negative aspects of the past and be anxious about what will arise in the future (amygdala, hippocampal, and temporal cortex). Negative and self-destructive patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors lead us to engage in repetitive experiences. While our attachment to our ideas of self-identity lead us to be burdened with guilt, shame, regret, and low-self-esteem.
The core principle of Buddhism - the one that is most central to Western psychotherapy - is that life’s suffering is related to how we think about ourselves, others, and the future. Notice the similarity to CBT’s cognitive triad; perhaps Aaron Beck was a Buddhist in a former life. All forms of therapy, including Buddhism, accept that pain is a natural part of life. We inevitably have illnesses, lose loved ones, grow old, and die. Pain is inevitable, but because suffering is a product of the mind, it is optional, if, we can learn to control them. To express it in a slightly different way, pain is woven into nature while suffering is the result of how our minds constructs our experience of the pain. Suffering is the anguish we experience from worry about not getting the things we need or losing the things that we have. It is the anticipatory anxiety and catastrophic thinking we can connect to not getting an A, being overweight, or not getting married and having a baby according to schedule. Suffering is a result of the dissatisfaction created by our minds no matter how much we have or how well we are doing.
Buddhist psychotherapy is not so different from those practiced in the West. The goal is to decrease suffering to distinguish between external reality and what the creations of our minds that lead to suffering. What is called “enlightenment” is the realization that our minds create the world and we have the power to change our experience for the better, which includes living with less suffering. By remaining mindful of the illusions created by the mind and its attachment to these creations that are not real. Most clients don’t come to therapy to become enlightened, but they do wish to become less symptomatic, engage in less self-destructive behaviors, and have a more positive engagement with life. As Freud wrote, the goal of therapy is not perfection, but to lessen pathological patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Therapy should go on long enough to allow the client to be free to love and work.
This is an excerpt from Dr. Cozolino’s book The Pocket Guide to Neuroscience for Clinicians.