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Buddhist Psychology - Free Will and the Human Machine · Gabriel Ellis, PhD | The Curious Mind Podcast

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  Hello everyone, my name is Gabriel Ellis.
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  I'm a psychologist, psychotherapist and Buddhist
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  scholar, and in the past I have published some videos about the
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  intersection between Buddhism and psychology, something that
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  is not yet fully established in the realm of psychology, which
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  is Buddhist psychology. But I would like to contribute
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  with these videos to establish that today I want to talk about
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  another interesting topic, which is free will versus what I call
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  the human machine aspect. In US and in normal life, this
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  is what we actually want. We want to be free.
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  We want to make our own decisions.
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  But yet we find ourselves often enough in situations when we do
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  something that we have not contemplated enough, something
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  that goes against our interests, something that we could or
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  should have known better. And so we are confronted with an
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  aspect of ourselves that is not accessible to our need to be
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  free and to be able to take responsibility for our actions.
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  Now let's go back to the Buddha's time, which is about
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  2500 years ago. At that time there were many
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  spiritual movements, there were sects, there were established
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  teachers, people following those teachers.
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  It was a very fertile landscape spiritually and the Buddhist
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  does had many competitors actually.
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  And you know for some he to some he was more respectful than
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  others. He had his own teachers, who
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  were obviously not Buddhists because he only developed his
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  own tradition later on. But there was one tradition that
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  he was most fiercely opposed to, and these were the Ajivikas.
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  Now, there's some controversy about what the spiritual
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  teachings of the Ajivikas historically were, because we
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  only know them indirectly through the writings of others.
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  But one thing they seem to have in common, which is that they
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  believed in predestination, in destiny, in the lack of freedom.
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  Now what is worth mentioning here is that in the region of
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  which the Buddha lived, the spirit of teachers, most of them
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  had a few tenets in common. Basically all of them believed
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  in karma and in rebirth. Karma being the belief that
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  actions have the recording consequences, and rebirth is the
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  belief that those consequences don't end with the end of this
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  physical life, but they are carried over into a new
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  existence, into the rebirth in a different realm, be it a new
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  human realm or some heavenly or animal or even hellish realm.
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  So most spiritual traditions had this belief in common, Also
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  Buddhism. Also the Ajivikas believed that
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  there is karma and rebirth but they did not believe in any free
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  will, which means that whatever you do according to the ajivikas
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  it is predestined you have. You cannot escape from what is
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  written basically in the book of your life.
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  And the Buddha was heavily opposed to that.
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  The Buddha said that there is free will, we can make our
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  decisions, and he always emphasized how important it is
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  to exercise our willpower, our power of efficacy, and to apply
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  this to our spiritual practice. It does matter if we believe in
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  free will. It does matter if we practice
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  accordingly now from today's perspective, of course, the
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  question of free will is has been discussed in philosophy
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  enough and I think it's quite tiresome to go into the purely
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  intellectual philosophical topic of it.
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  It is just important to point out that for the Buddha it made
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  difference. If you believed in free will,
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  that if you don't believe in it, you will be more phlegmatic, you
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  will give in to your worst tendencies.
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  And that if you believe that there is a free will, that you
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  will actually have the chance to improve your life for your
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  benefit and for the benefit of others.
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  Does it mean though that Buddhism believes that everyone
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  is always free to do what they choose?
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  No. We have to understand it
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  differently in the sense that there is something like a seed
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  of free will inside of us and we need to cultivate it.
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  Now the seed is planted in a what I call a human machine.
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  It is planted within a mind that has much more characteristics
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  and in common with a machine than with a completely free
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  will. This machine has a few goals.
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  It is basically wired to do certain things and to avoid
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  certain things. It's wired to go towards
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  pleasure, to avoid pain, discomfort and suffering.
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  And this setup, basically of this machine is thrown into
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  outer circumstances, right? So with this setup, to avoid
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  discomfort, to seek comfort or pleasure, we're thrown into a
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  world that is not particularly favorable to us.
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  We have to survive, we have to find food, we have to somewhat
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  foresee the future. We have to take control of over
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  our bodies, maintain our bodies, and so on.
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  So this is the exposure to the inner, to the outer world.
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  But there's also an exposure to the inner world because what we
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  experience is not only sensory experiences where we perceive
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  the outside world. We also have feelings that come
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  from within. We have thoughts that come from
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  within. We have beliefs, attitudes.
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  So this is something that I call the inner outside world.
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  We're exposed to both of those. Now according to Buddhism, what
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  is it that happens when this exposure takes place?
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  And I think it's actually relatively accurate.
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  It's not super precise in today's philosophical standards,
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  but none the less I think it's quite true.
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  Our perception, our mind meets some sort of circumstance,
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  irrelevant circumstance. I see a person, I meet, I face
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  some danger, I face a challenge. I'm eating something that I
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  like, all of these things. What is triggered then is a
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  feeling. The feeling to grab, to hold, to
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  increase, or the feeling that tells me to push something away,
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  this feeling includes is based on a judgment, right?
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  So this machine that we are, that you come to life with is
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  quite judgmental. We meet a circumstance.
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  We form a judgment. The judgment is expressed in a
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  feeling, and then an action follows that.
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  What we have to do now, according to Buddhism, is to
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  resist those automatic aspects, those automatic reactions, the
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  automatic triggers, and to develop some more degrees of
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  freedom in the way that we react or the way that we act.
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  What is the obstacle here? The obstacle is that this human
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  machine that we come into the world with is not only prone to
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  judgement and to emotional feelings reactions, but it forms
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  habit. And this is the memory aspect
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  that we are equipped with. We form a habit which means that
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  next time we are faced with a very similar stimulus with a
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  trigger, a situation, a circumstance, beat, alter or
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  inner. I remember what my response was
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  last time, to put it very simply, and if it was somewhat
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  successful, the result will be the tendency to repeat the very
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  same reaction as I did previously.
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  OK, so now we have a machine that comes with its tendencies
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  to seek and grab the good, to avoid or push away the
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  discomfort and the pain. And it has the possibility to
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  remember and based on memory, to form habits, habitual judgments,
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  habitual feelings, habitual reactions.
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  Now what it does, and I think we humans are pretty good in this
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  and much more advanced than most other sentient beings in the
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  animal realm, is we can link those habitual judgements,
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  thoughts, feelings and actions to pretty complex chains.
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  And it enable us, enables us to make very fast, complex
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  judgements in new complex situations.
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  So I can go to a city where I've never been to, and in order to
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  navigate the situation, I fall back to my habitual judgments
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  that I acquired in my home, my home place, my home city, my
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  homeland. What is actually going on?
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  If I compare the the data sets, so to speak, that I'm exposed to
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  is an enormous complexity. What I do with my Organism does
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  is IT projects onto this complexity full of information
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  that I've not been exposed to previously.
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  IT projects information judgments that I'm aware of,
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  that I habitually have applied successfully in the past.
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  I apply that to this new generation, new information.
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  Now, how successful am I with that?
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  I don't know. The further away the new
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  situation is from my acquired, my acquired habits, the less
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  successful it might be. But nonetheless, I am dealing
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  with complexity on a very high level, and this ability makes us
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  very intelligent. It makes us very flexible.
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  Ideally we are able to distinguish which situations
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  need more thought, but if we're thoughtless, we can still
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  project our experience onto the new situation.
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  OK, but this is exactly where the Buddhist understanding of us
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  being somewhat machine like actually meets our very even
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  uneducated in terms of Buddhism or philosophy, our experience,
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  because we are. I think most of us, all of us,
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  find ourselves in situations where we wish that we would have
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  acted differently, where we regret that we couldn't process
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  the information available to us fast enough, that we could not
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  get hold of my the best version of myself, what my actual
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  beliefs are, but that I was triggered into a quick reaction
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  that somehow harmed myself, harmed others, or where I simply
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  did not live up fully to my potential.
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  So the our habitual self, our machine self, we know it.
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  We know it when we overeat. We know it when in so similar
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  situations, I get upset again relating to a family member, my
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  spouse, my child, my pet, very repetitive situations.
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  I have reacted poorly in the past.
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  I vowed not to react as poorly in the future.
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  And yet I find myself again and again doing a similar silly,
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  harming reaction behavior, right?
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  So I am in that sense a victim of my machine self, of the
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  habits of my past. Now this freedom that Buddhism
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  tells us is implanted in us in a seed, as a seed.
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  What is the goal of that? Is the goal that this freedom
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  allows me to do whatever I like, that this freedom allows me to
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  be successful against others, to be better in competition, and so
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  forth in Buddhism? It is not.
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  The nature of the free will in Buddhism is that it allows me to
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  do the right thing. And what is the right thing?
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  The right thing is to act in a way that I am not harmed and
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  that I do not harm others and that I do not harm myself.
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  So the freedom is a tool that helps me to act in the best
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  possible way to not harm myself or others.
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  This is what freedom constitutes, what it essentially
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  is, and it finds its highest manifestation not only in daily
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  life. I spoke about this in my
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  previous video about the ethical foundation of a good gut feeling
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  and intuition. But to develop this skill of not
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  harming, of doing the right thing into meditation and to
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  further liberation of the mind so that the degrees of freedom
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  that I acquire expand more and more that I I get more and more
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  distant from the machine aspect of me, the so-called me.
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  Now in practice what it means is that I observe the situations
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  that I'm putting myself into, especially the problematic ones.
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  So in daily life, I look at the situations that I usually
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  struggle with and I try to understand what is actually
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  happening. At what point does the trigger
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  get me? At what point does my free will,
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  my ability to act as I wish, diminish and gives way to
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  slipping into some sort of trance?
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  Some sort of habit will have sleep where it takes over, where
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  my system takes over, where my habits take over.
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  I recognize my feelings. I recognize what the feelings
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  are telling me. That tell me a story that I'm
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  somehow violated. That I need to have this thing
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  that someone is not treating me well and believing the narrative
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  of the feeling I am triggered into this habitual judgement and
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  habitual action, harming myself, harming others.
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  So for Buddhism there are few central points there.
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  Feeling is one of them and the original Buddhism.
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  Historical Buddhism has a quite difficult relationship with
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  freedom, sorry, with feelings, because exactly it perceives
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  feelings to be in the chain of processes that are quite
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  symptomatic for the machine mind, for the machine self.
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  And so, unfortunately often enough in the original texts, we
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  come to the conclusion that feelings should be not accepted,
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  that they should be suppressed, that should be changed, morphed,
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  Just not taken, not taken at face value, not accepted.
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  Right. From today's perspective, this
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  is problematic. You can ask yourself, so if
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  Buddhism was that savvy and psychology and so on, why did it
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  lead to this conclusion that we should suppress if this is so
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  unhealthy? There are several reasons for
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  that. First of all, original Buddhism
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  mostly addressed people who were already highly developed in the
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  ethical ethical conduct. So it addressed people who
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  basically were quite immune against harming themselves or
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  harming others in a forceful, forceful way.
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  This is one reason. The other is that it mostly
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  addressed especially the core of the original teachings it
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  addressed monastics, and monastics had their own code of
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  conduct. They had to leave in a very
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  specific way in order to not be criticized or in order not to be
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  excluded. Sex communicated from the
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  monastic community. So for example, there was 0
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  tolerance against sexuality in the monastic community, so to
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  allow feelings that trigger sexual lust and might lead the
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  way to a conduct that as a consequence has an exclusion
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  from the monastic community that was just simply unacceptable.
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  So in order to avoid that, feelings have to be suppressed.
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  OK, coming back to today's life for us.
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  It is unhealthy for us normal human beings who are in a path
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  to improve the relationship with ourselves, to improve the
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  relationship with others. We are not that super highly
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  developed ethically. We are not immune against
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  harming ourselves. Quite the opposite.
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  Often enough we do harm ourselves in subtle or not so
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  subtle ways. And coming from that standpoint,
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  to suppress feelings, as we have seen and see every day, to
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  suppress feelings is an unhealthy choice.
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  What happens psychologically when we suppress feelings on a
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  systematic level with in very specific contexts at work, in
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  the relationship regarding the family?
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  When I think about myself? When I suppress feelings, I
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  create something that called Gustav Young.
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  He called the Shadow. I create a realm within myself
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  that I'm not accepting. When I'm suppressing who I am,
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  when I'm suppressing my needs, what I feel.
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  Those feelings don't just disappear, they go somewhere in
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  the emotional household. They go into a corner that is
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  dark, that is blind, that I don't want to communicate with.
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  None the less, it's within me. And what is it inside of me?
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  What is in me works through me. So the feelings, the needs that
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  I suppress, they will still express themselves, but they
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  will express themselves as something alien to me.
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  To put it differently, the suppressed feeling, the
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  suppressed need will live through me and will leave me
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  bewildered or frustrated with myself because I was just not
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  able to stop myself, to change to my way of acting or
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  communicating. And that feels then I feel
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  alienated from myself as is, as if someone else is living inside
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  of me. To put it dramatically, like
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  something like a demon working through me and the people around
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  me, my body as well, react to this different being.
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  And then of course I am harmed. People around me that I usually
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  love and so on. Which means consequences come
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  back to me and contributes to the mess that my life is more or
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  less OK. So I described that there is a
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  machine aspect from Buddhist perspective that is quite strong
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  in our mind and our Organism and our person feelings play an
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  important role, their needs play an important role there.
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  And that we want to free ourselves.
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  We want to be able to make the best decisions at important
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  moments. So what is the contribution of
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  psychology in that respect? What we do today, especially
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  when we address normal people who are not highly advanced in
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  Buddhism or any spiritual practice, who are not fully
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  control, in control over the feelings, thoughts, attitudes,
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  hopes, emotions and so on, is we look at the feeling, we look at
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  the need, we look at its expression and we trace it back
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  to its root. To give you an example, I have
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  an office job and in order to make it through work at the end
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  of the day, I my expressed need as it becomes conscious for me
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  is to vent, to take up steam, maybe to drink, maybe to go to a
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  party, to distract myself in ways that I partly enjoy.
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  Partly I regret. Because you know, the next day I
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  wake up with a hangover or if I was browsing through, you know,
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  YouTube videos, TikTok, etcetera, I might stay up too
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  late. So the next morning I'm groggy
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  and have to go back to work again and so on.
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  So my need is I have to switch off.
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  I have to recover from all the the kind of suppressed
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  tendencies that I had toward work.
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  I cannot simply, you know, do what I like at work or stop
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  working if I don't want to. There's a certain responsibility
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  that I have now. As I said, I don't.
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  In order to remain healthy, I don't suppress the need to get
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  drunk, to go to a party, to distract myself, to yell at
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  someone, to be aggressive towards people, to be aggressive
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  towards myself. I don't suppress that.
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  What I do is, I'm asking myself what is it that I actually want.
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  So I'm assuming that there is a healthy need, a healthy tendency
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  behind the overt the expressed unhealthy behavior, the
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  unhealthy expression. So in the example of work, what
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  I actually want to do is I want to feel free.
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  Maybe throughout the day I dissociated from my body, so I
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  want to feel my body. And so I go to a party to dance
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  or a drink or I take some other recreational drug and it gives
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  me back my body feeling. And this is somewhat satisfying
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  yet unhealthy. But once I identified what the
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  actual need was behind the expressed the overt behavior,
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  then I can ask myself, OK, what are other ways that are healthy
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  and yet give me the same result? And I might come to the
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  conclusion that, for example, in order to feel the body, I can do
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  sports, I can take a warm bath, I can go out to go to a sauna, I
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  can do relaxation methods. OK, now granted there is also
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  some sort of satisfaction in self-destructive behavior.
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  I will not cover that when I do healthy things like sports and
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  so on. But if my need was really to
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  feel the body then to do sports, to go to a sauna, to take a
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  bath, to get a massage and so on will satisfy that.
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  Maybe there is the the self punishing aspect, the the ultra
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  aggression as a need. I have to ask myself what that
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  stands for. What is it that I actually want
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  to have there? Then I might come to other
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  conclusions and then again I can ask myself, OK, so are there
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  healthy ways to live that to express that?
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  To give you a very different example, let's say at home I
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  live with my spouse and we somehow made the agreement that
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  I clean. I wash up now what time?
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  My impression is somehow my relationship is not good anymore
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  after a few years, and my impression is that the deal is
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  not fair. I find myself cleaning too much,
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  washing up too much, or she's been too naggy about all these
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  activities. So I'm unhappy with the
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  situation. And what happens now is she
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  makes a remark, rolls her eyes, she mentioned something with
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  cleaning or something. And then that triggers me and I
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  snap at her. I become aggressive, passive
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  aggressive or active aggressive and yelling and so on.
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  Again, I don't suppress the activity.
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  What I'm doing is I'm asking myself, what is it that I
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  actually want in this situation? What I actually want is I want a
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  better deal because I feel that that's unfair the load of work
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  that I have to do. I want to feel acknowledged and
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  I want to be in a relationship that is loving and probably a
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  few more. But just to mention the obvious
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  ones, so that I take seriously and instead of routinely,
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  habitually being triggered and react in very much the same way,
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  which is passive aggressive, active aggressive, or harm
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  against myself or escaping into fantasies.
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  Oh, it would be so nice to be with someone else.
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  Or if I just could be able to tell her or you know, anything
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  like that. I'm taking seriously the root of
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  the need. And that is healthy.
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  To want to be acknowledged, is healthy.
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  To want to be treated fairly is healthy.
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  To want to be in a loving relationship is healthy so that
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  I take seriously. And now I can ask myself, OK,
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  how do I get there? And I can have conversations, I
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  can have therapy, or in the end I can end the relationship.
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  And maybe that also is a complex process.
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  I have to organize that, a lot of responsibility that I have to
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  take there, but in the end I'm taking responsibility for my
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  needs. So of course I want a healthy
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  path there. This is the integration of the
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  Buddhist principle of enhancing my degrees, increasing my
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  degrees of freedom within my daily life.
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  What I'm doing again is in the example of the relationship
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  issue, is I'm observing what is actually happening in daily
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  life, and I become very aware at what point I start to act
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  habitually, at what point I depart from the degrees of
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  freedom that I have and I lay out a plan for myself to try.
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  What do I want to try? Let me try to talk to her, for
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  example. So before I come home from work,
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  I sent her a message that I want to talk to her about her
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  relationship, about daily activities in the household.
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  If she agrees, we sit down and give her my perspective.
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  Now, there's a technique to have conversations like these.
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  They're often not easy, especially if we have maneuvered
• 31:08
  ourself into a dead end in the relationship when it comes to
• 31:12
  communication. But there are ways to get there.
• 31:14
  There are books about it. There is coupled therapy.
• 31:17
  There's individual therapy. There are ways to get there.
• 31:22
  The important thing is to make the decision to do something new
• 31:27
  and then I can have this communication, this
• 31:30
  conversation, and at the end of the conversation, the conclusion
• 31:33
  might be, let's try for one or two weeks to do it differently.
• 31:38
  If I do it like that, would you be able to appreciate me more?
• 31:42
  My contribution? Could you please react in a
• 31:46
  different way when you disapprove of the way that I'm
• 31:49
  doing things? Maybe we want to swap?
• 31:52
  How about you do the cleaning for two weeks, just to get an
• 31:56
  impression of how much work that actually is?
• 31:59
  And in exchange, maybe I take over your tasks because I'm
• 32:03
  noticing that probably I imagine it to be easier than it really
• 32:07
  is. So these are very practical
• 32:13
  applications of increasing my degree of freedom.
• 32:18
  What is what this is based on is I'm chewing through my habitual
• 32:26
  reactions. I'm observing where I am
• 32:29
  habitual, the trigger points etcetera, and in order to change
• 32:36
  them, I contemplate them before I'm observing myself at that
• 32:42
  moment, because I know exactly which moments they are.
• 32:45
  And after that I'm reflecting how I did what else I have to
• 32:50
  pay attention to where I have to be more careful, maybe because
• 32:53
  the first time around again I slipped into some trigger point.
• 33:00
  So to sum up, the machine aspect of the mind has the potential to
• 33:09
  create some substantial troubles for my life, in spite of all the
• 33:16
  positive aspects that it brings, which is to improve my cognitive
• 33:21
  skill, to help me to navigate complex situations quickly.
• 33:25
  I mentioned that in the beginning, so there are
• 33:26
  definitely advantages to that. But the disadvantage is that I
• 33:30
  can become a victim of my own habits and that while I'm
• 33:37
  triggered in the habitual mode, I'm regressing.
• 33:43
  I'm regressing to the point where I started to develop the
• 33:47
  habit. If I am acting out a habit that
• 33:50
  I acquired in childhood, for example, emotionally or as a
• 33:55
  teenager, then it doesn't matter how old I am at that moment.
• 34:00
  When I'm triggered, I'm partly regressing to that age, and at
• 34:04
  that age, I am not control of myself.
• 34:09
  I'm not doing the best version of what I can do, and I'm
• 34:12
  certainly not free. I've been.
• 34:16
  I am even less free than the adult, because as a kid I was so
• 34:20
  much more. As a teenager, I was so much
• 34:22
  more in the control of the hormones and control of other
• 34:27
  forces within me. OK, so this is the arc from
• 34:37
  starting from a philosophical point in Buddhism, which is to
• 34:42
  see how machine like our behavior is to see how the seed
• 34:49
  of freedom is planted within us. Yet the US is a machine that is
• 34:57
  wired, that is programmed to grab the good, to reject the
• 35:01
  bad. Out of this we have we come to
• 35:04
  our habitable judgments, and the judgments then dictate us
• 35:09
  without asking us anymore. When we apply this to our lives,
• 35:14
  this already will be a great contribution to the enhancement
• 35:19
  of our quality of life. It will help us to navigate the
• 35:23
  situations where we fall prey to our own bad habits with some
• 35:29
  work and some insight. It helps us to create situations
• 35:35
  that are much healthier for ourselves and for others in
• 35:38
  those critical moments, and we can leave it at that.
• 35:43
  At that point I can be a well adjusted human being, aware of
• 35:48
  my needs and able to execute them in a healthy way for myself
• 35:53
  and others if I want. If I'm hooked now, if I
• 35:58
  understand how healthy it was to expand my degrees of freedom to
• 36:03
  be less of a machine, I can continue on a spiritual path.
• 36:07
  I can continue with meditation. I can continue on the path
• 36:11
  envisioned by the Buddha and his original followers.
• 36:16
  And I can continue to cultivate my mind in what I call the
• 36:20
  laboratory, in the lab, the lab of meditation, where I'm exposed
• 36:25
  mostly to my inner environment, to my feelings, my thoughts, my
• 36:31
  impulses, my attitudes. And I can chew through them.
• 36:36
  How much are they still in spite of my good quality of life?
• 36:42
  How much do they limit my degrees of freedom?
• 36:45
  Internally, I can work through them.
• 36:48
  I can ascend through the difficult different stations of
• 36:51
  meditation and thus contribute to a much deeper quality of
• 36:56
  life. That again feeds back into my
• 36:59
  daily life. When through meditation, for
• 37:02
  example, I become a calmer person, I can radiate, I can
• 37:07
  transport that, transmit that into my daily life, to myself,
• 37:12
  to my activities, my work, my relationships and so forth.
• 37:15
  But you know, as a contemporary practitioner, I can say this is
• 37:21
  it's not necessary to do this meditations.
• 37:25
  What is important though? To apply those principles to my
• 37:28
  normal daily life, to a more psychological perspective of
• 37:32
  ourselves, and thus to become more the person that I aspire to
• 37:38
  be. OK, I hope you were interested
• 37:42
  in the topic and you've got to take away some inspiration for
• 37:47
  yourself. Don't hesitate to leave a
• 37:50
  comment at the videos to ask a question and I will hope to get
• 37:55
  back to those comments and questions in future videos.
• 37:59
  Thank you.