No Self, No Problem: How Neuropsychology is Catching Up to Buddhism (The No Self Wisdom)

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My left brain had a problem accepting the premise of this book; that the story telling part of the brain is responsible for all suffering and delusion.

If you’ve ever found yourself competing with friends to prove that you had the worst day or that your job is the most stressful, then you’re familiar with this phenomenon. Both Apple and Google state that they ensure that only users who have actually downloaded the app can submit a review.Often wrong: when actions or facts arise from someplace to which the left brain does not have access, the interpretive portion of our mind will simply explain them (this explanation may have nothing to do with reality); constantly making interpretations without a full account of the facts and it believes these interpretations to be true, much of the time without doubting its conclusion. But unconscious tasks still require high amounts of complex brain activity, which means that our right brain is working overtime behind the scenes to execute tasks we don’t even think about. Specializing in neuropsychology, he offers classes on the differences between the left and right brain, as well as on mindfulness and consciousness. But it also provided scientists with a group of people whose left and right brains were no longer in constant communication.

What made this experiment even more fascinating was the fact that, although most participants never consciously acknowledged that the game was rigged, their hands appeared to sweat or tremble when drawing from the risky first deck, further indicating that they were experiencing trepidation on a nonconscious level. The ‘I’ represents the idea of our individual self, the one that sits between the ears and behind the eyes and is ‘piloting’ the body.After all, as you now know, the right brain doesn’t work with categories or language; rather, it specializes in taking in the big picture, and is able to discern information that the left brain can’t access. Niebauer's first book, I noted a similarity between his ideas and those of don Miguel Ruiz, and I wondered if he had read or even met Ruiz. The brain’s left hemisphere is where language is processed; it’s also responsible for categorizing and interpreting reality, as well as recognizing patterns. When we accept the idea that our “self” is a construct, we can free ourselves to tap into our right brain’s energy through practicing meditation, compassion, and gratitude. The right brain is about doing, so if you want benefits from this book, you must do at least some of the exercises.

While in grad school in the early 1990s, Chris Niebauer began to notice striking parallels between the latest discoveries in psychology, neuroscience, and the teachings of Buddhism, Taoism, and other schools of Eastern thought.

Buddhism, Taoism, the Advaita Vedanta school of Hinduism, and other schools of Eastern thought have quite a different take on the self, the ego, or ‘me. Our character, our personality, is not just the story we tell ourselves about us: it’s the version of our story that has the most support from our community. In fact, almost everything the left brain does, from language to its perception of objects in space, is categorical in nature. You can become the observer of your attention, and notice how your attention is pushed in this direction and pulled in another. Our association of our true self with the constant voice in our head is an instance of mistaking the map (the voice) for the territory (who we really are).