Saturday, July 04, 2020

Modern psychology in Buddhism.

Currently, I am reading a very interesting book, Thinking Fast and Slow (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow). The writer, a Noble laureate, explains numerous experiments he had conducted and discusses a two-agent model of the human brain.

One of these agents is called System I, the agent which reacts without thinking. This is the part that is responsible for all human biases. There is a range of fascinating examples in the book which shows how biased we all are all the time. Then we have System II which is the more thoughtful and calculating agent. However, our brain is lazy. Hence, it rarely engages System II.

This reminded me of the Buddhist model of the brain. Thee is our "monkey mind" which is always jumpy. It can never settle or seat in peace. (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/buddha-how-to-tame-your-m_b_945793) This is so similar to System I. And then we have the "noting mind" the part which can observe things without any bias. This is so similar to System II. https://www.insightmeditationcenter.org/transcribed-talks/noting/

Found on Bing from www.clipartpanda.com | Cartoon clip art, Monkey ...

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