Consciousness is beyond matter

Neuroscience is not without the smell of triumphalism first, that it assumes that consciousness and the brain are one and the same thing which adds up to matter; next, that what neuroscience cannot explain about consciousness doesn't really exist in the first place.  It's mumbo-jumbo.

However, the scientific notion of 'matter' may have some problems as we shall see.  Matter as physical stuff, which neuroscience generally supposes is the basis of the brain and therefore consciousness, is generally recognized to mean a particular mass that occupies space.  On the same track, and with circular reasoning, mass is considered to be the quantity of matter!  (So much for any profound truth here.)  

Supposedly things like a piano or a human brain are material things composed of matter (you could even say matters).  This means they are made up of different grades of matter until we reach the limit of matter, itself, which is massless and space-like.  We may also add that the limit of matter, which besides being massless and space-like, is not subject to gravity; does not generate gravity, is not particulate, exhibits no inertia, etc.  

Stopping here, are we not permitted to think that maybe 'consciousness' is the limit of matter, also, which means that consciousness is massless, space-like, etc.?  This is intended to suggest that the massless, space-like field upon which matter sits, including our brain, is real and is maybe who we really are.  Moreover, it is something that neuroscience has no means to either substantially grasp or to understand.  So they just ignore the problem of limit and what is beyond it.  In Buddhism we don't.

How much this helps our understanding of traditional Zen, which is about the realization of Buddha Mind, is probably very little.  But if we decide to buy Zen marketed through Zen teachers who embrace neuroscience like the Upaya Institute and Zen Center, then it becomes important. 

We cannot realize the Buddha Mind or Buddha Consciousness by believing the neuroscience dogma that there is no distinction to be made between consciousness and neural activity.  This would mean that we are only brains.  When these brains finally crap out, experiencing pain, that’s it.  We have it on good authority from pop Zennists and neuroscientists/neurobiologists that we shall, after we die, never become brains again.  It was by accident that we became brains in the first place.  However, if we are intrinsically massless and space-like—heaven forbid!—we could tune into another brain!  

 

Comments

[Bruce]

So if what I see is mediated by my eyes and occipital cortex; what I hear is mediated by my ears and temporal cortex; what I smell by my olfactory lobe, what I taste and touch by my sensory cortex; what I feel by my subcortical brain structures; what I think of by my parietal and frontal lobes, what I am aware of by my thalamocortical networks; then what's left when it all dies? If "who we are" is not sight, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, thinking or feeling, then what is it? What does the Heart Sutra tell us?

So in emptiness no form,
no feeling, thought, or choice,
nor is there consciousness.
No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind,
no color, sound, smell, taste, touch,
or what the mind takes hold of,
nor even act of sensing.

[Bob Morris]

You guys have confused by illusions like this http://www.nature.com/news/out-of-body-experience-master-of-illusion-1.9569

[Java Junkie]

Bob, to say that you have dogshit for brains is a titanic understatement.

Matter is no more self-aware/alive/conscious than there are little people IN the TV set, nor is the radio enspooked/haunted.

The coordination of the inchoate will/nous/citta/spirit with matter has resultantly no ultimate statement in conclusion UPON or ABOUT matter/hyle itself, rather that said X (persona non grata, person, existential being) is alive, nor is X being illuminated a statement about or upon LIGHT intrinsically when speaking of X being illuminated.

As for 'empty space', my little mental midget, such term is a disproven convention only used by the mental pedestrians such as yourself....empty space was disproved as far back as Pythagoras, plato, and in depth by Plotinus, ages ago.

A topos, or coordinate in magnitudinal relation, ie spacetime, as referrant to matter, which itself is merely the byproduct wavefront equivalency of emanation itself, has no relation other than magnitudes to other magnitudes. 2D and 3D magnitudes cannot backwards relate OR comment upon 0D ontological subjects such as mind/spirit/nous/citta which in their incoherent states (as meant = avijja) are omnidirectionally magnified (=coordinated) and falsely conjectured to be topographical, or implied 'in and of spacetime/matter/magnitude'

Or in terms a dolt like you might grasp, 'wise up fool'

[Bob Morris]

I made my living in Materials Science (Metallurgy, Ceramics, Polymers, etc) so please think of me as an unapologetic "Materialist." That "Material" stuff that Zennist is always jousting with is just evolving "big bang dust" ... quarks, gluons, photons, etc sequentially organized into protons and neutrons, hydrogen, carbon, iron, molecules, us, etc.. The stuff is basically empty space and its apparent solidity is an illusion. Odd thing is that this stuff is intrinsically self-aware. (I.e., Matter=Mind.) How mystical can you get?? http://www.livescience.com/17348-big-eyes-marine-predator.html

[Jure]

In the past, they had phrenology, a "science" they thought you could tell about a person's mind by looking at the shape of the skull. The German philosopher Hegel made fun of them, and sarcastically remarked how they claim "Spirit is a bone". - Nowadays neuroscience will be perhaps one day regarded as similarly pseudo as we see phrenology today.

To me, this can be dealt with on a completely logical level. The "brain people" claim reality is structured BY the brain. But the object called "brain" also appears WITHIN the structured reality. So, the "brain" is both the structured (object), and the structuring (subject)? It's not hard to see how this is contradictory.