Probably from the fourth grade of primary school to the second day of junior high school, family members died or suddenly became seriously ill at intervals. My mother suffered great family changes in a short time, and her spirit was fragile and helpless, and she unconsciously fell into deep worries and fears.
Influenced by people, my mother invited a bodhisattva back to the temple. After that, on the first and fifteenth day of the first lunar month, she would burn incense to the Bodhisattva devoutly.
Before burning incense, be sure to dress neatly, arrange offerings, lay worship mats, put your hands together, meditate, and worship carefully. After years of persistence, the family has become peaceful since then.
Most ordinary people, like their mothers, are devout to Buddha, which is reflected in a series of ritualized actions. Those exquisite ceremonies give people a very mysterious feeling, which makes people feel that there is a transcendental invisible power in the life of the universe. People are used to various rituals handed down for thousands of years, and few people may think about how the Buddha brought people strength.
Robert, a professor of evolutionary psychology at Princeton University? Wright's insight brings people a brand-new perspective. He broke people's traditional understanding of Buddhism through modern science, especially evolutionary psychology, and his thoughts were novel. Seeing that his book was decomposed layer by layer, he had a sense of steps, removed the overall decoration and went straight to the core.
The English name of Epiphany is actually "Why Buddhism is true", which seems a bit redundant for devout Buddhists, but also a bit superstitious for materialists. The word epiphany is well used, which makes readers curious about exploring the cognitive truth. In my opinion, the book Epiphany has two main lines: one is to establish contact with Buddhism with the evolutionary psychology of natural selection to prove the authenticity and rationality of Buddhist teachings; The second is to introduce a method provided by Buddhism to get rid of troubles and pains-meditation.
These two main lines have always blended with each other in the book, and it is difficult to separate them. If we are not obsessed with what Buddhism is, we can completely simplify a series of arguments and appreciate the magic of meditation. When we see our hearts, we can feel the infinite power of Buddhism.
I will share with you the viewpoints in the book from five parts: first, people's illusory cognition of the world they live in is confirmed by the theory of natural selection, and at the same time, the consequences of natural selection can also confirm the Buddha's statement that all human beings suffer in this world, then analyze the root of suffering, understand the enlightenment of Buddha to themselves, and finally focus on the magic of meditation.
1. Natural selection caused "disaster"
The Diamond Sutra says, "If the Buddha says that the world is not the world, it is a famous world". It means: the world we see is not the world, the world is illusory and unreal, but the name is the world. In other words, the world we see is just an illusion.
Why do we see that the world is not real? The author proves that the brain misleads people because of the design of natural selection through the research of evolutionary psychology. Specifically, the purpose of natural selection is to transmit genes, and all human senses and perceptions are constantly evolving to better achieve this goal. People take some correct actions at the beginning of adapting to a better life. In order to constantly strengthen this kind of behavior beneficial to survival, people will have a kind of pleasure that follows. Natural selection will make this kind of pleasure fade easily and cause dissatisfaction, so as to repeatedly pursue pleasure and consolidate this kind of behavior beneficial to gene transmission.
With the continuous development of human society, many feelings we inherited are not true, and many illusions in real life can be well explained by natural selection theory. For example, the author gives an example of eating donuts, telling us how natural selection designs our feelings in a specific environment. In ancient times, food was scarce, and the sweetest food that apes could get was fruit. At that time, eating sweet food (fruit) was good for apes, and this feeling would lead people to pursue what was beneficial to them. So today, we have a natural preference for sweets, and these feelings are all true. In modern society, high-calorie sweets do not meet the requirements of scientific diet, and eating too much sweets will do harm to the body, so our inherent feeling of favoring sweets becomes a "wrong" feeling.
The Buddha once said that happiness is a dilemma for human beings. It is the "design" of natural selection that makes happiness fade easily. Instinctive feelings confuse us and it is difficult to see the truth, so we are caught in the dilemma of chasing short-term happiness. At this level, evolutionary psychology actually explains the origin of hallucinations in Buddhism.
Ordinary life is accompanied by suffering.
"The Analects of Hokkekyo" said: "There is no security in the three realms, just like a fire house, full of suffering and terrible." It is said that there is no eternal happiness in the three realms, and suffering is the main theme of life.
Since the natural selection of preference genes will make people feel happy and lead people to pursue things containing nutrients, then they will be disgusted with things that hurt people to avoid this kind of thing. In the book, the author gives an example of a false alarm about rattlesnakes. During hunting, in order to avoid being bitten by poisonous snakes, human ancestors became alert to rattlesnakes, and they always thought there were rattlesnakes. People are easily frightened by repeated false positives, which will do harm to people's mental health. We have inherited this false positive tendency, not only in avoiding harmful events, but also in other fears and daily anxieties. Like Aaron quoted in the book? Baker (the founder of cognitive behavioral therapy) said, "The price of bloodline survival may be a lifetime of discomfort." Moreover, in the words of the Buddha, it is a lifelong "bitterness."
If "discontent" is used to explain what the Buddha said about "suffering", more * * * sounds about suffering can be generated. Because of natural selection, we will instinctively want to make things better, so we will always look for those unpleasant, uncomfortable and dissatisfied things and try to avoid them. And all this discontent has produced a bitter feeling, which makes people feel that suffering is everywhere.