“If people wish to fully understand
All Buddhas of the three periods of time,
They should contemplate the nature of the dharma realm:
Everything is made from mind alone.”— Avatamsaka Sutra
My understanding of the above verse has evolved since I first read it as a teenager. I no longer read it as mainly a cosmological statement —the Buddha wasn’t refuting a “world out there” that exists independent of its experiencers (nor was he confirming its existence)— but one that points to the centrality of our mind in the equation, because it’s the only instrument we have to know anything at all.
… the mind is saddled with a set of limitations —lenses, perspectives, points of view, positions— that mediates and changes how we perceive and process information.
This instrument of ours (Yogacara Buddhist texts describe the mind as 8 consciousnesses, with 5 of them correspond to the senses of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching) is saddled with a set of limitations —lenses, perspectives, points of view, positions— that mediates and changes how we perceive and process information. The last line of the verse indicates something much more active: each of our minds is constantly forming (and being formed by) a unique set of limitations, leading to unique sensual experiences of the “world without”.
Everyday experiences give us a glimpse into this active and creative process. To an errant tourist, a dense forest is a menacing force to be feared, but to an herbalist or anyone trained in nature survival skills, the same forest can be a safe haven with food and shelter everywhere. A series of notes plucked on a guitar is simply just that to the untrained ears, but a seasoned musician can glean much more from the same set of notes: the instrument, the music piece the notes might belong to, the ability and emotion of the player, etc. In these examples, given the same “external” conditions, our mind dictates what experience we will have. The recent studies on the concept of inattentional blindness further help to illustrate the primacy of our mind in even determining what “external world” we experience.
… some go further to assert that we can be functionally blind to our surroundings without attention.
Inattentional blindness is a psychological phenomenon of inability to see something in plain sight. Psychologists attribute such blindness on the complete lack of attention on the object (that’s in plain sight) in question. Some researchers infer the significance of attention in perception, and some go further to assert that we can be functionally blind to our surroundings without attention. Psychologists Brian Scholl, Christopher Chabris, Daniel Simons, and Steve Most have conducted various experiments to demonstrate this phenomenon and the importance of attention in seeing. In one of the experiments, subjects are instructed to count number of basketball passes by players dresses in white (with another team of players also present but dressed in black) while a woman dressed in a gorilla suit walks amongst the basketball players. About half of the subjects fail to notice the gorilla (I failed to notifce the gorilla when I watched the video for the first time as it was circulated on the Internet).
… perhaps because no one could reasonably believe that he could be so close to the crime scene without noticing the beating, and therefore he must be lying to cover his buddies on the force.
I heard about Simons and Chabris’ latest experiment on National Public Radio. It was inspired by the real-life case of Kenneth Conley. Conley was a police officer in Boston in 1995. During a foot chase after several people suspected of shooting a police officer, a group of white police officers mistook a black officer in plain clothes as one of the suspects. The black officer received a severe beating that left him in the hospital for 6 months. Afterward no one involved said a word about the beating, and the only police report indicated close proximity —perhaps feet or yards away— to the location of the beating was filed by Mr. Conley. He was tried and convicted of perjury and lost his job on the police force, perhaps because no one could reasonably believe that he could be so close to the crime scene without noticing the beating, and therefore he must be lying to cover his buddies on the force.
Simons and Chabris thought the case provided them the first real-life example of inattentional blindness, and designed an experiment attempting to reenact the incident as closely as possible. They recruited student volunteers to run through a wooded trail and follow a jogger ahead. The instructions to the subjects were to maintain a fixed distance from the jogger and count how many times the jogger touched his hat. Then a minute into the run the reseachers staged a simulated fight slightly off the trail. The question is whether the subjects, being absorbed by the task at hand and focusing on a target, can see the fight in plain sight. During nights, which was the condition of the original case, less than ⅓ of the subjects noticed the fight. Even in broad daylight, around 40% of the subjects still fail to notice the fight.
Why do we pay attention to certain things and not others? Do we have control over what we pay attention to? Can we maintain high level of focused attention while not losing sight of other important things?
Chris Chabris said in his interview with NPR, that “people don’t see everything around them —and they intuitively think that they will. And those two things together can lead to a lot of mistakes”. The phenomenon of inattentional blindness helps to demonstrate the importance of attention in perception. However, it’s only the first step toward understanding other important issues: Why do we pay attention to certain things and not others? Do we have control over what we pay attention to? Can we maintain high level of focused attention while not losing sight of other important things?