My Journey to Buddhism as a Finnish Person

Written by ST.

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Buddhism is a predominantly Asian religion. Most Finns are non-religious (in fact, Finland is one of the most atheistic countries in the world), but nominally Christian (protestant of the evangelical-Lutheran variety). But why am I, a Finnish person, visiting Buddhist temples in Asia, exploring meditation, and reading about Buddhist teachings?

Previously, as a child, I had dismissed meditation as a bunch of nonsense. Why would sitting around achieve anything? Maybe meditation makes sense if you need to calm down, but there is certainly no benefit beyond that. Monks et cetera are just an example of memes produced under the greater category of religions. It turned out that I was quite wrong.

At first, I started hearing from people who I think are intelligent seeing the world in a relatively accurate way that meditation works. If one person mentions this, I could just shrug and treat this data point as something close to noise in a data set. But it is an update towards “okay, maybe meditation works” (whatever that means).

Then a second person mentions this. Then a third. I started being a little bit curious. I started searching for information online on how meditation works, and what it is supposed to do. Turns out that meditation is actually an umbrella term for a wide array of practices that have a wide array of different intended and unintended outcomes. I try to filter what registers as obvious myths and stories and keep to more scientific explanations of what goes on in a brain when someone adopts a meditation regimen.

I came across books like Mind Illuminated, and Mastering the Core Teachings of Buddha, that attempt to explain key concepts of Buddhism and certain types of meditation more rigorously and scientifically. It seems to be a recurring theme that Western neuroscientists seem to be really into Buddhism, and often write very long and complicated books on the matter. However, through the stories of Thutti, Buddhism in Vietnam tends towards more spirituality. Interesting

I downloaded Sam Harris’ meditation app Waking Up but found using it a bit anxiety-inducing.

What is consciousness? I had defaulted to an answer that is roughly “bunch of neurons shooting in a brain creates an illusion of personhood” and called it a day, but the more I think about it the less this does seem to make sense. Is functionalism true? Why are we able to access certain types of information, and where lies the boundary of sensory experience? How do multiple streams of sensory data form a singular moment of experience while keeping coherence? How large is the space of experience that we can access?

In an intense workshop week I took part in there was an optional Alexander technique class. For the most part, Alexander technique is just about figuring out the details in posture so that serious musicians could train longer without risking physical damage to their bodies. But there is another school of thought within the Alexander technique community, which is more about mental movements. I realized that I had already intuited a way to trigger my brain into an Alexander-like state by just really trying to simulate the personhood of others around me and the environment around me in an expanding field of consciousness! I realized that okay, there are different types of states in consciousness, and there are relatively simple tricks that can be used to trigger these.

Most people do know a bunch of really simple tricks. You can purposefully trigger a sad state of mind by thinking of something sad. Think of crying puppies. By focusing on the puppies, you probably will notice a shift in your mood and experience. It turns out there are hundreds of levers you can pull to fine-tune your consciousness just a little bit, and tricks like “feel a bit sadder” and “feel a bit more entertained” are just the beginning.

I came across the topic of jhana. One psychiatrist attempted to define jhana states in terms of feedback loops. You focus very hard during meditation until you feel faintly good. You focus on the good feeling more. If you practice very hard, focusing on the good feeling feels very good. Then you can focus on the new, very good feeling that you get by focusing on the good feeling, which in turn feels very good, which you can focus on, which feels good, and a feedback loop is formed.

Suddenly you have what feels like a bottomless well of feeling good at your disposal, and it doesn’t appear to do anything too damaging like the more well-known methods of activating a lot of your hedonic synapses at the same time (by using certain drugs, for example)--don’t quote me on this, though, as there hasn’t been all that much serious research done on jhana states.

I continued to try meditating through Waking Up. I am not very good.

I feel torn. On the one hand, it is remarkable that Buddhists have explored topics like consciousness, suffering, and altered states of consciousness for thousands of years. It is remarkable that Buddhists have placed moral value on non-human suffering in a serious capacity much before this thinking had gone even close to mainstream. On the other hand, I really don’t have access to most of what people view as Buddhism. Up until a few years ago, I didn’t even realize that the man with the fat belly that I keep seeing in Buddhist imagery isn’t even The Buddha, but some guy called Budai! Luckily, I now have my Vietnamese friend Thuttiboo who has a very different perspective on Buddhism and she promised to show me temples in Vietnam.

This is Budai

My view of Buddhism is distilled through the lenses of neuroscientists and hippies. How does the lived experience of Buddhism of, let’s say, an Indian Buddhist differ from that of someone who grew up with the Western version of it? How about that of a Vietnamese person? I am not sure.

One thing I wish to do if I get a chance to visit a Buddhist country is to go to their temples, and just observe. If there is someone who is fluent in English, I can perhaps try to chat them up a bit. But I think above all, it is important to be able to explore and deeply reflect upon consciousness and its state space, especially if the system of ethics you subscribe to is greatly informed by these. And who knows, perhaps one might be able to lift up their hedonic baseline or reach a permanent shift in their experience for the better. Or, perhaps one might step astray and start being interested in ways of being that produce very little value under some other systems of ethics. Difficult!

Anyways, what do you think? Tell me in the comments! Remember to like and follow When in Finland.