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If most of our decisions are automatic, who is in charge?
cook99
Explorer
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My decision not to click that link wasn't automatic.
Ah, but how do you know it wasn't?
We are constantly being manipulated - because it's actually what we want.
>
@cook99; You're lucky I didn't actually dump the thread: Posting links to sites, videos and articles without some kind of explanatory preamble, opinion or comment (other than in the title) is not acceptable.
It has happened in the past that some have posted such links which have aroused sufficient curiosity to give an opening to trojans, and viruses.
In future, when posting a link to an outside source, please provide an introductory explanation of what members can expect to find and what you are trying to achieve through posting.
Thanks.
This is where mindfulness comes in. To move our reactions from the knee-jerk to the conscious and deliberate decision. That is why we practice. To get ourselves beyond instinctive and emotional response. Meditation has been proven to be a method by which humans can override the autonomic nervous system, and conditioned responses.
Yes, but how does this tie in with anatta and sunyata?
Kia Ora,
If most of our decisions are automatic, who is in charge?
Chaos . :coffee: ..
Metta Shoshin .
..
Two words.
Dependent Origination...
So nobody at the helm then?
No-self at the helm? How 'bout not-self at the helm. A series of not-selves, more like.
Oh yes. But it's just not who we think it is.
Sorry to be an attention-seeker, but has somebody looked at my link? We're 'steered' in a specific direction and made to believe it's all our own doing.
And I bet it doesn't just happen in what we openly recognise as 'Marketing' either....
What do those have to do with it?
Wow
.
My sister and BIL operate a 'chicken ranch', comprised of six 'houses' that hold about twenty thousand birds apiece (when the chicks are shipped in to be grown).
They look like cute yellow puffs when they are first shipped in. Within four weeks, they are ready for harvest due to genetic manipulation that has exploited an ability to grow huge amounts of muscle (your chicken meat) at the expense of every other system in the chicken's body. At four weeks old, the cute yellow puffs weigh about 5 pounds, are mostly featherless (makes the carcass more appealing), unable to stand or walk b/c of massive weight gain and lack of space, and so they just sit in front of the feeder at the mercy of their enormous appetites.
When I lived with them for a little over a year, I helped BIL work in the houses. What there was to do was pick up the dead chickens. BIL went through each house two or three times daily to pick up dead chickens or finish off sickly ones (throw hard against wall).
When it gets very hot, the mortality of the chickens rises and if they are near harvesting age, they are even more fragile. One must walk through several times a day and pick up dead chickens, who in the heat decompose VERY quickly, skin sliding off muscle and bone and making picking up a five pound mutant featherless lump of muscle a very distasteful job -- and there are two or three dead or dying chickens within eye shot.
I haven't talked about the smell.
No, I don't eat chicken, not even chicken flavored things.
The pictures of the chickens on that video are a laugh, but that's OK I don't wish anyone to see what it's really like
ETA: there are NO antibiotics used in the chicken feed or water, none are used. The food fed to the chickens (provided by the suppliers) is 100% VEGETARIAN. Chickens are omnivores, like you and me, but humans 'like' the idea of eating meat harvested off of vegetarian chickens, for some reason. It sells the meat!
In emergence theory complex systems don't require anyone to be in charge, there is no conductor leading the choir. That doesn't mean that decisions don't get made or that everything is predetermined, the process happens sort of organically. I suppose the workings of the brain could be seen to be one of those emergent systems.
@Hamsaka, that post - while pertinent to some of the content of my link - is a bit off-topic. The point of the link was not to necessarily highlight the plight of factory-farmed (or even intensely farmed) animals, but really, to expose how we're all 'sold' ideas, and manipulated into following specific trends, sometimes without realising.
It's about the power of advertising, and how susceptible we actually are to suggestion.
This is why subliminal publicity is banned. Because it manipulates people without their being aware of it.
However, clever advertising does the same. It just makes us also believe it's because of choices we make, not about the hard-sell and subtle phrasing....
Daniel Goleman's "Destructive Emotions" and Paul Ekman's "Emotional Awareness" deal with the issue of mindfulness and the Buddhist practice of meditation as being the cure to arrest our natural tendency to overreact at situations.
I have commented this before but it bears repetition.
Paul Ekman stresses that it is vital to "develop the monitoring to know that you are becoming emotional, so that you can choose how you enact your emotion."
Developing this monitoring can be done through the practice of mindfulness and meditation, because they help us be more grounded in the heat of the moment and therefore be more aware of negative mental states as they arise.
Indeed, way off track . . . an interesting 'blind spot' for me how I got very emotionally carried off. No judging against myself just . . . interested, and more interesting in the context of this thread.
@cook99
Buddhist meditation clearly demonstrates that our decisions need not be automatic.
The "who" that is in charge is always what ever you value most.
That is a real eye opener. People too are at the mercy of their enormous appetites. The difference is they have the opportunity to be free.
The Buddha said that food is to be taken only for the survival of this body.
Thank you @pegembara, it is eye opening and sickening. I went grocery shopping an hour ago, and Federica's link (meant to illustrate her point but making a completely different point for me) accompanied me during the shopping.
Yes, it puts a whole new slant on things, doesn't it....?
.
Kia Ora,
If most of our decisions are automatic, who is in charge?
Who wants to know ?
(I know it's corny but "I" just couldn't resist it .
.. )
Metta Shoshin .
..
Volition. Volition doesn't end when one becomes a Buddha.
I think the difficulty in answering questions such as this is one of the reasons the Buddha tended to re-frame the way they're asked and/or explained them in terms of dependent co-arising (e.g., see SN 12.12). Our actions of body speech, and mind are conditioned by a myriad of internal and external factors, and there are many aspects of our conscious and unconscious mind alone that feed into this process. I don't think you can single out just one and say, 'This is mine. This is my self. This is what I am' (SN 22.59).
Every cell in our bodies reacts to stimulus so you could say every cell is in charge.
It's a community effort! Haha
this is true
but
this is not true
On the ending of volition:
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn12/sn12.038.wlsh.html
That's about the end of volition? Maybe I'm missing something but isn't volition the same as free will? The ability to make decisions and put them into play?
Unless we somehow decide not to make plans or decisions? I guess that's truly just going with the flow.
Sorry about all the question marks, just trying to wrap my tired head around that one.
Volition is right intention and that doesn't end when we are a Buddha.
Are you sure you are thinking of volition? Volition is the ability to make conscious decisions and follow through whether the intention is right or wrong.
It means the same thing as free will.
I do agree that Buddha must have been able to make some decisions so volition wouldn't stop upon awakening.
The o/p is supposing we never had it to begin with.
I'm in charge, now give me all your money! You can send it to my PayPal account...
Step right up folks.
Get yer genuine definition for any and all conceptualized states of existence.
Don't be the last one on your block with no idea of where to be.
Buddha/Nirvana/Enlightenment, always available with a full ego back guarantee !
What is this "who" of which you write?
Kia Ora,
If most of our decisions are automatic, who is in charge?
Thought's in charge of the thinking department-Hunger is in charge of the eating department-Tiredness,is in charge of the sleeping department-Anger is in charge of the angry department, the list goes on and on.. They are all in contact with each other and have turns at being the driver of the body bus...
At times they might squabble over who should be doing what and when, but for the most part they manage to get on quite well together, ie work as a team, and as they say "There's no "I" in team !" ....
Metta Shoshin .
..
Yes volition can be for grasping and craving. But it can also be for compassion and so forth. So I agree with you @ourself.
conscious decisions are conditioned
free will is not conditioned,
in other words
if there is Noble Right View, one's decision is not conditioned, it is free will
they are called Kriya Cittas (actions only) no karma (cause) and karma vipaka (effect) involved
Bikkhu Bodhi said:
"Kamma means action. For Buddhism the relevant kind of action is volitional action, deeds expressive of morally determinate volition, since it is volition that gives the action ethical significance. The Buddha expressly identifies action with volition.
In a discourse on the analysis of kamma he says: 'Monks, it is volition that I call action (kamma). Having willed, one performs an action through body, speech, or mind.'"
"The identification of kamma with volition makes kamma essentially a mental event, a factor originating in the mind which seeks to actualize the mind's drives, dispositions, and purposes. Volition comes into being through any of three channels -body, speech, or mind- called the three doors of action (kammadvara)."
When we are able to distinguish which actions are kammically wholesome or unwholesome, we are said to have developped right view.
BIkkhu Bodhi opposes the law of causation to determinism:
"As it affirms that people can choose their actions freely, within limits set by their conditions, it opposes the 'hard deterministic' line that our choices are always made subject to necessitation, and hence that free volition is unreal and moral responsibility untenable."
So, actions are a product of our volition, and as much stemmed in free-will as our pre-conditioning allows. Our actions will per force be the natural consequence of our biases, prejudices and educaction.
The whole Buddhist Path is aimed at releasing us from the neurosis of this pre-conditioning.
Though Bikkhu Bodhi describes actions as being mainly a mental event, we know that our skandhas make up an organic, interactive whole, so the process of volition is much more complex than that.
And this organic whole makes up a conventional "Self" of sorts, which as we know, has no entity of its own, but as the Dhammapada (Chapter XII, verse 160, Buddhist Society version) has it:
"Who else but the self can be master of the self? With self well-controlled, another master is hard to find."
"With self well-controlled"_
means one is with Noble Eight-fold Path
to be in the NEP one has to have Noble Right View
Right View= we know what is good and what is bad
Noble Right View = no more self view (get rid of self-view (skkaya dhitti))
Yes, Mundane Right View is the forerunner of the Path. Our views condition our actions.
Superior Right View is the one that comes at the end of the Path, through internalizing the Four Noble Truths, through study, practice and reflection.
Whoever wishes to take responsibility for the decision to be discharged.
:wave: .
We're not really in charge at all!
What a relief. I can be totally irresponsible and don't have to own up to it because my decisions are made for me.
Or is it that Jesus died for my sins?
Meh, either way!
Dependent origination?
We are much more conditioned and influenced than we are aware of.
How many of you think that iphone is the best?
We are the product of all the conditions. We think we know why we make certain choices,
but it is not as simple as that.
How many of you will eat duck's liver?
I will not touch it with a 10 foot pole.
But the french say it is one of their finest culinary offering.
No, they don't. They are referring to GOOSE liver - Pâté de foie gras - fattened liver pate - which always comes from geese, because duck livers are simply too small.
Other culinary habits others find odd, is eating escargots avec beurre, persil et ail - and of course, a more obnoxious habit is eating Cuisses de Grenouilles - which actually, an enormous amount of French people are actively boycotting and protesting against. The method used to avail people of such a delicacy is barbaric....
Who's making them do that?
Our being influenced by the world should come as no surprise since we are not separate from it. That doesn't really mean our decisions are pre-made as much as we should weigh options mindfully.
@cook99
From the meditative perspective....
In any given moment, that which is in charge is determined by what controls our interactions with phenomena.
goose liver sounds gross to me too but I had it once, my brother encouraged me, with a steak. Taking the bites together it was delicious.
The thing with karma is that it happens from the side of the present and not just the past. At least that is the way in Buddhist conception of karma.
In advaita vedanta Mooji said that there is choiceless awareness but until that realization we are served well by believing in free will.
this is delution (moha) and this is the cause
'you' have to face the bad effect
.
whether 'you' know how Dependent Origination works but do not mindful of 'your' action, speech, and thought or you do not know how Dependent Origination works and talk, do, and think you can not say 'my' decisions are made for me
everything is cause and effect until one reach or be with Nibbana (Nirvana)
so best thing is try to understand Dependent Origination and do good and avoid bad until then
First priority should be given to getting Noble Right View (Arya Samma Dhitti)
@upekka
everything is cause and effect until one reach or be with Nibbana (Nirvana)
Do you realize that this is sounding like you are saying that Nirvana frees one from cause & effect.
Cause and effect actually covers a much larger body than mere intent.