Scientists find brain's "moral compass"

DailyMail.co.uk (March 30, 2010); Wisdom Quarterly

[MIT] scientists have discovered a real-life "moral compass" in the brain that controls how we judge other people's behavior.

The region, which lies just behind the right ear, becomes more active when we think about other people's misdemeanors or good works.

Morality is a better guide than parents, gods

In an extraordinary experiment, researchers were able to use powerful magnets to disrupt this area of the brain and make people temporarily less moral.

The study highlights how our sense of right and wrong isn't just based on upbringing, religion, or philosophy -- but by the biology of our brains.

Dr. Liane Young, who led the study, said: "You think of morality as being a really high-level behavior. To be able to apply a magnetic field to a specific brain region and change people's moral judgments is really astonishing."

Red does not indicate the compass (mit.edu)

The moral compass lies in a part of the brain called the right temporo-parietal junction. It lies near the surface of the brain, just behind the right ear.

The researchers at MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, used a non-invasive technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation to disrupt the area of the brain.

The technique generates a magnetic field on a small part of the skull which creates weak electric currents in the brain. These currents interfere with nearby brain cells and prevent them from firing normally.

In the first experiment, 12 volunteers were exposed to the magnetic field for 25 minutes before they were given a series of "moral maze" style scenarios.

Religion is a problem: Advice to Kalamas

For each of the 192 scenarios, they were asked to make a judgment about the character's actions on a scale of 1 for "absolutely forbidden" to 7 for "absolutely permissible."

In the second experiment, the magnetic field was applied to their heads at the time they were asked to weigh the behavior of the characters in the scenario.

In both experiments, the magnetic field made the volunteers less moral. More
 
How can anyone tell anyone else what's right or wrong? 
Dhr. Seven, Amber Dorrian, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly (COMMENTARY) 

Has U.S. lost its moral compass?

Debating "right" and "wrong" is futile. Buddhism speaks not in this simplistic way but rather of skillful (kusala) and unskillful (akusala) behavior: what acts lead to suffering, when they come to fruition, and which do not. We do not make decisions based on rational bases, reasoning, calculating, and arriving at some objective plan. We depend on emotions and our "guts" (the sources of many neurons and most of the body's serotonin). To follow our bliss we first have to be mindful enough to notice it. It is a subtle joy one feels, not a logic one deduces. One never feels happier, more buoyant, more relieved, more effervescent than when entering the early absorptions, meditative jhanas, based on virtue, concentration as the mind/heart begins to cohere, and ease. Piti and sukkha, joy and happiness are the natural result. In daily life, little contentment, bliss, or joy occur spontaneous to flood the body; likewise little moral dread (otappa) occurs when we engage in behaviors (breaking precepts) that are sure to bring unwelcome, unwanted misery.  
 

The Buddha said "come and see" not "believe!"

Killing, stealing, sexual harm, perjury, intoxication occasioning heedlessness cannot lead to happiness but, clearly, someone who steals can enjoy ill-gotten gains. Why? The act (karma) has not matured and borne its result. When it does it will surely be experienced as misery. This is what the Buddha taught and what made him a karmavadin, a teacher of actions with moral consequences. If it were not so, we would not say so. Who wouldn't rather do whatever s/he wanted? Mystics teach what they see as seers (rishis) not what will make them popular and lauded in their day. Truth is true whether anyone sees it or not. Fortunately, all that the Buddha said is personally verifiable in this very life. The Buddha taught the path to that knowledge and vision.  
 

There is no blind faith in Buddhism to act as beacon. Ironically, as Americans, most of us prefer Zen under the mistaken assumption that it's a DIY religion of no religion, a rebel stance, an anachronistic hodgepodge of senseless koans, blunts, and aphorisms no one really understands. In fact, "zen" means jhana, which is almost synonymous with moral blamelessness. Without virtue, the heart/mind remains uneasy, full of misgivings, worried about things done (unskillful karma) and left undone (skillful karma), and unconcentrated. And it is exactly a calm, cool, collected and therefore intensely concentrated (samadhi) mind/heart that leads to zen (meditation), that is Zen, that bears the fruits of the path: virtue --> concentration --> wisdom.

By ourselves is good/evil done

Or left undone.

By ourselves are we

purified or defiled.

   

No one saves us but ourselves;

No one can and no one may.

We ourselves must walk the path;

Buddhas only point the way!   

Read More

Smoking weed in front of Buddhist monks

Ashley Wells, CC Liu, Yogi Seven, Wisdom Quarterly

Sanskrit, ganja (medicinal Cannabis sativa)

BODHGAYA, India - "Smoking weed in front of Tibetan monks"? It's not as bad as it sounds. The headline might more correctly read, "Intoxicated Hindu mendicant dancing, ganja in hand, in front of Tibetan lamas at Buddhism's enlightenment grove."

  

The precincts of the Bodhi tree are sacred ground visited by hundreds of thousands of Buddhist pilgrims every year. (It is the most Buddhist town in the world, with authentic temples from every Buddhist land, from stately Japanese zendos (dojos) to a mysterious and fascinating Bhutanese dzong).

  

Sadhus: India's Mystic Holy Men (DH)

But the grove is controlled by Hindu holy men and Indian government officials, not Buddhists. The Maha Bodhi Society has a presence, but the sannyasis and sadhus (Hindu spiritual wanderers) run rampant.

  

Devotional exiled Tibetans travel down from Himalayan Dharamsala, Himalchal Pradesh in the north of the country. Some do 108,000 (yes, one-hundred and eight thousand) prostrations around the Maha Bodhi temple next to the tree, a genetic ancestor of the original enlightenment tree Siddhartha sat under.

Why would a wanderer behave like a madman (pagal) in front of pilgrim monks? Why would a spiritual wanderer go about smoking marijuana or hash? It is the custom of some Hindu ascetic holymen. The lamas could not be too put off since Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism has a long and storied history of spiritual madmen epitomized in the saintly-sinner figure Milarepa.

• Colorado, Washington await federal response to new pot laws
• Prostitution legal in parts of Nevada
• Bon Jovi's daughter arrested after possible heroin OD
• Crime regular feature of life in every American city

The Dharma in the West

Hookah pipe Buddha ashtray (Raezyx/flickr)

Sure these things happen in the chaotic East. But would anyone dream of firing up a peace pipe in front of Vajrayana lamas? We can't imagine. However, stranger things have happened. Many Tibetan monks (great rinpoches, lamas, even alleged tulkus) are falling. It's not self-immolation of the attention-grabbing sort that's bringing them down. They often explain that they want to "taste" the allure of the West. What was it about America in the 1960s that was so intriguing to the most powerful generation in the world? In "My Dinner With Andre" Andre explained the little Tibetan monk who went off kilter gorging himself on Western excesses. There is the real life story of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, who may have been the source of Andre's account. There are American lamas like Geshe Michael Roach and Lama Surya Das around which swirl rumors and controversies of sexual impropriety.

• Controversial "Buddhist" teachers and groups

So what's a little ganja to those violating other precepts? Monastics are not using or abusing drugs. We are. And we think they would be okay with that. "Let's get Buddha'ed," we say as if that meant let's get high. Medical cannabis abuse is no mild vice -- and it is no way to any kind of enlightenment or transcendent wisdom. It's a circuitous route to here, so some call it an insidious trap. So which is it? It's not Buddhist. Smoke and you, too, can dance in front of Tibetan monks like an addict sadhu in the video above. But instead of owning up to it, one can use euphemisms and claim it's a spiritual endeavor, a Milarepa-like-madman "quest."
  

"Oh, Buddha, to be like you! (Moondoxy)

Were alcohol or intoxicants part of the path, the Buddha would have pointed to them as aids rather than obstacles. Or he would have remained silent on the matter. That he thought them such a serious obstacle that he listed alcohol as a path of doom in the Five Precepts is serious.

Could there be a difference between drugs? Do some serve only to blot out and obtund consciousness rather than to expand it? It is certainly our position at Wisdom Quarterly that some natural substances (DMT, alkaloids, iboga, Amazonian vines that make ayahuasca and natema, etc.) may have some benefits to the awakening of the pineal gland/third eye. But booze and high-THC (low-CBD) weed stocks and caustic synthetic chemicals? Wake up. Reality is better than this or we would advocate making the best of this illusion.

(LINK) The wyrd world far beyond dulled consciousness

• Flouride (Prozac, toothpaste, tap water, etc.) calcifies Pineal Gland

Read More

Can girls be sex addicts? (video)

TurnMeOnDamnit.com; Amber Dorrian, Seven, Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; Indieculturebox

Sex addiction (whether called nymphomania or satyriasis) is a sad condition, but it is funny and entertaining as the topic of a Scandinavian teen sex comedy -- with all the neurosis and discomfort of high school.
 

TURN ME ON, DAMNIT! was awarded "Best Screenplay" at the Tribeca Film Festival 2011. It is a story about a group of teenage friends who feel trapped in the Norwegian small town they live in, which they constantly flip off. "D*ck-Alma" is experiencing desires she never felt before as she is discovering her sexuality. [No precipitating molestation is shown but it can be inferred.] Her sexual curiosity makes daydreaming and phone-sex an escape from everyday life. At a party, Artur -- the boy who frequents Alma's dreams -- makes a bold move on her, but everything seems to go wrong. The life Alma wanted to escape from has somehow become even worse. The film consists of beautiful frames and music, with dialogue that is careful but spot on. Jannicke Systad Jacobsen strikes against all the taboos surrounding young women's sexuality. The world has been waiting for a film like this. And we can only hope that we have evolved enough that fewer people will feel squeamish or shamed by something everyone goes through at a certain age. Starring: Helene Bergsholm, Malin Bjørhovde, Henriette Steenstrup, Beate Støfring, Matias Myren.

Laci Green saves the world (again)
   

Even with the success of Zen and Fifty Shades of Grey -- Catholic, Jewish, Christian fundamentalist America may not be ready for a light film on such a heavy topic. But since it comes from faraway Norway, it just might avoid protests, intolerant outbursts, and church condemnation. As Americans we are very confused about sex due to our hopelessly entangled Puritanical and pornographic roots.

• Is "sex addiction" even real?
• GET HELP for past childhood sexual abuse

Read More