What is Avidyā (Ignorance)?
Neuroscience has the answer.
Have you ever had this experience?
You're scrolling through your phone,
then suddenly look up,
and forty minutes have passed.
You don't even remember how you got from one video
to the next.
You don't remember making any decisions,
yet you made hundreds of choices to scroll, click, and stay.
During those forty minutes,
where were "you"?
Hello,
everyone.
I am Wang Lijie.
In Buddhism, there's a word for this state:
"Avidyā" or "Ignorance."
It is one of the most fundamental, core,
and most misunderstood concepts in Buddhism.
Many think Avidyā means just "not knowing the truth."
That because you don't know Buddhism or Emptiness, or haven't read sutras,
you are ignorant.
But if Avidyā were just a lack of knowledge,
you could solve it by reading a few books.
In fact,
Avidyā goes much deeper than "not knowing."
It's not that you lack information;
it's that you cannot see the automated program you're currently running.
During those forty minutes on your phone,
you didn't lack knowledge.
You might have even felt clearly, "I should stop now."
But you couldn't stop.
Why?
Because a power far stronger than "knowing" was driving you.
Your attention was hijacked by automated reward circuits.
You didn't choose to keep scrolling;
you were pushed to keep scrolling.
And you didn't even know you were being pushed.
This is Avidyā.
In Sanskrit, it's Avidyā,
literally meaning "un-seeing."
"Vidya" means
"to see."
So the most accurate translation isn't "ignorance,"
but "blindness."
Blind to what?
Blind to how your own consciousness is operating.
In the Twelve Links of Dependent Origination,
Avidyā is first.
The Buddha said
Avidyā is the starting point of the entire chain of suffering.
From Avidyā arises "Saṃskāra"—automated reaction patterns.
From Saṃskāra arises "Vijñāna"—biased consciousness.
And then it goes all the way down:
Name-and-form, Six Bases, Contact, Feeling, Craving, Clinging, Becoming, Birth, Aging and Death.
The very first link of the chain is Avidyā.
You don't see your automated reactions,
and then these reactions create your cognition, your desires, and your attachments,
eventually creating your entire world of suffering.
Do you see it now?
Buddhism isn't saying, "You're a bad person, so you suffer."
Nor is it saying, "The world is bad, so you suffer."
It says: you suffer
because you have an automated machine running.
This machine constantly manufactures reactions, attachments, and the "self,"
and you don't even know it's running.
You aren't the creator of suffering;
you are a product of the automated assembly line of suffering.
And you don't know you're on the assembly line.
2,500 years ago, this insight could only be gained through Vipassana.
But today,
neuroscience can show you what this machine looks like,
where it's installed, and how it works.
We discussed Predictive Coding theory in the meditation episode.
Your brain is not a passive receiver;
it is an active prediction generator.
Every moment, it uses internal prior models to "fabricate" a world,
then calibrates it with sensory data.
You think you are "seeing" the world,
but you are actually seeing the story your brain made up.
It's just that sensory data is constantly correcting it,
so the story is roughly reliable.
A key concept in this framework is "precision weight."
Every prior belief you have has a weight value,
representing how certain the brain is about that belief.
The higher the weight,
the less likely the belief is to be revised by external data.
A deep bias is a prior with extremely high precision weight.
No matter how much contradictory evidence you see,
the brain will automatically explain it away or ignore it.
And this process
is completely automatic and unconscious most of the time.
You don't know which priors your brain is using to construct the world.
You don't know how these prior weights are distributed.
You don't even know that the "reality" you see isn't raw data,
but an edited version by the brain.
You think you are facing the world directly,
but you are actually facing a movie the brain is showing you,
and you don't know you're watching a movie.
This is the precise neuroscientific equivalent of "Avidya" (Ignorance).
Ignorance isn't a lack of information;
it's a lack of awareness of your own information-processing.
Your brain is automatically running a complex prediction-
generation-calibration system,
and you are blissfully unaware of its existence.
Even more critically,
this automatic system has a command center:
The Default Mode Network (DMN).
We’ve mentioned it repeatedly in previous episodes.
The DMN is the network most active
when you are "doing nothing."
What is it doing?
It's fabricating your identity narrative.
"Who am I?" "How was my past?" "What do
others think of me?" "What will happen tomorrow?"
These endless inner monologues
are the output of the Default Mode Network.
Note that
the DMN runs completely automatically.
You don't need to start it;
it's on by default.
That's why it's called the "Default" Mode.
When you aren't focused on an external task,
it automatically takes over your conscious bandwidth
and starts telling stories,
and these stories share a common protagonist—"Me."
The story of "Me" is the core product of the DMN.
It constantly tells you that you are an independent,
continuous entity with boundaries.
Your past determines your present;
your present determines your future.
That you need to be protected, validated, and satisfied.
That there is a clear line between you and the world:
Here is "Me,"
and there is "Not Me."
This narrative is so powerful
that you never think to question it.
You might question what others say,
the truth of news reports,
or the validity of scientific theories,
but you almost never question the fact that "I am me."
This "Me" is so self-evident to you,
like a fish never questioning the existence of water.
This is the deepest level of Ignorance.
In the Twelve Links of Dependent Origination, "Ignorance" comes first
not because you don't know how the world works,
but because you don't know how the "Me" is manufactured.
You don't realize that "Me" is not a discovery,
but an ongoing manufacturing process.
The DMN remanufactures "Me" every moment,
yet you take "Me" for granted
as a pre-existing fact.
So, what is the Buddhist equivalent of "Vidya" (Clarity)—the opposite of Ignorance—
in neuroscientific terms?
It is metacognition.
Metacognition is "thinking about thinking."
It means you are not just thinking,
but you can see yourself thinking.
You are not just angry,
but can witness the process of "becoming angry" while it happens.
The difference between these two is extremely subtle, yet profound.
When you are angry,
if you are completely immersed in that anger,
your entire consciousness is occupied by it—this is the state of Avidyā/Ignorance.
The anger is running on autopilot;
you are the anger itself.
But if, at the moment anger arises,
a flicker of awareness flashes through your consciousness—"Oh,
anger has come"—
this awareness itself is a miniature moment of Enlightenment.
You have moved from being inside the automatic reaction
to observing it from the outside,
even if for only a second.
Neuroscience research shows that
this one-second surge of awareness
produces very specific changes in the brain.
When metacognition is activated,
the prefrontal cortex increases inhibitory signals to
the Default Mode Network (DMN) and the amygdala.
In plain English,
your "rational brain" hits the pause button
on the "autopilot" and "emotional reactor."
This isn't a metaphor.
Brain imaging studies have repeatedly confirmed that
when experienced meditators face emotional stimuli,
the prefrontal cortex's inhibition of the amygdala is stronger,
and the DMN activity is lower.
It's not that they don't feel anger or fear—their amygdala still activates—
but their awareness system reacts faster,
intervening before the automatic reaction forms a complete chain.
Here comes the most crucial insight:
Awareness isn't "eliminating" the automatic reaction;
it is "interrupting" its causal chain.
Returning to the Twelve Nidānas:
Ignorance → Formation → Consciousness → Name & Form → Six Senses → Contact → Feeling → Craving → Grasping → Becoming
→ Birth → Old Age & Death.
This chain keeps spinning
because each link automatically triggers the next.
Ignorance triggers automatic reactions;
automatic reactions trigger biased perception;
biased perception triggers attachment... link after link,
without any pause.
But if you insert awareness at any link—
for example, between "feeling" and "craving"—
you feel unpleasantness (feeling),
but before it can trigger craving or aversion (craving),
you observe the process.
A gap appears in that automated chain.
It's like suddenly inserting a needle between the gears of a machine;
the entire transmission chain gets jammed.
That jam
is the gateway to awakening.
A 2025 study on the neural mechanisms
of metacognition found that
metacognition doesn't require an independent, extra cognitive module to work.
In Recurrent Neural Networks,
when the network is trained to perform cognitive tasks,
metacognitive ability can emerge naturally.
It's a by-product of system complexity reaching a certain level.
In other words,
a sufficiently complex cognitive system
naturally possesses the potential to "see itself running."
What does Buddhism say about this?
Buddhism says all sentient beings have Buddha-nature.
The ability to awaken isn't installed later;
it isn't imported from the outside.
It is inherently present within your consciousness system.
The only difference is whether you use it.
No matter how thick the dust on a mirror,
the mirror's capacity to reflect never vanished for a second.
You have never lost the ability to be aware;
you've just forgotten to use it.
So, Ignorance isn't a state of "lacking something,"
but a state of "forgetting what you have."
Your metacognitive ability is always there,
but it's drowned out by the constant noise of the Default Mode Network.
The DMN is too loud:
"What do I need?" "What will others think?" "What about tomorrow?"
This noise takes up your entire conscious bandwidth,
leaving no space for awareness to intervene.
This is why meditation works.
The essence of meditation—as we discussed in the first episode—
is to reduce the precision weight of high-level prior beliefs,
quieting the Default Mode Network (DMN).
When the noise is reduced,
awareness surface.
You don't "create" awareness;
you "make space" to let it emerge naturally.
I used an analogy in a previous teaching story:
The Quantum Zeno Effect.
In quantum physics,
if you frequently observe an unstable quantum state,
its spontaneous evolution is inhibited.
Observation itself changes the system's behavior.
What metacognition does to automated loops
is structurally very similar to this effect.
If you frequently "see" an automated response,
its momentum is weakened.
Not because you fought it,
but because you changed its operating conditions,
from "unobserved" to "being watched."
This explains why that viewer's comment was so precise.
They said, "Awareness can observe the automated operation of ignorance
and cause it to collapse."
In neuroscience terms, this means:
Metacognition can observe the operating patterns
of the DMN and automated loops.
And the act of observation itself changes the system.
You don't need to "fight" ignorance.
You only need to "see" it.
Once seen,
its automaticity is broken.
It's like being startled by something in the dark.
You turn on the light
and find it's just your shadow—then the fear vanishes.
Not because the shadow is gone,
but because you see it for what it is.
But I must honestly point out a boundary here.
Neuroscience can tell you how metacognition interrupts automation,
how the prefrontal cortex inhibits the DMN,
and which neural patterns correspond to awareness.
But currently, it cannot answer a deeper question:
What exactly is "seeing"?
Where does awareness itself come from?
Predictive coding can precisely describe the brain's "autopilot,"
but it cannot describe the thing that "sees" the autopilot.
Like a camera filming everything in a room,
it cannot film itself.
If you ask "what is metacognition really,"
neuroscience says it's activity in the prefrontal cortex
and cortical midline structures.
But that only says "where it happens,"
not "why it happens" or "what it ultimately is."
Buddhism goes further on this point.
Buddhism suggests awareness is not a product of the brain,
but the very nature of consciousness.
Ignorance isn't due to a lack of awareness,
but because awareness is obscured.
Practice isn't about "creating awareness;"
it's about "removing the obscuration."
This is the core message of the Tathagatagarbha episode.
Awakening is not an acquisition,
but a de-shrouding.
This claim currently exceeds scientific verification;
it is a hypothesis.
But it is logically self-consistent
and has not been falsified.
I'll label it a conjecture
and leave it for you to judge.
I want to emphasize one detail.
One might ask: "If awareness breaks the chain of ignorance,
shouldn't I stay aware 24 hours a day?"
That question itself comes from a place of ignorance.
Because the thought "I should stay aware"
is just another narrative of the "self" produced by the DMN:
"I want to become a person who is always aware."
Awareness isn't something you can "maintain."
Because "maintaining" is itself a form of control and attachment.
Awareness is more like a state that emerges when you relax enough.
You don't "do" awareness through effort.
It is only after you stop exerting effort
that awareness "arrives" on its own.
Laozi said, "The pursuit of Tao involves daily loss."
What is lost is that superfluous effort.
Going back to the question at the beginning:
During those 40 minutes of scrolling,
where were you?
The answer is: You were there all along.
Your eyes were looking,
your hand was scrolling,
your brain was processing information,
but your awareness was absent.
Your consciousness ran on autopilot for 40 minutes.
The default mode network and reward circuits took the wheel,
while the ability to "see all of this happening"
never came online.
Ignorance (Avidya)
is when your autopilot is on, and you don't know it.
Enlightenment (Vidya)
is when you see that the autopilot is on.
Practice doesn't require you to turn off the autopilot;
that's neither realistic nor necessary.
Your brain processes too much information every day;
99% must be handled automatically.
You don't need to think, "Lift left foot or right?" to walk.
You don't need to think, "Inhale now," to breathe.
This automation is a gift from evolution.
Practice requires only one thing: In that critical 1%,
at the moment anger rises,
at the instant greed surges,
at the second fear tries to take over—your awareness comes online.
Even if it's only for a second.
That one second
is a crack in the chain of ignorance.
Light is what shines through that crack.
Is your autopilot running right now?
If you paused for a moment after hearing this sentence,
you just experienced a micro-shift from ignorance to awareness.
It is just that simple,
and yet just that difficult.
I am Leo Wang.
I'll see you next time.