Two thousand five hundred years ago,
the Buddha drew a diagram of the human sensory system. A couple
of days ago, I shared a neuroscience lecture
about the human sensory and perceptual system.
After that video was released,
one comment really caught my eye: "Is
n't this a modern neuroscience
reinterpretation of the Buddhist concepts of the six senses, six consciousnesses, and six sense objects? All
phenomena arise from the mind.
" Coincidentally, the "idea that resonated strongly" I mentioned at the end of my last video refers to
this. In
this episode,
I want to combine the neuroscience facts from last time with the cognitive framework of Buddhism.
You'll discover something truly astonishing: two thousand five hundred years ago,
without microscopes,
electrodes,
or fMRI, the
Buddha actually drew a
diagram of the human sensory system that highly matches modern neuroscience.
And in some aspects,
he went further than modern science. Hello
everyone,
I'm Wang Lijie. Let's
quickly review the core conclusions of last time.
Neuroscience tells us three things:
First,
your senses are translators,
not windows.
You never directly interact with the external world;
you interact with your nervous system's translated version of electrical signals from physical stimuli.
Second,
this translation is severely impaired. The
information you receive is only a tiny fraction of the information available in the universe.
Thirdly,
even this tiny fraction
requires further processing, filtering, and mental addition by your brain to
present you with a version it deems "sufficient."
Therefore, the "reality" you experience
is a processed product,
not the original.
Okay,
now let's see what Buddhism says.
Buddhism has a very sophisticated cognitive model
called the "Eighteen Realms" – the six sense organs, six sense objects, and six consciousnesses.
This isn't metaphysics;
it's a structural description of the human information processing system. The
six
sense organs are the six sensory organs: eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind. The first
five correspond to the five physiological senses, and the
last one, "mind," corresponds to thinking ability, which
can be roughly understood as the brain's higher-order cognitive functions. The six sense objects
are the six objects perceived: form, sound, smell, taste, touch, and dharma.
"Form" doesn't mean color; it refers
to all visible forms. "
Dharma" doesn't mean law; it refers to
all objects that can be cognized by thought:
concepts, memories, imagination, and reasoning. The
six consciousnesses
are the six sensory activities: eye consciousness, ear consciousness,
nose consciousness, tongue consciousness, body consciousness, and mind consciousness.
Note... The
"consciousness" here isn't a thing, but
an event—the
cognitive activity that "emerges" when the senses and the sense objects meet.
What was discussed in the last neuroscience class? It was about the
various sensory receptors in the human body: the
Piezo channels for touch, the hair cells for hearing, the
rods and cones for vision, and the chemoreceptors for smell and taste.
These receptors convert physical stimuli into electrical signals.
Then the brain processes these electrical signals to
produce your subjective experience. If
you put these two descriptions together: the sensory receptors are the "senses," the
physical stimuli are the "sense objects," and the
subjective experience produced by the brain is "consciousness."
This isn't a far-fetched analogy; these
are two descriptive languages ​​of the same system.
One uses Pali and Sanskrit,
the other uses English and mathematics.
They describe the exact same process,
but Buddhism goes a step further than neuroscience,
and it's a crucial one.
In the neuroscience class, the
professor used the term "
transduction"—converting physical energy into electrical signals.
He also used two analogies: wind turbines convert wind energy into electrical energy, and
solar panels convert light energy into electrical energy.
Your sensory receptors do exactly that.
This description is accurate,
but it stops at the mechanistic level.
Buddhism recognizes the same truth
and then asks a deeper question:
If all your experiences are "consciousness"—cognitive
events arising from the encounter between the senses and their objects—
then where exactly is the "external objective world" you perceive you are experiencing?
The answer is: you never step outside the realm of "consciousness."
You think you see a flower,
but what actually happens is: photons strike cone cells on the retina,
triggering ion channels to open,
electrical signals are transmitted to the visual cortex, and
the brain performs a series of calculations—edge detection,
color filling, depth estimation,
pattern matching—
ultimately "presenting" you with an experience called "flower."
This entire process,
from beginning to end,
occurs within your nervous system.
That "flower,"
as your object of experience,
is a product of your conscious activity.
Buddhism condenses this insight into four words: "All phenomena are consciousness-only."
Everything you can experience
is an activity of consciousness. It doesn't
mean there's nothing outside,
but rather that you can never bypass your cognitive
system to directly access that "external thing." What
you can access is
always only your consciousness.
This is the same thing I've repeatedly mentioned in several previous videos regarding
Hoffmann's interface theory.
Cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman used rigorous evolutionary game theory to prove that
natural selection does not lead organisms to evolve a perceptual system that "sees the truth," but only to
evolve interfaces that are "advantageous for survival."
Space, time, and matter—what
you perceive as the basic components of the objective world—are,
according to Hoffman, user interfaces of consciousness.
Like icons on a computer desktop,
you see a blue folder icon,
but there's no blue folder on your hard drive;
it's just an interface element that allows you to operate conveniently.
You see a red apple,
but both "red" and "apple" are interface elements generated by your consciousness,
allowing you to effectively survive and act in this world. The
neuroscience lesson in the last episode
provided a wealth of concrete evidence for this view from the perspective of biological experiments.
Rattlesnakes and pythons see infrared thermal images, bees see ultraviolet patterns, and migratory
birds sense magnetic field lines—every organism has its own "interface."
No one sees the "real world";
everyone sees a "suitable version" that they have evolved.
Okay,
next, I want to map out several specific neuroscience findings from the last episode
to a Buddhist framework, one by one.
You'll find the matching degree is surprisingly high.
The first: the distinction between sensation and perception.
Last time, I spent a lot of time discussing the
difference between Sensation and Perception.
Sensation is the raw data collection, while
perception is the subjective experience processed by the brain.
Your ears are constantly collecting the sound of the air conditioner,
but you don't "hear" it
because your brain determines it's unimportant and
filters it out.
This has a very precise correspondence in Buddhism,
namely the "Three Natures" model of Yogacara.
I broke it down in detail in the episode about the *Samdhinirmocana Sutra*. The
first layer is called "Dependent Origination" - the data flow of causes and conditions coming together, which is the
raw sensory signal.
Photons hitting the retina, sound waves vibrating hair cells,
pressure triggering the Piezochannel - these are dependent origination, the
information flow that occurs naturally under conditions. The
second layer is called "Imagined Nature" - the
narrative and judgment superimposed on the raw data.
After the brain receives the electrical signal, it
automatically performs pattern recognition, classification, labeling, and
emotional assignment - "This is a flower," "
This sound is noisy," "
This thing is dangerous."
These judgments are stories that your brain "makes up" on the raw data,
and you take these stories as facts. The
visual illusions I talked about last time...
Each one is a textbook example of conceptual constructs.
Is that dress blue or white? The
brain first makes a hidden assumption you're completely unaware of:
lighting conditions.
Then, based on this assumption, it presents you with a "fact"
—two identical orange dots.
The brain makes a size judgment based on the surrounding environment
and presents this judgment as "the reality you see."
You measure them with a ruler and know they're the same size,
but your visual system still insists they're different.
Your conceptual constructs are so stubborn;
they even ignore your own rational judgment. The
third layer is called "perfected reality"—truly understanding the operation of the first two layers,
knowing what dependent origination is,
knowing how conceptual constructs are added,
neither denying the existence of experience
nor taking the processed product as the original.
This "truthful understanding"
is Prajna,
is wisdom.
In fact, the neuroscience class in the last episode itself was
cultivating the ability of perfected reality. The
professor showed you how your sensory system works. For the
first time, you understood, "The world I see is processed by the brain."
This understanding itself
is a small "awakening."
You begin to see the process of "seeing" itself. The
second: the marking line system and binding.
Last time, we discussed a very important concept called the
Labeled Line System.
Each sensory neuron transmits only one type of information. The
tactile neuron at the tip of the index finger will only report "the tip of the index finger has been touched."
Then, the brain assembles the signals from different labeled lines
into a complete perceptual experience through "binding."
In Buddhism, this process corresponds to the operating mechanism of the "Five Aggregates" (Skandhas). The Five
Aggregates are another analytical framework for human experience in Buddhism:
form, feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness. Form
is the original physical stimulus and your physical body. Feeling
is sensation—touching something, whether it's
comfortable or uncomfortable.
This is the most basic emotional reaction. Perception
is recognition and classification—the brain says, "This is a cup." Mental formations
are will and reaction—"I want to pick it up."
Consciousness is the awareness of the entire process. The
neuroscientific process is:
physical stimulus → receptor transduction → labeled line transmission → brain binding → perceptual experience. The
Buddhist process is: form → feeling → perception → mental formations → consciousness.
You see,
this is not a rough directional correspondence, but a
step-by-step structural correspondence. Moreover,
2,500 years ago, without any experimental tools, Buddhism
used pure introspection—observing the operation of one's own consciousness—to understand the process. The very fact that
this model was derived is
worth pausing to reflect upon.
Thirdly: the unreliability of perception.
What was the most unsettling conclusion from the last issue? It was that
your perception is sometimes wrong,
and you don't even realize it. The
McGurk effect tells you that
your vision can directly modify your hearing,
allowing you to "hear" a sound that doesn't physically exist. The
size illusion tells you that
even if you rationally know the truth,
your senses will continue to deceive you.
Buddhism offers a very sharp diagnosis on this:
it says that
human suffering doesn't come from the external world,
but from your unwavering belief in your own perception.
You treat the brain's processing as objective reality,
and then build upon this foundation "I like this,
" "I hate that," "This is mine," "That's his." The
entire emotional and attachment system
is built on an unexamined assumption. What
I see is real. The
Heart Sutra says, "Form is not different from emptiness,
emptiness is not different from form."
All the phenomena you experience (form) and their
lack of independent self-nature (emptiness) are not two separate things; they
are two sides of the same coin. The
flower you see is a real experience,
but it is not an independent "entity" existing outside your consciousness;
it is your visual system.
Lighting conditions, your focus of attention,
your past memories, and your emotional state—
all these factors converge to create a temporary event. When
conditions change, the
experience changes.
This isn't nihilism—the flower as an experience is real,
but it doesn't have the "solid,"
independent, unchanging existence you might expect. The
previous lesson actually demonstrated this experimentally. The
same physical stimulus
can present completely different "reality" to your brain based on different assumptions. A
blue dress or a white dress—"
color"—the color you see is
entirely dependent on conditions; it
doesn't have its own independent, fixed "self-nature."
This is the precise meaning of "form is emptiness" in visual neuroscience. The
fourth, and
perhaps the deepest, point: evolution gives us interfaces,
not truth.
The professor said: it's not that this information is impossible to perceive, but that
we haven't evolved the corresponding sensors.
Snakes have infrared perception,
bees have ultraviolet vision, migratory
birds have magnetic field sensing.
Every organism lives in its own perceptual bubble,
believing that what it sees is the world.
Buddhism offers a more thorough deduction on this observation:
if every organism's "world" is determined by its perceptual system,
then is there an "ultimate truth" that doesn't depend on any
specific perceptual system?
If so...
How can we access it?
Buddhism answers this by saying: the direction is not to expand our sensory abilities outward,
not to evolve better eyes or ears – but to look inward and
observe how consciousness itself works.
When you practice mindfulness of breathing (止观), which is what we
discussed in the previous episode about quieting down the narrative machine and then observing as it is, you
begin to see the process of "seeing" itself,
to see how your brain superimposes stories onto raw data.
You begin to awaken from the "processed product" of perception. The
exercise the professor did in class, where
you stopped to pay attention to the hum of the air conditioner,
was actually a simplified version of mindfulness of breathing.
You suddenly realized, "This sound has always been there,
but I hadn't noticed it at all before." In
that moment of "sudden realization," you
simultaneously saw two things: the existence of the sound
and your previous ignorance of it.
You gained a new layer of awareness of your own perceptual system.
This is what Buddhism calls the starting point of spiritual practice. It's
not about denying your senses,
not about denying the world,
but about seeing how your senses work,
seeing how your brain processes raw data into "your world."
Seeing this process,
you will no longer confuse the processed product with the original.
You still live in this world,
but you are no longer completely deceived by its visual effects.
Remember the analogy of lucid dreaming I mentioned before?
You're dreaming, and in your
dream you're being chased by a tiger.
You're terrified.
Then you suddenly realize: I'm dreaming. The
tiger is still there. The
fear dissipates. You
haven't left the dream;
you've just woken up from it. The
neuroscience lesson last time essentially told you that
your entire perceptual system is a sophisticated "dream machine."
It uses physical stimuli as material,
electrical signals as paint, and
neural networks as brushes to
paint a "real world" that you deeply believe in. The
"awakening" in Buddhism
isn't about escaping from this dream,
but about opening your eyes within the dream and
seeing how this dream machine works. What
I find most striking is that
modern neuroscience has spent decades,
countless experiments, and billions of dollars worth of equipment to
arrive at these conclusions about the human perceptual system.
Yet, 2,500 years ago,
a group of people sat under the Bodhi tree, in caves, and in temples,
through pure introspection,
arriving at almost identical structural conclusions.
They didn't have the concept of Piezo channels,
but they precisely described how "touch" triggers "body consciousness."
They lacked the concepts of the retina and visual cortex,
yet they precisely described how "color dust"
arises from the "eye root" to generate "eye consciousness."
They even went further than modern science,
pointing to something science has only just begun to touch upon: the
"reality" you experience
is not passive reception
but active construction.
These two paths—observing the brain externally through experiments and
observing consciousness internally through meditation—
are converging on the same conclusion.
That conclusion is not "the world is false,"
but rather: the world is constructed,
and you
have the ability to see this construction process.
Seeing
is the beginning of freedom.
I am Wang Lijie. See
you next time.