back
What are you doing?
Brain science gives the answer, if you go to temples
Attended a puja
Or you have the habit of reciting Buddha and meditating
You're no stranger to the word retrograde.
Every time you finish your homework
Master will take you to read a retrograde text: May this merit be
Solemn Buddha Pure Land
Report Quadruple Grace
The three roads to suffering
You read along
But have you ever thought about a question
What did you just do?
What's going on in your consciousness?
The vast majority of people would say
Is it to share the merits with others?
OK
Then I ask you
What is merit?
Where is it stored?
How does it share?
What medium is it transmitted through?
If you divide the merits
Are you less yourself?
You distribute to all living beings in the Dharma Realm
There are an infinite number of life forms
How much does each sentient being receive?
Is it enough?
Did you find it?
As long as you follow the merit, it is a resource that can be transferred.
The logic goes down.
Every step is empty
It just doesn't hold up against your most basic physical intuitions.
So either devotion is superstition
Or it's not what you think it is at all
Today's video
I'm going to use research from cognitive neuroscience and social psychology
To answer this question
When I derived the answer
And I found something that really shocked me.
The True Role of Dedication in the Buddhist Practice System
It's more important than you think
It's not an afterthought.
It is the safety valve of the entire Mahayana practice system
Without it
The more you practice
Maybe the more dangerous
Hello
Hello.
I am Wang Lijie
To understand what backwards is doing
We need to figure out something more fundamental first
It's the same behavior.
You think differently when you do it.
What happens to your brain differently?
This question
Now, the last two decades of cognitive neuroscience have provided a very clear picture.
empirical answer
Year 2007
Now a team at the University of Oregon did a classic experiment using MRI.
They gave them money.
Then there are two cases
The first
It was taxed and given to charity.
You have no choice.
The second
You voluntarily decide whether to donate the money
In both cases
Money goes to the same charity
The same amount
The same goes for people who receive help.
External results are exactly the same
But the brain reacts completely differently
When subjects donate voluntarily
There is an area of the brain that is activated
Significantly higher than passive donation
It's called the ventral striatum.
It's the heart of the reward circuit.
It's you who eat good food
Make money
When receiving praise from others
The area that lights up.
And after this experiment
Multiple brain imaging studies over the past two decades have further revealed
In voluntary altruistic behavior
There are also two key brain regions that are activated simultaneously
One is the temporoparietal junction.
This is the region responsible for mentalization.
Your ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes and imagine their experience.
The other one is medial prefrontal cortex.
Responsible for self-reflection and social cognition
What does that mean?
Means the same external behavior
Pull out a hundred bucks
Because of the difference in inner intention
Two completely different sets of neural circuits are activated in the brain
One is a pure reward circuit
It's like eating a candy
The other is the generalized synergy of the reward circuit with social cognitive networks.
It is equivalent to eating a candy at the same time
Did a whole-brain integration training
An action
Two Intentions
Two Neural Signatures
More research to follow
Further validates this finding
2008
A joint team from Harvard University and the University of British Columbia
Research findings published in the top academic journal Science
People who spend money on others
They are significantly happier than people who spend the same amount on themselves.
This effect
It's stable across income levels.
It doesn't matter if you make 20,000 dollars a year or 200,000 dollars a year.
And so there are significant increases in happiness with altruistic spending.
Follow-up cross-cultural studies have further confirmed the generality of this conclusion
2017
A study of neuroeconomics at the University of Zurich reveals with greater precision
The mechanism behind it
When you make altruistic decisions
A functional junction is formed between the temporoparietal junction and the ventral striatum
These two normally separate areas suddenly start to work together
Researchers found that
The stronger this functional connection across regions
And the happier they were.
Did you notice the key point?
Not doing good things to make you happy
It was within the framework of an altruistic intention.
Let your brain function in a more integrated manner
It doesn't matter what you do
What heart to do
It is
Now this insight has a special term in psychology.
It's called self-transcendence.
Frankel
Survivors of Nazi concentration camps
The founder of logotherapy
An observation was made back in the 1960s.
The deepest source of human happiness
It's not self-satisfaction.
It's about transcendence.
When your attention and intentions are directed towards goals that go beyond your boundaries
You get something that your ego will never give you.
sense of meaning
Frankl observed this from his extreme experience in concentration camps
Neuroscience decades later
Confirmed his intuition with a brain scan
OK
Remember the central finding.
Same behavior
Intentionality is different
The brain integrates differently.
Psychological effects are different
This is the scientific basis for our understanding of backtracking.
Now I add the second piece of the puzzle
I talked about predictive coding theory in detail in the meditation issue
Your brain is not a passive receiver
It's an active predictor.
It's constantly making up the world from the top down with transcendental beliefs
Sensory data is just responsible for calibrating this fabrication process
The strength of a priori beliefs
That's the precision weights.
Determines how committed you are to a belief
How difficult it is to be corrected by reality
And so today I'm going to take a step forward in that framework.
In all your prior beliefs
There is one belief that is most unique
Highest precision weight
Almost never corrected by any sensory data
It's the belief that I'm a separate, persistent self.
Neuroscience calls the core network that sustains this belief
Default Mode Network
When you're sitting there doing nothing
This network is the most active
It keeps weaving stories about me
What have I done in the past?
What kind of person am I now?
What am I going to do in the future?
It's that self-narrative machine in your brain that never shuts up.
And this is precisely the breeding ground of pain
year 2010
A famous study from Harvard University
We sampled the real-time mental states of 2,000 people at random with their cell phones.
Discovered a surprising conclusion
People who were mind-wandering reported significantly lower levels of happiness.
The mind-wandering state in brain imaging studies neutralizes the default mode network
Highly active is closely related
This is how the brain is creating self-related stories.
It's not that you're least happy when something bad happens to you.
But you did nothing
When the brain is automatically running its own narrative
It's going to go down significantly.
Default mode The more active the network is
The more you suffer
The denser the self-narrative
The more anxious you are
reverse
When are people the happiest?
Concentrate on one thing
When you forget yourself
That's heart flow
Neural characteristics of heart flow
It's precisely in the default mode that network activity has dropped dramatically
Do you see the paradox?
The stronger I am
The more painful
The weaker I am
The freer
OK
Now I'm going to put these two pieces of the puzzle together.
When you do a good deed
Your default mode network will automatically do one thing
Pack this good deed into my narrative
I did a good thing.
I am a kind person.
I have accumulated merit
It's not what you think
Is the default mode network automatic operation
It labels all experiences as mine
What does this labeling process mean at the neural level?
It means that your good deeds activate the broad
Integrative, altruistic neural patterns
Were rerouted back to the narrow loop of self-referential processing
Your brain originally opened a window
Altruism activates social brain, empathy brain, whole brain coordination.
But by default, the network quickly closes that window.
Put everything back into my story
And guess what happens next?
Your motivation to do good deeds
Became the maintenance of the identity of the good person
You give to feel generous
You meditate to feel high.
Your practice is not to loosen the belief in yourself
Quite the contrary.
You're reinforcing it with practice.
Your transcendental belief is that I am an ordinary person
Upgraded to I am a practicing person
Precision weight not only did not drop
It went up.
This is why many people who have been practicing for many years
The more you cultivate, the more arrogant you become
What neuroscience tells you.
It's not a moral issue.
It's a matter of mechanism
Your default mode, the Internet, is hijacking your practice.
Transform it into my fuel
You think you are practicing
Actually, you're decorating your cell
And back
Is a precise intervention in this mechanism
When you have done a good deed
Read the riposte
Wish this merit
Solemn Buddha Pure Land
What concoction are you making?
You are in default mode before the network stamps your good deeds
Take the initiative to switch the direction of intentionality from self-directed to all-directed
Combined with previous neuroscience research
What will be triggered by this switch?
first
It prevents the neural effects of good deeds from being codified into
The narrow circuit of self-referential processing
second
It reactivates the broad spectrum that is characteristic of altruistic intentions
Brain Network Collaborative Model
The linkage of temporoparietal junction, medial prefrontal lobe and ventral striatum
third
Also the most critical
It reduces the default mode network self a priori.
Precision weight of belief
Every time you turn the direction of merit from me to all sentient beings
That's saying to the default network
Don't mark it as mine this time.
The effect of one shot is minimal.
But you do your homework every day
Every time you do a good deed, you give back
Every night of chanting Buddha, I turn back
Repeat this intentional switch hundreds or thousands of times
You're training your brain over and over again.
Lowering the most stubborn prior belief in the self
Meditation is used to actively reduce prior weights
Backward is to passively reduce prior weights with intentional switching
Two methods
Same goal
Release the greatest obsession
OK
The science section is here
Now I'm going to do the core thing of this video
Putting the Dedication Back into the Frame of Consciousness-Only Buddhism
Consciousness-Only Sect
Your every action will plant a seed in Alaya consciousness
The properties of seeds depend on two dimensions.
The good and evil of the act itself
And your intention in doing it
Did you find it?
It's almost the same thing as neuroscience.
The same behavior goes down in disagreement
Leaving completely different neural traces
The nature of the seed is determined by the intention
That is, the neural signature is determined by the intentional framework.
And look down.
The Consciousness-Only Sect says that at the end of the seventh consciousness, that consciousness will automatically label all experiences as mine
It's an always-on self-manufacturing machine.
You don't realize it's working.
But it's constantly incorporating everything into my narrative
Isn't this the default mode network?
Fifteen hundred years ago, Asanga and his relatives discovered it with Vipassana
21st century brain science using MRI
Rediscovered the same thing
And that's not all.
The Knowledge-Only School says that the attachment to consciousness is divided into strengths and weaknesses
Some obsessions are deeply ingrained
Some are shallow
The process of meditation is to gradually loosen these attachments
Predictive coding says prior beliefs have precision weights
The higher the weight, the harder it is to correct.
The process of meditation is to reduce excessive weight
The strength of attachment
It's precision weights.
And finally.
The most accurate correspondence
What is the only knowledge school saying about returning to the past?
Dedication is before the seed is stamped with my label by Mornah
Take the initiative to tear off that label
Put on a label of all sentient beings
The seeds are still in your alaya consciousness
You didn't send it to anyone.
But the intent property of the seed has been rewritten
The Only Knowledge Sect calls the seeds of goodness marked with ego-holding goodness
Loopy Good
It pays off.
But when the rewards run out, the seeds run out.
The seeds of goodness that remove the mark of ego are called good without omission
Goodness without loopholes
Because its intention is to have no boundaries.
The energy structure is also open
Translate into predictive coding language
Dedication is the neural effect of good deeds by default mode network
Before incorporating into the self-referential loop
Proactively switch from an intentional framework to an altruistic framework
This switch changes the type of neural signature that good deeds leave in the brain
From activating narrow self-reward circuits
Become activated extensive brain network coordination patterns
The former effect is narrow and short-lived
Corresponding to leakage
The latter effect is broad and long-lasting
Corresponding to no leakage
Did you see that?
Knowledge-Only and Predictive Coding
Not just a bit like
They are the same operation manual written in two languages
And there's an extremely subtle place in this.
Dedication does not reduce merit
He upgraded it.
You didn't lose anything.
You just change the intent properties
Rewrite a seed that runs in a narrow circuit into
A seed operating in an open network
That's not subtraction.
Is multiplication
Now we can understand
Why are all the practices of Mahayana Buddhism?
Whether it's meditation, chanting, mantras, repentance
After the end, you have to do backwards
Because if you don't do reverse
The results of your practice just now will be uploaded to the default mode network
That is, the mind.
Automatic collection of my repairs, my merits, my progress
The practice itself becomes the fodder that feeds the greatest transcendental belief of the self
Your weight goes up.
The more you cultivate
I get bigger and bigger.
This is the most terrifying trap in Buddhist practice
I am slow
I've been doing it for ten years.
I am vegetarian
I meditate for two hours a day.
How many scriptures have I read?
This is all Mornah adding to my narrative.
You think you are practicing
Actually, you're decorating your cell
Reverse is the safety valve that prevents this trap
Do backwards after each practice
That's saying to the default network
The result of this time
Don't mark it as mine.
Tear the label one piece at a time
Tear another piece of the label
You're not fighting against yourself.
Confrontation only strengthens it
You are every time it is stamped
Gently but firmly erase the chapter
That's why I say
Reverse is the safety valve of the entire Mahayana practice system
Practice without return
It's like a pressure cooker with no vent.
Pressure is all converted into self-expanding steam
After understanding this layer
I'll give you another AI perspective.
Make this structure more complete
In machine learning
The loss function defines the optimization direction of the model
A narrow loss function
For example, only optimize the accuracy of this question
Will make the model converge quickly but extremely overfitting
It would be stupid to change the question
A broad loss function
Performed well on a million different questions
You learn more slowly.
But what you learn is generalization.
What to do backwards
Is to minimize the loss function of your practice
To minimize the suffering of all beings
The optimization target has become larger
The training got harder.
But what you learn is no longer the technique of local optimality.
It's a deep structure that tends to be globally optimal.
And research on multi-agent reinforcement learning has repeatedly confirmed
A counterintuitive conclusion
In a complex environment
Agents that adopt cooperative strategies end up with more than
Purely selfish agent
Not because cooperation is nobler
Because collaboration forces you to build more accurate models of the world
You must understand the state of the other agents
Predict their behavior
Coordinate your strategy
The process itself makes your model more powerful
Selfishness is computational laziness.
Altruism is computational diligence.
Deviation is the switch from laziness to diligence
So much for that.
I want to wrap up all the clues
What the hell is going back?
Three levels
A structure
Neuroscience
Reverse is an intentional switch.
It blocks the neural effects of good deeds by default mode.
Networks are integrated into narrow circuits of self-reference
Instead, it activates the whole-brain cooperative model characteristic of altruistic intention
Every time you go back
It's all about the most stubborn transcendental belief in the self
A minor decrease in the precision weight
Consciousness-only level
Dedication is before the seed is stamped with my label by Mornah
Take the initiative to tear off the label
Upgrade the omission good to the omission good
Seeds do not decrease
The intent attribute of the seed has been rewritten
AI level
Backward is to switch the loss function of the practice from local optimization to global optimization
From overfitting to generalization
Three languages
An operation
And the core of this operation points to the same thing
Deviation is not really working on the outside world.
It's your own knowledge
Is your default mode network
It's the self-stamping machine that marks everything as mine.
Speaking of which
I want to share a finding that was very touching to me.
There is a famous saying in the Diamond Sutra
There should be nothing to live in but a heart
I used to understand it as not being persistent
Let's revisit this sentence from a retrospective perspective today
I suddenly realized
Isn't that an accurate description of the final form of regression?
no place to live
Do not place the fruits of any good deeds on me
Live in your heart
Under the premise of restlessness
Still have the heart to do good deeds and help sentient beings
Don't make it first and then send it out.
It was never on top of me from the start
If you can achieve this step
You don't have to do backtracking anymore.
Because every thought you have is naturally a state of return
The automatic stamping function of the default mode network has been rewritten by you.
The end of consciousness is transformed into equality intelligence
This is the most crucial step in the transformation of consciousness into wisdom
But for the vast majority of people
Including myself
It's far from that realm
So devotion is the training wheel.
Just like the auxiliary wheel for children learning bicycle fashion
You practice balance with it.
Until one day your sense of balance is so strong that you no longer need it
Finally, I want to pose a much bigger question.
Can devotion only be done after a formal practice?
Can you please return to your work?
Dedicate to the meal you cooked today
Say yes to everything you say on the way to school
What if every everyday action could rewrite the properties of intention by going backwards?
Then devotion is not just a spiritual ritual
It's a way of life
A way to make your every day
No matter whether you are in the office, in the kitchen, or on the subway
The way of living in an ashram that runs continuously
And your default mode network
Your motna
It's in every intentional switch, every day.
Be loosened a little bit
Loosen it a little more
That's probably why Zen says that carrying firewood and water is spiritual practice.
And the true meaning of Mahayana Buddhism is that all times and all places can be practiced
It's not about meditating all the time.
It allows you to turn back anytime, anywhere
What do you think?
Do you have the habit of doing backwards?
What do you really feel when you give back?
I really feel that it is in the interests of all beings
Or to be honest, just read a paragraph
If the latter
That's okay.
Because neuroscience tells you that.
Even if you're just taking the form
As long as you repeat it enough times
And your brain will be shaped by that.
Behavior can in turn change beliefs
The weight of prior beliefs cannot be adjusted only from within
It can also be continuously and bit by bit corrected by external behavior
Act first
Post internalize
This is probably the simplest and deepest secret of the entire spiritual system
I am Wang Lijie
See you next time.