[Buddha-l] Query on Non-Local Consciousness

[Richard Hayes]

On Thu, 2007-08-23 at 16:51 -0700, Franz Metcalf wrote:

> I've been thinking seriously about the dissolution of consciousness at 
> the death of the brain. Bad Buddhist that I am, the prospect fails to 
> cheer me.

Let me outline Buddhist practice in a nutshell.

1. Imagine what for you would be the worst possible scenario.
2. Assume that what you imagined in step one is the case.
3. Accept it cheerfully and move on.

For most of my life I have been unable to imagine how any kind of
consciousness could possibly occur without a billion or so living
neurons to support it. Any theory of consciousness that is not some form
of physicalist emergentism strikes me as nothing short of insanity.
Unable to imagine any plausible alternative to complete oblivion (which
I assume happens gradually as one neuron after another dies within a few
hours or days after oxygenated blood stops making its rounds through the
body), I have taken to looking for positive ways of viewing oblivion. 

Buddhism helps with this enormously, since nirvana as held in Buddhism
can't possibly be anything other than total loss of all consciousness,
and it is held as the highest possible good. So that encourages me to
look further into my own system of values for ways to look forward to my
own utter and complete non-existence.

Just to give one example, if Rudy Giuliani were elected president of the
United States, I would find the prospect of becoming totally unaware of
anything in the universe quite pleasant to contemplate. Sure, I have
thought of putting in a bid to come back as a grasshopper. Grasshoppers
seem to enjoy, well, hopping in the grass, and they don't seem to mind
that there are human beings such as George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Alberto
Gonzales and Antonin Scalia and uses of operating systems other than
Linux romping around. But today my cat came walking in with a
grasshopper, whose head he had skillfully pulled out, along with several
inches of grasshopperly innards that came streaming out the neck as the
head was pulled off. Oblivion seemed better. So I have withdrawn all
thoughts of coming back as a grasshopper, or anything else that has
thoughts, feelings, sensations, perceptions, dreams, fantasies,
knowledge, or any other kind of awareness of any sort whatsoever.

The Christians can have their rapture. I just ask that they leave my
decomposing body here until it (quite unknown to me) returns completely
to the soil, the air, the water and the digestive fires of countless
living beings. As the Buddha said "Aho, aho, aho, how wonderful. I am
food! I am food! I am food!" (What! You didn;t know that the Buddha
wrote the Taittiriya Upanishad?)

Now if that doesn't cheer you up, Franz, nothing will.

-- 
Richard 
http://dayamati.blogspot.com