Phil Stanley "The Relationships between sense perceptions, concepts, and emotions" TRT 29:00 [MUSIC] Hello. And welcome to Mindful U at Naropa. A podcast presented by Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. I'm your host, David Divine. And itÕs a pleasure to welcome you. Joining the best of Eastern and Western educational traditions - Naropa is the birth place of the modern mindfulness movement. [MUSIC] [00:00:45.13] DAVID: Today, I'd like to welcome Phil Stanley to the podcast. [00:00:48.20] PHIL: Hello. [00:00:49.17] DAVID: Nice to have you. Phil is a distinguished professor in the religious department and focuses on Indo-Tibetan Buddhism and Tibetan language. Wow. [00:01:01.01] PHIL: My love. [00:01:02.09] DAVID: Quite a thing you got there. Uh, do you want to go ahead and just introduce yourself a little bit? [00:01:06.18] PHIL: Ok. I have a doctorate in religious studies from the University of Virginia. My thesis advisor / doctoral advisor was the famous Dr. Jeffery Hopkins. I began studying Buddhism uh the first summer of Naropa. It was Institute at the time now Naropa University back in 1974. So, I've been uh meditating for over 40 years and uh have been teaching over 35 years in Buddhism. Uh after 5 years of course work uh at the University of Virginia and going off to do my uh dissertation work I got a full bright scholarship to do that. I'm a full bright scholar. At the end of the 5 years also (?) Institute was founded uh which was dedicated to translating the entire Tibetan monastic university system in New English. And I attended the first year and now 22 years I'm the Dean of Academic Affairs for Nitartha Institute in charge of training teachers and authorizing them for by the lineage we uh - it was founded by Ponlop Rinpoche so Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche and (?) both graduates at the program. So, I am deeply involved in translating uh... and teaching the monastic university system of Tibetan Buddhism - the entire curriculum. Normally 9 years. We can do it quicker than that in the West. [00:02:26.13] DAVID: Awesome. Well we are really excited to have you and your wisdom. What are you going to be speaking about again? [00:02:31.15] PHIL: Uh, I'd like to speak about uh one of my favorite class topics. Its - the relationship between sense perceptions, concepts and emotions. This - such an exploration leads to surprising insights. Uh students are often dumbfounded by aspects of the exploration that we think we know what sense perceptions are and concepts and so forth, but if you start looking into it it can be quite surprising. [00:02:57.19] DAVID: Yeah. Can't wait to hear. [00:03:00.18] PHIL: So, let's uh start with sense perceptions. I'd like to ask you to pick an object near you - in front of you. I typically use an orange when I am doing this with students. I'll use a cup here. Uh, so pick an object. Don't touch it uh I am going to ask you to pick it up later on but for now don't touch it. So, pick something that you could pick up that's within range. Now, I'd like to ask you to - as it were tell me about the object. You know a great deal about it - for example, with an orange you know what's its shape. What's the shape of the object that you're looking at. You know if you're looking at a pen well its long and oblong. If you're looking at cup its sort of squat and uh vertically straight maybe but curved if you look down on top of it and so itÕs got a shape. I ask you what its weight - you know is it really heavy or is it really light? Could you pick it up? If I ask you what its texture - you know does it got a smooth texture or a rough texture. Again, don't touch anything - we're just - you know talking about the object. How brittle is it? If you dropped it on a hard surface would it bounce? Would it shatter? What's its - what's it made of? You know is it made of ceramic or plastic or metal? Wood? Paper - all of the above? What's its texture like? You know and its temperature. If you were to pick it up. So, you'd picked a hot coffee mug that you just came and sat down with coffee, well you would anticipate it would be warm. Maybe even hot. Or if you just took out - you have an orange from the fridge you'd expect it to be cold and so forth. So now - and also what's it internal structure? Like an orange has a lot of structure. A lot of you know white pulp and seeds and this juicy succulent sweet juice or - or if itÕs a uh computer you're looking at. Say you picked a laptop uh itÕs a mass of parts. The interior you know itÕs got a hard drive. ItÕs got a memory chip. ItÕs got a processing chip. You know all this stuff about the insides - ok. So, now the question is what is it that your sense perception is giving you? We have 5 senses. Eye, ear, nose, tongue, body ok. Which of those senses are you engaging the object with? Well, itÕs basically the eye consciousness. You aren't touching it. You aren't licking it. You are not tasting it or whatever. So, what is that your eye consciousness gives you? What is eye consciousness experience? And it can be boiled down to two things - color and shape. And - and in the tradition the Abdulrahman traditions called the sort of philosophical tradition of early Buddhism uh this - some people argue shape is really just difference in color. That there is no shape separate from color. So, they say I only cease color. So, anyway you have this sort of view. So, but wait a moment uh you were telling me all sorts of things about this object when you look at this object you don't just think you're seeing color and shape. You - you feel it as a 3D embodied object. For example, if I - if I threw - if I had this orange here and I threw it at you - or tossed it to you gently say. Uh do you feel like color and - you're experiencing color and shape? As the color gets bigger and bigger it gets closer and closer to you. Do you experience that that's color and shape? Well no. Do you feel very much that itÕs a 3D object with a certain amount of weight? If I threw a spikey metal ball at you - you know you would be running like crazy away from me. But if I tossed an orange to you like oh I love oranges and you'd catch it and you'd know you'd catch it. Whereas a spikey metal ball. So, you're not seeing the color and shape of a spikey metal ball. You experience this - rich complex object coming towards you. But wait a moment. Your senses only give you color and shape. You're not experiencing the weight, the dangerous spikiness. The - whether itÕs a soft sand through a snarf ball at you - you know one of those real soft foamy things. You don't - your senses are not giving you that information. So where is that coming from? So, the basic proposition here is that based on your memory you interrupt the sense data, which in this case is purely the color and shape. And you're attributing all sorts of uh qualities to the object. So, but do you experience that as you're projecting it? Well, you know definitely not. We experience it as if - all these qualities are coming from the object. So, this is a fundamental trick of the mind as it were is that we project all sorts of qualities onto the world. And then we experience those projections as if theyÕre coming from the object. This is a bit shocking, right? And then when we get to a discussion of emotions and people you get this issue in space. You know you're projecting all sorts of interpretive qualities onto the people, but do they have a referent object to use the technical language of the epistemology - the study of how we know. Is there a referent object - look if I say I have a concept of an orange and I have an orange in front of me - is there a referent object? Well yeah there is an orange there. Or if you are looking at your laptop is there referent object for your concept laptop? Well yes. But, there's this question of all the qualities that you're projecting onto the object - are they actually in the object? [00:08:35.01] DAVID: Yeah. [00:08:35.01] PHIL: Ok, so this gets to the issue of how accurate are our concepts? So, in a moment, I'm going to ask you to pick up the object that you were looking at. So, don't touch it yet. And what I want you to think - to ponder and to experience is what is your expectation of what the weight of the object will be? And then I want you to pay close attention to what the actual weight of it is. When you pick it up what does it actually feel like? And then in particular, is there a disjunction? Is there a difference? Now, we - generally don't like to experience disjunction between our interpretations so I would suggest that we're often suppressing the fact that there is this regular day moment to moment almost experience of the physical world where we're projecting and interpreting is these little differences or big differences - and we don't like to acknowledge it. So, I'd like to ask you to be really sort of honest as it were. Really pay attention to how close was your expectation of the weight. Ok, so look at your object. Think about what it would feel like. You can also think about what the texture might feel like - what the temperature is. And then when you're ready -- pick it up. So, now at this point if we had a group of us together uh you get a surprising range of reactions. That some people will say wow it is way heavier than I thought. Or way lighter. Or some people say well it was really close, but a little off. And some people don't see any difference. And, and itÕs surprising that there can be sometimes be a fair number of people who don't see a difference. They sort of don't allow themselves to experience the - as I would suggest. And we're pretty good at this. You know we're often quite close and functionally it doesn't make a difference. Like if you look at a cup. You know you can pick it up unless somebody is playing a trick like glued it to the table or something. LAUGHS Or, you go to pick up a chair and its way heavier than you thought and you say I can't pick this thing up you know. [00:10:38.20] DAVID: Or your friend is playing a trick on you and is acting like its heavy and gives it to you and then all of the sudden you're just like whoa. [00:10:43.22] PHIL: Have you ever seen those rocks that are real bolbas but they're very light? They are incredibly light and you think I am going to pick this up and then it almost flies up in the air. So, like that. [00:10:52.03] DAVID: Surprising. [00:10:52.20] PHIL: So, some objects really trick us. They really surprise some. Uh so the proposition here is that in ordinary sense experience in fact uh you know 98% of what we're - uh when we're engaging with objects - 98% of what we're perceiving is our projection - and that the projections are often only approximately correct. And this is a structural feature of concepts. Uh in the epistemology of Buddhism they talk about generally characterized phenomenon specifically characterized phenomenon. So, a concept of banana is a generally characterized phenomena and then you have all sorts of specifically characterized bananas. The actual bananas and itÕs called a generally characterized because it can't possible capture all the nuance and like the texture of a particular banana - some of them are more firmer. Some of them are sweeter. Some of them are softer. You know - itÕs just this tremendous variation and even one end of a banana can be more ripe than the other end. [00:11:52.11] DAVID: Yeah. [00:11:53.11] PHIL: And you have this concept of banana and it can't possible capture the actual qualities of this specifically characterized banana. So, concepts from this point of view are inherently approximate. They're course. They really can't capture the complexity. And like consider the concept taste of a strawberry. And the actual taste of a strawberry. I mean its - itÕs incredible the taste of a strawberry. And your concept of it just pales beside the actual experience. But then some strawberries are very bland and some of them are rotten. You know there's all this variation that happens. So, concepts can't possible capture all of that. Now, another question is - and this will sound odd. Where do you experience objects? Where do you experience your sense objects? Now, you might say well obviously I experience them out in the world. Like I'm sitting here looking at David and he's over there and he's clearly over there, right? [00:12:50.16] DAVID: Hello. [00:12:50.16] PHIL: Hello. LAUGHS. Uh but if you ask well wait a moment you know use science for a moment that there is ambient light in the room that bounces off the object in front of you so you're looking at your laptop or your pencil or your cup. The light comes towards the eye faculty interacts with the eye faculty and then you have a mental experience of the sense perception. So, to explore this take your index finger from one hand and stick it up in front of your nose about 5, 6, 8 inches - not too far away. And look through the finger. Don't look at the finger. This helps against a white you know uniform background. Don't look at the finger but through it. How many fingers do you see? [00:13:32.20] DAVID: One. [00:13:33.03] PHIL: Really? You have two eyes giving you two images. Aren't there two images there? Don't look at the finger - look through the finger. [00:13:43.21] DAVID: ItÕs like a fuzzy two. It's -- [00:13:44.22] PHIL: They're fuzzy too. Right, right. Ok. Uh and if you wiggle them both they'll move ok. This is occurring in the mind. You are experiencing two images given to you by your sense faculty. The entire room before you was occurring was a mental experience. You were not experiencing it out in the room. [00:14:03.11] DAVID: Yeah. [00:14:03.20] PHIL: Now, we've learned to correlate it. You know babies this is part of - what babies go through. They experience this flood of uh sense perceptions and they have to figure out oh my gosh it corresponds to objects out there. Ok? Now, so we have to describe sense experience then you have a mental experience of the sense input given by your 5 senses. You interpret the heck out of it based on memory - you know like 98% of what you think you're seeing is actually being contributed by your mind. And then you project even the sense perception - the sense sensation out into the room. You're not actually seeing the room out there. But you've learned if you walk over to the right side of your room you'll bump into something sooner or later than if you walked to left side you know. You've learned to interpret this way. And, we really believe our interpretive process. So, we're really uh have a lot of feedback that oh there is a chair over there if I walk over there I can pick up a chair and sure if you walk over there you'll have the tactile experience of bumping into a chair and so forth ok. So, LAUGHS - quite surprising. [00:15:11.23] DAVID: ItÕs interesting to think too if - if you are very familiar with the room and you walk into a room that you are familiar with and someone played a trick on you and moved it around - you're walking around you might have a little bit of trouble navigating the space in which you're familiar with. [00:15:26.23] PHIL: And at night - you know if the lights are out you expect things to be in certain places and then sometimes you're - you're shocked you know you stumble over something. Another uh dimension of this is uh when we classify objects we use concepts to classify things like when we said bananas before there's - you know if you go to a grocery store - you can go around looking and say that group of things over there are bananas or if you say fruit - what's in the fruit category you'll go to the grocery store and there's all sorts of stuff that you include in the category fruit ok? So, if you uh - had a collection of objects - say like a uh - a round orange, a round plum, a round rock - an oblong rock, a uh long oblong-ish say pen or pencil, sticks, uh a stalk of celery that's long, a carrot that's long, a tennis ball ok. Very tiny stones, very large stones. Big piece of fruit like the whole stalk - the whole thing of uh celery. Ok now if you ask someone to categorize these. If you have a group of people and say ok would you categorize these into groups - related groups. So, one person might put all the stones together. And another person might put all the fruit together. And a non-fruit and non-stones like the pencils and chalk or whatever long - oblong object would be a third group. Ok. Now if you looked at each group - like the stone group has some - some large round objects and some small round objects. Some long small-ish maybe small but oblong stones. So, if you say well this is - these are all stones. TheyÕre the same. But if you look at them they're all different. Everyone is different. You look at the fruit. You know the plum is not the orange. If you look at the non-fruit, non-rocks you know the pencil is not the pen so forth and so on. Ok. So, if you asked another person to group them well another person groups them like large objects together. He puts a big stone with a soccer ball. LAUGHS. And then he puts the pencil with the celery and the carrot because they're long - he's doing it on shape and size. See? But again, within the category if you look at the - the brown things well a soccer ball is pretty different from a large stone. But conceptionally this is what we do. When we classify things basically the process is that conceptuality suppresses the difference within things in the class and accentuates the differences with the things outside of the class. Ok. So, if you think about how we categorize people then. You're suppressing similarities and accentuating differences when you do that. You know for one thing you know if you're - if you're a racially prejudice person and you say I'm x race then you're not. Well, you're all humans you know. You know you're suppressing a similarity by accentuating a difference. So, this is a fundamental characteristic of concepts. Whenever you categorize anything like large round objects you're going to suppress the large round stone is not a soccer ball. Ok, so uh there's a basic limitation even mistakenness about concepts. They produce a type of error whenever you apply them. They're useful to us. If I say could you get me a spoon - I'm - I need to stir the pot. It doesn't help me so much to bring me a knife, right? So, the concept is useful, but it - there's a basic way in which the concepts are falsifying the actual uniqueness of everything - actually everything ends up be credibly unique specifically characterized phenomena. And concepts uh really suppress that - that variation. So, when you get to well to - maybe step back and review but so the way we perceive objects the sense perception is a very tiny bit of the input of what we think we're experiencing. We're projecting both the sense experience and the concepts about the sense object occurring within the mind. We project it out into the world as if - we are seeing it directly in the world. [00:19:46.21] DAVID: Yeah. [00:19:47.07] PHIL: And then, the concepts we apply themselves are suppressing the difference between and accentuating difference between things inside and outside the class. And we really believe this process. We strongly believe this process. So, when you get to talk to interactions with people with humans and we start doing this interpretive project process like you're walking down the street and you see somebody coming towards you with dreadlocks and they got a t-shirt with a marijuana plant on it - or you see somebody walking towards you with a three piece suit. Or you see someone in athletic tights with a yoga mat strapped on their back. LAUGHS. Or you see a policeman walking towards you. Your mind is producing all sorts of interpretive - interpretations of these people. And projecting these qualities onto them. And then you perceive those projections as coming from the person. You know for example, maybe the person - you're sort of anti-capitalist or something and you see the person with the three piece suit. Well, for what you know he may be a person really deeply involved in - in supporting fundraising for - Doctors Without Borders and he's going to a corporation to try to talk them into giving a million dollars to you know Doctors Without Borders. He might be a marvelous person uh you - you know your projections basically uh have a high degree of being erroneous. And then, you react to your projections emotionally as if they we're really in the person. And so, you have all sorts of emotional reactions and depending on what your background is a guy in dreadlocks may be uh you might be have a sort of whimsical enjoyable sense of seeing such a person on the street with their marijuana t-shirt. Or you might see a business person you know do you treat as sort of very negative experience. So, you - or can you be open about it - just suspend your projection and see what's going on there. You know so - uh this discussion, this investigation then of how sense perception works and how conceptuality works that leads into this issue that our emotions are often shadow boxing with our own projections and the accuracy of them is highly suspect. [00:22:00.11] DAVID: Yes. [00:22:00.11] PHIL: So, there's a lot more that can be gone into. This is part of a larger you know set of talks and lectures and topics that then get into how emotions work and so forth and so on. [00:22:10.15] DAVID: That was a wonderful introduction. Wow, itÕs really interesting to hear how previous experiences as we move through life inform how we project - how we see things, how we relate to the world. How we use our consciousness. I'm finding that really interesting now that you have kind of turned me onto that and - and itÕs really interesting because a lot of the emotions that come up after that are coming from ego, which are this human construct things so - so we're creating a narrative within our minds and maybe within our body language before we even have an interaction in us. You know. [00:22:49.08] PHIL: Yeah, well I mean - the ability to interpret things is - is one of the reasons humans have been such a successful species. You know sort of useful - for a bible if you will - you know to - to be able to interpret your environment in ways based on experience. And based on memory. So, itÕs got you know a real functionality and its part of the reason why we really believe it. You know. And when you're so shocked. Like if you've ever sat down in a chair and you're like you're really tired. You went running you know for 3 miles, 5 miles whatever and you're really tired and then you see a chair - itÕs not at your house. You're a friend's house. You stopped by a friend's house and you - oh that looks like a comfortable chair. And you sit - sit on it and it collapses. ItÕs like - we get this shock. We're like how dare the world do this not meet our expectation. You know like you get furious at the chair. And it was probably getting ready to fill you know for the last 5 years itÕs been wearing out. And it just happens that - or you think oh wow that looks like a really comfortable chair and you sit on it and itÕs like hard as a rock. [00:23:48.11] DAVID: Not what I expected. [00:23:49.18] PHIL: Yeah, so you get pissed off or irritated. [00:23:51.09] DAVID: Not what I projected. [00:23:52.22] PHIL: Yes, yes. How dare you not meet my projection. [00:23:55.21] DAVID: Cool. So, here's a question for you. What - what types of sensing practices do you utilize and or teach to your students or...anybody else that you work with? What kind of sensing practice can we practice as our - the listeners to uh engage with more of this? [00:24:14.21] PHIL: Well, there's a wide range of ways of using the sense experiences. You can do specific things like - like we did with I asked you to think about the weight of an object and pick it up. And uh you can do this all the time. Uh just you can notice this. You're about to like in winter you're about to leave in the morning and you reach for the doorknob and the doorknob is way colder than you think because the outside is really cold right, but there is a sort of being grounded in the present actually experience it beyond your projection. So, there is a sort of vividness to that. Uh you can do things like aimless wandering asking people to mindfully you know sort of a meditative state go out and walk in a park or -- even down a busy street. But for the point of view of experiencing the sense the vividness of the senses. Uh so the senses can be a real ally is sort of waking you up. Being present in the present moment sort of freshness. And things are - are always more complex than your concept of them. Like you know look at a rock. If you looked a rock itÕs like a little universe of detail. ItÕs like a gorgeous painting or looking at tree bark itÕs like amazing. ItÕs just incredible. So, uh there's this sort of you could even say ordinary magic or sacredness about the directness of sense perception where you allow your conceptual mind to sort of uh suspend itself and just be present. [00:25:37.05] DAVID: Yeah, we're all just creating ordinary magic all the time. [00:25:40.06] PHIL: Yeah, the senses are giving it to you all the time. If you pay attention. [00:25:43.20] DAVID: Yeah, itÕs so wonderful. So, I have another question as well so you earlier you said you had been meditating for 40 years. Uh that's really impressive by the way. And I'm curious what kind of insights have you come up with - what has come to you within 40 years of sitting and being with yourself and consciously observing what comes up? How - is it - was there like a moment where you're just like whoa things have changed? Because if you practice an art or a musical instrument for 40 years you're - you're going to have some skill within what you do so - I'm kind of curious what kind of skills or developments have happened for you within 40 years of meditating? [00:26:22.11] PHIL: Well, there is lots of dimensions to this. There is all sorts of insights that come along. So, itÕs a gradual process. You know sometimes if you - if you hear of things like Bodriana - this sort of esoteric tradition passed from India to Tibet there are ritual things - ritual uh practices you can do that are very complex and so forth, but you can really - when you read the books they'll use a term that shows up and a number of them ordinary mind. And its sort of from ego's point of view its - you could do these what you might consider exotic practices of you know visionalizing deities at some point. And from the traditions point of view there's a lot of huge - sense of humor that in fact all of the practices that pour into this during ordinary state of mind that's not - itÕs an insult to ego actually. Ego wants to develop you know hey I'm going to get these high esoteric states or whatever it is. And, the humor of that is that in fact the state that of realization is extremely direct and simple and - and uh not about ego and building yourself. Its uh - it cuts the ground out of arrogance and aggression. So, it - should produce a kinder you know reasonable person. Not an arrogant - oh I'm so sophisticated. [00:27:37.08] DAVID: The more you mediate the more ordinary things become? [00:27:40.19] PHIL: Yes, in a way you could say. But then again, itÕs so sacred too. Its uh really quite interesting and you become very - there's a kindness that you develop. And a lot of people they - they're - they have this sense of ambition that I am not happy with myself and my life and I have to push myself and I'm critical of myself - there is a lot of self-deprecation. And the process of meditation creates this kindness to yourself. This allowing yourself to really uh flourish in a different way. In a way that's more human and more direct and more - clear. [00:28:14.08] DAVID: Thank you so much. That was so beautiful. [00:28:16.20] PHIL: Thank you. [00:28:17.01] DAVID: Awesome. So, that was Phil Stanley on our podcast today distinguish professor in the religious department focusing on Indo-Tibetan Buddhism and Tibetan language. We just like to thank you. [00:28:29.15] PHIL: Well, thank you. Pleasure to teach. [MUSIC] On behalf of the Naropa community thank you for listening to Mindful U. The official podcast of Naropa University. Check us out at www.naropa.edu or follow us on social media for more updates. [MUSIC]