[BLANK AUDIO] >> So many of you are, keep on coming. That's great. It's thrilling. Today we have a guest for just a little bit of time. Professor Tracey Shors. That's how you spell her name. You know, last night when I was dreaming. When I introduced her, I did a little Steven Colbert, you know? As she was coming on stage, I was doing a high five. I'm not gonna do that. >> [LAUGH] >> And then, once of course, she was here, I would insult her. I do not want to insult my colleague. Tell you a little about Tracey. Shes studies the neuronal mechanisms through which the brain learns and remembers. She's a neuroscientist. What's really cool about being on a large faculty like we have in the Department of Psychology is I get to know people who have interests and skills and talents that I don't have, got a background training. We're suppose to stay within the confines of our own division. She's only supposed to talk to neuroscientists, and I'm only supposed to talk with social psychologists, but I'm not even a social psychologist. I'm a personality psychologist. I got no home! >> [LAUGH] >> But the cool thing about being a personality psychologist among all these other psychologists, they have no idea what I do. And that's fine because I can pretty much do anything I want, as long as I show up and I'm reasonably productive. So I'm a kind of cross-breeder. I go into these various areas and one advantage of that is I got to know Professor Shors. Now, it's now known that the brain continues to produce new neurons throughout the life. Now, when I used to teach general psychology years ago, the word was that once you got your stack, billions of neurons, there and in place, that was it. And the rest of your life was spent losing those neurons. What Professor Shors has uncovered and continues to promote is no, we continue to generate neurons. Now, what happens to them? Many of them, I guess, die off. But there are others that survive, and the way to get them to survive is to remain intellectually active. Is that fair to say? Okay, all right, good, good. Maybe I won't interview her. I'll just keep on talking. No. What Professor Shors has done, I will slip once in awhile and call you Tracey. >> Okay. >> She studies learning and memory, but also, I guess through the study of the brain, you got interested in, what, Buddhism and meditation? Go ahead. >> Well initially. Woah, that's really loud. Initially I got interested in, I was interested in mental training, because we showed that animals that learn something difficult and challenging will retain these new neurons. Studying that, I became acquainted with meditation. Because, as many of you know, meditation is really challenging. It's really difficult to meditate. That's why most people just talk about meditating, they don't actually meditate [LAUGH] because it's very difficult to stay focused and concentrated and mindful. And so I started doing that meditation because I was curious about it. And then through that process I became more interested in the origins of meditation and that's how I got into Buddhism. >> Okay so that's how I, why I invited you to come here because in this paper that I wrote, and it's assigned to them. It's called a Partial History of Afterlife Beliefs, and near the end I acknowledge that it's incomplete, and I'll acknowledge that throughout the rest of this afternoon. But one major gap is, I don't even talk about, don't even mention Buddhism. So, we're here to sort of fill that gap, just a bit. So, tell me, who was Buddha? >> The Buddha, or at least the person that we associate with the word Buddha, which actually means to be awake, the word Buddha does. But the Buddha, his name was Siddhārtha Gautama, he was from India and he was born around 560 or so BC. He was a contemporary of Socrates and I actually like to refer to him as Mister Gautama because he wasn't a god. He didn't have supernatural capacities or capabilities as far as we know. He was just a man. But he was a great man. He discovered great things about the mind through studying his own mind. And I think one of the fortuitous aspects of his life is that he lived a very long time. He lived for like 80 some years, which in those days, was pretty long time. And so, he had a long time to go around and talk to people and teach people about what he had discovered through meditation about the mind. >> So, sort of briefly. None of this should be brief, but what did he teach? >> Well one thing that I have learned about Buddhism is that it's not only wide like the teachings are wide, but it's really deep. So like the deeper you go, the deeper it gets. But I think that one of the core teachings of Buddhism was referred to as the four nobel truths, and what the Buddha, Mr. Gautama, observed was that everybody suffers. Everybody suffers. >> You're telling me. >> [LAUGH] You know, we all have stressors in our lives and we suffer as a consequence. That was the first truth. The second was that there's an origin to that suffering. There's a reason why you suffer. And a third truth, he loved lists, he was always making lists all over the place so he had the third truth was that you could learn to stop that suffering. You could learn to control the suffering. And the fourth truth was what's known as the eight fold path. And I don't have time to go into it, but he had another list. And within the eight fold path were ways that you could approach your life and not suffer so much. It had to do with concentration, being mindful, having the right view of your life. Eight factors. And you could learn this path through the process of meditation, so through observing your own mind as it works. I should add that the two big points I think of Buddhism are, one, is that everything is always changing. So we're always changing, ourselves, our friends, life, everything is always changing and we know that, but it's hard to appreciate it in the moment. And the second core philosophy was that only this moment exists. This very moment. So everything that happened before this moment, even when you came into class today, it doesn't exist anymore. It's gone, I mean it's in your mind, in your brain somewhere, but it doesn't exist anymore. This is the only moment. Moreover, the future doesn't exist. I mean, you can plan all you want about what's going to happen when you get out of class or next year or when you graduate. But this is the only moment that actually exists. And you know, that's difficult even as a neuroscientist studying memory and learning. I still have a feeling that things exist, that happened a little while ago, but they don't. So you can see that you can appreciate the teachings, you know them, inherently you know these teachings, but it's hard to live them each moment. Live in each moment as the only moment that exists and knowing that everything is always changing. >> Is that all part of getting beyond suffering? >> It is. Yeah. Because once you realize that, and you think it would make you suffer more, right? If you knew everything's always changing, you can't predict it, you're gonna die, you can't control that. You could see on the face of it that might seem like it would cause even more suffering. But through the practice, that's why it takes time and training and concentration, it allows you to let go of that. Clinging, clinging to this moment, clinging to the past, clinging to what you think you're gonna be in the future. Clinging to your friends, clinging to your relationships. It lets you release that grip and presumably lessen the suffering. So people who are texting all the time, are they suffering? >> [LAUGH] Well, it depends on what they're texting about. >> Oh, okay, all right. But it's probably not likely they're living in the moment. I don't want to talk that. >> That's a tough one. But I would say that just, even going after things that are pleasurable, the teachings would say that those even lead to suffering. Because even when you have something that's really great, you know? Say you fall in love. Then you're worried that it's gonna end, and you won't be in love anymore. So that leads to suffering. So it's not that you're always trying to avoid things that are bad. The point is that even things that you think of as pleasurable will ultimately be bad, cuz you'll ultimately die. So by releasing your attachment to them, you can live more freely in the moment. >> Did the Buddha, or do Buddhists believe in a soul? >> My understanding, and I'm not an expert in Buddhism, but my understanding is for the most part no, quite the opposite. So one of the other tenants of Buddhism is this idea that your self doesn't exist, and we can somewhat loosely associate the soul with a self. Or at least the soul arises from the self or vice versa. [COUGH] So the idea is that because everything is always changing, you're also always changing. So the person that you are now in this room is different, the self is different than you might've been this morning when you woke up and certainly years ago when you were younger. And so because the self is always changing, there's nothing to hold onto. So in a way, and they often call it learning about non-self. So in a way you learn to not hold on to the idea that you are a self separate from every other organism on this planet. >> Wow. Well, my primitive knowledge of Buddhism, that's come down in the air and people talk about it, it's all about reincarnation. That, once I die, my soul will go someplace, and maybe depending on how I behaved myself or misbehaved myself, it will go into another creature. Is that being played up now more than it was originally? >> Well, that's a complex question and I think I can attempt to answer it. I think that if you look at the original teachings of the Buddha that a very small part dealt with anything after death. Because like I said, the whole idea is to learn to live in the moment. So, after you die, if you don't exist anymore, there wasn't a lot of attention paid to that. However, because everything is connected to everything else, in that sense you can live on. Now, at least my understanding, is the word reincarnation is more related to Hinduism, where you actually would maybe be reborn as another soul, or I don't know what the word exactly is, creature. In Buddhism it's a little more hazy, because the idea is that life continues. So before you were ever born as yourself, which doesn't exactly exist, there were still elements that made you, that caused you to come into being. And then once you die, again of course, you would no longer exist as yourself. But then other things would arise. So like a good analogy would be the seed that a tree would let go of. So let's say a tree drops a seed, and then that seed would eventually become another tree, but it's not the same as the seed. I mean, the tree is no longer represented in the seed. And it certainly isn't represented in the tree that lived before it, that dropped the seed. So the point is that everything is connected to everything else. So there's no soul really to hang on to. It just becomes another part of life. >> Okay, finally. Is Buddhism a religion? >> Now that you save the most tough question for less. >> No, >> I would say that in my personal understanding and experiences, it's probably not a religion. Now there's people, particularly in the west, who are adamant that Buddhism is not a religion. There's a group called secular, group of secular Buddhism, Buddhists. And they practice meditation and living in the moment, not worrying about before or after life, anything like that. However, I did go to Asia this summer, and I think in certain countries, it's practiced more as a religion, because there is a lot of honor and gratitude and well, gratitude given to the Buddha, almost like he's a God. Even though he actually was just a man. So, it's complicated, but I guess I would say, at the end of they day, no, Buddhism is not a religion, at least to the extent that there's no belief that there's an afterlife, that your soul lives on in heaven or some other place. >> Is it fair to call it a philosophy? >> I think it's a philosophy. >> All right. >> A lot of people call it a philosophy. I would actually even go as far as to say it's a type of psychology. I mean really the Buddha was a, Mr. Gautama was probably one of the first great psychologists, cuz what he cared about was understanding the mind. What is in our mind? Who are we inside our mind in this moment? >> Well, in this moment I hate to let go of you, but our time is up and Tracy, this is fabulous, thank you. >> Thank you. [APPLAUSE]
