ASD and non-sectarian Buddhism

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Not from my readings and personal experience. Empathy is one of the major deficits on the Autism spectrum.

I'm not going to argue it. There is a reason why people with antisocial personality disorder are said to have excellent cognitive empathy - it means they can read other people's emotions well, it doesn't obviously mean they care about them. Most autists' have normal empathy for people when they recognise other people's emotions; it's reading people that's difficult for them. No religion is going to teach you to read other's emotions better than any other - they all teach you to feel their pain once it's recognised.

I guess it depends on one's definition of empathy. When I first read the descriptions of the empathy problem in Autism, I felt like the writer knew me personally.

I don't think there's a one size fits all when it comes to AS. What works best for me is not being so intense about everything. If I try to desperately find meaning in everything it only ends up driving me nuts and making things even more senseless.

I have discovered that Compassion, Empathy and $3.69 will buy me a small coffee and two plain donuts at the local donut shop.. I have also discovered that not having either Compassion and Empathy but having $3.69 will buy me a small coffee and two plain donuts at the local shop. I think there is a conclusion hiding somewhere here.

ruveyn

The perfection Buddhism speaks of applies to everything -not just aspies -, but the reality of finally seeing this perfection (as opposed to merely believing in it) is said to be so powerful that it takes one beyond one's condition -whatever that might be- without defeating the whole point by removing the original condition. Buddhism is classed as a religion partly because of this belief in (human) transcendence-with-immanence.

One danger of Buddhism for aspies is of attachment to nothingness, known in Buddhist circles as the 'poison of emptiness', and I suspect that no autist can ultimately benefit from joining a monastic order or going on retreat. Also, I can't see Buddhism having such a powerful effect on us as it might on NTs, given that we generally have so much less to detach from. As to Buddhism's "other wing":



Cognitive empathy -as science currently describes it- is a purely mechanical process based on the unconscious interpretation (involving transfer to the emotional centres) of sensory inputs - Monkey see, monkey know how you feel. The result is not fundamentally different from our autistic sympathy - Monkey read, monkey know how you feel. Being used to feeling compassion on the back of indirect, 'weak' inputs (such as being told verbally what someone else is feeling) opens up a wider -albeit hazier- field of compassion for auties.



The conclusion being that ruveyn sees no value in empathy or compassion and can therefore be called a miserable old curmudgeon, who nonetheless never fails to entertain and should therefore stick around for a long time to come

P.s. Not showing any empathy and compassion at the local doughnut shop will get your small coffee spat in while you're not looking

Last edited by undefineable on 25 Aug 2012, 9:33 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Buddhism demolishes all this talk of (un)equal value from the outset. Since there is no ultimate reality (God etc.), how can any beings be said to have any value, let alone more value than others', from the standpoint of ultimate truth? Furthermore, if we accept rebirth across infinite space and time, then all sentient beings have been aspies and creepy-crawlies as well as gods and bankers etc. in various previous lives in any case, all of which would indeed be founded on the sharing in common (by all beings in all times and places) of a basic substrate of being in the form of the simple power of awareness.

Really? Have you studied ALL beings to come to this conclusion?

Is it conceivable that there is one being somewhere in the universe (at least 13 billion light years in diameter) that does not seek happiness?

ruveyn

No, not a one size fits all. However, I still think that heartfulness and empathy need to be the focus for Autists.

This person explains it pretty well:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPGX8G-UvsU[/youtube]

He practices this method (MP3 file).

I've based the same conclusion on my study of myself and all the other beings I've come across.



Well how would such a being be a 'being' unless a) it lacked a brain with which to be a sentient being or b) it was already happy enough? Even a person with no desires other than to be tortured in sadomasochistic relationships would seek to derive satisfaction -i.e. happiness- from such experiences.

I would like to ask you all a question in open friendship.

Do you think/believe that we possess a 'basic goodness of being'?

What do you think it is, or is not?

Grant South. [AS/HFA]

I know this is going to sound a little twee, but we are all connected through the interaction of cause and condition.

This shared interdependence is the very basis of us all sharing together in positive attitudes which support the actual quality of our lives.

We can make our relative situation better by both education and attitude.

We share much in common not only are we alive, thinking and feeling, but we have Autism. I like what 'Nominalist' mentioned regarding "heartfulness and empathy", I agree- it is very healthy.

In Autism, empathy is delayed in measured social development to neurotypical aged peer's. Delay does not mean that we lack the inherent potential of improvement.

In neurological studies focused on Autism many of us seem to have an over abundance of neural connections within the older brain and less in the frontal/executive sub-regions. This means we are, 'specialist thinkers', within those sub-sections. In the process of our own human development we can include a focus of positive social interaction, as we possess the ability of adaptation via neural plasticity.

Meditation can be very positive as it introduces and affords the release of neurotic self-preoccupations. This is by learning to actually let go of those thought patterns which are associated with, or give rise to negative habitual emotions/patterns. We can keep and foster the good ones and let go of the naughty ones. The ones that do not actually work for our true benefit.

I often now ask myself, 'what is my contribution to others', I never did this when I was younger I was just too overwhelmed.......

A few thoughts......

All my best!

Grant South

I wonder about this:
We are all connected and this
metta cultivation of loving kindness, compassion towards myself
and towards all sentient beings, in the space of my heart and beyond.

Does that not mean that spiritual people are connected to religious people
and if Metta meditation includes even those one disagree with but still
are connected to what about this talk about religion being looked down upon.

I am an aggressive atheist so I hate all religions
and I wish all of them to get deleted from Earth.

But all this talk about religion being bad and
then all this Metta for all sentient beings.

It does not compute for me. If one really have
loving kindness even for the religious then
no need to talk bad about them is there?

I know there are a lot of atheists that dislike religions
but they are positive to Buddhist spirituality and practice.

I see almost no difference between religious acts and spiritual acts.

The doctrines can be different maybe. Religious people
treat their God in similar ways that a spiritual person treats
the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eight Path with reverence

I think it is difficult to find any Buddhist that talk bad about the 4NT?

But why talk bad about religions at all. Why not see them as spirituality
only more organized?

Yes I hate spirituality too I am an aggressive atheist.
I am skeptical to this Metta claim. The do talk down
religions so they don't have loving kindness towards it.

They usually say. I am not religious I am spiritual or similar.
To me that is to talk down religions and talk up spiritual ways.

Makedgod2020, I sense you're trying to come to grips with a lot of things here:

First off, the downfall of religion is that it promises everyone someone to look after them after they're grown up - even someone to keep them happy (as well as alive in some sense) after they're dead - As such, it was always a question of when rather than if the religious would start being mocked -by the ruling classes- as incorrigibly uninitiated mummy's boys and daddy's girls who deserve nothing but to be crushed by the weight of their own emotional neediness.

Second, Buddhism in most accounts appears to be an exception to all this - We're taught how to provide for our own emotional needs - eternally. Nominalist, your MP3 file's semblance of Buddhism stretched as far as the Tibetan accent, but no further (to my knowledge) - The 'open heart meditation' it described just made me think how unloved many people must have felt as children - either because they were brought up badly or because they were severely autistic (and thereby unable to either interpret their caregivers' gestures as loving or to notice their own emotional 'needs' until much later).

Aside from rebirth, Buddhism's main dogma -until one has meditated enough to confirm it I guess- is that all sentient beings have plenty of love in them (and 'as' them) to begin with. However, from our own practical point of view, Reality is Destruction and nothing else. Buddhism recognises this, and offers a path to a state in which this is no longer problematic - since one is no longer a sentient being. So Buddhism gets round makedgod's 'lovey-dovey-ness' issues with panache (in my view) and without resorting to the usual half-arsed repression.

Hello,

Undefineable- you make many sound points.

When I mentioned 'Inter-connected', it was in the sense of our cellular level, the level of shared composite natures.

We all come about as a process, we abide in life as a consequence of that process, and we will disolve from this present form as a consequence of this process. Further the process continues as we shape-shift in dynamic flux back to nature and re-build as constituents of new life forms/composite matter.

In this sense there is in actuality 'no-birth' and also 'no-death'. It is only a sense of self which is born and then dies. The composite constituents continue on, and on, and on. In this sense we are all connected and have never been separated from this universal process.

Further we are connected through our life experience, we all share many concerns in common, and we also seek happiness in similar ways [I am talking generally and of course there are exceptions to the rule]. But in general most of us would like to feel at ease, to have peace, to experience safety, and to be respected and valued.

Also on a deeper level we are also connected as we share a purity of cognition. Here I refer to our most basic fundamental nature of mind, our sentience. This pure stainless awareness is in full measure. It is not conditioned by our momentary thoughts or emotions. This luminosity is before thoughts, it is the nature from which the energy of thoughts and emotions arise from. We only need to see the purity of its energy, and in that recognition itself, its energy is naturally liberated. It is a fundamental nature before and beyond the touch of our Autism. This cognitive purity of being, is what we share in equal potential with all beings. Whether we are Neuro-diverse, Neuro-typical or even if we are another being, dog, cat, gold fish. To various degrees we all share the same basic cognitive quality of consciousness. In Buddhism this basic cognitive quality of luminous wakefulness is the so-called Buddha-nature within [Skt: Tathagatagarbha].

All beings share in this inheritance of cause and condition, and so, ipso facto, are connected.

Buddhism is a departure from the parameters of all religion, yet it includes and maintains the very essence of the human heart, the development of deep humanistic qualities. Love [The deep wish for people to be happy] and Compassion [the deep wish for the causes and conditions of sorrow to not arise and the motivation to actively work towards creating positive action to that end] and also principles of emotional balance such as Wisdom [the knowledge and living recognition of dependent origination or inter-dependence, every-thing being inter-connected].

There is also another quality that is very sane about Buddhism, its tradition of practice. There is a common view shared in all authentic traditions that we are all the Buddha's heir. We are all heirs to the lineage if we choose to resonate the basic truth of our sentience. An inclusive view beyond extremes.

What I have written directly above is based on the view as introduced in the 'Heart Essence of Wisdom Sutra', commonly known as the 'Heart Sutra', where we find the words-

"Form is emptiness.
Emptiness is form.
Form is none other than emptiness.
Emptiness is none other than form."

The four lines above introduce the view beyond extremes. Here emptiness does not mean no-existence, what is does mean is no-self nature [Skt: anatman]. What the historical Buddha taught as true Wisdom was the knowledge that everything was connected, that every-thing is born, abides and dissolves through the interplay of causes and conditions. Further that because every-thing arises through such causes and conditions there is no such reality or truth of an independent self in the whole universe as all phenomena are a composite of energy. Further even energy itself is a composite of causes and conditions..............

Love and Compassion arises from this knowledge as we come to see others as 'same', not as an overlay of nice spiritual ideas, but as an actual truth/reality as a universal spirituality of inter-connectedness resonating with the actual living truth [Skt: Dharma] of all things.

This is not about convincing people into belief, rather it is just the bare awareness of nature. The inferred power of our own observation, our intrinsic, yet shared, cognitive sentience which already has its own innate Wisdom and Compassion.

What obscures our innate Wisdom and Compassion is our respective delusion/subjective psychological projects on both our 'selves' [as a non-connected self] and others [as non-connected things].

We are not isolated/separate, nor is anyone else. This in itself is the very basis of care and caring through great equality. This view is absolutely non-sectarian/unbiased.

All my very best!

Grant.

So if I claim that Buddhism get's it wrong?
What if I say that the true reality is that we are
all of us truly separate and utterly alone even
when we don't feel that way?

Am I seen as a dread materialist or reductionist
or scientism supporter or worse?

Haha I may be seen as an Illusionist.

Nope I am bad at sleight of hand. I am very clumsy indeed.
But I care about the truth and we are truly separate and alone!