Rewiring the brain for happiness

Evolution of the Brain

One important realization that I have had from photographing impermanence for about two months daily is that things change constantly but unless I paid careful attention it did not register in my consciousness. My hypothesis is that human brains are evolutionary wired to pay attention to only large anomalies because if we don’t react to major threats in our environment we would die as a species. We also constantly seek pleasure because it allows us to propagate our genes. This is a great mechanism to ensure our survival as a species when we evolved in the African wilderness but it doesn’t work if we live in an environment where everything is reasonably safe and secure.

Because our brains are optimized to register threats or seek pleasure, our daily existence becomes a drudgery because most of us live in conditions that are reasonably secure and safe. An event registers in our consciousness only if it is a life changing event like death, marriage or birth of a child. If we were to draw a graph of our life from the perspective of the brain, it would be mostly flat with a few highs and a few lows. Unfortunately, because of the inability of the brain to register small changes we feel constrained and trapped within the confines of our consciousness. Buddhism calls this Dhukka, the pervasive unsatisfactoriness of the human existence.

Because of this we are constantly seeking the next pleasure principle or otherwise spend our times manufacturing future imaginary threats in our mind. This process is doomed to failure because we are going against a fundamental aspect of the brain’s evolutionary mechanism which is wired only to detect an imminent threat or chase the possibility of pleasure. The best sex, food, or even spiritual experiences get boring after a while because our brain is constantly changing the threshold. If we always get the same amount of pleasure from a particular activity we wouldn’t seek anything anymore, we would be perfectly happy, and our species would die out either through predation or lack of growth. There is an inbuilt mechanism in the brain to prevent this from happening and ensuring the survival of our species.

Changing the Threshold

A valuable insight that I gained from photographing impermanence daily is that the very act of observation alters how the brain processes information, and how it assigns values to our highs and lows. You don’t need a big high to get pleasure, and brain does not assign an arbitrarily low value if things don’t your way. You can train your brain to notice small changes in your everyday life and there is a subtle joy that comes from noticing how beautiful change can be.

For example in the groups of pictures above, a change in atmospheric conditions gives rise to three very different pictures on the same scene. In normal circumstances our brain does not register this change because of the absence of any threat but if you make it a daily practice you can see that there is an inherent beauty in the most mundane aspects of our existence. If I hadn’t photographed the same twig everyday for two months my brain would not have recognized the difference. A change in light, temperature, and moisture gives three completely different images from the same scene, and registering this makes our brain realize that things constantly change. This recognition changes the threshold of what is considered a high and a low in the brain, and we live in a constant state of childlike wonder. Rilke’s poem describes this feeling very eloquently.

Sonnets to Orpheus I, 13

Juicy apple, pear, and banana,
Gooseberry ... They all speak of
Death and life in the mouth ... I have a presentiment ...
Read it from a child’s expression

If she savours them. It comes from far, from far ...
Aren’t you slowly becoming aware of something inexpressible in your mouth?
Where a moment ago were words, a flowing discovery
Is released, startling, from the fruit’s flesh.

Venture to say what your apple is called.
This sweetness, which originally condensed itself,
Spreading out, slowly in being tasted rose up
To achieve a clarity, awake and of transparency,
Resonant of opposites, sunny, earthy, of the here and now -:
Oh the experience of it, the feeling, the joy -, immense!

(Rainer Maria Rilke 1875-1926; Translated by Robert Temple)

Paying Attention to Impermanence

This process of rewiring the brain is an active and constant process. You have to actively notice how everything around you is constantly changing, and this process of looking at things anew everyday rewires the brain. This practice has to come from within because only you can rewire your brain. It is going to be a long drawn out practice because our brains are conditioned by centuries of evolution, and is hardwired to reset to a default setting because millions of years ago it was critical for the survival of our species.

Once you understand this process of looking, you will also realize how ridiculous it is to look for a teacher to transmit enlightenment to you. A teacher can only give you a glimpse. Only you can do this work because it is your brain that you are rewiring, and it also necessarily means that cannot be a fixed formulaic path. It is a daily practice of noticing actively how everything around us in constant flux. That is the miracle we all seek. It is right in front of us only if we stopped and looked.

Miracles (Walt Whitman 1819-92)

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,

Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,

Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,

Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.