We are biological agents trying to survive in a complex world. Our brains generate models of reality that help us interpret, predict and navigate the external world with the purpose of survival and reproduction.
Such models provide our experience with a certain organization (spatial, temporal, etc.), or structure. We don’t experience reality directly, but only the interface provided by our mind in its attempt to make sense of an ever-changing, complex external world (for a nice exposition of this idea see Donald Hoffman’s The case against reality). These models are limited in their capacity to faithfully represent the incoming sensory data, due to our intrinsic limitations as biological creatures. Employing Steven Wolfram’s terms, we are computationally bounded agents trying to survive in a computationally irreducible universe.
The Buddhist tradition teaches us that the origin of suffering is tanha, typically translated as craving. There is suffering or unsatisfactoriness (dukkha) because we cling to phenomena that we consider as existing and stable, whereas those phenomena are impermanent and lack inherent existence (they are empty). The absence of an inherent existence does not mean that phenomena don’t exist, but that they transcend our conception of existing or non-existing, given the limitations of our conceptual mind that needs to reify phenomena to make sense of them.
We grasp at things because we are wired for that. We are wired to try to obtain whatever gives us pleasure because it helps us survive (or helped us during our evolutionary history). And for the same reason we frantically avoid whatever we dislike.
Suffering arises because our very experience of things as things imposes an inherent existence to such phenomena. We don’t see them as they are, but only through the conceptual scaffolding of our mind (i.e., the structure of our experience). Thus, we are constantly seeking and rejecting phenomena that we consider as having inherent desirable or undesirable qualities when those phenomena are ultimately empty.
The perception of phenomena as things is not only dependent on our language. Our brains work in way that the reification of phenomena goes all the way down to the basic perceptions of sights, sounds and the other senses, as a consequence of our computational boundedness. In other words, hierarchical generative models exist at different levels and help us predict the world at different scales, from low-level visual perception to social behavior, and such models are the origin of the fabrication of perception, and, thus, of our suffering. Hence the title: structure is suffering.
The teaching of dependent origination (paṭiccasamuppāda) deepens our understanding of this relationship. Rob Burbea’s book Seeing that frees is a beautiful guide through the profound implications of this teaching; one of the most liberating ones being that the arising of phenomena in experience is necessarily accompanied by craving, feeling tone (vedanā) and self. Interestingly, when the reification of an object of perception ceases, the clinging to the object disappears, and the very perception of this phenomenon fades. This is a priceless experiential insight.
As meditative skill develops, we see that without clinging phenomena do not appear at all. Not only how they appear, but that they appear is dependent on the fabricating conditions of clinging. — Rob Burbea
Many scientific theories of agenthood (in particular those rooted in predictive coding) resonate with this view. From the Free Energy Principle (FEP) point of view, world models are generated from priors that encode the preferred state of the agent, and are constantly evaluated against incoming data. Negative valence in the agent arises from a mismatch between the predicted and observed data, which is inevitable given the complexity of the external world and our computational boundedness. If one contends that agents experience the contents of their generative model predictions, the dependent links between fabrication (prior models), experience and valence appear as a consequence of the theory.
According to the Kolmogorov Theory of consciousness (KT), agents generate compressive models of the world to navigate and predict the environment. The objective function is constantly evaluating the valence of the agent’s current models of the state of the world (and of the agent). Such models provide structure to the agent’s experience. Again, fabrication (structured models), valence and experience co-arise, as described in the teaching of dependent origination.
The paradox here is that the compression of world data in structured models is at the same time our best ally for survival and the very root of our existential suffering.
What’s the way out?
Well, as long as the links of dependent origination are left untouched, the process of creating suffering will unfold inexorably. As long as phenomena are perceived as real (their fabricated, empty nature unseen), the cycle of fabrication, craving, and, as a consequence, dukkha, will persist.
But when the fabricated nature of a given phenomenon is revealed (i.e., the generative model becomes phenomenally opaque), clinging towards that phenomenon will consequently decrease, and with it the associated dukkha.
Once you know that Santa doesn’t exist, you can’t go back anymore.
Importantly, the integration of such insights into the existing model of reality is crucial for a sustained reduction of suffering; this will make the difference between a liberating view of no-self and a pathological sense of de-personalization.
In the context of predictive coding, the de-reification of phenomena is associated with a reduction of model precision. As model precision decreases, the associated suffering does too, as prediction errors are given lower weights (via precision-weighting). Thus, one can see how the decrease of belief precision (de-reification) in deeper and deeper layers of the generative model hierarchy is accompanied by a progressive release of dukkha. This deserves a lengthier exploration, but in the meantime this talk by Shamil Chandaria is a wonderful exposition of de-fabrication (and much more) in the context of active inference.
Finally, one can think about meditation and psychedelics as facilitators in the process of revealing the constructed nature of experience. Similarly, in my experience, an intellectual understanding of how external reality is modelled by the mind (as conveyed by predictive coding for example) can also result in experiential insight into the empty nature of phenomena. It is with this in mind that I am writing this piece.
We have seen that our experience is always structured experience, and that this seems to inevitably lead to suffering. But when this is understood, and the process of fabrication progressively recognized and experienced, suffering is gradually released, revealing the mystery and beauty of existence.
When we see the void — the open and groundless nature of all things, the inseparability of appearances and emptiness — we recognize anyway just how profound is our participation in this magic of appearances.
— Rob Burbea, Seeing that Frees.
