Karma and Your Brain

By Jason Lim

The central narrative of the current economic crisis is that highly capable individuals driven by rational self-interest have made such bad decisions that they almost brought down the world's financial infrastructure and visited ruin upon themselves.

But bad decision-making is not limited to powerful executives. From A-list celebrities to powerful politicians, we have witnessed people make disastrous, self-destructive decisions. As behavioral scientists have already proven, human decisions are not driven by rational self-interest coldly maximizing utility and resources. Then, what really drives our decisions, many of which can be self-destructive? Karma.

I touched upon the true nature of Karma in a previous column (Sept. 15, 2008) and was surprised (I had thought that the subject was a bit esoteric) by the many positive reactions and encouragements to explore the topic in more depth and make it more relevant to today's world. It's a tall order, but I will try by making the connection between Karma and modern neuroscience.

Buddha, born 2,553 years ago last week, concluded that most human beings make decisions in such a manner that lead not to their happiness ― their stated goal ― but to discontent because they are not self-aware of what really drives their decision-making.

Translated into modern vernacular, Buddha had essentially observed that what really drives human decision-making is a complex and organic web of social context, cultural norms, genetic predisposition, evolutionary imprints, peer pressure, traumatic experiences, and everything else that have had any influence in shaping us as human beings and individuals. All these etch a deeply ingrained pattern of cognitive reflexes and automatic biases that make us decide how we decide, most often without even thinking. He called this Karma.

Human beings are already equipped with a subconscious, automatic system that sustains and guide us: the autonomic nervous system. The autonomic nervous system controls our heart rate, digestion, respiration, and other life-essential physical functions, working largely below the level of consciousness. In a similar sense, Karma is an automatic decision-making system functioning largely below the consciousness that make us decide how we decide in a reflexive and preordained fashion with minimal conscious interference. In a word, it's a system of decision-making patterns.

Venerable Pomnyun, the Zen Master who founded the Join Together Society, a popular Buddhist humanitarian organization in Korea, agrees that Karma, stripped of its mystic burdens, really refers to your decision-making habit that lives in your subconscious without you being consciously aware that it's there.

In essence, Karma is like an automatic piloting system on modern jet airplanes that makes critical decisions quickly and efficiently without conscious input from the human pilot. In fact, the human pilot doesn't even know the autopilot engaged. Even worse, he thinks he is flying the plane all on his own. No wonder that we are often surprised when we land and realize that we are not where we thought we wanted to go.

This brings us to the brain because neuroscience defines habit as a specific brain circuitry that triggers a corresponding behavior or thought. These brain circuits originally formed because of a specific stimulus or experience had activated a ``learning" process in which the neurons come together to code a specific neural pathway that makes the behavior ingrained and automatic.

Once etched into the brain, each instance of the behavior makes the associated brain circuit more ingrained in a self-reinforcing loop, making it very difficult to break a habit; in fact, Koreans have a saying that a habit formed at three-years-old will last until you are 80-years-old. In brain-speak, therefore, Karma is the totality of the decision-making circuits etched in your brain that makes decisions automatically without you even being consciously aware that a decision has been made.

Luckily, the human brain has a remarkable capacity called plasticity that allows it to structurally remake itself in response to new experiences and stimuli. Neuroplasticity is what allows stroke victims to relearn how to move once paralyzed limb or dyslexic children to make out previously garbled words. But neuroplasticity is not limited to changing the brain in response to physical stimuli. It can also change the brain in response to pure thought.

No one less than the Dalai Llama is leading the scientific charge to explore this potential in more depth. Already, experiments with experienced meditators ― Tibetan Buddhist adepts ― have shown that focused and repeated meditation causes physical change in the structure and activity of the brain. In short, evidence shows that conscious, focused thought can rewire the brain to adopt different thinking circuits, or decision-making circuits.

Such findings have a huge significance in how we can actively reshape our Karma. If you can change your brain with conscious thought, then, in essence, you can change your Karma by purposefully and deliberately overwriting bad decision-making brain circuits with good decision-making brain circuits. It won't be easy because it would mean consciously stopping the habit and overwriting the deeply etched brain circuit. But by rewiring your brain, you will actually be undergoing a change management process for your Karma by empowering your conscious awareness to take back control over your life from your subconscious habits.

Going back to the plane analogy, it's just a matter of recognizing that you have an auto-pilot that you can control and reprogram in full awareness of where you really want to go. This is true self-empowerment.

Jason Lim is the managing editor of the Korea Policy Review published at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He can be reached at jasonlim2000@gmail.com.

[출처 : 코리아타임스]