Debugging mind viruses: Clear Comprehension.

---

"Take the life-lie away from the average man and straight away you take away his happiness." Henrik Ibsen: The Wild Duck

"But yet the light that led astray
Was light from Heaven." Robert Burns: The Vision

---

This is a continuation of the posting Debugging Mind Viruses, where Clear Comprehension is mentioned together with Bare Attention, as the two parts of Insight Meditation. Bare Attention and Clear Comprehension are complementary to each other, each supporting the other.

It is said that Bare Attention cannot be sustained for a very long period. In our terminology, Bare Attention is debug mode, and we cannot stay in debug mode all the time, we have to attend to our mundane tasks. Clear Comprehension, on the other hand, is recommended, to be practiced at all times, except when sleeping. The expression, to be mindful at all times, it to be understood in this way.

With regard to debugging mind viruses, Bare Attention, concentrates on one object at a time. It is based on the observation, that no two objects can occupy our mind at the same time.
All relations of the object are severed instead of being followed, our judgement suspended, so that the object can be seen as it is.
In the computer analogy, with Bare Attention, we can see all the processes that is currently running in the computer.
But, how do we know which process is a malignant virus, and which are processes necessary for the functioning of the computer? An expert should be able to distinguish them easily. Some viruses, however, attach themselves to normal running processes, and even more sophisticated viruses use stealth techniques to escape detection. If this sounds complicated enough, the task of debugging mind viruses is even more daunting.
There is no guarantee that anyone can ever achieve total purification of the mind, devoid of any mind viruses.
In ancient times, it is believed that wise ages have been able to achieve such feats. Today we owe them and their disciples for the teachings, and practices they left for future generations.
The world has in the mean time grown much in complexity compared to 2000 years ago. Civilization, life, and with them mind viruses have grown ever more complex. I believe that the chance of achieving purification of the mind, has diminished compared to back then, although the possibility is not equal to nil. Anyway, a 80% purification or even just 40% is still much better than none at all, and we will not know until we practice it. A wise man of today would probably achieve enlightenments several times in his life, but never fully immune from the ever mutating mind viruses.

Returning to the topic of Clear Comprehension, we can see it as complementary to Bare Attention, it picks up where Bare Attention left out. Bare Attention cannot distinguish between harmful and neccesary mind objects, this is where the wisdom of Clear Comprehension comes into play.

According to Insight or Vipassana Meditation (see for example Nyanaponika Thera: The Heart of Buddhist Meditation), Clear Comprehension consists of four comprehensions:

1. Clear Comprehension of Purpose
2. Clear Comprehension of Suitability
3. Clear Comprehension of the Domain (of Meditation)
4. Clear Comprehension of Reality

The first states that before every action, one should examine whether it would be in accordance with our goals, aims, and ideals. Some actions might cause great regrets afterwards. We cannot simply assume that man will always act rationally, particularly if the man is infested by mind viruses, just as we cannot entrust an infected computer to keep our files uncorrupted!

The second says that suitability depending on the internal and external environments should be considered in acting.
If the first comprehension is rather idealistic, the second is practical, adaptible, and flexible. This sounds almost like optimization problems in operations research: optimize goal under the satisfaction of constraints.

The third comprehension is understanding the specific domain, where our actions apply. When playing football, the domain is of course football. But we must make this domain a meditation object or in other words, in every of our actions in daily life, such as eating, walking, running, reading, talking, driving, playing, we should be mindfull.

The last comprehension is understanding what is real and what is virtual, and what is a delusion. There are innumerous delusions that we encounter, in Buddhism, the mother of all delusions is the self delusion.
In Buddhism, the doctrine of nonself (anatta) is one of the three universal characteristics.
Impermanence is quite easy to accept, all things change, the only permanent thing is change itself.
Incompleteness is not hard to understand when we know Goedel's incompleteness theorem or Heisenberg's uncertainty principle or even the second law of thermodynamics. It also manifests itself in day to day life as various sufferings, sickness and death.
Nonself is however much more difficult to stomach than the other two characteristics. Nonself entails also no soul, and no reincarnation. This is often misunderstood, rebirth and reincarnation are different. The process of rebirth is just one breath after another, there is no identity of any kind being preserved in the transition.
How can we deny a self, when we are dealing with me and you all the time?
It is precisely this, why it is called the great delusion. It took me 50 years to begin to understand this, understand here meaning not just intellectually, but to understand with the heart.
The topic of nonself shall be covered in another place, suffice it to say that the most dangerous mind viruses are related to this delusion.
All sorts of problems arise from comparisons "I am better/worse" and possessions "this is mine", " this is ours", etc.
Mind viruses certainly find self delusion as the most important security hole to get into our minds. Advertisements know how to exploit this very well to sell us their products. Flattery is another trap for the self.

The self delusion also applies to groups of people, it is then called a group self delusion. Groups of closely related people often are infected by the same virus, but only outsiders can be aware of it. It is interesting to observe that sometimes the virus is that binds the group together! Think about hate campaigns, hate Mr X, spreading and exchanging jokes about the stupidity or clumsiness of Mr X via SMS and the internet.

All the above four comprehensions are taught in Insight Meditation. They will be very useful in detecting mind viruses, and also preventing us from getting us new ones. They are anti-viruses that heal and protect.
People from different creeds or from different spiritual communities, may formulate the comprehensions in slightly different ways, but they certainly have their goals, constraints, contemplations and what they consider the most important delusions.
Richard Dawkins, who wrote "The God Delusion" presumably would say that the God delusion is the root of all evil.
We may or may not agree with other people's life principles and world views, to say that ours is the only correct one, would be to fall into the self righteousness, which is again a self delusion.
What A considers a delusion, B may consider as the very foundation of her existence. Practicing meditation is one practical way to find out who is right and who is wrong. Shooting each other is not a recommended way to find out.

It would be interesting to conduct a poll what people think is the greatest delusion of all, but the results would mean no more than a popularity contest.

Clear Comprehension is thus different from Bare Attention. Bare Attention is basically the same for different people because it is value neutral. Clear Comprehension is wisdom, and as such very much dependent on our beliefs.