Spirituality, Science and Technology: Barendregt's Cover-Up Model of the Mind

2/12/08

Barendregt's Cover-Up Model of the Mind

Henk Barendregt (homepage ) is widely known for his work in Lambda Calculus and Type Theory, less known is his writings on Insight Meditation.

He used reflection without interference to observe his own mind, and the Cover-Up Model is the outcome of such experience. Reflection without interference is practiced in Insight or Vipassana Meditation.

He discovered three important characteristics of the Mind confirming what others have also experienced:

it is constantly fluctuating
it is unbearable
it is not under our control

Buddhists recognize these as the three characteristics of all things. The first is impermanence (anicca). The second is dukkha (sometimes is translated as suffering), which Barendregt prefers to think as akin to the emptiness of extentialism or nausea. The third states that the mind is not under our control, in fact there is no central control as in the Cartesian doctrine. Since self is the illusion of such central control, the third characteristic is usually called anatta no-self.

The Cover-Up model says that we will always try to avoid the nausea by covering it up. Cover-up can take the form of feelings and thoughts: positive thinking, pleasure seeking, distractions (talking, watching TV, eating, etc), mysticism and many others. Meditation which only makes us relaxed or happy but does not lead insight is also a form of Cover-Up.

Cover-up does not handle the nausea directly, it just makes it less visible (for a while). The nausea appears hidden when we cover-up, we become ignorant of it.
However Cover-Up does not last forever, and we will have to constantly make ourselves busy to do it.
The analogue is when we sit for a long time, and feel uncomfortable, we change our posture, until we feel uncomfortable again.
In contrast to Cover-up, the real way to cope with nausea directly is the path of purification through mindfulness. There is a nice picture of this practice in a poster by Barendregt.

The explanation of why mindfulness works leads us to the Abhidhamma model
of the ancient Buddhist tradition (Tipitaka). According to the Abhidhamma, the stream of consciousness is discrete, basically serial but with parallel sub-branches.

Barendregt claims that the Cover-up model can be translated in terms of the Abhidhamma model.

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