Scott Alexander called me a rationalist techno-Buddhist on his blog. Since Scott Alexander is a rationalist of the highest status, that wording constitutes rationalist dharma transmission. I therefore consider myself authorized to speak authoritatively on the topic of rationalist techno-Buddhism.
Why am I writing a glossary? Because there are 14 different kinds of Buddhism and they all use words to mean slightly different things. This is a problem. I hope that this document will end 2,500 years of sectarianism, such that all of us finally communicate perfectly with no misundersandings.
But just in case there exist one or more people on the Internet who disagree with some aspect of this document, I have included a "1.0" in this document's title. You are permitted to fork it into 1.1 or 1.<your-name-here> or 2.this.is.why.lsusr.is.wrong.about.everything. Now, if you write about Buddhism, then instead of tediously defining all the terms you're using, you can just say "This uses Rationalist Techno-Buddhist Jargon 2.this.is.why.lsusr.is.wrong.about.everything.17.2" and get back to arguing online, sitting in silence, or whatever else it is you do to make the world a better place.
This list is ordered such that you can read it beginning-to-end without having to jump forward for a definition.
Warning
This document may be cognitohazardous to some people. Proceed at your own risk. Thank you Iraneth for feedback on an early draft.
Glossary
pragmatic dharma. A loosely-connected movement, mostly Western lay practitioners, focused on reproducible meditative methods and transparency about experiences. This differs from traditional Buddhism by not appealing to traditional religious authority.
rationalist techno-Buddhism (RTB). A movement within the pragmatic dharma that is trying to create cybernetic models for why and how this stuff works.
qualia. Subjective first-person experience.
consciousness. The dynamic field in which qualia arise and are perceived.
attention. The part of your consciousness you are paying attention to. Attention can be in only one place at a time.
concentration. When a person stabilize their attention on a target e.g. the breath. Strong concentration states elicit altered states of consciousness. Concentration is a skill that can be improved with practice.
kasina. Meditation using a visual target instead of the breath.
altered state (of consciousness). A temporary non-normative state of consciousness, usually caused by strong concentration.
access concentration. The first non-normative altered states of consciousness, through which all other altered states are entered. Access concentration is when your attention stabilizes on its target. For example, if you are meditating on your breath, then access concentration is when your attention stabilizes on your breath.
jhana. An altered state of consciousness characterized by deep meditative absorption. There are 8 jhanas. Jhanas are used in Theravada practice.
nirodha-samapatti. An altered state beyond the 8 jhanas at which all perception ceases.
mushin. A state of unobstructed action without deliberative thought. Mushin starts out as an altered state, but eventually it turns into an altered trait.
nonduality. An altered state of consciousness without distinction between self (homunculus) and other.
duality. Normative non-nonduality.
homunculus. Physically-speaking, your field of consciousness is a real-time generative model created by your brain. Inside of this model, some elements are labelled "self" and constitute your homunculus.
generative model. See wikipedia.
raw sensory inputs. The signals going into the generative model. This probably includes preprocessed data from e.g. your brainstem. What matters is that this data is raw from the perspective of the generative model in your brain.
altered trait. A permanent change to subjective experience. In the context of RTB, altered traits are caused by meditation.
ego death. An altered trait where the homunculus in your brain ceases to exist. [[1]]
fabrication. When the generative model in your brain creates an object in consequence in an attempt to reduce predictive error, usually in an attempt to simulate external reality. All conscious experiences are fabricated, but not all fabrications are experienced consciously. You can think of your brain as a video game rendering engine. Fabrication is your brain rendering physical reality in its simulated mirror world.
rendering. Synonym for fabrication.
encapsulation layer. When a fabricated element in your consciousness is so sticky that it is never not fabricated. It is difficult for normative consciousness to directly perceive that encapsulation layers are fabricated. Encapsulation layers feel like raw inputs until you pay close enough attention to them.
chronic fabrication. Synonym for "encapsulation layer".
non-recursive encapsulation layer. A fabrication that summarizes incoming raw sense data, thereby blocking direct conscious (attentive) access to the perception of that raw sense data. Examples of non-recursive encapsulation layers include non-local space and non-local time.
non-local space. Normative perception of space as a gigantic world far beyond your immediate environment.
local space. Perception of space after dissolution of space.
non-local time. Normative perception of time.
local time. Perception of time after dissolution of time. Eternal present.
recursive encapsulation layer. A fabrication created to block a problematic feedback loop caused by self-reference. Ultimately, recursive encapsulation layers are caused by an interaction between the generative algorithm in your brain and the reinforcement learning algorithm in your brain. Examples of recursive encapsulation layers include self/other duality, desire, pain-as-suffering, and willful volition. See [Intuitive self-models] 6. Awakening / Enlightenment for further explanation.
willful volition. The recursive encapsulation layer that is misinterpreted as free will.
acute encapsulation. A non-chronic encapsulation algorithm that doesn't congeal into a permanent element of perceptual reality. Encapsulation functions are non-chronic because they appear only in response to unpleasant stimuli. Pain-as-suffering is an acute encapsulation function, because it doesn't drag down your hedonic baseline.
chronic encapsulation layer. An encapsulation layer that is so stable, it is incorrectly perceived as raw input data to your field of consciousness. For people who don't understand conceptually that everything you perceive is part of a simulation, chronic recursive encapsulation layers are incorrectly understood to be elements of objective physical reality. Chronic encapsulation layers cause chronic suffering.
insight. An abstract concept measuring the cumulative effects on your brain when you pay attention to fabrications in your consciousness. The word "insight" lossily and pragmatically projects these effects into a single dimension. Accumulating insight eventually unsticks encapsulation layers, and then defabricates them.
dissolution. Permanent defabrication. When the defabrication of an encapsulation becomes a person's default mind state. Non-permenent defrabrication often percedes permanent defabrication.
integration. Dealing with the aftermath after an encapsulation layer has been dissolved. Fabrications are often load-bearing. Dissolving fabrications therefore often removes load-bearing components of a person's consciousness. After this, the person must learn new, healthier cognitive habits. This process is called integration.
vipassana sickness. Mental destabilization from too much insight too quickly with insufficient integration. In extreme cases vipassana sickness can cause psychosis (or worse, because unexpected psychosis can cause accidental death), especially when paired with sleep deprivation. This is similar to how people on an LSD trip can think "cars aren't real" and go wandering into traffic if unsupervised.
dissolution. A permanent shift (altered trait) from fabrication to non-fabrication. All dissolutions cause permanent reductions in chronic suffering.
dissolution of self. Synonym for ego death.
dissolution of desire. An altered trait where your brain's reinforcement learning algorithm is no longer abstracted into desire-as-suffering.
dissolution of space. An altered trait where you no longer feel like a small person walking around a gigantic world and your brain instead renders just your local, immediate environment. When this happens it stops feeling like your body is walking around a fixed world, and more like the world is moving while your body remains stationary.
dissolution of time. An altered trait where past and future are defabricated such that you live in local time.
suffering. Absolute-zero-based suffering. Normative models of consciousness have positive qualia (pleasure) and negative qualia (suffering). RTB uses a model based on absolute zero based model of suffering instead. The normative model is like Celsius or Farenheit, whereas RBB's model is more like the kelvin scale. Pleasure is a decrease in suffering, the same way cold is thermodynamically-speaking the removal of heat. Heat is fundamental. Cold is not fundamentally. Similarly, suffering is fundamental in a way that pleasure is not.
chronic suffering. Suffering produced by a chronic encapsulation layer. Normative levels of suffering have a floor produced by the chronic suffering induced by self, willful volition, non-local space, non-local time, etc.
hedonic baseline. A person's level of suffering when acute suffering is removed, leaving only chronic suffering.
enlightenment. Absolute zero chronic suffering. It may be physically impossible for human minds to reach such a state while alive and conscious. Absolute zero is still useful as a reference point or limit point. It's like a Carnot engine.
pleasure. An acute stimuli that temporarily reduces a person's suffering. Normative people can dive below their hedonic baseline temporarily, and conceptualize such dives as positive valence "pleasure". Lowering the floor itself requires that chronic encapsulation layers be dissolved. When a person's hedonic baseline drops, stimuli that used to be pleasurable become unpleasant, because they felt better than the previous hedonic baseline, but worse than the new hedonic baseline.
jhana junkie. A person who does jhanic practice without accumulating insight. Jhana junkies get stuck on the path to awakening, but being a jhana junkie is not dangerous the way vipassana sickness is dangerous.
awakening. Dissolution of a chronic fabrication. Awakenings tend to have a 1-to-1 correspondence with completed insight cycles.
insight cycle. A discrete cycle of three phases: concentration, insight and integration. In the concentration phase you cultivate concentrative skill. In the insight phase, you penetrate an encapsulation layer. Finally, in the integration phase, you deal with the fallout of blowing up that encapsulation layer. It takes effort to get to your first insight cycle, but after your first insight cycle, there's no stopping the process. Insight cycles will keep coming for years, whether you want them to or not. That's because chronic suffering is an obstacle to concentration. Completion of an insight cycle thereby improves your concentration, thus making your next insight cycle easier. This is a chain reaction. Your fabrications are like a woven fabric with a warp and a weft. If you leave the whole thing alone then it will stay intact. Your first insight cycle cuts the fabric and yanks on the weft. If you continue pulling on the weft then it'll unwind faster, but the fabric will continue to fall apart whether or not you pull on the weft. This is an old Zen saying "Better not to start. Once started, better to finish."
knowledge of suffering. An early phase in an insight cycle where you notice that your mind has been doing something stupid and unpleasant for longer than you can remember.
dark night. The phase of an insight cycle that takes place immediately after knowledge of suffering. Encapsulation layers exist to shield you from unpleasant perceptions. When you dissolve an encapsulation layer to get knowledge of suffering, you remove that shield, and all of the stuff it was protecting you from enters attention-accessible consciousness. This can be very unpleasant. Some people can cycle through many dark nights before landing stream entry.
hell realm. When you're stuck in a dark night. A person percieves what their consciousness is doing wrong (gets knowledge of suffering), but doesn't have the ability to fix it yet. I suspect that LSD-induced hell realms are particularly difficult to escape, because they're like taking a helicopter to the top of Mt Everest without learning mountaineering first.
stream entry. Ambiguously refers to the successful completion of your first insight cycle and/or your first awakening. It is customary to wait 1 year plus 1 day after awakening before claiming stream entry because ① it ensures you are experiencing an altered trait, not just an altered state, and ② it ensures you have completed the integration part of the insight cycle, thereby satisfying both definitions. During this time you should not make any big unilateral life decisions more irreversible than going vegan [[2]] . Stream entry typically reduces chronic suffering by at least 90%.
stream entry mania. The immediate aftermath of stream entry often produces a manic-like state. For this reason, it is recommended that you not post anything on social media for a few months after stream entry. The cooling of period is even longer for posts related to spirituality. Instead, you should talk to a trusted spiritual advisor. It is best if you establish a relationship with this person before you hit stream entry.
kensho. A glimpse of nonduality (or similar non-encapsulation) via a transient state but which leaves lasting insight. Kensho preceeds stream entry.
Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn. Cthulhu waits dreaming in R’lyeh.
In RTB, ego death refers to an altered trait. Confusingly, LSD induces an altered state of consciousness where the ego is not present. LSD trippers usually refer to this state as "ego death", whereas RTBs refer to it as a nondual state, since the altered state is temporary and the ego reappears after the LSD trip is over. ↩︎
If you do go vegan, make sure you take a multivitamin so you don't get brain damage. ↩︎