conditioned

The basic premise with buddhism is that we are a conditioned being - a chain of dominoes that was set in motion at birth and has never since ceased ticking along.

Every thought and every dream you have ever had was somehow planted there or generated based on the things that preceded it. We are a generative AI which takes the result of one thing as the seed of the next.

We have our cultural conditioning and our religious conditioning and our schoolhood conditioning, business conditioning, romantic conditioning… all these different domino chains running along in our heads at the same time and preventing us from seeing reality.

Each of these chains is an abstraction, based on definitions. Every chair is a different chair but we just see ‘chair’ and label them as the same thing. Then we plug that chair into our ‘chair algorithm’ and sit on it without realising someone has put a pin there.

We go from one relationship to another and our ‘relationship algo’ kicks in and we say the wrong name in bed. Oops. Nah - what we do is we instinctively view people the same; the abusive partner of old lives on in your neuroses.

And as things progress these rules start to conflict. We were told to be good people and good things will come our way, but that's not what we see. Someone tells us they will be with us forever and then they leave. You work hard and someone else gets the ferrari.

We become a big, convoluted mess of conflicting rules, which gradually stops being able to function properly.

And what is our function?

Our function is to experience reality as efficiently as possible*. Our function is to be able to act within the reality of the moment rather than simply *react* based on a convoluted mess of abstract parameters.

These parameters are not reality. They are abstractions. We see children and we see a tree and we label them ‘child and tree’ and plug them into the set of rules that the external world gave us and we reinforced with mental repetition.

We do not see *the child*. We do not see *the tree*.

So the idea of purification in buddhism is nothing like ‘good and evil’. It simply comes down to truth, and whether you can see that truth or not.

Our conditioning prevents us from seeing the truth. We see ‘chair-object’ and miss all the beauty of the wood grain. We see ‘eldest-child’ and miss the fact that they have grown freckles since we last looked. 

The reality is that we are all living in simulations which we did not choose.

And buddhism’s main aim is to remove that simulation layer so you can see and experience real life.

So while I talk about reprogramming your sim, that is merely part of the picture.

The real aim is to de-program your sim.

To remove all filters and mods.

To enable you to see and experience true reality and stop just acting out the ball of neuroses, good or bad, that were implanted in you by circumstance.

There is no faith or belief necessary in buddhism. Faith that the process works makes the process work better, because of dopamine. But that does not mean ‘believe in buddhism’.

What it means is ‘believe in the results that you see with your own eyes’.

Take a few steps to removing your programming; your conditioning. You didn’t choose it, so why would you want to be slave to it?

Just try to loosen it up a bit. Take off the distorting glasses. See reality for what it really is.

That is the goal. The goal is not just to reprogram your sim.

It is to remove your sim as much as possible so that you can be engaged in reality, rather than engaged with some imaginary world with other people who are engaged with their own imaginary worlds.

And you can do it by riding your bike!

Ain’t that a great bit of news.

/jb202509042029

*this is my take; buddhism doesn't give you a specific 'reason for being'. I think our reason is to find reason, and to do that we need to be efficient.