Monotropism, neurodiversity, and samādhi

[Erika_ODonnell]

Hiya ,
one of the things I’m interested in is why people tend to give different descriptions of core experiences in Buddhism. Jhana, or perhaps samadhi states in general, are examples where this seems to be frequent. So I’m interested in non-handwavy explanations for this, basically.

But before I go further I just want to define some terms for the sake of discussion:

Neurodiversity:

Neurodiversity is the idea that people’s brains work in different ways, and that these differences are normal variations in human experience. (Google)

The Buddha said that we should view our current body and mind as old kamma (SN 35.146). I.e. as a product of actions we did in the past. So this includes our brain, which (AFAIK) co-creates our conscious POV with our minds.

Monotropism:

Monotropism was originally created as a theory to explain autism. Basically, it says that brains can be geared towards allocating more attentional resources to few things at any one time (monotropism) or geared towards distributing attentional resources more evenly across many things at any given time (polytropism). So there’s a spectrum, but monotropic attentional styles are correlated with being diagnosed with autism. (https://monotropism.org/)

[Here is a link to the monotropism questionnaire if you want to gauge your attentional style]

Someone with a monotropic attentional style might love to sink their attention into an interesting project or task, to the exclusion of other stimuli. I.e. you get so absorbed into the thing you’re doing that you lose all track of time, you might not hear if someone is trying to talk to you. If they do get your attention, it might feel distressing or annoying to be pulled out of the ‘attentional tunnel’.

However, someone with a polytropic attentional style might love a fast paced environment with many things happening at once. They’re somewhat interested in many things instead of being intensely interested in few things.

Now to samādhi. Some people describe full absorption into an object, other people describe more full-body type experiences. I wonder if it’s just the case that monotropic people are more inclined to absorption, while polytropic people are more inclined to full-body experiences?

Attention is a central aspect of meditation. If people vary in attentional style, that could also explain why people prefer different meditation styles and topics.

I wonder if the poly-monotropic spectrum correlates with meditation preferences?

What do you think?

[NgXinZhao]

so autism is a super power?

or buddha meant to include both lite and deep Jhāna as his sutta Jhānas, just that the autistic group took over the commentaries and made it deep Jhānas only and the neutrotypicals start to recently claim that their experience is valid as well.

[Erika_ODonnell]

@NgXinZhao

so autism is a super power?

Perhaps, if one hyperfocuses on the right things. But it might be a disadvantage to hyperfocus on the wrong things.

But I think it’s very worthwhile to work with one’s own attentional style than against it. Learning about monotropism has already been helpful to me; usually, putting all my attention into one task can be very pleasurable, and I’ve just recently noticed that the same pleasure is available in meditation – i.e. not just watching the object but seeing the quality and collectedness of the attention on the object.

@NgXinZhao

or buddha meant to include both lite and deep Jhāna as his sutta Jhānas, just that the autistic group took over the commentaries and made it deep Jhānas only and the neutrotypicals start to recently claim that their experience is valid as well.

Perhaps more like the ‘whole body’ being breath body or whole body awareness. Or spreading piti throughout the body vs. absorbing into it.

‘Spreading out’ just feels a bit noisy to me. Much better to hang out in the attention tunnel. But for someone polytropic they might feel the opposite.

Or perhaps absorption is just more intuitive for monotropic people? We have more examples in our own lives to extrapolate from?

It also makes me think of of Bhante @sujato’s post about experiencing feeling:

@sujato

At a time when you feel a pleasant feeling, you don’t feel a painful or neutral feeling; you only feel a pleasant feeling. At a time when you feel a painful feeling, you don’t feel a pleasant or neutral feeling; you only feel a painful feeling. At a time when you feel a neutral feeling, you don’t feel a pleasant or painful feeling; you only feel a neutral feeling.

The idea that only one kind of feeling can be experienced at a time became an oft-repeated adage of Buddhist psychology, but it is not empirically obvious that it is the case. One can, for example, enjoy the taste of cake while feeling guilty about eating it; or experience meditative bliss while also feeling sharp back pain. In fact it seems to me that it’s usually the case that we experience a mix of feelings, and only in exceptional moments is it all pain or all pleasure.

How is it that the suttas teach something that seems so disconnected from experience?

I mean, I experience that attending to one thing excludes other things all the time. Things outside the attention tunnel just cease to exist, basically.

So my hypothesis here would be that Ven. @sujato might be on the polytropic side? What do you think Bhante? For me the quote does not seem disconnected from experience but rings true

[Malunkyaputta]

What -ism is it if I like jelly on my toast for breakfast?

[Erika_ODonnell]

🩵 Cutie-pie-ism!

!

[Quidam]

‘Conserve’ -at-ism would be my guess.

[Erika_ODonnell]

Okay let’s stay on topic please