What Buddhists Fail to See

You think it works like this: you look at reality as it is, and then a thought distracts you.

But it doesn’t work like that. Your thoughts are part of the here and now too. There’s no particular reason to focus on your breath, for instance. Your thoughts are just as much a part of the experience of observing.

This misunderstanding occurs not only in Buddhism but also in fields like quantum mechanics. Thoughts—and the way you observe—are just as much a part of the experiment as the particle you're studying. These things happen simultaneously, in the act of observation.

In that sense, everything happens at once; we don’t truly look at the past.

I think Buddhism is a flawed way of explaining things. The Buddha clearly understood something profound, but the way it’s been passed down isn’t good enough. Buddhism is something that often goes wrong in translation. It also carries an ego of its own: sitting under a tree trying to end all suffering—how much more ego do you want?

Buddhism also has a tradition of looking down on the senses and sensory consciousness.

Our Brains Work Perfectly
The brain reveals distorted relationships.

I literally can’t believe how bad scientists are at understanding this. I’ve never opened a book on neuroscience, but since I have a brain myself and just looked inside to see how it works.
Almost every mainstream conclusion about the brain is completely wrong. People have no clue what a thought is, what a brain does, or how a body functions. We know vague things about individual organs, but that’s not the same as understanding how it all works in practice.

So what does the brain do?
The brain is a relationship device (!!!). It’s not a command center, so to speak. You can even operate the brain from the outside in. You can press your skull and squeeze electricity into it (try it—it works). It’s like squeezing a muscle. It's more like hardware than software: you literally press it and 'inject' energy into it.

The reason people with psychological disorders show anomalies on brain scans isn’t because their brains are “broken.” It’s because the brain reflects relationships—including distorted ones.

Some examples:

• Anorexia → distorted relationship with food

• Depression → distorted relationship with meaning and with other people

• Anxiety → distorted relationship with one's own body, with others, and often with social media

• Dementia → this one does resemble a brain disease, but it might be more about the enormous effort it takes to constantly re-evaluate one's relationships with loved ones. This uses a lot of energy and isn’t necessarily caused by memory loss.

• ADHD → distorted relationship with physical activity, prolonged sitting and listening, and excessive screen time

I think an eating disorder is the toughest one, because somebody is already not feeling good (low on energy) and then keeps making the same mistake.
What you should do (this helps) is reframe the relationship you have with food.
You only see it as something that gains you weight and/or you use it to suppress other emotions. You don’t actually have a disease, you are doing this to yourself.
At least, that’s what I did for years until I fixed it myself.
It’s very, very hard to spot that somebody is actually suppressing emotions very quickly under the hood. That’s not exactly the same as physical movement on the outside. The first thing you should check in someone with anorexia is whether they still feel moved by something sad. If not, the emotion has been pushed too far away.

Also, make it more playful, story-wise. Some thoughts and ideas are made to be ridiculed. Make the thought patterns worse.