June 13, 2015

June 13, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This writing is my fourth response to “Zen and Behavior Analysis” (2010) by Roger Bass. What does “Zen’s central notion of the individual-inseparable-from-the-world” mean? And, what does this notion,, which presumably “is consistent with behavior analysis and evolutionary biology” mean for how we talk?  If, with this notion,, with this understanding, with this description, we still go on with our Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), it is just talk. 

However, Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) is not just talk. It adds a dimension to Buddhism as well as behaviorism, which was missing due to our NVB and which can only become visible while we talk with each other. Few people are still interested in talking. One must be interested in and willing to participate in talking to be able to embrace SVB. Those who can get away with their pretention of talking will continue their NVB, regardless of many years of practicing meditation or study of behavior analysis. 

This paper by Bass was written in the same vein as other behaviorists that wrote about the similarities between behavior analysis and Buddhism. Presumably Zen is different from other Eastern ways of thinking because it “matured in China, where a practical emphasis on techniques and outcomes whittled away the mysticism of its Indian origins, a process similar to behaviorism’s role in psychology.”   Bass's objective is to point out that behavioral analysis and Zen “share at least some common ground and that is the starting point for this discussion.” Here we have a vague reference to talking. This so-called “discussion” is only about what is written and what has already been written and has no implication for how we talk.

Like many other behaviorist authors,, Bass is trying to talk with himself, because, let’s face it, nobody is talking, with him,nobody is listening to him. In the same way, Skinner was also talking with himself, when he boldly stated that he was even ready to make over the whole field of psychology if that was what it would take to make it fit with the things that he was thinking and talking about. 

Since Zen practice, like verbal behavior, is about instruction, it makes sense for Bass to illustrate his case by following the experiences of a Zen novice after he or she first comes to a Zen master. Basically, the student is to learn a new language. “Beginners must be taught how to peel verbal behavior away from the rest of their repertoires, undoing stimulus control established and nurtured since infancy.”  

Supposedly, Zen “applies techniques “”to our normal –life worldview ““that develop a complimentary, verbally unmediated repertoire” (underlining added).  However, verbal behavior is behavior that is mediated by others. By Skinner’s standards Zen thus defined, is not operant,, not verbal behavior. 

It is interesting to notice that during Zen meditation no talking occurs. The “Zen instruction clearly indicates that verbal behavior [private speech] should diminish during meditation,, but that goal should be accomplished with minimally intrusive techniques.” (words between brackets added). In ordinary teaching learning occurs only if the covert speech of the student becomes more or less the same as the teacher’s overt speech, but is prevented when the student’s covert speech deviates from the teacher’s overt speech. In the latter case, the student is distracted from what the teacher is saying by his or her self talk. Bass describes that the teaching’s objective, to diminish a person’s private speech during meditation “should be accomplished with minimally intrusive techniques.”  However, these “minimally intrusive techniques” are derivatives of Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). Since our private speech is a function of our public speech, the best way to effect change in our private speech is to effect change in our public speech. If we have more Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) there will be no troubling NVB  private speech anymore. The objective in Zen meditation that a person’s verbal behavior should diminish is in and off itself aversive and it is no surprise that “Beginners often find meditation fraught with disorganized thinking that quickly jumps between topics.”

" The listener-Zen-student, who responds to the instructions of the Zen-Master-speaker is told that he or she “must avoid creating a verbal editor that simply exchanges one verbal intrusion for another.”   However, the Zen student is unable to match his or her private speech with the Master’s pubic speech, because he or she is not talking out loud, but is only quietly observing his or her private speech. 

In Zen as in NVB the link between private and public speech is broken. In NVB, our private speech is pushed out of our public speech as if it has nothing to do with it. How a person talks with him or herself is a function of how others have talked with him or her. Although it is our natural tendency to trace back our private speech to our public speech, NVB prevents that and thus creates enormous problems. In other words, the person who is told and inadvertently tells him or herself that he or she is responsible for his or her own thoughts is basically driving him or herself nuts. “The worst case scenario is becoming so upset with lack of control over verbal behavior that motivating operations like anger spiral into even greater disruptions.”  This “lack of control “is what the listener always experiences during NVB. The speaker in NVB feels that he or she is in control, because he or she can make others angry with his or her verbal behavior. Elicitation by the speaker of  negative feelings in the listener are antithetical to verbal behavior and always triggers counter control, that is, more NVB. 


When the listener has no way to trace back his or her NVB private speech to the environment, that is, to the speaker, he or she is inclined to accept the also culturally promoted belief that he or she is him or herself responsible for his or her private speech and this why our “verbal tactics” become themselves such a problematic interference. 

No Zen techniques can undo the consequences of NVB. No matter how much a Zen student practices, “the problems with negative motivating operations (e.g. ruminating)” continue. That it became accepted that some presumably enlightened people transcended these NVB consequences, simply signifies that we haven’t looked into how we actually talk with each other. Once we have SVB, we realize that our talking makes us quiet and meditative and that NVB, which is hierarchical and uni-directional continues our inner turmoil.  Meditation as a way in which we are trying to get away from talking is ineffective and self-defeating as at the end of the day we still need to talk with each other and must deal with the consequences of how we have talked at others or how others have talked at us. 

 

Zen masters and therapists have “noted the problems with aversive control”, but didn’t yet differentiate between SVB and NVB. Shakespeare is still relevant today as he gave talking a prominent place in the lives of his characters. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” 

Presumably, the “several ways” that “advances a monk’s preparation for enlightenment” have something in common with how “scientific communities attract and assimilate young, unrecognized researchers.”  Bass may have a point if he means that the strict Zen discipline is similar to writing scientific papers. “Talking about it” and “honoring those who achieve enlightenment “is NVB as it is talk between people who are believed to be unequal. Besides,, the only talk accepted by a Zen master is the talk he or she prefers, to hear, that is,, the Zen student doesn’t really talk with the Zen master,, but gives him or her whatever he or she wants to hear. What Zen and science have in common is that they diminish the importance authentic conversation. . 

In SVB there is fluid turn-taking, in which, at any time, the speaker becomes the listener or the listener can become the speaker. Moreover, in SVB, the speaker is his or her own listener. In science, however, more importance is given to the written word than to the spoken word. This is to enhance our understanding, but it diminishes the experience of our natural way of talking. Both in Zen and in science we underestimate the importance of normal interaction. Normal conversation is SVB, but what we have invented and claimed as something better than that is NVB.  


Rigid Zen practices are “interpreted as necessary for becoming not just to an observer of, but rather continuous with, a marvelous world,”, How marvelous can a world without talking be?  “Collectively these tactics my function like advertising.”Indeed we are being sold on NVB, but SVB  is not about buying into something.