June 16, 2015

June 16, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

This writing will be my seventh response to “Zen and Behavior Analysis” (2010) by Roger Bass. I had a conversation with friendly, shy man at the swimming pool. He told me he had multiple sclerosis and swimming helped him. I felt like telling him about Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), because he seemed open to me. I explained that one can have SVB by oneself as well as with others. The key principle is that one listens to oneself while one speaks. I told him that if he is at ease, relaxed and calm, he can hear that in the sound of his voice and enhance that if he keeps making that sound and listening to it. He became suddenly very enthusiastic and told me he was reading the bible, sometimes many times a day. It had made him aware of exactly what I was talking about. He had felt much better after he had been reading out loud, that is, after he had been listening to his own voice. Because he was so shy he had never talked much and didn’t get to hear his voice very often,, but after he began reading his bible out loud, his body had felt much better and he was also more clear in his head. He said he didn’t pay attention anymore to the words of the bible,, but he mainly used it as an opportunity to listen to the sound of his own voice and he was even jokingly imagining that he was hearing God talk through him.

 I explained that SVB it is just a natural phenomenon. He was happy  I talked with him and when I came out of the swimming pool after I swam a few laps,, he was waiting for me and wanted to share a verse from the bible which related to what we had talked about: in the beginning was the word and the word was with God. He was so excited that he had recognized in his own voice his sense of well-being and he gave me a hug and thanked me. Listening to our voice is very reinforcing.  

I also received a letter from my Dutch friend  Lak who recently moved to Spain. It is unknown what made him decide that or how it is possible for him to do this,, but he seems to be happy there and I am happy for him. He commented on his hand writing, which was clearer than before and he expressed himself coherently and elegantly in his letter. With him I exchange only written letters. Today’s letter feels like receiving a present. He also complimented me about my writings as he appreciates them very much. 

“At the start of koan study, Zen monks are often told  that they will feel as if they have swallowed a molten pellet that will burn until resolved” (underlining added). They are told by the Zen master who does all the speaking and I call Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) . They are only supposed to listen and any kind of speaking behavior on their part is stopped. In Zen the annihilation of verbal behavior is considered to be a good thing. And, similar to many other spiritual practices,, monks are told that the reward will come later, after they have been purified by their suffering. The Zen koans are meant to relieve them from the burdens of their world view. They experience enormous distress because “verbal behavior, whose use is encouraged throughout life and is left to operate unrestrained by instruction on how to control its effect on the rest of our behavior.” 

Ironically, behavior analysis is often used to teach verbal behavior to autistic non-speaking children. Zen, seems to be teaching its follower to become autistic. The only difference is that the “first fruits of Zen study often do not blossom for years, sometimes decades” because “verbal behavior is fluid and integrated into so much of our repertoire.” What are these so-called fruits anyway? All we have as evidence is some weird acting authoritarian Zen masters. I think SVB is needed, but Zen repertoire or any other NVB isn’t useful for becoming “affected by the larger context,,” The benefit of SVB is that it  works immediately and everyone can experience and verify it while they are talking.  

    

However, without SVB, even behaviorists will not be “affected by the larger context”. Koans are in fact no different than any other sales technique to gain compliance. When “comprehension is Zen, and not of Zen” Buddhists are fooling themselves that they are somehow beyond verbal behavior. Like gullible costumers they are suckered into buying into whatever they are sold. This tradition is kept alive by Zen masters who all pretty much say the same things. Zen is not as Bass proclaims “difficult for Westeners” Behaviorists who know about SVB, see right through the cheapZen scheme.  Zen,, like any other religion, is make-belief. 

Although behaviorists are more into writing and reading than into speaking and listening,  they are still more into speaking and listening than any Zen Buddhist. Consequently, they are not inclined to replace “a typical verbal community’s practices” such as those of their own behaviorist community, with  those“Zen masters use to generate verbally unmediated responding.” Why would any  behaviorist want to know whether he or she is “progressing toward Satori?” Bass writes that“persons who operate within different paradigms literally do not perceive the world in the same way and so may not be able to effectively communicate.” Those who buy into the idea of less talking are of course less effective when they talk.  

A striking example of that was illustrated by the aftermath of the tsunami which hit Japan. Thousands of people had drowned and coastal towns had been devastated and survivors, due to their Zen culture, were unable to cope with the loss, of their loved ones as they didn’t know how to talk about their emotions. Instead of “Zen master’s conversations” which are “meaningless to those with typical verbal histories, this would be a very different, more life-like, interpretation of Skinner’s words that “different verbal communities generate different kinds and amounts of consciousness and awareness”(Skinner, 1976). However, I do agree with “the study of subjective states requires the study of verbal communities practices,,” because this will finally make us realize that different verbal communities have SVB and NVB in common. Such a realization, unlike Satori or Samadhi, would be tremendously revolutionary. 

Zen and behaviorism part ways on many more issues than only on meaning.  “In Zen, meaning is communicated by creating the singularity – conditions under which verbal behavior is excluded – whereas behavior analysis requires describing and controlling the conditions under which a word is used.”   The Zen master speaks and the Zen student listens, but behavior analysis explains “the Zen master’s baffling verbal behavior” simply as NVB, as demanding, dominating and distracting the listener’s attention.

Bass assumes that “behavior analysts and Zen Buddhist may agree that [knowledge] returns to a larger world that generates verbal behavior but is not itself affected by verbal behavior in anything like the way like normal-life repertoires are affected “(underlining added). Presumably, in the strange world of Zen there are no actual people  affected by the verbal behavior of other people? Isn't verbal behavior a consequence of a verbal community? The community which has generated the verbal behavior is of course also affected by it. To state that the community of Zen people is not itself affected by their verbal behavior that it has generated, reduces people who live in that community into objects. This is yet another perfect illustration of how NVB creates it’s an own unscientific reality. Zen’s fanatical  rejection of normal-life repertoire is equivalent with NVB which makes us talk in an abnormal manner.  The illusion that Zen “produces an unmediated perception” of the world  and is based on "a stimulus singularity”, which “challenges the science of behavior” is ludicrous. Like other sectarian behaviors Zen must be exposed.