Brain cognition has another flaw: it generates attachment to self and phenomena. Because the brain belongs to an individual, its cognition is independent and unique, possessing the attributes of the attachment to self.
What does this mean? You are an individual with only one brain, so you instinctively protect it at all times. If your parents hit you, you'll cover your head, not your heart. During a bomb explosion, you'll crouch and protect your head. On a turbulent flight, passengers instinctively protect their heads. You must protect this unique brain because you can't "plug in" an external brain.
Brain cognition perceives itself as an independent, unique entity, which is precisely the attribute of the attachment to self. Moreover, it considers its cognitive ability as constant. Although its cognitive functions may improve and expand, it always feels there's a "self" doing the cognition, and this feeling remains unchanged - another attribute of self-attachment. In other words, brain cognition inherently has the foundational conditions for generating self-attachment.
Brain cognition perceives the external world as distinct from the brain, as an existence independent of the brain, possessing the attributes of attachment to phenomena.
From the perspective of brain-based cognition, when the brain perceives the external world, we don't consider the external world to be the brain itself. From the viewpoint of consciousness-based cognition, although we might say "all phenomena arise from the mind," we would never say "the external world is my brain." In fact, even from the perspective of brain-based cognition, what we see as the "external world" is just visual information collected by the eyes, transmitted, and imaged in the posterior thalamus. Although this process, from beginning to end, doesn't involve the kind of real brain you might imagine, you still firmly believe there's a real brain and an objective external world different from this brain. This is how attachment to phenomena arises. As soon as there's objectification, there's attachment to phenomena. This is why brain-based cognition leads to both self-attachment and attachment to phenomena.
Brain-based cognition inevitably believes that once the brain dies, life ends, and thus doesn't believe in samsara. Since brain-based cognition cannot see the function of the mind stream, it only believes in cause and effect on the physical realm, not in the causality of the mind.
What does modern medicine consider death? Brain death - when brain waves cease. We consider the termination of brain cognitive activity as death. Moreover, after death, it's impossible to resume cognition with this brain, which is seen as the end of life, with no return. Hence, there's no belief in samsara. This logic is very simple.
Brain-based cognition can't see the function of the mind stream either. Causality is a function of the mind stream. Can we see causality with radio telescopes? This is impossible; at least, we don't have such instruments yet. Is it possible that with further technological development, we might invent an instrument that can see past lives? This seems unlikely!
Therefore, most people only believe in cause and effect on the physical level, which is why we now exhaustively study physics and computer science. People can see cause and effect in the physical realm , but they can't see the causality of the mind, so naturally, they don't believe in it. This is a characteristic of brain-based cognition.
Excerpted from: Cognition and Expression Part Three
