Brain Karma: Are We Doomed to Live in Illusion?

All spiritual traditions suggest that our perception of reality is distorted. Hinduism speaks of a “veil of illusion,” while Christianity says we “see through a glass, darkly.” Neuroscientist Wendy Hazenkamp, in her article for Tricycle magazine, explains how modern science accounts for this illusion at the level of brain function—and whether it can be changed.

The Roots of Dissatisfaction

It seems people are always seeking change: buying the latest gadget, finding a new job, improving relationships. Things “as they are” rarely bring complete satisfaction. Buddhists describe this as dukkha, often translated as “suffering,” but more accurately meaning “restless impatience.” We often believe happiness can be achieved by changing external circumstances, ignoring the fact that much of our suffering is perpetuated by our own minds. Our habitual mental patterns shape our perception of events, our emotional reactions to others, and our overall worldview—whether we see the world as “good” or “fundamentally flawed.”

These same patterns influence even the most basic aspects of daily life. Our mental and behavioral habits underlie the full range of our experiences, and most of these habits are unconscious. They run our lives, causing us to live on autopilot.

Karma and the Brain

In Buddhism, these mental habits are directly related to the concept of karma. At any given moment, our consciousness is not free but is determined by its previous states; our entire past experience shapes our current experience. Our actions—including thoughts—leave traces in our minds, increasing the likelihood that we’ll think or act the same way in the future. Korean Zen teacher Daehaeng Kun Sumin puts it this way: “People often treat the thoughts they allow into their minds carelessly. They think that once they forget a thought, it ceases to exist. Not so. Once a thought appears in your mind, it continues to function, and its consequences will eventually return to you.”

What’s remarkable is that these ancient ideas about karma—at least as they describe cause and effect within a single lifetime—closely mirror neuroscientific views of how the brain works. One of the most fundamental principles of modern neuroscience was formulated in 1949 by Canadian neuropsychologist Donald Hebb, known as “Hebb’s Law” or the “theory of cell assemblies.” In his book The Organization of Behavior, he proposed that “neurons that fire together, wire together.”

Hebb suggested that “any two cells or systems of cells that are repeatedly active at the same time will tend to become associated, so that activity in one facilitates activity in the other.” This is the basis of neuroplasticity—the brain’s ability to change in response to new experiences.

How Neuroplasticity Works

Neuroplasticity has been revealed through extensive research into how neural networks form and update at the micro level. Imagine two neurons connected so that the activity of the first increases the likelihood of the second firing. If both are repeatedly stimulated together, after a few hours, the same stimulation of the first neuron will produce a stronger response in the second. This happens because the first cell releases more neurotransmitters, and the second forms more receptors to receive them. These molecular changes strengthen the connection between the two neurons. If this joint activation continues over time, the neurons physically change shape—growing new dendrites to reinforce the link.

This is a simple example; in the living brain, millions of such interactions occur every second. Each neuron communicates with thousands of others, creating an incredibly complex network. As new, stable neural connections form, our brains develop new networks associated with the experiences we repeat most often. These networks reflect our personal knowledge of specific objects, people, or situations, manifesting as sensations, memories, emotions, thoughts, and behavioral responses.

As we live our lives, the neural circuits we use most become rigid and highly stable. In practice, this means they’re activated almost automatically and are much easier to trigger than new, unused circuits. It takes less energy to activate these old circuits, making habitual behavior literally the “path of least resistance.”

The Brain as an Energy Saver

The brain can be compared to an energy-saving mechanism: it uses 20–25% of the body’s cellular energy, even though it accounts for only about 2% of body weight. Under evolutionary pressure, the brain has learned to be as efficient as possible. Like a river following its established course, when the brain has a choice between two actions, it picks the familiar, well-repeated one because it’s more energy-efficient.

It’s easy to see the connection between these findings and the concept of karma. Every subjective experience—ideas, thoughts, emotions, sensations, behaviors—has a cellular basis. Millions of neurons come alive in complex networks underlying each experience. The more often certain mental patterns are repeated, the deeper the mental groove becomes. Engaging in a thought or action makes us more likely to repeat it, as each thought and action activates specific neural connections.

On one hand, this is simply an energy-saving mechanism or a biological cause-and-effect relationship. On the other, it’s the law of karma manifesting in our daily lives. Our brains literally become what we think.

Illusion and Conceptual Thinking

These karmic aspects of neuroplasticity have important implications. According to Buddhist views, the cause of suffering and impermanence is illusion and ignorance—our inability to see the true nature of reality. Instead of recognizing the impermanence and emptiness of all worldly phenomena, we tend to see things as real, unchanging, and independently existing. We treat people and objects as separate, composed of distinct parts, and attribute to them an inherent identity. We do the same with ourselves.

This mistaken perception is the root of dukkha, plunging us into an endless stream of desires and disappointments, all aimed at protecting and maintaining our sense of “self.”

The brain’s plasticity means this illusion is maintained by the neural mechanism responsible for concept formation. Consider how a new concept forms in response to a new visual stimulus (from Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon’s A General Theory of Love):

• A little girl is learning letters. She sees the capital letter A for the first time, written in a decorative font. A specific group of neurons in her visual system is activated.
• In another book, she sees a different A, this time with a watermelon at its base. A slightly different set of neurons fires—many the same as before, but some new, some missing.
• She sees a third A in yet another font—again, the core group of neurons for the unchanging elements of the letter, plus some additional ones, are activated.

Each time she sees the letter A in a new form, the neurons associated with the common elements are increasingly linked, per Hebb’s Law. For the letter A, these are the two angled lines and the horizontal bar. As her brain learns to identify these elements, she forms the concept of the letter “A.” Later, she’ll add the sound and its place in words.

As a result, whenever she sees two slanted lines joined by a horizontal line, her brain instantly activates the neural circuit for recognizing A, making it easy to identify and understand.

Conceptual processing is incredibly useful for interacting with the world and others. Thanks to our ability to form concepts, we can learn and remember. Without it, even simple tasks would stump us, as we’d have to figure out a spoon or pen as if for the first time, every time.

The Downside of Concepts

But conceptual thinking has a downside: by its nature, established concepts disrupt the immediacy of our perception. Buddhism has long recognized this. American scholar John Dunn cites the 7th-century Buddhist philosopher Dharmakirti, who argued that encountering a unique element of an object several times leads to “false awareness.” Our mind creates “sameness” (a concept), grouping all objects with that element together for practical reasons. Because of our habit of using fixed concepts, we fail to realize that each element is actually unique. Instead, we believe the concept in our mind reflects the object’s fundamental essence.

Modern cognitive science also confirms that conceptual thinking distracts us from direct perception. In the letter A example, the neural groups associated with differences in appearance don’t form strong connections, since those visual stimuli aren’t repeated—this is the flip side of Hebb’s Law. Because only the connections for common elements are strengthened, the girl’s attention shifts from unique details to the familiar. She doesn’t perceive uniqueness! The purity of her perception is, in a sense, compromised. The conceptual filters in our brains create a veil of illusion, hiding true reality from us.

We don’t notice the interdependence and impermanence of the world around us because we crystallize our experience into pre-formed patterns that seem unchanging. We don’t see the emptiness of things because we believe our concepts reflect their essence. We think a certain arrangement of lines is the letter A and always will be.

With letters, this isn’t a big problem. But it becomes one when we perceive people and complex phenomena just as narrowly, labeling them with simplifying tags. As a result, we fail to see others (and even ourselves) in the full uniqueness of the present moment. It seems that illusion—our incorrect perception of reality—is a natural outcome of a fundamental biological process, practical and elegant, but also leading to major misconceptions.

Can We Break Free?

So what can we do? Are we doomed to live at the mercy of routine neural patterns? Both Buddhism and modern neuroscience say no. The same neuroplastic properties that create our karmic limitations can help us break free from illusion.

For centuries, people have turned to contemplative practices, and their experience shows transformation is possible. Recently, neuroscience—partly thanks to its partnership with Buddhism—has discovered that the brain can change throughout life. This is good news: if you practice meditation regularly, you can significantly change your brain.

Neuroplasticity is always active; the brain constantly updates its neural networks in response to current experience. If we consciously choose our experiences, we can activate the brain regions we want. Through regular meditation, we can become aware of our mental habits. Once we notice them, we can choose to follow them or try to change them, responding consciously rather than automatically. In this way, we can form new, stable neural circuits. Over time, we can redirect our river into a new channel.

But it’s not easy. We’re trying to change deeply ingrained mental habits formed by thousands, if not millions, of repetitions. This reprogramming process also requires a lot of energy—both the effort to keep the mind from wandering and the cellular energy needed to create new, stable synaptic connections.

These biological processes reflect what Buddhism calls “purifying karma” and are the first step toward realizing that, beyond our personal karma, there is also collective karma—deeply rooted social patterns of behavior and thought that extend beyond our individual lives.

We need courage, because this work can be extremely exhausting, mentally and physically. As new neural pathways form, the old ones weaken from disuse. This is an inspiring realization: change is possible, and difficulties are natural. Understanding that we need to act and think in new ways, again and again, to create new stable neural circuits helps us develop patience in meditation. With enough dedication, we can create new, healthy mental tendencies—toward wisdom and compassion, mindfulness and kindness. That’s why meditation practice is so important.

The question of how far we can actually go beyond this illusion—how much we can change the tendency for abstract concepts to “solidify” our experience—remains open in neuroscience. Buddhism claims that a person can begin to perceive the world directly and discover the emptiness beyond all concepts.

Biologically, we may never fully eliminate the brain structures responsible for conceptual thinking. After all, we need them to function meaningfully in the world. But through meditation, we can change our relationship to our concepts and see their foundations. Gradually, we can lift the veil of maya and see the true nature of reality.

About the Author

Wendy Hazenkamp, PhD, is a senior research scientist at the Mind & Life Institute, founded by the Dalai Lama and leading Western scientists. Her research explores how mindfulness and mind-wandering manifest at the level of neural connections.

Translation © Anastasia Gosteva