PPP, Part 26, The Goal of the Practice, Awakening, Hemisphere Lateralization?

Greetings, Friendlies. :)

It is my understanding reading the suttas that all this bhāvanā stuff, this eightfold path stuff, does in fact have a goal. Awakening. Bodhi-pattī.

I have not, however, found a satisfyingly simple answer to the question, “What is awakening?”

Some will say this is because there is not a satisfyingly simple answer to the question. Perhaps.

But here’s a proposal: What if Gotama’s awakening, the awakening of his followers, the awakening touted by Buddhisms (maybe “spiritual” pursuits as a whole?) what if it is a permanent shift from left-hemisphere-dominant functioning/view to right-hemisphere-dominant functioning/view? (The languaging is awkward. Thanks for your indulgence. :)

If this were the case, the eightfold path, the various lists, the bhāvanās, all could be seen as means to gradually cultivate a shift in both neurological dominance and lived experience.

Moments of insight, path moments, fruitions, maybe particularly Anattā experiences?, could be seen as temporary shifts to a right-hemisphere-dominant functioning/view.

This proposal could be formulated as a hypothesis. It is, at least to some extent, testable with current and certainly future brain imaging technologies. If we had a fully awakened being amenable to this kind of thing, we might devise fMRI studies to investigate their brain function for lateralization.

Short of that, if the whole of path and cultivation is a gradual/temporary move towards the right hemisphere, we could study the effects of various types of meditation on us regular unawakened practitioners, with an eye towards lateralization. There are purportedly folks able to experience fruitions on a regular basis. Maybe we can look for lateralization there?

Leigh Brasington says of the neuro-anatomist Jill Bolte Taylor and her “Stroke of Insight“: we are trying to do with a software upgrade what Taylor did with a hardware failure.

Hemisphere-dominant-experience seems to me a reasonable explanatory model, more coherent than any other I have heard, and it permits study of human wetware, which is more to my taste than, say, commentarial exegeses of the Kāmadhātu Heavens.

Your thoughts?