Dopamine and Seretonin

Joy and Love: dopamine
Serenity and Calm: seretonin

I am fully happy to accept that there is no transcendental reality (though I have ample reason and experience to argue for it).

The brain is a vehicle to experience our world. That experience is purely subjective. Meditations (Joy and Serenity) fire off biochemical responses. Over time, the brain forms certain pathways and ‘memory engrams’ that become habitual. The habitual states brought about by these bio-mechanical alterations lead to perceptual alterations. The phenomenologically predicated reality is altered.

So even without the transcendental, we still attain a state of being that is marked by joy, love, compassion and peace.

In a bastardization of Pascal’s wager, I count these practices as good insurance. If the divine is false, a Golden Path life is well worth living. If the divine exists, well, a good outcome indeed!