“All of this points to the sense in which the ancient Buddhist appraisal of the human condition is very modern in spirit. The human brain is a machine designed by natural selection to respond in pretty reflexive fashion to the sensory input impinging on it. It is designed, in a certain sense, to be controlled by that input. And a key cog in the machinery of control are the feelings that arise in response to the input. A donut smells good, so we approach it; a restless hunger feels bad so we try to escape it – by, say, eating a donut; social status feels good and ridicule feels bad, so we pursue and avoid, respectively.

If you interact with such feelings via tanha – via the natural, reflexive thirst for the pleasant feelings and the natural, reflexive aversion to the unpleasant feelings – you will continue to be controlled by the world around you. But if you observe those feelings mindfully rather than just reacting to them, you can in some measure escape the control; the causes that ordinarily shape your behaviour can be defied, and you can get closer to the unconditioned.”