Research
The life sciences have developed enormously over the last 50 years. One main
branch is the study of mind, cognition, affect and related mental phenomena,
where the brain sciences (or neurosciences) play a central role. There is an
unusual confluence of disciplines collectively training their focused lenses
on the nature of cognition, emotion and action. These disciplines include neuroscience,
molecular genetics, experimental psychology, artificial intelligence and linguistics.
Several major interdisciplinary efforts have emerged from this hybridization
including cognitive science, neuroscience and affective neuroscience. These
new interdisciplinary hybrid sciences have rapidly embraced the study of the
mind as a scientific object and have enabled modern science to approach this
effort with unprecedented rigor and precision.
As a result of this research frontier, science has been gradually waking up
to what, until very recently, seemed "un-scientific": consciousness
itself. Can a scientific study of mind leave out what is ever-present for humans:
their own experience? What is consciousness? How is it related to other mental
abilities generated by the brain (such as vision, emotion, and memory)? How
plastic is the brain's potential for meeting human needs in medicine and education?
This consciousness "revolution" has brought to center stage the simple
fact that studying the brain and behavior requires an equally disciplined complement:
the exploration of experience itself. It is here that Buddhism stands as an
outstanding source of observations concerning human mind and experience, accumulated
over centuries with great theoretical rigor, and, what is even more significant,
with very precise exercises and practices for individual exploration. This treasure-trove
of knowledge is an uncanny complement to science. Where the material refinement
of science is unmatched in empirical studies, the experiential level is still
immature and naive compared to the long-standing Buddhist tradition of studying
the human mind.
The natural meeting ground between science and Buddhism is thus at one of the
most active research frontiers today. What is involved is learning how to put
together the data from the inner examination of human experience with the empirical
basis that modern cognitive and affective neuroscience can provide. Such first-person
accounts are not a mere "confirmation" of what science can find anyway.
It is a necessary complement. For instance, unless refined internal descriptions
are taken into account in current experiments that use brain imaging to study
the neural substrates of emotions or attention, the empirical data cannot be
properly interpreted.
Thus, we foresee in the future that the mind sciences will evolve into a form
of experiential neuroscience, bridging the gap between external and internal
descriptions. Such a unification of our understanding of the world, a new frame
for a mind science, is one of the major contributions Buddhism is capable of
offering. The interest in such cross-fertilization with science was one of the
main inspirations for the Mind and Life initiative, and remains at the center
of its efforts to transform this vision into concrete laboratory collaborations.
Two related implications of the dialogue between science and Buddhism include
contributions to our understanding of behavioral and neural plasticity and to
the development of specific interventions for the promotion of psychological
and physical well-being. Modern cognitive science and psychology makes certain
assumptions about what is normative in mental functioning and also what the
limits of change are for such functioning. For example, in the cognitive domain
it is regarded as normative for individuals to be incapable of attending to
a single object for more than several seconds. In the affective domain, the
emotion of anger is regarded as a normative emotion that naturally arises in
situations where our goals are thwarted. Buddhism teaches us that each of these
assumptions about the "normal operating mode" of humans is faulty
and that with training (i.e., in meditation), significant transformations in
these abilities are likely to occur. This perspective poses an important challenge
to Western scientists and calls into question some of our deepest assumptions
about the "nature" of human behavior. Moreover, Buddhism provides
a detailed specification of the methods that enable such plasticity to occur.
This meeting ground will provide a critical impetus for change in the Western
conception of the fixedness of mental function, with a clear call for new research
to explore the capacity for plastic transformation in basic biobehavioral functions
that were once regarded as unchanging components of our mental landscape.
The experientially based technology of meditation and related practices offered
by Buddhism is currently having a major impact on modern medicine and psychotherapeutic
intervention. Claims about the beneficial effects of these practices on both
mental and physical health and well-being have catalyzed serious efforts to
examine the mechanisms by which meditation produces salubrious consequences.
The Mind and Life dialogues have directly spawned new research demonstrating
changes in both brain and immune function produced by meditation. This work
is helping to restore the brain back into the context of the body to examine
how changes in the brain have downstream effects on the immune, autonomic and
endocrine systems, all of which are implicated in health and disease.
Epistemology
Although the life and cognitive sciences are where Buddhism can touch science
intimately, at the detailed research level, it can also have a great importance
at the more fundamental or epistemological level. In fact, the philosophical
refinements in the Buddhist tradition concerning the nature of reality, perception
and logic, are as deep as its observational base of human experience. This includes
notions such as designated identity, co-dependent origination and emptiness
that have no counterpart in the philosophical heritage of the West.
Modern physics is perhaps where this second meeting ground is most visible.
Physics is in the middle of a conceptual revolution pursuing the so-called unification
efforts, in order to relate the minute universe of quantum mechanism to that
of macrophysics and gravitation. As is well known, such research has opened
numerous gaping epistemological questions; for example non-locality, the origin
of the universe, and the role of the observer. Philosophers of science and research
physicists have found these conceptual or epistemological exchanges potentially
precious. See GEO Magazine, cover story, January, 1999. The Mind and Life Institute
has decided to continue this line of mutual exploration as the second major
contribution Buddhism can offer to modern science.
© Copyright 2002 Mind and Life Institute, Boulder, CO, USA. All rights
reserved.