Buddhism and the Brain Sciences
Published October 15th, 2008
For those interested in the relationship between the sciences and Buddhist practice, linked here is a lecture by Harvard Professor Anne Harrington, entitled Eastern Brains: Probing the Partnership Between Buddhism and the Brain Sciences, that is pretty interesting.
Dr. Harrington discusses the relationship between neuroscience, cognitive science, and Buddhism in the first lecture of the Religious and Psychological Well-Being Project series sponsored by the Center for the Study of Religion and Psychology at the Danielsen Institute. She recalls a 2005 Society for Neuroscience conference, where the Dalai Lama spoke on The Neuroscience of Meditation. He talked to the 13,000 attendees about his curiosity about the world, his affection for science, its benefits for happiness and health, and his belief that science and Buddhism have a lot of constructive things to say to each other. Harrington then asks a key question, “What in the world does Tibetan Buddhism have to do with brain science?”
The rest of her talk attempts to answer the question. Harrington traces the history of U.S. interest in Tibetan Buddhism, talking about the fascination with the eastern brain and transcendental meditation during the 1960s and 1970s counterculture. She refers to the research of the University of Wisconsin’s Richard Davidson on the brain functions of Buddhist monks during long periods of meditation. She touches on studies done by scientists and neuroscientists over the years, from Robert Keith Wallace’s research on meditation as a “fourth major state of consciousness” to the research on stress and its relation to health, in particular cardiac health, of Harvard Medical School’s Herbert Benson.
Many scientists have attempted to study the physiology of advanced meditation, she says, but it wasn’t until the late 1990s that with the help and influence of Buddhist monk and scientist Matthieu Ricard and author and scholar Robert Thurman there was progress in the field.
