The Dalai Lama attends the 'Mind Science' Forum at Australian National University

By Dr John Powers

One of the greatest dilemmas for traditional Buddhists today involves reconciling inherited dogmas with the findings of modern science. As with adherents of other religions, contemporary Buddhists are faced with difficult choices between scientific data and what their scriptures tell them about the universe and the workings of their bodies and minds. Some respond to these challenges by embracing dogmatism and many-despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary-choose to believe that the world is a flat disk with a huge mountain named Mt. Meru in its centre, surrounded by four continents facing in the cardinal directions.

Others, like the 14th Dalai Lama, have adopted a more critical approach. While he holds some Buddhist tenets to be non-negotiable, he has shown a remarkable willingness to engage in dialogues with scientists and to modify-and sometimes even reject-traditional Buddhist doctrines in light of scientific findings.

During his recent Australian tour, the Dalai Lama participated in his seventh such dialogue in a forum entitled 'Mind and Science,' which was held at the Australian National University's Llewellen Hall on 24th May 2002. His Holiness was a member of a panel of distinguished scientists and philosophers, which included: Professor Paul Davies, an internationally renowned physicist, Professor Maxwell Bennett, a neuroscientist, Professor Jack Pettigrew, a neurobiologist, and Professor Frank Jackson, Australia's leading philosopher of mind. A keynote address was delivered by Professor Allan Snyder, and the forum was moderated by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Robyn Williams.

The central focus of the forum was the nature of mind, with a particular emphasis on how the mind is able to process information without conscious thought. While it is commonly assumed that most of our cognition operates at the conscious level, it is becoming more widely understood by cognitive science that in fact the majority of mental processing goes on below the threshold of conscious awareness. Our ability to recognise patterns, to understand causal relations and perhaps most importantly-flashes of insight, brilliance and creativity-are generally products of unconscious mental processing. This phenomenon has been attracting increasing attention and study in contemporary western mind science, but the scientists at the forum all stated that little is known about how the mind actually operates.

Much laboratory research involves 'shot in the dark' studies in which scientists try out various scenarios in order to begin mapping how the mind responds in various circumstances. Professor Bennett (holder of a University Chair in Physiology at University of Sydney), for example, discussed experiments he has conducted in which magnets are placed on subjects' heads in order to see what effect this might have. In some cases it has led to short-circuiting of one or the other hemisphere of the brain, allowing scientists to better understand how the still-active hemisphere functions. But he admitted that the original decision to apply magnets to the brain was not the result of a planned series of experiments, but instead was one of many attempts to possibly alter brain function. Another involves pouring cold water into a subject's ear, which also affects the functioning of the hemisphere on that side, but was initially attempted as a 'what if?' experiment.

Part of the rationale for a forum that brought together the Dalai Lama and western scientists and philosophers is the fact that while western scientific study of the mind is still in its infancy, Tibetan Buddhists have been exploring and applying tested techniques to alter brain functioning for millennia. From the earliest period of Buddhism's inception, Buddhist meditators have used techniques inherited from the surrounding Indian environment and modified to Buddhist purposes. These techniques are purported by the tradition to enable meditators to consciously alter their mental patterning and replace it with other patterning that can result in greater happiness, reductions in stress and delusion, enhanced compassion, wisdom and other positive mental qualities; eventually leading to Buddhahood, the culmination of Buddhist mental training. More importantly, from the perspective of some contemporary western scientists, Buddhist meditation theory claims that the techniques of mindfulness meditation can allow practitioners to gain direct conscious control of mental processes that operate on the unconscious level in most people.

Mindfulness meditation traditionally has four primary foci: body, feelings, consciousness and phenomena. All of these are shifting and externally influenced phenomena, but by applying the techniques of mindfulness, meditators progressively gain the ability to consciously recognise causal patterns-how physical and mental phenomena arise, persist and pass away-and how these processes are influenced by causes and conditions. In other words, some contemporary scientists hope that these techniques, which have been used successfully for more than two and a half millennia, might provide them with data about the functioning of mind from a well-established body of participatory meditation and give clues regarding how their experiments might be shaped in future to better understand mental processing.

The forum began with a keynote address by Professor Allan Snyder of the Centre for the Mind at the Australian National University and University of Sydney. He stated his opinion that this sort of gathering of experts from various fields has great potential for cross-fertilisation of ideas and that a sharing of insights from traditional Buddhist meditation, western philosophy of mind and neuroscience, could serve to enliven all the fields represented. Scientists, he asserted, can benefit from the well-documented and well-developed literature of Buddhist meditation practice as well as the expertise of meditators who apply its techniques. They can also benefit from the emerging field of mind science, which has the potential to establish the study of the mind on firm empirical and experimental footing and not merely on anecdotal accounts of practitioners.

He raised a number of questions, beginning with 'What changes does meditative training make in the brain such that access is made possible?' 'If meditation does access the non-conscious mind, does it do so by turning off the left side of the brain (as it does with magnetic pulses)?' He also wondered why it is that some individuals appear to have access to non-conscious levels of mental processing without advanced meditative training (for example, autistic savants), while others do not. His own current research is seeking for ways to stimulate this sort of extraordinary mental processing, which he believes lies within the mental capacities of most people, but is generally latent.

Snyder also asked whether meditative practice might facilitate creativity and innovation. As a scientist, he was particularly concerned with what sort of evidence might be provided in this regard. Must we rely on the assertions of practitioners, or might it be possible to fashion experiments that could enhance savant-like skills-such as enhanced memories or mathematical skills, drawing, calculations, musical aptitude, ability to position space and time, to see numbers arranged in space and so on. What sort of conditions might enhance such abilities and what sort of experimental parameters could be used to measure them?

Finally, he speculated that mental peculiarities like synaesthesia and schizophrenia might be conditioned by unintended and intermittent access to the non-conscious mind. Might depression, for example, be a manifestation of being overly literal, of seeing the world warts and all, without passing through a conceptual filter? In other words, Snyder wondered if these phenomena are present in all people in a latent form and triggered by external or internal stimuli and if meditation theory and practice might aid in developing a better understanding of them.
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ollowing Snyder's address, the Dalai Lama was invited to make some opening remarks. He began by stating that he considers dialogues between Buddhist teachers and scientists to be very important and he emphasised his belief that solid scientific data should be used to challenge and even overturn Buddhist dogma. When the facts of the matter are clear, Buddhists should be willing to abandon even well-entrenched dogmas and adopt the best available scientific findings. He also agreed with Snyder's assessment that this exchange should not necessarily be one-way and that scientists and philosophers of mind stand to benefit from the accumulated evidence and experience of millennia of Buddhist meditators, who have recorded their techniques and experiences in great detail and who have living masters well-versed in a range of meditative traditions.

Professor Pettigrew (Director of the Vision, Touch, and Hearing Research Centre at the University of Queensland) began his opening remarks by asserting that he personally suffers from bipolar disorder and is also a medical doctor who treats patients with this and other mental disorders. Because of his practice and his own psychological problems, he has a more than passing interest in techniques that purport to control and treat mental disorders. He stated that his interest in Buddhist meditation was sparked by a patient who has managed to treat her bipolar disorder entirely through meditation and without using any drugs. Her practice focuses on mindfulness, on maintaining a clear sense of the distinction between reality and mental fantasy. Professor Pettigrew indicated that he is impressed that this training has been sufficient to control her disorder. He also stated that he has practiced tong-len (literally 'giving and receiving') meditation for years and is convinced that it provides a powerful technique for developing equanimity and compassion and for promoting healthy mental functioning.

Pettigrew expressed surprise and admiration for the fact that traditional Buddhist conceptions of the functions of the two hemispheres of the brain show a high correlation with what contemporary scientists are finding. He was particularly impressed by the fact that the meditators' conclusions derive entirely from participant observation and do not require the expensive equipment of the modern neuroscientist. How, he wondered, did early Buddhist masters know that the right side of the brain has a predominance of red imagery and the left side has a predominance of green and white imagery? How is it possible to discover the respective assignments of the two hemispheres solely through introspection? He noted that allowing for the crossed projections of the cerebral hemisphere (which was unknown to ancient meditators) the hemispheric assignments they posited conform to recent results from investigations of the separate complementary functions of the cerebral hemisphere. He asked rhetorically, 'How did they know that?'

Like Snyder, Pettigrew also noted that there are marked individual differences in peoples' abilities to meditate or to introspect about the functioning of the mind. Some of these individual differences may run in families, and there may be a genetic predisposition toward particular abilities. He wondered if such individual differences are recognised when students are being trained in mental practices such as meditation. He further asserted that a growing body of scientific evidence indicates that many bodily processes, including mental processes, are governed to a significant extent by cycles of time-the light and dark cycles of the day, of seasons and even of years. He asked His Holiness whether or not Tibetan Buddhism is aware of the possibility of internal oscillators that determine the timing of conscious and unconscious events, to which His Holiness replied that there is an extensive literature on this within the Buddhist tradition.

Professor Davies (of Macquarie University's Centre for Astrobiology) raised a number of questions in his opening remarks. He began by noting that the phenomenon of consciousness appears to be deeply mysterious and asked what, exactly, is it that enables us to utilise electrical processes in the brain in cognition? Is it the electrical impulses themselves that constitute consciousness, and if so, why is it that the New South Wales electricity network does not achieve consciousness (at least as far as we are aware)? There is no empirical difference between the electrical impulses circulating along the power grid around us and those in the brain's neural network, but the former is not aware of itself and its functions, while the latter is. He noted that a number of cosmologists and physicists have realised that the laws of physics appear to be cunningly fine-tuned for life and for consciousness to emerge in the universe. The fact that life emerged from the available raw materials and that consciousness developed in it appears to have occurred against astronomical odds and he wondered if there might be some explanation for this. He noted that scientists have been unable to find any evidence for a being (or beings) operating behind the scenes or of any apparent conscious co-ordination of the process, but still the fact that life and consciousness did happen to emerge calls out for some sort of explanation. Davies concluded, however, that scientists at present are unable to do anything but speculate in the dark.

Finally, Professor Frank Jackson (Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University) said that he was particularly interested in exploring the relation between mental states that we have and experience and the brain states that science-particularly neuroscience-talks about and he wondered how we might bridge the gap between subjective experience and objective description. He asserted his belief in materialism, that is, the philosophical position that all mental processing has a biological basis, that consciousness is a result of certain chemicals in the brain operating in particular ways, of synapses firing and of electrical impulses moving along neural pathways. He expressed scepticism regarding religious beliefs in supernatural beings and asserted that it is his opinion that consciousness and its operations can be understood through exploration of purely physical processes, as a purely physical phenomenon that is intimately connected with the physical body and is unable to operate apart from that. This statement resulted in one of the surprising exchanges of the forum, when Professors Pettigrew and Bennett both replied that as neuroscientists, they have no such confidence based on their experiments to date and that there is significant experimental evidence within the field for which the physicalist hypothesis is unable to account.

The first hour of the forum was mainly devoted to statements from the various participants outlining the present state of play in their respective fields. This served to raise a number of potential synergies between contemporary mind science and Tibetan Buddhism. There were a number of long pauses during which Thubten Jinpa, His Holiness' translator, attempted to render the scientists' words into Tibetan, but it was clear from His Holiness' responses that he fully comprehended what they were saying and was able to respond in ways that apparently impressed them. At one point Professor Bennett remarked, 'I'd love to be able to get you into my laboratory to study how your mind works. I'm sure that if I could, I'd have no trouble securing funding grants.' His Holiness responded that he would be interested in participating in such experiments, but that there are many other meditators more advanced than himself who would make better subjects, which resulted in laughter both from the panel and the audience.

The forum lasted for two hours and particularly during the second hour some interesting synergies emerged between His Holiness and the scientists on the panel. Professors Pettigrew and Bennett in particular noted a number of potential avenues of study that might involve Buddhist meditators and that could shed significant light on mental functioning. His Holiness had the last word, and concluded that while such research could provide new insights and greater knowledge, it should also be linked to a concern for others and should ideally result in a happier mind. He noted that all Buddhist meditation has this as its goal and he ended by hoping that such dialogues might continue and that both they and the science they might inspire should be of benefit to others. After he finished, the crowd spontaneously rose and gave a standing ovation to His Holiness and the forum participants.

After the forum I mingled with the crowd in the main lobby, and the general feeling varied between admiration and euphoria. Many remarked at what an unusual gathering of minds the forum represented and that despite their widely differing backgrounds, the panellists all found interesting things to discuss and discovered unexpected synergies. Many noted that His Holiness dominated the discussion through his personal presence, despite making a number of humble remarks about his abilities and accomplishments.

It would be difficult to assess the value of a forum like this. As the organiser I was acutely aware before it began of the potential it had for disaster. I wondered whether or not the participants would find anything to discuss, or if the differences in their backgrounds would prevent them from finding connections. In addition, the lead-up to the forum was fraught with myriad logistical difficulties, any one of which could have derailed the forum before it began.

I was fortunate to have the aid of a number of people who devoted their time and energy to the forum, most importantly Ms Pamela Lyon, a PhD student at ANU who is working on topics related to the focus of the forum and who was instrumental in clarifying the topic and drafting the briefing documents for the participants. Ms Wendy White, who organised His Holiness' Australian tour, was a rock of stability and a model of organisational competence, and several people at ANU's Public Affairs division devoted enormous amounts of time and energy to publicising the event and organising a reception for His Holiness, the panellists, and the University Executive prior to the forum. The forum was financially sponsored by three of ANU's National Institutes: the National Institute for the Humanities, the National Institute for Asia and the Pacific, and the National Institute for Bioscience. In addition to their financial support, several of their staff also contributed mightily to the planning of the event. Allan Snyder was probably the most important contributor to the process of identifying and clarifying the final topic. The fact that it coincides with his own research interests meant that he was intimately familiar with the field and its current state of play and could communicate effectively with the panellists.

In many ways, my role as organiser involved sitting at the centre of the action and operating like an orchestra conductor as various people did their work. In the end, the forum was the result of the efforts of many people, beginning with Geshe Sonam Thargye, who initiated His Holiness's Australian tour, and Mr Chope Tsering, who worked behind the scenes to keep things on track. By the time the forum began, my only role was to sit in the front of Llewellen Hall and hope for the best. As it turned out, none of the many things that could have gone wrong eventuated and in my opinion the dialogue was illuminating and thought-provoking. It was clear that the panellists were highly impressed by both His Holiness's presence and the intelligence and insight he displayed in responding to them and the audience was hanging on his every word. The spontaneous expressions of enthusiasm by members of the audience served to confirm the general impression that the discussion went extremely well and that the forum lived up to most people's expectations. There is, of course, no way to know if it will have any long-term significance, or if it might spark new research and open up new questions for scientists and philosophers who study the mind and its workings, but I echo His Holiness' hope that it might.

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