Comments?

Two American Buddhists vow to never be more than 15 feet apart. I have a funny feeling there is more to this story...

Summer Meditation

We are considering having sitting meditation on Tuesday mornings and Thursday evenings. If you are interested email pete@tinicumartandscience.org

The Little Loop of Enfranchisement

You may recall that several weeks ago I posted an overview of the workshops we held for the students regarding brains, learning, and learning environments. Overall, they seemed to go well, though we have not managed to do more than an informal evaluation of them.
The purpose of the workshops was to give the students some basic information about how they learn. Next- tomorrow- we discuss in small groups four basic questions:

What skills do you need for the immediate future? What knowledge do you need? What do we need to emphasize more? What is lacking here at TAS?

The format is several small, teacher facilitated groups. The teacher merely keeps the discussion focused and takes lots of notes.

Next, we will collate the responses and post them here and on one of the bulletin boards at school. Hopefully this will provoke some discussion. Perhaps by the end of the school year we will have some consensus on what to tweak, what to change, and what to change completely.

The overall goal is increasing each students' awareness of and involvement in their own education.

(BTW, the gender neutral "their" is deliberate!)

more on "Neural Buddhists"

Andrew Sullivan (one of my daily reads) first drew my attention to Brooks' NYT . To be completely honest, I generally find David Brooks pretty aggravating, but I have read with interest his columns of the last several weeks. What I enjoy about Sullivan's blog is his rather effortless kindness and the way that his Catholicism, conservatism, Englishness and open homosexuality all contribute to the impression of a truly open mind.
This is a letter sent to the blog regarding Sullivan's comments on Brooks' column:

As a fan and Buddhist, a couple of points seem relevant regarding your "Neural Buddhists" post. When you write, "Deus Caritas Est. Buddhists intuit this, which is why the overlaps between Buddhism and Christianity have been so compelling to many in recent years," you do some transposing. As I'm sure you know, Buddhists don't have a position on god. (Deus being a poetic construction on your part.) But more to the point, the word "love" here is theologically problematic. Buddhists hold that the fundamental mistake un-enlightened beings make is mistaking the nature of self and other. Without delving too deeply into it, the "love" you suggest is characterized as compassion and generosity in Buddhism because these are impulses not polluted by the intention to reify the self. It's not a moral code, though. (Much, much more could be said.)

The second point is a critical one for understanding Buddhism.

For people coming from a Christian civilization, we often fail to recognize our basic assumptions. In the US and Europe, we assume that belief and religion are identical. When you ask a person about their religious views, you say "What do you believe?" This is a peculiarly Judeo-Christian view. Indian-based religions don't have an orientation to belief. Buddhism's focus is on meditative practice, which imparts non-conceptual insight; more or less the opposite of belief. In fact, the central obstacle to overcome in Buddhism is a belief, and so the religion regards belief with some big suspicion.

In your post, you spoke of belief and love. Recognize that you are speaking as a Christian, not a Buddhist, and that the view from this side of the window is a lot different. (Not incompatible, but different.)

Here Andrew comments:

All points taken. I had a Buddhist phase in my twenties and found the question of the self and other an insuperable problem. Now I'm less sure.

Meditation and Psychotherapy

Harvard Medical School has been coming around to the qualitative and quantitative study of meditation and other mindfulness practices. Their continuing education program is very interesting and worth checking out. Scroll down, for instance, to "Mind-Body Medicine". I will be attending a conference organized by them this weekend on Meditation and Psychotherapy, moderated by Ronald D. Siegel, M.D., who taught a class I took online a couple of years ago. Another good resource is the National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine.

Here is the schedule:

Moderator: Ronald D. Siegel

10,000 Joys and Sorrows: Buddhist Practices at the Heart of Psychotherapy - Jack Kornfield, Trudy Goodman

Jung and Buddhism: Refining the Dialogue - Polly Young-Eisendrath

Transference in Meditation and Psychotherapy - Jack Engler

Morning Discussion 12:45 - 2:00

BREAK 2:00 - 5:00

AFTERNOON PROGRAM - Moderator: Ronald D. Siegel

Meditation and Social Change - Christopher Queen

Mental Health Benefits of Meditative Techniques - Sat Bir S. Khalsa

From the Monastery to the Therapy Office: Meditation for Difficult Clinical Relationships - Aviva Goldman, Tom Pedulla, Susan M. Pollak, William Slaughter

SATURDAY - 8:00 - 8:30 Pre-Conference Meditation led by Narayan Liebenson Grady

8:45 - 12:45 MORNING PROGRAM - Moderator: Christopher K. Germer

The Mindful Brain: Reflection and Attunement in the Cultivation of Well-Being - Daniel J. Siegel

Acceptance and Transformation: Thoughts from a Meditation Teacher - Narayan Liebenson Grady

Acceptance and Transformation: Thoughts from a Therapist - David Treadway

Morning Discussion 12:45 - 2:00 BREAK 2:00 - 5:00

AFTERNOON PROGRAM - Moderator: Christopher K. Germer How Not to be Afraid of Yourself and Others - Susan Piver

Freedom from Self - Paul R. Fulton, Stephanie Morgan, Janet L. Surrey Discussion - Faculty

A Money Quote

The following, from the previous post, is the nub of Brooks' so-called "neural Buddhism":

First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships. Second, underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions. Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love. Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is.

and then there is this, at the end:

In unexpected ways, science and mysticism are joining hands and reinforcing each other. That’s bound to lead to new movements that emphasize self-transcendence but put little stock in divine law or revelation. Orthodox believers are going to have to defend particular doctrines and particular biblical teachings. They’re going to have to defend the idea of a personal God, and explain why specific theologies are true guides for behavior day to day.

I think that Brooks is on to something when he guesses that a convergence of rational belief (neuroscience, in its pop or laboratory form) and spiritual practice is already underway. I would also agree that this will create a new set of pressures on traditional religious practice as people around the world both become urban and tap into vast information and communication networks.

But something here requires comment. Buddhism has nothing to say about God, the nature of god, mysticism, or transcendence. It is radically non-theistic. This is what allows it to work so well with so many religious traditions. There is no fundamental conflict between Buddhist practice and Christianity, for instance. At least from the (Zen) Buddhist side of things.

Another aspect of Brooks' column that I have to comment on is this: could it be that an crucial characteristic of profound religious experience is first a fearless embrace of paradox, for instance, loving deeply a person who must someday die, or accepting life with all its suffering, and then a resolving of that paradox in some non-verbal, non-analytic state of mind?

Perhaps the function of the parietal lobe- which does indeed "orient us in space"- is also to orient us in "conceptual space", and that the diminution of some of its activity allows for non-analytic experiences. The cerebellum used to be thought of as the part of the brain that merely coordinates physical activity. It is now being suggested that it coordinates mental activity as well. Perhaps there is a parallel between the two lobes.

Paradox can be experienced and expressed in many ways, not the least of which is the visual arts. A vibrant, engaged Christianity, for instance, will change over time, and continue to debate its own nature as changes sweep through it. Zen is about change, so perhaps Brooks' "neural Buddhism" is less a challenge than a workshop for people of all faiths actively sorting out suffering, love, endurance, and faith. As people always have.

The Neural Buddhists

from David Brooks' column this morning in the Times...

In 1996, Tom Wolfe wrote a brilliant essay called “Sorry, but Your Soul Just Died,” in which he captured the militant materialism of some modern scientists.

To these self-confident researchers, the idea that the spirit might exist apart from the body is just ridiculous. Instead, everything arises from atoms. Genes shape temperament. Brain chemicals shape behavior. Assemblies of neurons create consciousness. Free will is an illusion. Human beings are “hard-wired” to do this or that. Religion is an accident.

In this materialist view, people perceive God’s existence because their brains have evolved to confabulate belief systems. You put a magnetic helmet around their heads and they will begin to think they are having a spiritual epiphany. If they suffer from temporal lobe epilepsy, they will show signs of hyperreligiosity, an overexcitement of the brain tissue that leads sufferers to believe they are conversing with God.

Wolfe understood the central assertion contained in this kind of thinking: Everything is material and “the soul is dead.” He anticipated the way the genetic and neuroscience revolutions would affect public debate. They would kick off another fundamental argument over whether God exists.

Lo and behold, over the past decade, a new group of assertive atheists has done battle with defenders of faith. The two sides have argued about whether it is reasonable to conceive of a soul that survives the death of the body and about whether understanding the brain explains away or merely adds to our appreciation of the entity that created it.

The atheism debate is a textbook example of how a scientific revolution can change public culture. Just as “The Origin of Species reshaped social thinking, just as Einstein’s theory of relativity affected art, so the revolution in neuroscience is having an effect on how people see the world.

And yet my guess is that the atheism debate is going to be a sideshow. The cognitive revolution is not going to end up undermining faith in God, it’s going end up challenging faith in the Bible.

Over the past several years, the momentum has shifted away from hard-core materialism. The brain seems less like a cold machine. It does not operate like a computer. Instead, meaning, belief and consciousness seem to emerge mysteriously from idiosyncratic networks of neural firings. Those squishy things called emotions play a gigantic role in all forms of thinking. Love is vital to brain development.

Researchers now spend a lot of time trying to understand universal moral intuitions. Genes are not merely selfish, it appears. Instead, people seem to have deep instincts for fairness, empathy and attachment.

Scientists have more respect for elevated spiritual states. Andrew Newberg of the University of Pennsylvania has shown that transcendent experiences can actually be identified and measured in the brain (people experience a decrease in activity in the parietal lobe, which orients us in space). The mind seems to have the ability to transcend itself and merge with a larger presence that feels more real.

This new wave of research will not seep into the public realm in the form of militant atheism. Instead it will lead to what you might call neural Buddhism.

If you survey the literature (and I’d recommend books by Newberg, Daniel J. Siegel, Michael S. Gazzaniga, Jonathan Haidt, Antonio Damasio and Marc D. Hauser if you want to get up to speed), you can see that certain beliefs will spread into the wider discussion.

First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships. Second, underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions. Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love. Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is.

In their arguments with Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, the faithful have been defending the existence of God. That was the easy debate. The real challenge is going to come from people who feel the existence of the sacred, but who think that particular religions are just cultural artifacts built on top of universal human traits. It’s going to come from scientists whose beliefs overlap a bit with Buddhism.

In unexpected ways, science and mysticism are joining hands and reinforcing each other. That’s bound to lead to new movements that emphasize self-transcendence but put little stock in divine law or revelation. Orthodox believers are going to have to defend particular doctrines and particular biblical teachings. They’re going to have to defend the idea of a personal God, and explain why specific theologies are true guides for behavior day to day. I’m not qualified to take sides, believe me. I’m just trying to anticipate which way the debate is headed. We’re in the middle of a scientific revolution. It’s going to have big cultural effects.

Some Upcoming Events

May 28 and 29: Three interesting young men from Baltimore Atman Smith, Ali Smith, and Andres Gonzalez will be visiting our school and conducting a few yoga workshops. They have created their own not-for-profit and serve the young and very young in their inner-city neighborhood with a mix of yoga, basketball, and mindfulness training. It should be quite interesting to see possibilities open up in our students' eyes...these guys have put their practice into practice...

Coming Up...

Tomorrow we visit the Frida Kahlo exhibit in Philly with all the students. Also keep an eye on this blog for the list of classes being offered next term, as well as our summer staffing schedule.