How do we square our deeply personal, spiritual experiences with the objective scientific method? What could science have to learn from Eastern religious traditions?
These are some of the topics that religious scholar and author Thupten Jinpa Ph.D. will address during a free lecture titled “Stretching the Boundaries of Science” at the Presbyterian Church of the Big Wood in Ketchum at 6 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 13. The lecture is sponsored by the nonprofit Flourish Foundation.
Jinpa received his early education and training as a monk and received the Geshe Lharam degree from Ganden University in south India. He began serving the Dalai Lama as principle English translator in 1985. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Western philosophy and a doctorate degree in religious studies from Cambridge University in England.
Jinpa is chair of the Mind and Life Institute, an organization that seeks to bring together the insights and practices of age-old spiritual traditions with cutting-edge scientific research. Past Mind and Life conferences have addressed neuroplasticity, the clinical applications of meditation, and the phenomena of addictions.
“Mind and Life has shown a way that science and religion can interact in way that is not antagonistic,” Jinpa said in a recent interview.
He said that his lecture will also draw from his work as a visiting research scholar at the Stanford Institute for Neuro-Innovation and Translational Neurosciences.
Jinpa said that recent studies of brain function, using meditation practitioners as subjects, has re-opened fields of inquiry into the nature of consciousness, revisiting a 100-year-old tradition begun by psychologist William James that incorporated personal experience within the study of psychology.
“William James understood that one of the primary features of our spiritual life is the first-person experience,” Jinpa said. “That is why he was always listening to people’s accounts of their experiences. But scientists needed objective criteria, so introspection became increasingly problematic.”
He said recent studies of mental processes, using brain-scanning technologies, has re-focused brain research on subjective states of mind.
“Working with contemplatives (including Buddhist meditation practitioners) is bringing back a way to apply introspection,” Jinpa said. “Because of this meeting between contemplative practitioners and scientists, we are beginning to have a way to scientifically explore how conscious mental processes express themselves and change the brain.”
Jinpa said until very recently many aspects of our mental life, such as consciousness, were off the table with when it came to brain studies. They were explored and/or understood primarily from the perspective of behavioral expressions.
“Now there is a growing debate within the scientific community, challenging the reductionist assumption that what we experience as thoughts, emotions and consciousness are ultimately reducible to brain states or processes,” said Jinpa. “Some scientists are also challenging the old assumption that human beings are basically selfish. There is a debate now about whether or not we have overlooked our basic nurturing and caring instinct in explaining our human evolution. This debate about our fundamental nature could have a big impact on the kind of story we tell ourselves about who we are.”
Jinpa said recent advances in neuroscience have demonstrated increasingly complex models of brain processes, but have yet to identify what we refer to as “consciousness.”
“Scientists can talk about localization of emotion, attention and other things, but they also have found that many of these functions are the result of a synchronous activity across the entire brain,” he said. “Does this mean that there is an emergent reality at the collective level that is not reducible to the parts that make up that whole?”
Developing this line of thinking, Jinpa went on to say that science is currently not able to explain what consciousness is because it does not have a way to get a handle on our subjective experience. Jinpa described the Tibetan tradition as a combination of science, philosophy and spirituality, one that differs from the Western religious tradition in important ways—perhaps allowing for an easier melding with current brain-science research.
“I do think having Buddhism and Hinduism in the midst of a scientific discussion brings it a good new flavor. In the Judeo-Christian tradition there has always been a great deal of emphasis on the proof of divinity, and its role in creation and evolution,” Jinpa said. “Buddhism takes the religious experience seriously, but there is also an idea of perfectablity of human nature and of spiritual liberation. Because Buddhism is not a theistic religion, the engagement with science is easier, because practitioners can talk about mental processes without getting into a religious domain.”
Jinpa said he follows the Dalai Lama’s advice to “bracket out” the metaphysical questions, in order to study scientifically the inner functions of the spiritual practice of meditation. Yet, he allowed for the possibility that consciousness was not only based in our biology, and that consciousness could reincarnate after death.
“Consciousness is conceptualized in Tibetan Buddhism, not as a thing, but as a continuum. If you think of consciousness as a process, it would allow for some degree of integrity of the process to carry on even after its physical basis is gone,” he said.
“Even from a Buddhist point of view, it is challenging to come up with a conceptual description of what consciousness is. There is, however, the idea that in meditative experience you can experience glimpses of the true nature of consciousness,” he said. “These practices involve going beyond our thoughts, sensory experiences as well as concepts, and experiencing our consciousness as it is—like seeing the clear sky beyond the overlay of clouds that obscure it. Through meditation, the tradition suggests, that we can go beyond thoughts, to an experience of our mind with no real content.”
“No, I have not experienced it,” he said. “Though many of us can have glimpses of the experience, but there are progressively deeper levels to the experience.”
He said that some of the Buddhist texts characterize this kind of experience of consciousness as it is as a state of total freedom, with a spacious and luminous quality to it.
“There will be no sense of duality or self-consciousness in such an experience,” he said.
Tony Evans: tevans@mtexpress.com
Thupten Jinpa, right, translates for the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists.
Courtesy photo
