THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF

RELIGION
AND SCIENCE
Edited by

PHILIP CLAYTON
AND

ZACHARY SIMPSON
ASSOCIATE EDITOR

OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
 CHAPTER 2

BUDDHISM
AND SCIENCE

B. ALAN WALLACE

INTRODUCTION

When reading an essay on Buddhism and science, it is natural to assume that

Buddhism is a religion, together with Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, because our
Western concept of religion has been modelled primarily on the basis of the three
Abrahamic traditions. In the West we have developed separately the constructs of
science and philosophy, as initially inspired by Greek and Roman modes of inquiry.
Since Buddhism is one among many traditions of inquiry that arose outside the
Mediterranean basin, there is no reason to expect it to fit neatly into any of the
categories of religion, science, and philosophy that have been forged in the West. To
understand what Buddhism brings to the dialogue between religion and science, it
should be met on its own terms, without insisting that it conform to Western
conceptual categories. Buddhism is both more and less than the sum of these three
Western traditions of inquiry.
While Buddhism is often referred to as a 'non-theistic religion', a problematic
characterization in many ways, it does have the potential to play a unique mediating
role between theistic religions, with their emphasis on faith and divine revelation, and
the natural sciences, with their ideals of empiricism, rationality, and scepticism. It may
serve as a catalyst for reintroducing the spirit of empiricism in religion with respect to
the natural world and in science with respect to spiritual realities and subjective
experience in general. This might even lead to a science of religions that would earn
the respect and trust of religious believers, scientists, and the public at large.
Religion is often regarded as addressing questions concerning the meaning and
purpose of life, our ultimate origins and destiny, and the experiences of our inner life.
 BUDDHISM AND SCIENCE 25

Moreover, we commonly deem a system of belief and practice to be religious if it is

concerned primarily with universal and elemental features of existence as they bear
on the human desire for liberation and authentic existence (Harvey 1981: ch. 8; Gilkey
1985: 108-16; Gould 1999: 93). Stated in such broad terms, Buddhism can certainly be
classified as a religion.
Science may be defined as an organized, systematic enterprise that gathers know­
ledge about the world and condenses that knowledge into testable laws and prin­
ciples. In short, it addresses questions of what the universe is composed of and how it
works (Wilson 1998: 58; Gould 1999: 93). Buddhism is an organized, systematic
enterprise aimed at understanding reality, and it presents a wide range of testable
laws and principles, such as the propositions set forth in the Four Noble Truths
(Dalai Lama 1997). Although Buddhism has not developed historically along the lines
of Western science, it is a time-tested discipline of rational and empirical inquiry that
could further evolve in ways more closely resembling science as we have currently
come to understand it.
Furthermore, philosophy, as it is defined primarily within the context of Western
civilization, consists of theories and modes of logical analysis of the principles
underlying conduct, thought, knowledge, and the nature of the universe, and it
includes such branches as ethics, aesthetics, logic, epistemology, and metaphysics.
While there is a general consensus that scientific theories must be testable, at least in
principle, by empirical observation or experiment, no such stipulation is made
for philosophical theories. They may be evaluated on the basis of reason alone.
Buddhism has from its origins included theories and modes of logical analysis of
the principles underlying conduct, thought, knowledge, and the nature of the
universe. So in this regard, Buddhism may be viewed as a philosophy, or-given
the great range of theories within the Buddhist tradition-as a diverse array of
philosophies.
While theistic religions are centrally concerned with transcendental realities, such
as God, Buddhism is naturalistic in the sense that it is centrally concerned with the
causality within the world of experience (Sanskrit: loka). Its fundamental framework
is the Four Noble Truths, pertaining to the reality of suffering, its necessary and
sufficient causes, the possibility of freedom from suffering and its causes, and the
practical means for achieving such freedom. This basic structure of the Buddhist
enterprise is pragmatic, rather than supernatural or metaphysical, so it bears only
some of the family resemblances of Western religions.
While science has overwhelmingly focused on understanding the objective, quan­
tifiable, physical universe in order to gain power over the natural world (Bacon
2004), Buddhism is primarily focused on understanding subjective, qualitative states
of consciousness as a means to liberate the mind from its afflictive tendencies (klesha)
and obscurations (avarana). Given the scientific focus on the outer world, the
Western scientific study of the mind did not begin until more than 300 years after
the time of Copernicus, whereas the rigorous, experiential examination of the mind
has been central to Buddhism from the start. Buddhist theories are not confined to
the Buddha's inquiries alone, but have been rationally analysed and experientially
26 B. ALAN WALLACE

tested by generations of Buddhist scholars and contemplatives over the past 2,500
years (Wallace 2000: 103-18). Buddhist insights into the nature of the mind and
related phenomena are presented as genuine discoveries in the sense that any
competent practitioner with sufficient training can replicate them (though different
kinds of training pursued within different conceptual contexts do lead to different,
and sometimes conflicting, insights). They could thus be said to be empirical in the
sense that they are based on immediate experience, but that experience consists
primarily of first-person, introspective observations, not the third-person externalist
observations more commonly associated with science.
In addition, many Buddhist writings are clearly philosophical in nature and can be
cross-culturally evaluated as such (Bronkhorst 1999; Tillemans 1999). However,
empirical or intellectual inquiry motivated simply by curiosity or knowledge for its
own sake has never been a widespread Buddhist ideal. Unlike both Western science
and philosophy, the Buddhist pursuit of knowledge occurs within the framework of
ethics (shila), focused attention (samadhi), and wisdom (prajiia). These comprise the
essence of the Four Noble Truths, the path to liberation.
The main body of this chapter focuses on Buddhist approaches to cultivating
eudaimonic well-being, probing the nature of consciousness, and understanding
reality at large. In each case, religious, scientific, and philosophical elements are
blended in ways that may not only lend themselves to dialogue with Western science,
but push forward the frontiers of scientific research as well as interdisciplinary and
cross-cultural inquiry.

THE BUDDHIST PURSUIT OF EUDAIMONIC

WELL-BEING

Buddhist tradition identifies itself not in terms of the Western constructs of religion,
science, and philosophy, but with the Indian notion of dharma. While this word takes
on a wide variety of meanings within different contexts, 'Buddhadharma' refers to
the Buddhist world-view and way of life that lead to the elimination of suffering
and the realization of a lasting state of well-being. Such 'sublime dharma'
(saddharma) is presented in contrast to mundane dharmas (lokadharma), which
include the classic set of 'eight mundane concerns': namely, material gain and loss,
stimulus-driven pleasure and pain, praise and ridicule, and fame and ill repute
(Wallace 1993: ch. 1).
These two types of dharma correspond closely to two approaches to well-being
studied in psychology today: hedonic and eudaimonic (Ryan and Deci 2001).
The hedonic approach, corresponding to mundane dharma, is defined in terms of
the pursuit of mental and physical pleasure and the avoidance of pain, whereas the
 BUDDHISM AND SCIENCE 27

eudaimonic approach, corresponding to sublime dharma, focuses on striving for the

perfection that represents the realization of one's true potential (Ryff 1995: 100;
Kahneman, Diener, and Schwarz 1999). Bedonie well-being includes pleasurable
emotions and moods aroused by agreeable stimuli. I would argue that the evolu­
tionary process of natural selection facilitates such happiness in the course of
modifying living organisms so that they can survive and procreate. Eudaimonic
well-being, on the other hand, appears to arise not as a result of natural selection,
but primarily from practices of the kind Buddhists call sublime dharma.

A BUDDHIST MODEL OF SUFFERING

The sublime dharmas taught in Buddhism as a whole have as their principal aim the
decrease and eventual complete liberation from suffering (duhkha), of which three
levels are commonly identified: explicit suffering, the suffering of change, and
ubiquitous suffering of conditionality (Tsong-kha-pa 2000: 289-92). Explicit suffering
refers to all physical and mental feelings of pain and distress. The suffering of change
refers not to unpleasant feelings, but to pleasurable feelings and mental states aroused
by pleasant stimuli, as well as the stimuli themselves. It is so called because when the
stimulus is removed, the resultant happiness fades, revealing the underlying dissat­
isfaction that was only temporarily veiled by the pleasant stimulus. The ubiquitous
suffering of conditionality refers to the state of existence in which one is constantly
vulnerable to all kinds of suffering due to the mind's afflictive tendencies. These
include the 'three mental toxins' of craving, hostility, and delusion, which are
fundamental sources of dissatisfaction. In short, the ground state of such an afflicted
mind is suffering, even when one is experiencing hedonic well-being, and this is
overcome only through the pursuit of eudaimonic well-being, in which all forms of
suffering are ultimately severed from their root.

A BUDDHIST MODEL OF HAPPINESS

As a remedy to the above three-tiered model of suffering, Buddhists aim toward a

similarly three-tiered model of happiness (sukha). The most superficial level of sukha
consists of all forms of explicit pleasure that arise from pleasant chemical, sensory,
intellectual, aesthetic, and interpersonal stimuli. Some of these are ethically neutral,
such as the pleasure of eating sweets; some are ethically positive, such as the joy of
performing an act of altruistic service, or taking delight in one's children's success;
28 B. ALAN WALLACE

and some are ethically malignant, such as taking satisfaction in another's misery. A
second level of sukha consists of traits of eudaimonic well-being that arise from an
ethical way of life and from exceptional states of mental health and balance. The
highest level of sukha consists of the eudaimonic well-being resulting from freedom
from all mental afflictions and obscurations and the complete realization of one's
potentials for virtue. One who experiences such total freedom and realization is
known as a buddha, literally 'one who is awake'.
Hedonic psychology is concerned with the avoidance of explicit suffering and the
accomplishment of explicit happiness, and it measures the success of that approach
in terms of the amount of happiness and suffering one experiences from day to day.
The Buddhist pursuit of eudaimonic well-being, on the other hand, is primarily
concerned with gaining freedom from the second and third levels of duhkha and
realizing the second two levels of sukha. However, there is an asymmetry in the causal
relation between hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. While the hedonic pursuit of
stimulus-driven pleasures may or may not contribute to eudaimonic well-being and
may actually interfere with it, the eudaimonic approach enables one to derive
increasing pleasure from life in the midst of both adversity and felicity. The hedonic
approach focuses on the short-term causes of stimulus-driven happiness, whereas the
eudaimonic approach focuses on the long-term causes of well-being that arise from
mental balance.
While hedonic well-being is contingent upon outer and inner pleasant stimuli, and
is often pursued with no regard for ethics, the Buddhist eudaimonic approach begins
with ethics, then focuses on the cultivation of mental balance, and finally centres on
the cultivation of wisdom, particularly that stemming from insight into one's own
nature. In this regard, eudaimonic well-being may be characterized as having three
levels: social and environmental well-being stemming from ethical behaviour in
relation to other living beings and the environment, psychological well-being stem­
ming from mental balance, and spiritual well-being stemming from wisdom. These
three elements--ethics, mental balance derived from the cultivation of focused
attention, and wisdom-are the three 'higher trainings' that comprise the essence
of the Buddhist path to awakening.

Ethics
The essence of the first training in ethics consists of the avoidance of injurious
behaviour and the cultivation of behaviour that is conducive to one's own and
others' well-being. While the topic of ethics in Western civilization is commonly a
matter of religious belief or philosophical analysis, and has not been a focus of
psychology, in the Buddhist tradition as a whole it is a practical, experiential matter
that is at the very core of well-being. All of us are called upon to examine our own
physical, verbal, and mental behaviour, noting both short-term as well as long-term
consequences of our actions. Although some activity may yield immediate pleasure,
if over time it results in unrest, conflict, and misery, it is deemed unwholesome
 BUDDHISM AND SCIENCE 29

(akushala). On the other hand, even if a choice of behaviour involves difficulties in

the short term, it is regarded as wholesome (kushala) if it leads eventually to
contentment, harmony, and eudaimonic well-being for oneself and others. This
raises the possibility of ecological, sociological, and psychological research into the
role of ethics, not in terms of religious doctrines or societal contracts, but with
respect to the typ es of behaviours that impede and nurture our own and others'
genuine well-being.
In Buddhist tradition, ethics is taught before introducing the second kind of
training-meditative practices designed to reduce mental afflictions and enhance
mental balance-for it has been found that without this foundation, such practices
will be of little or no value. Indeed, they may aggravate pre-existing neuroses and
other mental imbalances. Likewise, we can reflect upon the limited benefits of
teaching people sophisticated therapeutic techniques to reduce depression, anxiety,
or rage without exploring the effects of how they are leading their lives.

Mental Balance
While many environmental problems and social conflicts stem from unethical
behaviour, according to Buddhism most mental suffering is due to imbalances of
the mind to which virtually all of us are prone. A person whose mind is severely
imbalanced is highly vulnerable to all forms of duhkha, including anxiety, frustration,
boredom, restlessness, and depression. These are some of the symptoms of an
unhealthy mind, and Buddhists claim that the underlying problems can be remedied
through skilful, sustained mental training (Gethin 2001). On the other hand, just as a
healthy, uninjured body is relatively free of pain, so a healthy, balanced mind is
relatively free of psychological distress.
This is the point of the second phase of Buddhist practice, a key element of which
is the cultivation of focused attention (samadhi). The training in samadhi, however,
refers to much more than the development of attentional skills. More broadly, it
includes (1) conative balance, or the cultivation of desires and intentions conducive to
eudaimonic well-being (Tsong-kha-pa 2000); (2) attentional balance, including the
development of exceptional attentional stability and vividness (Gunaratana 1991;
Lamrimpa 1995; Wallace 2005a); (3) cognitive balance, including the application of
mindfulness to one's own and others' bodies, minds, and the environment at
large (Nyanaponika Thera 1973; Gunaratana 1991); and (4) affective balance, in
which one's emotional responses are appropriately measured and conducive to
one's own and others' well-being (Goleman 1997, 2002; Davidson et al. 2005; Nauriyal
2005; Wallace 2005b).
A basic hypothesis of Buddhism is that to the extent that the mind loses its balance
of any of the above four kinds, its ground state, prior to any chemical, sensory, or
conceptual stimulation, is one of duhkha, or dis-ease. In response to such dissatis­
faction, there are two major options: (1) to follow the hedonic approach of smother­
ing the unpleasant symptoms of these fundamental imbalances; (2) to adopt the
30 B. ALAN WALLACE

eudaimonic approach of getting to the root of these symptoms by cultivating mental

balance. Modern society has provided us with a plethora of means to stifle unhap­
piness, from mood-altering drugs to sensory bombardment, to extreme sports. The
more the mind is in a state of imbalance, the more intense the stimuli it requires to
smother its internal unrest.
According to Buddhism, no pleasurable stimuli are true sources of happiness in the
sense that an artesian well is a source of water and the sun is a source of heat. If they were,
we should experience happiness whenever we encounter pleasurable stimuli, and the
degree of our happiness should be directly correlated to the intensity and duration of
our contact with those stimuli. While sensory experiences, attitudes, other people, and
situations seem to 'make us happy', in fact the most they can do is contribute to our well­
being; they cannot literally deliver happiness to us. The only way, according to the
Buddhist hypothesis, to achieve eudaimonic well-being is to balance the mind, and to
the extent that this occurs, one discovers a sense of well-being from within, which
lingers whether one is alone or with others, active or still.
We turn now to the third element of Buddhist practice, the cultivation of wisdom,
particularly through the investigation of consciousness.

Buddhist Science of Consciousness

In his classic work Science and Civilization in China (1956) Joseph Needham explored
the historical reasons why the civilizations of China and India never developed
science as we understand it in the modern West: namely, a quantitative, technologic­
ally driven science of the outer, physical world. Similarly, one may ask why Western
civilization has never developed a science of consciousness (Whitehead 2004), in
which a consensus is reached regarding the definition of consciousness and means
are devised to examine directly the nature of consciousness, as well as its necessary
and sufficient causes and its causal influences. Buddhism, I maintain, has developed
such a rational and empirical discipline of inquiry.
I shall begin by outlining a hierarchy among the natural sciences, showing both
the strengths and weaknesses of modern science. While the physical sciences rely
heavily on quantitative analysis, axioms of mathematics do_ not define, predict, or
explain the emergence of the physical universe. Isaac Newton modelled the physical
laws presented in his Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy on the axioms of
geometry, but his discoveries would have been impossible without careful observa­
tions of celestial and terrestrial physical phenomena. Likewise, the current laws of
physics alone do not define, predict, or explain the emergence of life in the universe.
Biologists needed to develop their own unique modes of observing living organisms,
such as Darwin's studies on the Galapagos Islands, as a basis for defining and
explaining the emergence and evolution of life in the universe. Similarly, the laws
of biology alone do not define, predict, or explain the emergence of consciousness in
living organisms; nor is consciousness detected by the instruments of biology. Given
the pattern of the physical and life sciences, it follows that cognitive scientists must
 BUDDHISM AND SCIENCE 31

also devise sophisticated, rigorous means of directly observing mental phenomena as

a basis for defining and explaining the origins and nature of consciousness. Galileo
refined the telescope and used it to make precise observations of celestial phenom­
ena, and Van Leeuwenhoek used the microscope to make precise observations of
minute living organisms. But cognitive scientists have failed to devise a methodology
for making reliable, direct observations of the whole spectrum of mental phenomena
themselves, which can be made only from a first-person perspective, as I shall discuss
below.
William James, a great pioneer of American psychology, proposed that psych­
ology should consist of the study of subjective mental phenomena, their relations to
their objects, to the brain, and to the rest of the world. To develop this scientific
study of the mind, he proposed a threefold strategy: mental phenomena should be
studied indirectly through the careful observation of behaviour and of the brain,
and they should be examined directly by means of introspection. Among these three
approaches, he declared that for the study of the mind, 'Introspective Observation
is what we have to rely on first and foremost and always' (James 1890/1950: i. 185).
Much as the theories of Copernicus, Darwin, and Mendel were largely ignored for
decades after their deaths, so this threefold strategy of James has been discarded for
the most part, while behaviourism, cognitive psychology, and neuroscience have
dominated the cognitive sciences. The current means of observing mental phenom­
ena directly has not achieved the level of sophistication of the behavioural and
neurosciences, so, in this regard, James's comment that psychology today is hardly
more than what physics was before Galileo still retains a high degree of validity
(James 1892).
There are certainly problems in incorporating introspection-a first-person,
qualitative mode of inquiry-into the framework of science, which is centred
upon third-person, quantitative methods. Indeed, there have been examples in
Western psychology of employing inadequately developed methods of self­
reporting that were never able to clarify general principles for undePstanding
mental functions (Danziger 1980). However, these problems may be surmounted
by improving the necessary skills for making precise, reliable, introspective obser­
vations. Another reason why first-person observation has been so neglected since
the time of James is the neuroscientific interest in identifying the mechanisms
underlying mental processes. Despite this focus, cognitive scientists have yet to
identify any mechanism that explains how neural processes generate or even
influence subjectively experienced mental processes, or, conversely, how mental
events influence the brain. They have succeeded in identifying the neural correlates
to specific perceptual and conceptual processes, but the exact nature of those
correlations remains a mystery. A widespread assumption among cognitive
scientists is that neural and mental processes are actually flip sides of the same
coin, but this belief has yet to be validated by either empirical evidence or rational
argument. All we really know is that specific kinds of neural events are necessary
for the generation of specific kinds of mental processes. That hardly amounts to a
proof of identity.
32 B. ALAN WALLACE

In light of the history of science, this insistence on identifying the mechanisms of

mental processes may be premature. From the time when Newton identified the
natural laws of gravity in 1687, it was 228 years before the mechanism of gravity was
explained in Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. Likewise, for the laws of natural
selection, a century passed after the publication of Darwin's On the Origins of Species
in 1859 and Gregor Mendel's formulation of his theories of genetics in 1865 before
James Watson and Francis Crick were able to model the structure of DNA. And
according to quantum theory, which is commonly cited as the most successful of all
scientific theories, no mechanisms have yet been found to explain such phenomena
as non-locality, the uncertainty principle, or the collapse of probabilistic wave
functions.
It is quite possible that no mechanisms will ever be found to explain the causal
interactions between neural and mental events, but this should not deter scientists
from developing rigorous methods for observing mental phenomena in the only
way possible: through first-person, introspective observation in conjunction with
careful observation of behaviour and of the brain, as James proposed more than a
century ago.
The physical sciences have undergone two revolutions: the Copernican revolution
and the twentieth-century revolution of relativity and quantum theory. The bio­
logical sciences have witnessed one revolution, beginning with Darwin and culmin­
ating in the Human Genome Project. The cognitive sciences have achieved no similar
radical shift in their understanding of mind or consciousness. The basic assumptions
about the mind and its relation to the brain that were common in the late nineteenth
century remain unchanged and largely unchallenged to this day. Although great
advances have been made recently in measuring neural correlates of mental phe­
nomena, it is far from clear whether these objective measures will ever reveal the
nature of those correlations and therefore the nature of mind-brain interactions or
consciousness itself.
Despite the West's failure to bring about a revolution in the rognitive sciences,
it would be hasty to assume that no other civilization has revolutionized the
scientific study of the mind. Much as Galileo refined the telescope and used it in
unprecedented ways to directly observe celestial phenomena, so the Buddha
refined the practice of samadhi and used it in unprecedented ways to explore
states of consciousness and their objects (Nal)amoli 1992). As a result of his own
experiential explorations, he came to the conclusion: 'The mind that is established
in equipoise comes to know reality as it is' (Kamalasila 1958: 205). While such
introspective inquiry may seem more philosophical than scientific, consider the
definition of the scientific method as 'principles and procedures for the systematic
pursuit of knowledge involving the recognition and formulation of a problem, the
collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and
testing of hyp otheses' ( Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary). There is noth­
ing in that definition that insists on third-person observation or quantitative
analysis, especially for phenomena that are irreducibly first-person in nature
(Searle 1994).
 BUDDHISM AND SCIENCE 33

THE PSYCHE

Derived from exactly this kind of exploration, three dimensions of consciousness

may be posited on the basis of contemplative writings common to the Mahayana
Buddhist tradition (which emerged around the beginning of the Christian era). The
first of these is the psyche (chitta)-the whole array of conscious and unconscious
mental processes that occur from birth to death. In Buddhism the primary reason for
exploring the psyche is to identify and learn to overcome the afflictive mental
processes that generate suffering internally. This is the central theme of the Four
Noble Truths and the Buddhist pursuit of liberation.
A thorough understanding of the human psyche must include insight into
its origins. The vast majority of contemporary cognitive scientists assume, often
unquestioningly, that the brain is solely responsible for producing all mental pro­
cesses. The uniformity of this view is remarkable in light of the fact that scientists
have yet to identify the neural correlates of consciousness or its necessary and
sufficient causes (Searle 2002: 49-50; Searle 2004: 119). Researchers in the field of
artificial intelligence question whether a carbon-based brain is necessary for the
generation of consciousness, and there is no scientific consensus regarding its
sufficient causes. The belief that the brain is solely responsible for all states of
consciousness stems immediately from the metaphysical principles of scientific
materialism, which dominate most scientific thinking today, much as Roman Catholic
theology dominated and constrained intellectual life during the time of Galileo
(Wallace 2000).

SUBSTRATE CONSCIOUSNESS

Through the development and utilization of highly advanced stages of samadhi,

which remain unexplored by science, contemplatives in the 'Great Perfection'
(Dzogchen) tradition of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism claim to have discovered a second
dimension of consciousness: a continuum of individual mental awareness that
precedes this life and continues on beyond death, which they call the substrate
consciousness (alayavijnana) (Wallace 1996: ch. 23; Dudjom Lingpa 2004: 31 and 68;
Wallace 200a: 77-8 and 164-6). This relative ground state of the mind is characterized
by three qualities: bliss, luminosity, and non-conceptuality. It is most vividly appre­
hended by meditatively enhancing the stability and vividness of attention, but it
naturally manifests in deep sleep and in the dying process.
The human psyche, the first dimension of consciousness mentioned above,
emerges, they conclude, not from the body but from this underlying stream of
consciousness that precedes species differentiation. While the body conditions the
34 B. ALAN WALLACE

mind and is necessary for specific mental processes to arise as long as the substrate
consciousness is embodied, the psyche emerges from this underlying stream of
consciousness that is embodied in life after life. This theory is compatible with all
current scientific knowledge of the mind and the brain, so there is nothing illogical
about it; nor is it simply a faith-based proposition as far as advanced Buddhist
contemplatives are concerned. Scientific materialists, however, insist that mental
phenomena emerge solely from the brain, much as bile is secreted from the gall
bladder (Searle 2002: 115). W hat they commonly overlook, though, is that mental
phenomena, unlike all other emergent phenomena known to science, cannot be
observed by any objective, scientific means. So this assertion is a metaphysical
assumption, not an established scientific fact. Something that is purely a matter of
religious faith or philosophical speculation as far as scientists in the West are
concerned may be an experientially confirmed hypothesis for contemplatives in the
East. The demarcation between science and metaphysics-between theories that can
and cannot be tested empirically-is determined by the limits of experiential inquiry,
not Nature or God.
Thus far, experiential inquiry in science has been confined largely to the exploration
of the objective world by way of our five physical senses and the instruments of
technology. Mental phenomena themselves, as opposed to their neural and behav­
ioural correlates, are invisible to such objective modes of observation. So, to this day,
cognitive scientists have yet to come to a consensus regarding the definition of
consciousness; they have no objective means of detecting the presence of consciousness
in anything; they have failed to identify even the neural correlates of consciousness, and
therefore remain in the dark regarding the necessary and sufficient causes of con­
sciousness. All this suggests that mental phenomena are irreducibly first-person
phenomena, and that the only way to restore a true sense of empiricism to the scientific
study of the mind is to acknowledge the primary role of introspective observation.
A major reason for the resistance on the part of many scientists to including
introspection as a legitimate method of empirical inquiry is that it is quintessentially
a private, first-person kind of experience. Scientific inquiry, on the other hand, has
achieved its great successes by way of public, third-person observations. It is import­
ant to note that these advances in scientific knowledge have focused primarily on
objective, quantifiable, physical processes, while conscious mental processes are
subjective, qualitative, and invisible to the physical means of observation developed
by science. But now, with the recent development of sophisticated psychological and
neurophysiological methods of inquiry, the first-person methods of introspection
(based on the development of advanced stages of samadhi) may be cross-checked
with the third-person methods of the cognitive sciences in ways that may expand the
horizons of both scientific and contemplative inquiry.
TheBuddha claimed to have gained direct knowledge of this continuity of individual
consciousness beyond death, as well as direct knowledge of the patterns of causal
relationships connecting multiple lifetimes (Nal)amoli 1992: 23-6). Many generations
ofBuddhist contemplatives throughout Asia claim to have replicated his discoveries, so
such reports are not confined to the testimony of one individual. From a third-person
 BUDDHISM AND SCIENCE 35

perspective, all such discoveries based on introspective inquiry remain anecdotal, so

only practitioners have 'proof ' of their validity. As such, they are accessible only to a
privileged few, but this has always been true of many of the most profound scientific
truths. It takes years of training to become a qualified 'third person' capable of testing
others' alleged discoveries in any advanced field of science. They have never been
testable by the general public, who often take them on faith, much as religious believers
take on faith the claims of their church. The Buddhist training in samadhi required
to gain experiential access to the substrate may easily take 10,000-20,000 hours­
comparable to the time required for graduate work in science-and until now, such
professional training has never been available to cognitive scientists.
Particularly in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, for centuries there has been keen
interest in identifying children who were allegedly accomplished meditators and
teachers in their past lives. This has commonly been done by seeking out children
who appear to remember their past-life experiences, and scientific research into such
instances has also begun (Stevenson 1997). Most cognitive scientists have refused to
consider any theory of reincarnation, insisting that it cannot belong in a scientific
dialogue per se.
While there does not appear to be any neuroscientific means of disproving the
hyp othesis that the brain is necessary for all states of consciousness, few scientists have
expressed concern over the non-scientific nature of their fundamental assumptions
about the mind-body problem. Similarly, the Buddhist hypothesis of the substrate
consciousness does not easily lend itself to scientific repudiation; but scientific
inquiry, with a suspension of disbelief, should first be directed to examining whether
any positive evidence exists, before worrying about whether it can be repudiated.
Indirect evidence may be provided by third-person methods, such as the field
studies of Ian Stevenson and his scientific successor Jim Tucker (2005). The quanti­
tative, objective tools of observation of science provide no immediate access to any
kind of mental phenomena, so they are not likely to reveal any evidence for the
substrate consciousness. This can come only from rigorous, first-person methods
such as those proposed by the Buddhist tradition. Just as the existence of the moons
ofJupiter can be verified only by those who gaze through a telescope, so the existence
of subtle dimensions of consciousness can be verified experientially only by those
willing to devote themselves to years of rigorous attentional training. And dedication
to such refinement of attention is not contingent on accepting the hyp otheses of
Buddhism or any other contemplative tradition beforehand.

PRIMORDIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

There is yet a third dimension of consciousness, known as primordial consciousness

(jnana), or the Buddha-nature (buddhadhatu) (Ruegg 1989; Thrangu Rinpoche 1993;
36 B. ALAN WALLACE

Dalai Lama 2000). This is regarded in the Mahayana Buddhist tradition as the
ultimate ground state of consciousness, prior to the conceptual dichotomies of
subject and object, mind and matter, and even existence and non-existence. This
realm of consciousness is described metaphorically as being space-like and luminous,
forever unsullied by mental afflictions or obscurations of any kind. The realization of
this state of consciousness is said to yield a state of well-being that represents the
culmination of the Buddhist pursuit of eudaimonic well-being, knowledge, and
virtue. With such insight, it is said that one comes to understand not only the nature
of consciousness, but also its relation to reality as a whole. This raises the truly
astonishing Buddhist hypothesis: 'All phenomena are preceded by the mind. When
the mind is comprehended, all phenomena are comprehended. By bringing the mind
under control, all things are brought under control' (Siintideva 1961: 68).
This primordial consciousness is, then, the ultimate basis for the other two
dimensions of awareness. While each human psyche emerges from its individual
substrate consciousness, all streams of substrate consciousness emerge ultimately
from primordial consciousness, which transcends individuality. The substrate con­
sciousness can allegedly be ascertained with the achievement of advanced stages of
samadhi, whereas primordial consciousness can be realized only through the culti­
vation of contemplative insight ( vipashyana) (Bielefeldt 1988; Karma Chagme 1998;
Padmasambhava 1998; Wallace 2005b: ch. 14). Thus, Buddhism postulates this di­
mension of awareness not as a mystical theology, but as a hypothesis that can be put
to the test of immediate experience through advanced contemplative training open
to anyone, without any leap of faith that violates reason.
The above theory of the multiple levels of emergence of consciousness flies in the
face of the widespread assumption of cognitive scientists that the brain alone
produces all states of consciousness. Such scientists commonly assume that they
already know that consciousness has no existence apart from the brain, so the only
question to be solved is how the brain produces conscious states. Neurologist
Antonio Damasio, for instance, while acknowledging that scientists have yet to
understand consciousness, declares, 'Understanding consciousness says little or
nothing about the origins of the universe, the meaning of life, or the likely destiny
of both' (Damasio 1999: 28). This assumption is an instance of what historian Daniel
Boorstin calls 'an illusion of knowledge'. It is such illusions, he proposes, and not
mere ignorance, that have historically acted as the greatest impediments to scientific
discovery (Boorstin 1985: p. xv).
Prospectively, were the Buddhist theories of the substrate consciousness and
primordial consciousness and the practices for realizing eudaimonic well-being to
be introduced into the realm of scientific inquiry, radical changes might occur in
both traditions. Buddhism, like all other religions, philosophies, and sciences, is
prone to dogmatism. As they encounter the empiricism and scepticism of modern
science and philosophy, contemporary Buddhists may be encouraged to take a fresh
look at their own beliefs and assumptions, putting them to the test, wherever
possible, of rigorous third-person inquiry. Buddhist societies have never developed
a science of the brain, nor any quantitative science of behaviour or the physical
 BUDDHISM AND SCIENCE 37

world, so its understanding of the human mind may be enhanced by close collabor­
ation with various branches of modern science.
The encounter between the cognitive sciences and Buddhism and other contem­
plative traditions may also bring about deep changes in the scientific understanding
of the mind. One possibility is that the first revolution in the cognitive sciences may
result from the long-delayed synthesis of rigorous first-person and third-person
means of investigating a wide range of mental phenomena. This would be the
fulfilment of William James's strategy for the scientific study of the mind, which
has been marginalized over the past century. This revolution could be analogous to
the emergence of classical physics, culminating in the discoveries of Isaac Newton. If
we speculate further into the future, we may envision a second revolution in the
cognitive sciences emerging from the study of and with individuals with exceptional
mental skills and insights acquired through sophisticated, sustained contemplative
training. This might parallel the revolution in physics in the early twentieth century,
which challenged many of our deepest assumptions about the nature of space, time,
mass, and energy. Such revolutions in the cognitive sciences may equally challenge
current scientific assumptions about the nature of consciousness and its relation to
the brain and the rest of the world.

A RETURN TO EMPIRICISM

A reasonable scientific response to the above presentation of Buddhist views on the

nature of eudaimonic well-being and the three dimensions of consciousness is one of
open-minded scepticism. But such scepticism should be equally directed to one's
own beliefs, which may be 'illusions of knowledge' masquerading as scientific facts.
Richard Feynman wonderfully expressed this ideal of scientific scepticism thus:

One of the ways of stopping science would be only to do experiments in the region where you
know the law. But experimenters search most diligently, and with the greatest effort, in exactly
those places where it seems most likely that we can prove our theories wrong. In other words
we are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we
find progress. (Feynman 1983: 158)

Buddhism, too, expresses a comparable ideal of scepticism. The Buddha is recorded

as having said: 'Monks, just as the wise accept gold after testing it by heating, cutting,
and rubbing it, so are my words to be accepted after examining them, but not out of
respect for me' (Shastri 1968: k. 3587). The Dalai Lama maintains this self-reflective
spirit of scepticism when he writes: 'A general basic stance of Buddhism is that it is
inappropriate to hold a view that is logically inconsistent. This is taboo. But even
more taboo than holding a view that is logically inconsistent is holding a view that
goes against direct experience' (Varela and Hayward 1992: 37).
38 B. ALAN WALLACE

I have argued in this chapter that Buddhism has developed a science of conscious­
ness, but serious objections may be raised. It may be pointed out that science is
characterized by controlled experiments, repeated iterative evolving cycles of
hypothesis formation, controlled testing, hypothesis revision, and prediction. How­
ever, these traits are not common to all branches of science. Astronomy, geology,
meteorology, and ecology are some examples that do not lend themselves to all the
above methods. Buddhist rational and experiential inquiry into the nature of
consciousness and the world at large bears some qualities in common with modern
science, but not all. This opens the possibility of a new contemplative science
emerging from the interface between Buddhism and the cognitive sciences, in
which rigorous first-person and third-person methodologies are integrated in
unprecedented ways. Such a science may serve to bring together spiritual and
scientific modes of inquiry, to the enrichment of everyone.
Buddhism is also poised to serve as a mediator between theistic religions, which
regard God (existing independently of human experience) as their ultimate author­
ity, and science, which takes Nature ( existing independently of human experience) as
its ultimate authority. While many theologians claim that God can be known only
through faith or reason (versus direct experience), and many scientists claim that the
mind can be scientifically studied only inferentially by examining the brain and
behaviour, Buddhist contemplatives claim that the potential range of immediate
experience is far greater than is commonly assumed. The Buddhist challenge here is
to retrieve spiritual realities and physical realities from their respective black boxes
and return them to the world of experience, where they rightfully belong.
Such a move accords with William James's proposal of a science of religion that
differs from philosophical theology by drawing inferences and devising imperatives
based on the scrutiny of 'the immediate content of religious consciousness' (James
1902/1985: 12). Such a science of religions, he suggested, might offer mediation
between scientists and religious believers, and might eventually command public
adherence comparable to that presently granted to the natural sciences. I conclude
this chapter with James's challenge to restore a true spirit of empiricism to both
religion and science:
Let empiricism once become associated with religion, as hitherto, through some strange
misunderstanding, it has been associated with irreligion, and I believe that a new·era of religion
as well as philosophy will be ready to begin ... I fully believe that such an empiricism is a more
natural ally than dialectics ever were, or can be, of the religious life. (James 1909/1977: 142)

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