Buddhism and Science

There is growing evidence that Buddhism can potentially have an important and productive

influence on modern science, primarily at two levels: (i) the detailed research level evident in the

study of mind, and (ii) the epistemological impact on the foundations of science, especially

physics. The life sciences have developed enormously over the last 50 years. One main branch is

the study of mind, cognition, affect and related mental phenomena, where the brain sciences (or

neurosciences) play a central role. There is an unusual confluence of disciplines collectively

training their focused lenses on the nature of cognition, emotion and action. These disciplines

include neuroscience, molecular genetics, experimental psychology, artificial intelligence and

linguistics. Several major interdisciplinary efforts have emerged from this hybridization

including cognitive science, neuroscience and affective neuroscience. These new

interdisciplinary hybrid sciences have rapidly embraced the study of the mind as a scientific

object and have enabled modern science to approach this effort with unprecedented rigor and

precision.

As a result of this research frontier, science has been gradually waking up to what, until very

recently, seemed “un-scientific”: consciousness itself. Can a scientific study of mind leave out

what is ever-present for humans: their own experience? What is consciousness? How is it related

to other mental abilities generated by the brain (such as vision, emotion, and memory)? How

plastic is the brain’s potential for meeting human needs in medicine and education?

This consciousness “revolution” has brought to center stage the simple fact that studying the

brain and behavior requires an equally disciplined complement: the exploration of experience
itself. It is here that Buddhism stands as an outstanding source of observations concerning human

mind and experience, accumulated over centuries with great theoretical rigor, and, what is even

more significant, with very precise exercises and practices for individual exploration. This

treasure-trove of knowledge is an uncanny complement to science. Where the material

refinement of science is unmatched in empirical studies, the experiential level is still immature

and naive compared to the long-standing Buddhist tradition of studying the human mind.

The natural meeting ground between science and Buddhism is thus at one of the most active

research frontiers today. What is involved is learning how to put together the data from the inner

examination of human experience with the empirical basis that modern cognitive and affective

neuroscience can provide. Such first-person accounts are not a mere “confirmation” of what

science can find anyway. It is a necessary complement. For instance, unless refined internal

descriptions are taken into account in current experiments that use brain imaging to study the

neural substrates of emotions or attention, the empirical data cannot be properly interpreted.

Thus, we foresee in the future that the mind sciences will evolve into a form of experiential

neuroscience, bridging the gap between external and internal descriptions. Such a unification of

our understanding of the world, a new frame for a mind science, is one of the major contributions

Buddhism is capable of offering. The interest in such cross-fertilization with science was one of

the main inspirations for the Mind & Life initiative, and remains at the center of its efforts to

transform this vision into concrete laboratory collaborations.

Two related implications of the dialogue between science and Buddhism include contributions to

our understanding of behavioral and neural plasticity and to the development of specific

interventions for the promotion of psychological and physical well-being. Modern cognitive

science and psychology makes certain assumptions about what is normative in mental
functioning and also what the limits of change are for such functioning. For example, in the

cognitive domain it is regarded as normative for individuals to be incapable of attending to a

single object for more than several seconds. In the affective domain, the emotion of anger is

regarded as a normative emotion that naturally arises in situations where our goals are thwarted.

Buddhism teaches us that each of these assumptions about the “normal operating mode” of

humans is faulty and that with training (i.e., in meditation), significant transformations in these

abilities are likely to occur. This perspective poses an important challenge to Western scientists

and calls into question some of our deepest assumptions about the “nature” of human behavior.

Moreover, Buddhism provides a detailed specification of the methods that enable such plasticity

to occur. This meeting ground will provide a critical impetus for change in the Western

conception of the fixedness of mental function, with a clear call for new research to explore the

capacity for plastic transformation in basic biobehavioral functions that were once regarded as

unchanging components of our mental landscape.

The experientially based technology of meditation and related practices offered by Buddhism is

currently having a major impact on modern medicine and psychotherapeutic intervention. Claims

about the beneficial effects of these practices on both mental and physical health and well-being

have catalyzed serious efforts to examine the mechanisms by which meditation produces

salubrious consequences. The Mind & Life dialogues have directly spawned new research

demonstrating changes in both brain and immune function produced by meditation. This work is

helping to restore the brain back into the context of the body to examine how changes in the

brain have downstream effects on the immune, autonomic and endocrine systems, all of which

are implicated in health and disease.

Epistemology
Although the life and cognitive sciences are where Buddhism can touch science intimately, at the

detailed research level, it can also have a great importance at the more fundamental or

epistemological level. In fact, the philosophical refinements in the Buddhist tradition concerning

the nature of reality, perception and logic, are as deep as its observational base of human

experience. This includes notions such as designated identity, co-dependent origination and

emptiness that have no counterpart in the philosophical heritage of the West.

Modern physics is perhaps where this second meeting ground is most visible. Physics is in the

middle of a conceptual revolution pursuing the so-called unification efforts, in order to relate the

minute universe of quantum mechanism to that of macrophysics and gravitation. As is well

known, such research has opened numerous gaping epistemological questions; for example non-

locality, the origin of the universe, and the role of the observer. Philosophers of science and

research physicists have found these conceptual or epistemological exchanges potentially

precious. (See GEO Magazine, cover story, January, 1999.) The Mind & Life Institute has

decided to continue this line of mutual exploration as the second major contribution Buddhism

can offer to modern science.