← B. Alan Wallace

Four Applications Of Mindfulness Retreat 2013 with B. Alan Wallace (part 1)

B. Alan Wallace · 2013 · 1 h 59 min · Vajrayana Institute via Internet Archive

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  • 0:45

    We'll see how it goes. Right now it's quite pleasant. So back to the main topic. The topic here for this week, as you well know, is the four close applications of mindfulness. These have been translated in various ways, commonly four foundations of mindfulness, which is bad, which isn't bad, but it's not really quite accurate. These four matrices of meditative inquiry or contemplative inquiry really lie at the very core. Buddhist insight practice or Vipassanā practice. They're the foundation, to my mind, for all schools of Buddhism, whether Zen, Chinese Buddhism, Inter-Tibetan Buddhism, Theravāda Buddhism and so forth.

  • 7:34

    They left it out. And so branches of physics, chemistry, biology, geology, botany and so forth and so on took off like gangbusters, you know, tremendous progress, astronomy, cosmology. But for those first 300 years when there was so much progress in the physical sciences, there was zero progress. In the mental sciences, because there weren't any. And so these started up only in the latter part of the 19th century. And certainly much progress has been made.

  • 11:17

    An infusion of fresh air and an infusion of radical empiricism, and that can come by way of the very sophisticated observation, investigation of mental states directly. Not by way of dogmatic brainwashing or trying to be converted to a religion or anything of the sort, but by sharp, clear, penetrating investigation of the mind from a first-person perspective. That's almost entirely absent from modern mind science. It's incredibly odd, but that is the state of the art.

  • 55:02

    You can just crack open the skull and look at it. A big lump of two kilos of goo, a kind of tapioca pudding-like substance. You can look at a macro level. And then you can take your microscope right down to electrons and at no point will you ever see any subjective experience at all. At all. Period. And then if you introspectively, you really hone your introspective abilities and that's what we'll be developing here in a week. It's a short workshop. Well, you won't see the brain.

  • 1:21:34

    That's a big difference. It's acknowledging introspection rather than dismissing introspection. It's radical empiricism. What the skeptic should have been saying, he said, while they do the opposite. So introspective observation, what role does this have in the scientific study of the mind as envisioned more than a hundred years ago by William James? He said introspective observation is what we have to rely on first and foremost and always.

0:06 So, Report an error

0:09 I'm just wondering whether we can cut down on road noise. Probably not. But if we can, it'd be nice. But we certainly want the fresh air coming in. It's not a big deal. So, I'm just going to jump in. So, the topic for this week. Report an error

0:34 Again, I don't want to sacrifice the nice fresh air for a little bit quieter, so everybody should be most importantly comfortable. Report an error

0:45 We'll see how it goes. Right now it's quite pleasant. So back to the main topic. The topic here for this week, as you well know, is the four close applications of mindfulness. These have been translated in various ways, commonly four foundations of mindfulness, which is bad, which isn't bad, but it's not really quite accurate. These four matrices of meditative inquiry or contemplative inquiry really lie at the very core. Report an error

1:13 Buddhist insight practice or Vipassanā practice. They're the foundation, to my mind, for all schools of Buddhism, whether Zen, Chinese Buddhism, Inter-Tibetan Buddhism, Theravāda Buddhism and so forth. They're absolutely foundational. They're very practical. We can integrate them into daily life. It is, I think, really a paradigm or a prime example of Buddhist science of mind or mind science. Report an error

1:39 If it's not this, then I don't think it's anywhere else. It is so clear that this is not simply a matter of faith or belief or simply devotion or what have you, but it is intended as a very rigorous form of inquiry to make discoveries that can be replicated, that are sophisticated, they're rational, they're empirical, and they have the distinctive quality when such insights arises to really transform the one in whom they arise. Report an error

2:05 So these insights are not simply for the acquisition of fresh knowledge or insight, Insight and knowledge for the sake of the purification of the mind, the liberation of the mind, the achievement of liberation and spiritual awakening. So it's a very special type of knowledge and a special type of knowing. Report an error

2:23 And so in terms of a very broad framework, when we look at the fourth noble truth, the noble truth or the reality of the path, its fundamental structure. It's first laying a foundation of ethics, of non-violence, of living a benevolent, altruistic way of life. On the basis of that, really learning how to balance and refine the mind through meditation, Samādhi in particular. Report an error

2:50 And then finally, the culmination in terms of method is the practice of Vipassanā, for insight meditation, in order to realize the third of these basic structures or practices of Buddhism, and that is wisdom. And so this is foundational. These four up close applications of mindfulness to the body, to feelings, to mental states and finally phenomena at large. Report an error

3:16 So any of you have taken and attended any meditation retreats in the Theravāda Buddhist tradition and you've likely bumped into this because these four foundations of mindfulness or four applications of mindfulness are very central. They utterly dominate. Report an error

3:33 The practice of meditation, particularly for Vipassanā, within the entire Theravāda tradition, the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, the Buddhist discourse on the close application of mindfulness, is very, very prominent in Theravāda Buddhism, the Buddhism nowadays that flourishes in Southeast Asia. But it's not just there, it's not simply a Theravāda practice or a so-called Hinayana practice. We find these four applications of mindfulness figure quite prominently in the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras. Report an error

4:02 Quite interesting, very well developed there. For those of you who know the works of Shantideva, the great 8th century Indian Buddha sage, in his Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life, he gives a thorough treatment of the four applications. In his other text, which is translated but not particularly well, an old, old translation, called The Compendium of Practices, it's taught there as well, more elaborately, quite brilliantly. Report an error

4:25 And it figures in other Indian classics such as the Shravagabhumi, The Stages of Listeners. And then there are various Tibetan commentaries to it. But for those of us who've been trained primarily in Tibetan Buddhism, in any of the schools of Tibetan Buddhism, it kind of slipped through the cracks. And that is, it's studied by real scholars, by the Geshe's, by the Kempo's and so forth. They will study this in the Abhisamaya Lankara, the Mundo Gen, one of the five works of Maitreya. Report an error

4:52 It's taught there also quite elaborately. Tsongkhapa has a brilliant commentary to this, and it's a great commentary to this classic work, which is studied extensively. In the monasteries of Tibetan Buddhism. But again, it tends to be more of an academic study without really applying it so much to the cushion and really turning into meditation. Report an error

5:10 Because if you've studied, I know many of you are trained in the Glupa tradition, then our core practice in the Glupa tradition. I'm certainly a hybrid, but Glupa training is very much part of my training. Report an error

5:22 It's not there explicitly in the Lamrim. You won't find it anywhere. And so nevertheless, this is... Very practical, very powerful. It's a central practice and so I'm delighted to spend a week looking into this. Enormously relevant for the modern era, for this 21st century. And so from tomorrow morning onwards, then we're really looking at the classic teachings, the practices. We'll have guided meditations in the morning and afternoon. Report an error

5:53 Evenings we'll have further meditation, but they will be unguided. We'll have time for discussion. And then a khyam in the morning and afternoons for lecture. So that would be the overall format. Try to strike a good balance from day to day. Lectures, guided meditations and discussion. But it occurred to me just yesterday that I think it's very important to venture into these classic practices, 25, 2600 years old, from where we are. Report an error

6:25 And that is living in the modern world in the 21st century. To take stock of that, to integrate, to get a dialogue going with everything we think we know about the world by way of modern science, philosophy, politics and everything else. Modern religions are very religions that are prominent wherever we live. That we're doing this not in isolation. In other words, when we're engaging this meditation, we're not withdrawing from our century, our countries, our society. Report an error

6:55 But that our practice, in terms of theory and practice, is really integrated on good speaking terms with what's happening around us in our cultural environment. So I'd like to spend some time, I hope it will be time well spent, to highlight something that I quite passionately believe in, and that is that the modern scientific study of the mind, which has been going on for only about 135 years, which is to say that the first 300 years or so, Of the development, the evolution of modern science in the first 300 years proceeded with no empirical science of the mind at all. Report an error

7:34 They left it out. And so branches of physics, chemistry, biology, geology, botany and so forth and so on took off like gangbusters, you know, tremendous progress, astronomy, cosmology. But for those first 300 years when there was so much progress in the physical sciences, there was zero progress. In the mental sciences, because there weren't any. And so these started up only in the latter part of the 19th century. And certainly much progress has been made. Report an error

8:04 And it's been made by, overwhelmingly over the last century, by studying the mind indirectly. With the rise of behaviorism, then it's studying the mind by way of behavior, or simply studying behavior. And in terms of cognitive psychology, in terms of cognitive neuroscience, then... Scientists study the mind by way of interviews, by way of studying the brain correlates of mental activity, states of consciousness and so forth. Report an error

8:32 But especially over the last century, one modality or one approach to studying the mind has been largely overlooked in terms of really making it a sophisticated, rigorous mode of inquiry. And that is trying to understand the mind by observing it. Report an error

8:52 The science of the mind is quite an anomaly over the past century or so, while all other branches of the natural sciences emphasize as their central mode of investigation the careful observation of the phenomena they're seeking to understand, whether they're galaxies or plants or animals or single-celled organisms or electrons and protons. Report an error

9:16 This is the bread and butter of modern science, and that is develop the appropriate technology. So that you can make sophisticated, rigorous, precise observations of the phenomena you're seeking to understand so that you can make discoveries that are replicable. Report an error

9:31 Well, much has been understood about the nature of the mind indirectly by studying brain and behavior. But ever since the rise of behaviorism, almost exactly a hundred years ago, introspection, the only mode of observation that we have by which we can directly observe. Mental phenomena has been almost entirely neglected. And so this has given rise to some very odd consequences. And I would like to then address this a little bit this afternoon. Report an error

10:02 And I'll tell you my agenda or my conviction here. And that is that the modern scientific study of the mind, which at this point is very, very heavily dominated by the metaphysical beliefs of materialism, of reductionistic materialism. That it desperately needs a breath of fresh air in the spirit of radical empiricism that's willing to question all metaphysical assumptions about mind and brain, their relationship and so forth. Report an error

10:33 Modern science desperately needs some fresh air coming in. Because I see ever so frequently beliefs that are simply opinions or speculations presented as scientific fact. And that's fraudulent. It's pseudoscience. If you say something that is not empirically corroborated, is not logically, logically, I say, reasoned, but is simply an opinion, and you're presenting that as science, well, that's pseudoscience. Report an error

10:59 And there's a lot of it out there, as I think I will hopefully make clear. So I believe the mind sciences are really urgently in need of a radically, to complement the indirect study of the mind by way of brain and behavior. Report an error

11:13 They need, whether they know it or not, An infusion of fresh air and an infusion of radical empiricism, and that can come by way of the very sophisticated observation, investigation of mental states directly. Not by way of dogmatic brainwashing or trying to be converted to a religion or anything of the sort, but by sharp, clear, penetrating investigation of the mind from a first-person perspective. Report an error

11:40 That's almost entirely absent from modern mind science. It's incredibly odd, but that is the state of the art. In the year 2013. But it's not only, according to my view, that modern science, both in terms of it's kind of the research science, academic science, simply understanding or seeking to understand the nature of the mind, mental processes, states of consciousness, but also, very much so, clinical psychology, psychiatry. Report an error

12:13 There are beliefs now that run through the healing of the mind, understanding mental disorders. That once again, to my mind, are heavily burdened by uncorroborated metaphysical beliefs. I'll get to those very shortly. Report an error

12:28 So the interface between modern science, both research psychology or academic psychology, cognitive psychology and clinical, I think there could be a tremendous kind of a rejuvenation, a revitalization or even a revolution in the mind sciences that could be catalyzed by the interface with Buddhism and other contemplative tradition. Report an error

12:48 But it's not just one way. I've been a practicing Buddhist now for 43 years. It's really been my whole adult life. And I cherish everything that I've learned from primarily the Tibetan tradition but also the Theravāda. Report an error

13:04 So much of tremendous value and it really has profoundly shaped my own worldview, my way of life, my meditative practice. But it's also apparent to me that within inter-Tibetan Buddhism especially, where most of my training is grounded, when it comes to shamatha, Report an error

13:23 There aren't that many people teaching it. Or among those who are teaching it, not that many who are really guiding their students in rigorous sustained practice of it. And for those who are getting some sustained practice, there are very, very few places where you can practice it in a conducive environment. Report an error

13:38 To move it up to a professional grade where you're practicing full time as a contemplative for one, three, five, ten years, those places are very hard to find anywhere. Not only in Australia, but even in Asia. I know, I've been looking. And it's very rare to find. It's very rare to find people in the Indo-Tibetan tradition, that is, let's say, Tibetan Buddhism, who are really teaching Vipassanā and teaching it not only reading through the relevant passages in the Lamrim Chamo, the text by Tsongkhapa, or other similar texts within the four traditions of Tibetan Buddhism, but are really giving experiential guidance in a sustained, really rigorous fashion, really utilizing the mind sciences within Buddhism. Report an error

14:20 It's actually quite rare. Many people doing devotional practices, discursive meditations, reciting rituals, reciting prayers and liturgies, doing visualizations, reciting mantras. And all of that has a place. It all is valuable. And as the Dalai Lama has commented so often, Buddhism is not simply a religion that is a faith-based set of beliefs, institutions, ethical guidelines to leave a good life and then look for a better one in the future. Report an error

14:49 There are certainly religious elements in Buddhism and I embrace them. I'll just stop right there. I embrace them. I'm a religious person. There's no question that Buddhism is tremendously rich, perhaps even without peril, among the so-called religions of the world in terms of the richness and diversity of its philosophical tradition. Report an error

15:08 I've studied it fairly extensively. Many have studied it far more than I have. But anybody who studied Buddhist philosophy, you know it's really incredibly rich and diverse. Report an error

15:18 This is where the Tibetan Geshe, the Tibetan scholars, the Kempos and different traditions will really spend a lot of time in debating points of Buddhist philosophy in multiple schools and likewise in Western academia. There are many scholars, and I am one of them, but I'm not in academia any longer, quite happily, who will write book after book, learn an article, have confidence and so forth on aspects of Buddhist philosophy. Report an error

15:42 Very good. Very good. But it's not mind science, it's philosophy. And it's treated as philosophy. And so religion, Buddhist religion, it's there. It's not going to die away soon. There are a lot of people practicing Buddhist religion. It's faith, with devotion, with ritual and so forth and so on. All good. And praying for good future life. Good. A fewer number practicing Buddhist philosophy. Report an error

16:09 Analyzing it, debating, writing, thinking, cogitating. Very good. But Buddhist mind science, guys tend to get a bit overlooked. Report an error

16:19 So I'm happy to say I'm working under the guidance of and the collaboration with His Holiness Dalai Lama to try to establish at least one and hopefully multiple Mayan centers and contemplative observatories to create environments that can really highlight, sustain, nurture and revitalize Buddhist Mayan science. Report an error

16:39 Now, I mentioned before that the Buddhist contemplative tradition, I believe, has a tremendous potential for enriching modern Mayan science by bringing in a spirit of radical empiricism. Free of dogma. But the whole spirit of modern science from the time of Galileo onwards has such integrity, such clarity, such intelligence, bringing out a very healthy sense of skepticism, being willing to be critical, to reassess one's own assumptions. Report an error

17:07 And then we see how science keeps on evolving, evolving, questioning its assumption, making new discoveries, replicating discoveries and leading to growth of knowledge. Report an error

17:18 So this is something quite spectacular. And we're all recipients of the benefits of modern science and technology. I don't think any of us walked here. It would have been a very long walk and for me a very long swim. I wouldn't have come. And so we can all be very grateful to be living in such a lovely environment. Well, this environment wouldn't be here without science and technology. Report an error

17:38 But I do feel, before I go into the notes now, that science, Buddhism, Buddha science, Can really be learning a lot in spirit and in terms of kind of the mood, the attitude of modern science. Of taking Buddhist beliefs and not simply adopting them out of faith in the scriptures, out of faith in the Lamas, out of faith in the Guru lineage and so forth, all of which I have, but not frankly reducing it to a religion where it just goes to belief and they say, okay, I've got all my beliefs in line. Report an error

18:08 I'm okay. I think I'm going to have a good rebirth now because I believe all the right things. Buddhism deserves better than that. It's not simply a religion. It's not simply a philosophy. It's also a science. And that which truly liberates the mind is not faith by itself or belief. It's not ethics or even compassion. That which truly liberates the mind is wisdom. And wisdom comes from investigation, from careful analysis. Report an error

18:38 That's been the spirit of Buddhism from the time of the Buddha, but sometimes just the sheer inertia of tradition. Overwhelms the freshness of inquiry that is not enough for the last generation. I'm kind of old now. And so most of my teachers have passed away from the Tibetan tradition. But those who are trained in Tibet, there's a gravitas, a depth, a grandeur of these great lamas. His Holiness is that generation. Report an error

19:09 He's still in very good health. Hopefully he'll live a long time. But most of the lamas of that generation have passed away by now. It's not enough for that generation, most of whom have passed away, to have made great discoveries, empirical discoveries. If anybody of you have watched, for example, the film, I recommend it, called Yogi's of Tibet. Report an error

19:29 One very accomplished Tibetan yogi, who's now passed away, named Dupan Rinpoche. He looks right into the camera. He speaks with a candor that is very rare among highly accomplished Tibetan yogis. He looks right into the camera and says, I can remember all my past lives. Report an error

19:49 And yet it didn't make a ripple. It made a ripple in my mind. But one could think he's going public there. Do any of us Buddhist yogis actually know what we're talking about? And he's raising his hand. Well, I do. I'm not speculating. I'm not just believing. This is not faith-based acclaim. I've been meditating for 60 years. And I can now recall all my past lives. Report an error

20:11 That's his hand, not mine. But it didn't create a ripple. One might think that, wow, if we're taking him seriously, The Dalai Lama certainly did. I won't give the whole background story there. This man is, this is like a professor at your finest university. I don't know what you, I know you have a number of fine universities in Australia. Report an error

20:31 I don't know if you have one that is kind of head and shoulders over the others. But in America, Harvard, MIT, they're kind of up there. Or Cambridge University, Oxford. It would be like, you know, a... An endowed chair, Nobel laureate from Oxford saying, I made the discovery. If they did, well then people from all over universities all over the world say, tell us how, how did you do it? Report an error

20:48 We want to replicate that. You say that you found phenomenal entities that can travel faster than the speed of light. Wow, if that's true, that's really revolutionary. Tell us how you did it. We want to replicate that. We want to see whether it's true or false. Right? It would create big waves, wouldn't it? If somebody said, I have now measured particles traveling faster than the speed of light. Report an error

21:08 Somebody made that claim just a year or two ago. It turned out to be false. But it certainly aroused the interest of the scientific community. And they checked it out and it turned out to be false. Okay, that's how science corrects itself. But here is this yogi saying, I can remember all my past life and nobody was knocking on his door saying, that's amazing. How did you do it? Can we replicate that? Report an error

21:28 Why do you believe it's actual memory and not fantasy? What makes you think that? What's your confidence? Are you a doddering old fool or are you a brilliant contemplative? Tell us, we are open. It never happened. It didn't create a ripple. So I think there can be tremendous benefit mutually by a very deep interface. Report an error

21:50 So we're a small collection of people out here in this lovely rural environment. But what we're venturing into for this very short time we have together, I think has global significance. Whether our little group will have any catalytic event or effect, I don't know. I don't know. But I have utter conviction. Report an error

22:11 But this interface is enormously important for the future of Buddhism, that it doesn't just go into a slippery slope of gradual, gradual degeneration, until nobody really knows that there was a mind science, because it's just all hearsay, and then gradually even the philosophy gets mushier and mushier, and then we're just always signing prayers and doing devotions, and that's all that's left. Report an error

22:32 It could happen. Buddhism goes in two directions. One, it kind of goes into New Age, watered-down Buddhist psychotherapy. And not much more. Just a few nice little techniques. A little bit of loving kindness here, a bit of mindfulness there. And that's really Buddhism after all. And it's just kind of melted away into the sands of becoming the 251st school of psychotherapy. Report an error

22:56 That could happen. It's happening. So it can kind of vanish into the sands where the majesty, the integrity, the depth, the transformative power of the Buddha Dharma, it just evaporates. And all we have is a few little techniques. That could happen. Or it can just become ossified, kind of like a dinosaur slipping into a tar pit, a museum piece. I've seen this taking place in Tibet right now. Report an error

23:19 I just read an article a couple of days ago where there's a large monastery visited. It's called Lapran in northeastern Tibet. It's a quite formidable establishment. But the Chinese government had turned it into a tourist attraction. And so they have the monks there. It's like visiting a zoo. Really, it's like visiting a zoo. Report an error

23:38 And that is there are the monks. And they're swarmed with Chinese tourists coming in and putting on the monks' hats and so forth and having their photos and swarming in where the monks are trying to do their study and so forth and taking their photos. They're really visiting a zoo. And the Chinese government is tolerating it because it's good for the tourist trade. But they're a bloody zoo. Report an error

24:02 Nobody's taking them seriously. They're just these cute little critters wearing their little cute little crowns and let's come and take a cute little photo and then we'll head on to the next true site. It's become a little zoo, a museum. Actually it makes me weep because I have some sense of the profundity of what those monks are doing and the surrounding society doesn't have a clue. It could be as well as a collection of pandas. Report an error

24:28 So the sakes here are very high. But the future of Buddhadharma, which I know has tremendous potential. And the future of modern science, which has tremendous potential for good and evil. So let's look a little bit. That was rather a long preamble. So I'm looking at notes that you don't have, but Claudio will make them available digitally, very easy, at least digitally. Report an error

24:53 But I put these together just over the last day or two, because I thought today, the only day, if this isn't of interest to you, then don't worry, it'll be over by the end of this afternoon. But I want to bring what we're doing into dialogue. into collaboration, nested in the 21st century, not pretend as if we're living 500 years ago in Tibet or 1,500 years ago in India, and somehow have a profound disconnect the theories. Report an error

25:19 That we can speak intelligently. And in fact what we're doing makes... Incredibly good sense in the 21st century and knowing how to articulate that. So what has really caught my attention is that especially, oh well, the 20th century overall, and I sense maybe it's accentuating a trend in the mind sciences, generally science as a whole, but most specifically the mind sciences, that is cognitive psychology, cognitive neuroscience and so on, philosophy of mind, Report an error

26:09 of a devaluation of first-person experience. I wrote a book on this topic, published it 13 years ago, called The Taboo of Subjectivity. So that's always background reading. But I'll just take a few quotes here to illustrate my point. And I will say that the quotes that I will cite are not representative of everyone who's involved in science or the mind sciences, but they are representative of a lot of thinking. Report an error

26:35 That it's appearing in the popular media as well as scientific literature. They are having an impact. On global society and most, how do you say, very importantly, to our youth, for our youth, people getting education right now. So we'll start with a quote by a very well-known astronomer in the United States. His name is Neil deGrasse Tyson. He's the head of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City. Report an error

27:06 He often appears on talk shows and so forth. He's very articulate, very good astronomer. He knows his business very well. So he's quite influential. He shows up a lot. And here's a quote from him. As a scientist, and this was on ABC, that is in American style, American Broadcasting Corporation, ABC World News with Peter Jennings some years back. Report an error

27:29 And he says, as a scientist, I need something better than your eyewitness testimony. In other words, whatever you witness. This was actually on a documentary that Peter Jennings, who's a Canadian, did on UFOs. And this was on national television. It was very sober, very grounded. It was critical, but not dismissive. In no way gullible. Report an error

27:52 It was really a very open-minded, even objective piece, saying, what's the evidence? Is this something to be taken seriously or not? And so Peter Jenny, I thought it was really quite a splendid documentary. Just nice and clear, objective, critical, sharp, intelligent. So he had a lot of guts to show that. Report an error

28:09 On public television, because many people will ridicule you if you even say the word UFO and take it seriously. But he interviewed among other people this astronomer, inciting in the program, of course, many, many people around the world who claim to have seen UFOs. And so what is the astronomer's response to this? As a scientist, I need something better than your eyewitness testimony. Because even in the court, even in the court of law, eyewitness, even if in the court of law, Eyewitness testimony is a high form of evidence. In the court of science, it is the lowest form of evidence you could possibly put forth. Report an error

28:52 That's a very sobering and frankly quite a disturbing statement. If this guy's kind of a nut, then we go, okay, well then you're off the deep end, you're a fanatic. But he's not. He's not a nut. He's not a fanatic. Or if he is, he's a mainstream fanatic. But he basically just brushed aside every possible account, past, present or future. Report an error

29:09 Of anyone who ever claims to have seen a UFO, what your testimony is the lowest form. You're like a slug. You know? It's the lowest form of evidence you could possibly put forward. So before you start speaking, we will let you know we're already ignoring you. Report an error

29:29 What you have to say doesn't count. It is of no significance. And that is, eyewitness testimony is good enough to send a person to life imprisonment for killing someone. It's good enough for that. But it's not good enough for a scientist. And that if it's your eyewitness, it doesn't count at all. I mean, that's very strong words. It's the lowest form of evidence. We'll hardly even look in that direction because you who are non-scientists, your perspective doesn't count at all. Report an error

29:58 The only perspective, by implication, I'm not reading much into this, the only perspective that counts is scientific observation, but not your first person eyewitness. Report an error

30:11 Well, I find that a bit demeaning, actually. I would say the lowest form of evidence you could possibly put forth, I learned about this recently, I just looked up, there's a plant called jimsonweed for Datura. Report an error

30:28 And I actually met somebody just recently, attended my retreat in Phuket, where I just came from, who had actually taken it. I didn't know anybody had ever taken it, but I met somebody. And it sounds absolutely dreadful. Because LSD can be kind of fun, strawberry fields forever, you're having cool hallucinations and you know you're hallucinating and then it's off and then you had a good trip or a bad trip. Report an error

30:50 You take Datura, I strongly encourage nobody ever try it because it's self-induced psychosis. You become delusional, you're hallucinating, but you don't know you're hallucinating. Report an error

31:03 You become psychotic. It is transient, it wears off. But you can be having all kinds of hallucinations and you're taking all of them to be real and acting accordingly. In other words, you're acting like a madman. Report an error

31:17 I would say that's the lowest form of evidence. I just dropped Datura and I'm experiencing you as a great big sick foot gopher. And you're about to eat me and I'm looking for a weapon to protect myself from you. That's the lowest form of evidence. A person has just taken Datura. That's the lowest form. So for Tyson to put us on that level, I find that rather demeaning. Let's leave these alone. Well, there's a rather well-known guy in America named Michael Shermer. He's the founder and editor of the journal called The Skeptic. Report an error

31:48 They deem themselves very skeptical. He deems himself the paradigm of skepticism. Well, let's see what kind of skepticism this is. He's a rather well-known figure. His journal is well-known. A lot of people love it. It's kind of like their Bible. And so he defines skepticism. Let's see how he defines it. Skepticism is, and I quote, The application of reason to any and all ideas. Sounds good start. No sacred cows allowed. Good start. Report an error

32:17 In other words, skeptics do not go into an investigation close to the possibility that a phenomenon might be real or that a claim might be true. This is something really good. When we say we are skeptical, we mean that we must see compelling evidence before we believe. Okay. Report an error

32:38 I don't have any qualms with that. Does that sound good? But ends, when we say we are skeptical, in quotation marks, we must see compelling evidence before we believe. Aha, but I see there's a little bit of an issue there. What constitutes compelling evidence? We've just seen Tyson say that even if a UFO lands in your backyard, green people jump out of it, take blood samples from you, burn a hole in your grass, and then they take off, your account doesn't count at all. Report an error

33:11 They won't even jot it down because you have the lowest form of evidence. So compelling evidence, thereon hangs the big question. What constitutes compelling evidence? Because they won't believe anything without compelling evidence. That's what he says, right? So let's see about that. What's compelling evidence? Michael Shermer answers the question. Everybody has eyes and ears and a brain that perceives and so on. Report an error

33:35 I think they're all equally unreliable as eyewitnesses. We're very bad at recounting things we think we saw. Uh-oh. So compelling evidence means that we don't have any. Report an error

33:57 We don't have any at all. Because all we have is eyes and ears and the brain. That is, we are aware of our mental states. I mean, you're aware right now. Are you clinically depressed? Are you happy? Are you calm? Are you agitated? Are thoughts arising in your mind? Any memories? Are you interested or are you bored? I think you can answer all of those with great... Report an error

34:15 certainty and confidence. You are an expert. Right now, are you interested or not? You know better than anybody else. And I think you can write down with certainly, I am interested on a scale of one to ten, okay, three or six, but you know that, right? You know that. How does your body feel right now? Do you have arthritis? Do you feel stiff? Do you feel uncomfortable, relatively relaxed? How does your body feel? Are you seeing me in color or in black and white? Report an error

34:39 And so forth. We have this kind of sense that, you know, we have a lot of evidence, right? what he says You're unreliable as eyewitnesses. In other words, whatever you're experiencing, I'm sorry, that doesn't count. So compelling evidence, we determine what compelling evidence is and you don't have any. Report an error

35:00 So who is the we? Since all of us who are not scientists seem to be left out of the shuffle, who are the we? I guess it's scientists, John. Report an error

35:10 We're unreliable as eyewitnesses. Report an error

35:16 That sounds a bit grim. It sounds rather dismissive. Well, let's go now, but he's not really a scientist. So let's go to a scientist. She's an eminent, world-class, cognitive psychologist. I met her, in fact, I invited her to a Mind and Life meeting we held four years ago. She's a world-class cognitive psychologist, one of the world experts on the scientific study of attention. Report an error

35:40 That's why we invited her to a conference with His Holiness four years ago. She's at Princeton University, endowed chair, the Grand Dame. of the cognitive psychological study of attention. So she spoke quite some length about her research, findings, and here's what she commented. She said, perception. So this is our visual perception, auditory and so forth. And of course they don't even talk about it much, but our introspective perception, our thoughts, images and so forth arising in our minds, that hardly even comes up, but certainly is a type of perception. Report an error

36:13 That is, after all, if you're interested or bored right now, you're not knowing that by way of inference. You're not looking at your body posture and say, oh, I guess I must be bored with my body. Right? It's not inference. It's not remembering something. It's knowing right now whether you're bored or interested, agitated or calm, and so forth. Report an error

36:30 It's perception. It's direct experience, right? Well, here's what she says about perception. Perception is a kind of externally guided hallucination. So it looks like we're hearing the same thing now from an astronomer, a professional skeptic. And now from a world-class psychologist. She continues... Report an error

36:47 We create experience rather than photographing it. Report an error

36:53 Psychologists regard subjective reports, that is when psychologists interview subjects. When I show you this diagram, when I show you these slides, what report, report, report. Or I've been engaged in multiple scientific studies of meditation, including the Shamatha Project, the largest scientific study done thus far. Report an error

37:14 And there were questionnaires. The participants in the study, 70 people who participated in three-month retreats, and they were interviewed by highly trained psychologists. They filled out daily questionnaires and journals and so forth. But what she's saying, and she does speak for really her whole profession, she's saying, oh, psychologists regard subjective reports as data rather than as factual accounts. Report an error

37:42 So if we interviewed you right now and said, are you interested or are you bored by this lecture thus far? And you would write down, well I'm moderately interested, let's see how this develops. But yeah, reasonably interesting. I will not take that as a factual account. I will not acknowledge that you actually know what you're talking about. I will simply say that my data shows that subject number one reports this. But that's not really giving you any credence at all. Report an error

38:09 The credence is she said this. But it's not the credence that she actually knows what she's talking about. So we're seeing a similar theme here. And when she says that our... Perception consists of hallucination. I just checked this out. What does she mean? Hallucinations, by definition, involve sensing things while awake that appear to be real, but instead have been created by the mind. Report an error

38:33 In other words, she's kind of putting us in that Datura class again. We're just hallucinating, but we don't even know we're hallucinating. It sounds kind of grim. There are few treatments for many types of hallucinations. However, for those hallucinations caused by mental disease, a psychologist or psychiatrist should be alerted. Report an error

38:51 And treatment will be based on the observations of those doctors. Apparently the doctors can make observations that are not hallucinations. Now how they get a freebie here, how they get an exception, I'm not quite sure. But if the doctor is hallucinating, trying to understand a person is hallucinating, exactly where does that domino chain stop? Who's making any valid observations of anything? Report an error

39:15 So if this was a few cooks, you know, I just had to scurry through a lot of data to find a couple of lame-brained... ridiculous claims about the utter fallacy of our perceptions of the world. In fact, this is representative of academic psychology and to a large extent the Mayan science as a whole. But how about introspection? Because none of these people mentioned it. And I took a course, only one, so I'm no expert, but I did take a course in cognitive psychology at Stanford University. Report an error

39:46 Very fine professor, 500 pages textbook. And what I found remarkable... i'd say would be a joke we'd all laugh and then move on but that in fact this Report an error

39:51 In the whole textbook, which we read cover to cover, was that there were no references whatsoever to mental perception. There was no acknowledgement that we can actually observe our thoughts, our emotions, our impulses, our desires and memories, that we can observe our dreams, that we can become lucid in dreams, know the dreams as dreams. Report an error

40:08 There was no reference to that, no acknowledgement. You actually have any first person knowledge of our own minds in the whole textbook. I found that exceedingly odd. Because I was studying this, I took the course about 20 years ago after I'd been already studying Buddhism for more than 20 years. And I looked at this textbook, which is referring to robots as having emotions and computers having memories and thinking this and knowing that. Report an error

40:34 And I was a graduate student and I contacted the professor and said, I don't want to take your exam. I'd like to write a critique of this textbook. Would you allow me to do that because that is my final paper? She said, okay. And I did. I ripped that textbook apart. I just shredded it really severely and said, here, did you need me an A +, which I thought was very odd. Report an error

41:03 But what about introspection? What about the Buddha's assertion, which seems so commonsensical to me, that we have six modes of perception, the five physical senses, and then we can perceive the thoughts, images arising in the mind, in dreams, we're perceiving the dream imagery. Report an error

41:21 We're perceiving memories coming up and so forth. We're perceiving, we're knowing directly, not by way of inference or studying behavior and so forth. We're studying brain states, what our emotions are. So mental perception, it's real. So what about mental perception, a.k.a. introspection, the direct observation of mental states and processes? Well, I'm going to cite one of the two most prominent philosophers of mind in the United States. Report an error

41:44 It's John Searle, one of our finest universities, the University of California, Berkeley. Renowned figure. He appears in many, many major publications. He's a well-known figure in the United States. And here's what he writes about introspection. Report an error

42:00 If by introspection, he puts it in quotation marks, inverted commas, we mean a special capacity, just like vision, only less colorful, then we have to spect intro. Then it seems to me there is no such capacity. In other words, introspection doesn't occur. You can't, you can't understand. There could not be, because the model of specting intro requires a distinction between the object spected and the specting of it. Report an error

42:32 And we cannot make this distinction for conscious states. Report an error

42:40 And when I read this, I really felt that man is mentally impaired. I mean, if he isn't even aware of his own thoughts, he's not aware of his own emotions. He's not aware of whether his mind is agitated or calm, whether he's emotional or peaceful, whether he's remembering something or imagining something. If he has no awareness of what's going on in his own mind, as one of the most distinguished philosophers in the mind, the man is metacognically challenged. Report an error

43:07 He's a quadriplegic mentally. But unfortunately, he's representative of contemporary philosophy of mind to a very large extent. His great sparring partner, Daniel Bennett, Doesn't even acknowledge that subjective experience exists. It already exists as brain states. And so it's dumb and dumber. I don't know a nicer way to say it. I'm not criticizing people, but I am criticizing what they say. This looks to me like sheer idiocy. But it's commonplace. Report an error

43:40 And as I said, I took a standard textbook at a prestigious university and never even acknowledged that introspection exists. Report an error

43:51 Well, there's a great irony here. And that is every day, every week at least. In the major media, New York Times, Time Magazine and so forth, in America, BBC, etc. We'll be hearing about the latest insights from the brain scientists. The brain scientists have now found the neurocorrelates for this type of emotion, for decision making, for memory, for vision and so forth and so on. It's wonderful science, discovering one type of neurocorrelate after another, among other things, for mental processes. Report an error

44:22 So what parts of the brain are activated when you're experiencing anger? Or compassion or empathy or desire or memory. And then specific ganglia of neurons that are associated with specific memory. Now you can catalyze a memory by electrically stimulating a ganglia of neurons. It's very good science. But when they're looking for the neurocorrelance of subjective mental experience, they have to know what that mental experience is. Report an error

44:51 Because a neuroscientist, qua neuroscientist, is able to scientifically observe only... The physiological process is in the brain. And that's neurons, dendites, synapses, electricity and chemicals, basically. That's what they are actually observing. So how do they know what those neural mechanisms are correlated to in terms of subjective experience? How do they know that? Because you can look at the brain until the cows come home, but you'll never see a subjective experience. Report an error

45:19 Ever, of any kind. So when they say this brain activity is correlated with this type of mental event, process, state and so forth, how do they know? Well, they know by interviewing people and asking them, what are you experiencing mentally? Report an error

45:41 But wait a minute. And that's the basis for making all the correlations, is relying upon first person report. But if those reports aren't factual, if they're hallucinations, or if introspection is impossible, Report an error

45:58 Then the whole foundation of cognitive neuroscience melts away. Because you're relying upon first-person reports that you're saying either don't exist or they're hallucinations or they're completely misleading and unreliable. In fact, they're the worst form of evidence. But all of your cognitive science is based on the worst form of evidence or no evidence at all because it's first-person. You see a problem? Report an error

46:19 This is insane. I mean, what other words shall we call this? Some major confusion is here and it's rampant. This is what the science writers around the world, in Australia, Europe, America and so forth, they should be pounding the dram. Hey, wait a minute. What you're saying is nonsense. And they're not doing it. They're lapping up whatever the scientists give them, like puppies lapping up milk. So I find it really a travesty. There used to be something called investigative journalism, but it's entirely absent when it comes to science writing. Report an error

46:50 It's pathetic. And I've been in correspondence with one of the best in the United States. I know her personally. And she has no excuse. She said, well, I think they probably get fired. Report an error

46:59 I think that's what would happen. So there is a problem here. So if all such observations, first-person observations of your own mental states, if all of these are unreliable, says Schirmer, illusory, says Treisman, or impossible, says Searle, then all neuroscientic claims about mind-brain correlations are based on such flawed or non-existent observations. Report an error

47:21 All of these are invalid. So it sounds like there's really something of a crisis here. This radical devaluation of first person experience, relying entirely on brain and mind studies. But then they're not really. Because they keep on interviewing people first person, but then disparaging them as soon as they've interviewed them. Report an error

47:39 So that's just a report. We can't take you seriously. It's just a report. You know what you're talking about. We won't take what you're saying seriously. But it's a report that we can include in our data analysis. But how about Buddhist studies in academia? Now there are many, many scholars. I know many of them. I've been in the profession. That was what I trained in. Report an error

47:56 But this one really caught my eye. I won't say it's representative. That is, it's a good generalization. But this person has a position now of great distinction. His name is Robert Scharf. He's professor of Buddhist studies and chair of the Center for Buddhist Studies and the director of the group in Buddhist studies, a lot of titles, at the University of California, Berkeley, which is one of our finest universities in the United States. Report an error

48:22 So this really caught my attention when I read it. This is a direct quote. Scholars of religion are not presented with experiences that stand in need of interpretation, that is, meditative experiences. He said, well, that's not what we're presented with. So we're not presented with experiences by Tibetan yogis, by that Dupan Arbache that says he can remember all his past lives. Report an error

48:44 Somebody just told me of his Holiness, giving quite a remarkable account about his own experiences. Or many, many other yogis that I've... Personally engaged with, who speak about their own insights or discoveries, their experiences in meditation, as well as my own. And then I've had quite a few students. Report an error

49:01 They've reported their experiences to me in eight-week retreats, three-week retreats. Some of my students have been in full-time retreat now for six years. A lot of experiences coming up. But he says, as Buddhist scholars, scholars religion, we are not presented with experiences that stand in need of interpretation, but rather with texts, narratives, performances and so forth. Report an error

49:22 That's kind of odd. We don't even need to interpret experiences because we're going to ignore them. So he continues thus, while experience, construed as that which is immediately present, may indeed be both irrefutable and indubitable, Report an error

49:40 we must remember that whatever epistemological certainty experience may offer is gained only at the expense of any possible discursive meaning or significance. Report an error

49:55 To put it another way, all attempts to signify inner experience are destined to remain well-meaning squirms that get us nowhere. Report an error

50:07 Shall I repeat his title, Stu? Director of the group in Buddhist Studies and Chair of the Center for Buddhist Studies and Professor of Buddhist Studies. And he's saying all of the experiences don't count at all. They are meaningless squirms from which we derive no knowledge whatsoever. We will not look at your experiences, we will not interpret them, we will ignore them and have a nice day. And that's a person I think calls himself a Buddhist. Report an error

50:39 This is why I'm convinced, because I am a Buddhist scholar, I have a PhD, I taught in university for four years, and now I'm happily out of academia and I'm a Dharma teacher. I think this is one reason, exactly attitude like that, that has created a real kind of alienation from people really dedicated to Buddhist practice. Report an error

50:58 And those who are dedicated to the academic study of Buddhism. They're hardly even on speaking terms. Now there are many exceptions and I could give a list of them. But that really caught my attention in the context of all the preceding votes. There's a problem here. And we see it in science, we see it in philosophy, John Searle, and we see it in the study of religion. Report an error

51:20 Years ago when I was teaching at the University of California, Santa Barbara, I sat in on a seminar by a very distinguished colleague. A senior professor in our department, who was an expert on medieval mysticism, Christian mysticism. And he read the text, he was very smart, he knew the languages, and he was giving a very high-level graduate seminar. Report an error

51:42 It was brilliant, it was brilliant material. I have a lot of respect for it. The neoprotonic tradition of Christian mysticism. And I read the readings that he had assigned to his students. I was just auditing the course as a professor. And I asked him at one point, because I found the material very fascinating, and points of parallels and so forth with Buddhist. Report an error

51:59 Meditative experiences. And I asked him, what do you think is the, what kind of experiences were these medieval Christian contemplatives having that gave rise to these reports and what kind of training led to these kinds of experiences? Can you illuminate? Because I'd be very interested to see where these are coming from. Because the reports themselves, the texts are very interesting. I find quite compelling. And so what are the experiences on which they're based and what is the training, if there is training? Report an error

52:28 It gives rise to these experiences. And he looked at me as if I had said something very rude and said, we don't ask those questions. Report an error

52:41 And that was his answer. We don't ask those questions. I think he was really quite offended that I raised that in his seminar. Report an error

52:50 We don't look there. So I wrote a book called The Taboo of Septivity, actually before that encounter. But it's more of the same. What we find from this is that there is now a very widespread... Spoken and unspoken assumption that the mind is the brain, or a nice simple quote that many, many neuroscientists and other scientists believe, the mind is what the brain does. Report an error

53:20 The mind is nothing more than, that is all of your subjective experience, is nothing more than brain function, or is equivalent to brain activity, or is an emergent property of the brain. But if you want to understand the mind, well study what's doing it, and that's studying... The brain. Or if you want to find the effects of brain processes, study behavior. Report an error

53:47 And so something gets left out in this squeeze of studying the brain and behavior, and that is first-person experience. Report an error

53:57 So the notion that the mind is the brain or is the function of the brain, this is very often presented as scientific fact. That is, if you're taking a course and you say, no, I don't believe that, then you fail the course. I'm sorry, but then... You're flying in the face of an enormous amount of evidence. The mind is what the brain does. If you can't accept that, you may as well find some other, go into poetry or something. Because you don't belong here. Report an error

54:20 This is really kind of an unquestionable assumption. We all know this. And so therefore, we don't need to question it. I mean, it's so obvious. Report an error

54:30 Well, if two things are equivalent, the mind is the brain. Let's just start there. And again, it's only going to be one afternoon. So if this is not really interesting, you're kind of impatient again. Well, the rest of the week, we'll be going to the response. To all of this dogmatic nonsense. If the mind is the brain, if they're equivalent, then when you see one, you should see the other. Report an error

54:53 If two things are really not two things at all, they're the same thing, then you should see both of them when you're looking at any one of them. But you can look at the brain at any level of magnification. You can just crack open the skull and look at it. A big lump of two kilos of goo, a kind of tapioca pudding-like substance. You can look at a macro level. Report an error

55:11 And then you can take your microscope right down to electrons and at no point will you ever see any subjective experience at all. At all. Period. Report an error

55:22 And then if you introspectively, you really hone your introspective abilities and that's what we'll be developing here in a week. It's a short workshop. Well, you won't see the brain. You won't see any aspect of the brain. You may not know anything about the brain, even after meditating 20, 10 or 20 years, 10, 12 hours a day. Report an error

55:43 You'll never see a single neuron, a dendrite, and you won't see any aspect of the brain. So that should already elude us, well, wait a minute, if they are qualitatively so different that when you look at the mind, subjective experience, you see that it has no physical attributes at all. Thoughts, emotions, memories, states of consciousness, all of them have no physical attributes, no mass, no weight, no velocity, no momentum, no electric charge, no physical qualities whatsoever. Report an error

56:12 And when you study the brain, you see it has no subjective qualities whatsoever. In other words, a set of qualities are not even overlapping. So all the evidence suggests they are not the same. There is no evidence they are the same. And there's no reasoning to indicate that they're the same. I've never read a single compelling argument that says, well, you see, QED, therefore doesn't that prove it? Report an error

56:37 There's no such reasoning. Okay, well, then maybe that's an exaggeration. How about the mind is a function of the brain? Report an error

56:44 That's a very, very common belief. The mind is what the brain does. Well now, that's a hypothesis. Let's do what Schirmer said and let's not take anything without sufficient compelling evidence. So, here's the most common view in the mind sciences. The mind is what the brain does. Very good, okay? In other words, one is the entity, the other one is the function of that entity. Report an error

57:03 There are many, there are countless examples of entities and their functions throughout the whole of nature. You don't have to look very far at all. Your kneecap, your liver, a tree, the sun. There it is, and that's a function of the entity in question. Well, I can tell you something. For all of the natural sciences, and I have a kind of a broad understanding of where they are, find any physical entity of any kind, from electrons up to galaxies, and then point to a function of that entity. Report an error

57:34 We're looking at a physical phenomenon. And I challenge you to find any exception in the whole of the universe where you have identified a certain physical phenomenon. And then you've identified what is clearly unequivocally a function of that phenomenon. That function is not physical and therefore not measurable scientifically. Report an error

57:55 There's not one case. That's my hypothesis. If you find one, let me know. But every function of any physical phenomenon is itself physical. It lends itself to physical measurement. And moreover, when you observe the function, you're observing the phenomenon that has that as a function. When you're observing the phenomena, you at least have the capacity to observe the function of the phenomena simultaneously with the same mode of observation. Now that's everywhere true throughout the entire universe. Report an error

58:24 See the phenomena? You can see its function by looking at it simultaneously. The same thing. There's the entity and look, there's its function. There's a locomotive. Look, it's rolling along the cracks. Its movement is physical. You can measure it. If you observe the function, you can see the entity. It has the function. If you observe the entity, you can observe its function. It's true everywhere with no exceptions. Report an error

58:43 Okay? The mind is the function of the brain? Good. When you observe the brain, you can't observe the mind. When you observe the mind, you can't see the brain. So why are you saying one is the function of the other when it's unlike every other example in the entire universe? And you're saying this is so obviously true that it doesn't even need to be defended. This is pseudoscience. And it goes likewise for the last gasp. Report an error

59:06 The mind is an epiphenomenon or emergent property of the brain. Fine. There are many emergent properties throughout the whole of nature. The moisture of water is an emergent property of many H2O molecules. But the moisture of water is a physical property that you can physically measure. And when you're measuring the moisture of water, you are measuring water. When you measure water, you can measure its moisture. They are both physical. And that's emergent properties and epiphenomen. Report an error

59:33 It's true throughout the whole of nature. Emergent properties of physical phenomena are themselves physical, therefore are measurable. But all subjective experience is not measurable. By any scientific means whatsoever. So it's saying that it's equivalent to the brain with no evidence. It's a function of the brain. All the evidence points to the opposite. Report an error

59:54 They say it's an emergent property of epiphenomena of the brain. All the evidence points to the opposite. And there's no reasoning to support it either. Report an error

1:00:05 You see why I get upset? Because I love science and this is pseudoscience. This is a ridiculous parody of scientists. And by the way, do you think Michael Schirmer ever questions these? Not on your life. He will question anybody. Talk to him about parapsychology. Talk to him about seeing a ghost. Talk to him about introspection. Talk to him about having any paranormal, anything at all that stands outside of the materialic paradigm and they'll bring out their 18-inch guns. Report an error

1:00:34 We are about to be skeptical. Be prepared to be blown away because we're skeptical. Except about what we believe. In other words, he has a skepticism as the Pope. Or, I like the Pope actually. I think he's a very good man as far as I can tell. No worse than that. He's like an American fundamentalist, Southern Baptist evangelist who's skeptical of everybody's beliefs except for his own. Report an error

1:00:58 And there are plenty of those people. They believe that God planted dinosaur bones to trick people. Report an error

1:01:09 Because that fits in within the paradigm. They believe, I mean the really strict ones, the creationists, the earth is really 7,000 years old, all the evidence to the contrary doesn't count. It's not in the Bible. It doesn't count. The only evidence is God's word, every word to be taken literally. How is that different really from the scientists denigrating everybody else's experience except for their own? Report an error

1:01:31 We have the only methodology and the rest of you are all hallucinating and we will take none of your accounts as being factual but only reports for our data crunching. As if you're all on datura. What's the difference? And I have to say, I have no respect whatsoever for religious fundamentalism. Although some religious fundamentalists are very nice people. And I have absolutely no respect for scientific dogmatism parading the science. Although some of the people who parade are very nice people. Report an error

1:02:00 So the critique here is against the dogma, not against people. And I will be ferocious in criticizing that. Here is where... This is thus far a bit funny. The next part is not funny at all. And it's not funny because of the man's saying the words. Because this is one of the most distinguished scientists in America. He's quite renowned. Appears again and again in the media. He's a Nobel laureate. Tremendous high regard, high recognition by everybody in his field or related fields. Report an error

1:02:39 His name is Eric Kandel. The recipient of the year 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. It's a matter of great stature. I know a lot of neuroscience psychologists, they all regard him very high, high regard. Here's what he says in a recent article in the New York Times. And it has to do with mental disorders. Now being suddenly, this is no laughing matter. Report an error

1:03:04 We all know some people, perhaps even family members. It's severe depression, PTSD, ADHD. PTSD, ADHD, anxiety. Anxiety and schizophrenia and so forth. There's no laughing matter here at all. People are really suffering because of a wide variety of neuroses and psychoses. So here we want to be as wise as I think every compassionate healer, every compassionate person wants to see that we tend to such people with as much compassion and wisdom as we possibly can because their suffering is very, very real. Report an error

1:03:37 No laughing matter here. So let us be very careful, discerning. wise, as we assess the nature of mental disorders, stakes here are very high. Depression is on the rise globally. It's going to be soon the most debilitating mental disease, I think disease around the world, and economically a tremendous cost, but subjectively a tremendous cost. Report an error

1:04:03 So here's what Eric Kandel said. Our understanding of the biology of mental disorders has been slow in coming. But recent advances like these have shown us that mental disorders are biological in nature, that people are not responsible for having schizophrenia or depression, and that individual biology and genetics make significant contributions. Report an error

1:04:39 The brain is a complex biological organ possessing immense computational ability. he Report an error

1:04:48 constructs our sensory experience. not the mind, not you. an it constructs our sensory experience. It our thoughts and emotions. Report an error

1:05:05 It is responsible not only for relatively simple motor behaviors like running and eating, but also for complex acts. That we consider quintessentially human, like thinking, speaking and creating works of art. Looked at from this perspective, our mind is a set of operations carried out by our brain. The same principle of unity, that is the equivalence of mind and brain, applies to mental disorders. In other words, all mental disorders are nothing more or less than brain disorders. Report an error

1:05:49 So when one reads a statement, Report an error

1:05:54 That people are not responsible for having schizophrenia. I think my response may be representative, and that is I'm very sympathetic to that statement. People are born with a genetic unsumnication, with a genetic predisposition, or just mysterious causes that we don't understand. But a child who's schizophrenic, a person who becomes schizophrenic as a teenager, what have you, to say you are responsible for that, I would never say that. Number one, I don't know enough. Report an error

1:06:24 But then I'm very sympathetic. Let alone people who have major mental disorders because of brain damage or other physiological processes. They are not responsible completely. But I start to feel very nervous, very, very uncomfortable at an existential level when it says people are not responsible for depression. Report an error

1:06:52 Well, I don't want to say the opposite that if a person has suffering acute clinical depression. I don't want to say, oh, it's your fault, you're responsible, you've done it, you're a bad person. I don't want to say that. I don't feel that. I don't believe that's true. But where's the slippery slope here? Report an error

1:07:09 There are cases of extremely acute, severe depression, and in those cases, antidepressants can be a godsend, can be very beneficial, where maybe nothing else can be. So then we can be very grateful to the pharmaceutical industry for providing some relief of this terrible suffering. It's a good thing. Report an error

1:07:29 And are there cases, especially of such acute, clinical, intense depression, that are powerfully biologically driven? Sure, why not? Why not? Report an error

1:07:42 What about a person who is mildly, mildly depressed? For which scientific studies have shown that the antidepressants are really not much better than the placebos. Big study. Not much better than the placebos. But basically the same. Or mild depression. Or a person who is simply unhappy because his spouse just left him. Report an error

1:08:02 Or that he just lost his job. Or his pet died. Or he has a lot of negative thinking. Tends to really have a lot of negative rumination. Or tends just out of sheer habit to focus primarily on negative things. Has perhaps very low self-esteem. Report an error

1:08:22 Or maybe lives a very unethical life. Very harmful life. And it's starting to come home. That maybe I've actually been quite toxic to the world. And I'm feeling depressed about that. Or maybe I've been abusive to my wife for years and looking back thinking, I feel pretty bad about it. I feel quite depressed. I wasn't a good parent and so forth. Report an error

1:08:47 I'm feeling depressed. Where exactly is the speed bump on that slippery slope? From a point where I think most perhaps all of us in this room would say, severe, intense clinical depression, you're not responsible. I would imagine that may very well be true. But on that slope... The person who's been depressed because he's been running a concentration camp and torturing people on a regular basis and he feels depressed about it afterwards, is this person not responsible? Report an error

1:09:22 In other words, there was no point. That was a slippery slope right down to ground zero. At no point, if I read that again, I won't. It's on recording and you'll have the notes if you wish it. There was no point at which we become responsible for anything. I mean anything. You get really upset and you stab somebody to death. You didn't do it. He says so. You didn't do it. Your brain did it. Report an error

1:09:47 Because your brain controls everything you do. Everything that you consider to be quintessentially human, I'm sorry, that's quintessentially neural. The brain is agent. You're an illusion. You are what your brain does. But the brain is agent. We've just gotten a freebie. Everybody living in Australia. Report an error

1:10:13 everything in the name of the globe. He is now just given us a freebie, a free escape from jail card. None of us are responsible for anything we do at any time. There is no morality. We don't make decisions. We don't do anything. Therefore, the whole notion of punishment should be antiquated because nobody should be ever punished for anything because we didn't do it. Report an error

1:10:39 It's something over which we have no control because we are what is controlled by the brain. It's doing everything. Oh, and by the way, The brain, as a physical organism, runs purely in accordance with the mindless and amoral laws of physics, chemistry and biology. You won't find a neuroscientist that disagrees with that. Report an error

1:10:58 In other words, we are robots, run by machines that have no morality whatsoever, and we are not responsible for anything we do at any time. We are quintessentially not human, we are quintessentially organic robots. And this is by a man who has won a Nobel Prize. And it's telling us how from now on we should regard all mental disorders. Nobody's laughing. If you were a kook, again, I wouldn't even mention him. Report an error

1:11:28 There are a few people of greater scientific stature in the United States when it comes to mind sciences. This is cropping up more and more. Well, to the last I listen to how people talk, I read and read the popular media. This has not been true for my entire adult life, but it's now almost universally true in the popular media. The words mind and brain are used interchangeably. Report an error

1:11:50 And often the word mind isn't even used at all. Train your brain. The brain's doing this, the brain's doing that. The brain's doing this and that. Not many references to the mind anymore. Report an error

1:12:01 The mind is what the brain does. So why don't we just talk about what's real nature, isn't that the brain? Our kids are getting the message. Those of us old enough with our gray hair or white hair, we weren't indoctrinated into this in the 1950s. It was coming in the 1960s. But over the last with the rise of modern cognitive neuroscience, it just become normal. Report an error

1:12:19 And I listen to the way people speak. Ordinary people are not scientists who may regard themselves as Christian or this or that. More and more commonly now, almost universal, people are now saying brain, brain, brain, brain. They're not using the word mind as much. They're just substituting brain for mind. Are the young people getting the message? Report an error

1:12:41 Right next door, two hours flight away, New Zealand has one of the highest suicide rates among teenagers in the world. And I don't know the more pleasant country in the entire planet than New Zealand. I mean, what's not to like? You know? And the kids are killing themselves. I wonder why. So I think the stakes here are high. Report an error

1:13:02 We're just here for a little week-long retreat. I think this is enormously important. Is there any relief in sight? I'm going a bit longer so we can finish this. And then the rest will be just to the practice. But we are living in the 21st century. I think we must not blink, not pretend as if we're living someplace else. Report an error

1:13:24 There is hope. And it comes from a number of people. I'm citing one that I'm very familiar with. And that's William James, pioneer of American psychology, started the first neuroscience lab in America in 1875. Report an error

1:13:43 He writes a response to this view expressed by Michael Sherman, and that is that we must not believe anything without having first compelling evidence. Report an error

1:13:58 Well, Michael Sherman doesn't follow that at all. He doesn't even try. He seems to be utterly blind to his own unquestioned beliefs in scientific materialism. They never get questioned in his journal. Not seriously. So it's a fraud. Report an error

1:14:14 William James writes with a breath of tremendous fresh air, he said, where preferences are powerless to modify or produce things, faith is totally inappropriate. Report an error

1:14:25 Like the inverse square law of gravity. If you study physics and you think that I'd really prefer the inverse cube law, I really hope it works out. Let's hope so. Let's pray so. Oh Buddha, please bless my experiment that it can turn out to be an inverse cube law. Well, this is silly. Get over it. Whatever your preferences are, they don't matter. There's something is true here in what you believe. It doesn't make any difference at all. Just run the experiment. See what it says. Report an error

1:14:51 So there are many things like that. Does Jupiter have moons or not? Well, just look. Don't have any preference. Just be objective, open-minded. But for the class of truths that depend on personal preference, trust or loyalty, for actualization, in other words, some things don't become true unless you have a personal preference, trust or loyalty. Report an error

1:15:17 In such cases, faith is not only licit and pertinent, but essential and indispensable. Such truths cannot become true till our faith has made them so. Report an error

1:15:32 Now that's powerful. As powerful everywhere. I'm looking over at Phil, or Peter, Peter. So have you ever had clients who are suffering from some type of mental problem? They're anxious, they have low self-esteem, they're depressed, they're still suffering from some prior trauma, and they don't know whether they'll ever get better, because they've had this for months or years. Report an error

1:15:59 And they just don't know. This is their reality. I'm always depressed. I always feel I'm the poorest person, and so forth. And they don't, they just, they can't remember feeling anything other. And they come to a psychotherapist and say, these are my symptoms. Report an error

1:16:16 If this person has no faith, no trust, no vision of the possibility of getting better, then what are Peter's chances of helping that person get better? They have no confidence in Peter, no confidence in the whole tradition of psychotherapy and so forth that he represents. No confidence in the scientific findings and the much great deal of research. Report an error

1:16:37 It's gone into clinical psychology. No faith in all of it. No, for me, I don't know. Your faith and confidence, your vision of the possibility of overcoming your mental problem is crucial in order for that truth to manifest. Now let's go on the other side of the ledger. You're relatively normal. You don't have any particular pathology. But you're hearing about bodhicitta. You're hearing about immeasurable loving kindness. Report an error

1:17:04 You're hearing about these marvelous virtues that are discussed in great detail in Buddhism. And you're wondering, gosh, I'd love to experience immeasurable, unconditional loving kindness. It's not like a noble virtue. I'd love to achieve shamatha. I'd love to have insight into these various aspects of the nature of mind. I'd love to. Report an error

1:17:24 But then could I? Well, probably not. I probably could. I'm a Western or I'm ordinary. I'm not a Tibetan Rinpoche. I probably couldn't. I guess I won't try. Report an error

1:17:35 And then you're right. You've just given a self-fulfilling prophecy, you will fail. You don't believe in yourself. That's one of those truths that will become true only if and only if. You use that truth as a working hypothesis. And if you don't, nothing will happen. So faith is a virtue. Faith is a power, a strength. Report an error

1:17:58 It's crucial. It's imperative in science. If you don't have faith in your own hypotheses, you will not put them to the test. You'll be stuck with the world of actuality and never venture into the realm of possibility. So I think that is immensely more wise than this flat-footed statement, believe only that for which you have compelling evidence, which nobody does anyway, including the so-called self-style skeptics, who don't even trust their absurd. Report an error

1:18:27 So this has to do with vision. William James continues, in what matter do we espouse and hold faster visions? By thinking a conception might be true somewhere. So let's take an example. I teach Samatha quite frequently. Is it possible that anybody has achieved Samatha? Or has that era of history passed? Has Dharma become so degenerate? Whether you're a Tibetan, you're a Mongolian, you're an Australian or an American, it doesn't matter. Report an error

1:18:55 Degenerate times, nobody can achieve it. Can't happen. Don't even cry. Don't waste your time. The time has passed. Just study Dharma and teach. Hope for the best in a future lifetime. Okay? So there's something. There's a vision. But how about the vision where maybe it's possible if we put together all the necessary causes and conditions? Report an error

1:19:14 So might it be true somewhere? It could be true that someplace on the planet, somebody's actually achieved shamatha. Just taking one of many examples. So there's the first question. It might be true somewhere. It may be true even here and now. It is fit to be true. It ought to be true. It must be true. It shall be true for me. Report an error

1:19:34 And then you make reality happen, boldly venturing into the realm of possibility. He writes, philosophy is more a matter of passionate vision than of logic. Logic only finds finding reasons for the vision afterwards. So William James, unlike everything we've heard from these various quotes, and they're not completely representative, but they're pretty representative of a lot of thinking. Report an error

1:20:03 He defines psychology. Now we're really honing in on where we're going for this retreat. Psychology is the science of mental life. He defines it. Both of its phenomena, the actual experiences you're having and their conditions. So, environmental conditions, brain states and so forth cover the whole package, three-dimensional. Report an error

1:20:23 The phenomena, which are the subject of study in psychology, are such things as we call feelings, desires, cognitions, reasonings, decisions and the like. And William James' approach to the scientific study of the mind is one of radical empiricism. And what does he mean by this? He says, I say empiricism because it is contented to regard its most assured conclusions concerning matters of fact as hypotheses liable to modification in the course of future experience. Report an error

1:20:57 And I say radical because it treats the doctrine of monism, and that's his word for scientific materialism, itself as a hypothesis. And unlike so much of the halfway empiricism that is a current under the name of positivism, or agnosticism, or scientific naturalism, it does not dogmatically affirm monism, everything boils down to matter. Report an error

1:21:22 So this is true skepticism, but it comes back to your own experience rather than negating your own experience. That's a big difference. It's acknowledging introspection rather than dismissing introspection. It's radical empiricism. What the skeptic should have been saying, he said, while they do the opposite. So introspective observation, what role does this have in the scientific study of the mind as envisioned more than a hundred years ago by William James? Report an error

1:21:58 He said introspective observation is what we have to rely on first and foremost and always. The word introspection need hardly be defined. It means, of course, the looking into our minds and reporting what we there discover. Report an error

1:22:14 Thank you. We've been now acknowledged back into the universe. We actually have a perspective that might be taken seriously rather than all of the proceedings that say we're all drugged out of our minds and don't know what we're talking about. Except for them. Somehow they got a freebie back. The people are writing that, unlike us, you people are all on Datura. Report an error

1:22:31 But we scientists, of course, rely on us. You know what it reminds me of in a very creepy fashion is the Roman Catholic Church at its nadir, maybe its lowest spot, 16th century, 17th century, where the Roman Catholic Church wouldn't allow the Bible to be translated into any vernacular language. It was in Latin so only the professionals could read it. They were very happy to burn you at the stake if you had any anomalous experiences that did not correspond to their dogma. And that went on for 250 years. Report an error

1:22:58 It killed tens of thousands of people, mostly women. They are the experts on all experience. Your experience counts for nothing unless they give it a thumbs up. And if you disagree with them, you go to hell. Report an error

1:23:11 You get excommunicated. Sounds too creepily similar to that. And science rescued us from that. The rise of modern science in the early 17th century was coming right in the middle of that witch hunting craze that sent Europe into psychosis for 250 years. Science was the medicine. Where they just kind of cleaned up external reality and said, no ghosts, no spirits, no demons, never mind all of that, they're just projections of the mind. We now have a nice clean and disenchanted universe and we'll study it, but this demonic possession is a bunch of crap. Report an error

1:23:47 And so stop it because it's delusional. And it petered off. Science actually saved us from that terrible psychosis that captured the European mind. And now scientists are doing the favor for us all over again. But they've taken the role of the church. So who's going to be the medicine? Who's going to be the rescuer? When science itself is taking on a new dogma that once again completely negates our experience and they say now they have their dogma and any experience we have that falls outside of the dogma is nuts. Report an error

1:24:19 Well, that's why we're here. That's why I'm here. To help catalyze an overthrow of this horrible domination of the beloved natural sciences by this awful dogmatism. Report an error

1:24:32 William James was one very astute man. He introduced introspection as having taken a primary role in the study of the mind. He said, introspection is difficult and fallible. And the difficulty is simply that of all observation of whatever kind. The only safeguard is in the final consensus of our father or later knowledge about the thing in question, later views correcting earlier ones until at last the harmony of a consistent system is reached. Report an error

1:25:01 In other words, he's suggesting that introspection is like all other kinds of observations. All of our observations, whether scientific or just by way of our senses, are fallible. Report an error

1:25:11 You know, the Hadrian Super Collider, that $7 million creation there on the border between France and Switzerland, you know, it went dysfunctional, it went offline for about a year. Report an error

1:25:24 And that's because it wasn't making sound measurements. Brilliant minds, hundreds if not thousands of brilliant minds created this wonderful contraption, and then it didn't work. It's offline for a year, I think it's maybe back online now, but even the best, you know, the best technology, and that's some of the best humans ever created, malfunctions. Report an error

1:25:43 You pick up false data, you're making false measurements, something was wrong, you know. So scientific measurements are fallible, visual perceptions are fallible, introspection is fallible, but not hopelessly so. When it malfunctioned for a whole year, they didn't say, oh crap, we blew it, let's throw it away and make a farm. No, they fixed it. And then they discovered the Higgs boson. Report an error

1:26:07 Cool. The introspection is fallible. But what's not being done in modern science, and it has been done for 25 years, 2500 years in Buddhism, is take a fallible mode of observation, refine it, sharpen it, make it more sophisticated, reliable, so that by way of introspection you can make accurate and replicable discoveries. Report an error

1:26:28 That can be corroborated by other people who go through similar refinement of our introspective skills. That's what William James envisioned. But he should have lived for 200 years instead of 70 odd years. Because he died. And in the year of his death, he was buried multiple times. And everything he stood for was just plowed under. Report an error

1:26:49 And behaviors him took over. And negated everything he said. And they dominated academic psychology for the 20th century. So it needs to be rescued. So in this regard, William James writes, psychology indeed is hardly more than what physics was before Galileo. So before Galileo, you had all of these assumptions and beliefs going back to Aristotle, back to the Bible, that were unquestioned for 2,000 years or longer. Report an error

1:27:20 What Galileo was up against and what Galileo brought in was, so ironic, visual observation. That which Tyson, the astronomer said, is the least reliable. And it's the foundation of astronomy. Who do you think is looking through the telescope? Report an error

1:27:42 People with their eyeballs. And Michael Schirmer says it's totally unreliable. In other words, the starting, the launching pad of modern science is a hallucination, it's illusory and totally unreliable. The worst form of evidence. Thank you, Galileo. You are totally dope. You're a great big dope. Oh, you too. Report an error

1:28:02 And Max Planck, yeah, you too, you observed, you're a dope. Where does the dope start stop when you've just called Galileo a dope? Report an error

1:28:13 Because all of his observations were made with his eyes and very simple technology. But he started the Sain of Revolution. So, but before Galileo, they didn't have sophisticated types of measurements. They had no telescope, they had none of his technology that he used for terrestrial physics and mechanics. And so it was empiricism. Report an error

1:28:35 Trusting our senses, refining our senses by way of technology, that God is out of the quagmire of the dogma of the late medieval period and launched us into the modern era. But now we're up to our neck in another form of dogma where they're saying all of your experience might, when it doesn't count at all, something has to come to the rescue here because we're in dire straits. Report an error

1:28:57 But what about religion? Because of all types of experience, the most suspicious... Where you even say the word religion, and I've lived in academia for six years. I taught for four years, lived at Stanford for six years. That's ten years. That's a pretty deep, pretty long exposure. Report an error

1:29:14 And for many people, if you say you've had a religious experience, they just start smiling immediately. Oh, tell us about your fantasy. I'm all ears. Is it better or worse than Harry Potter? Lord of the Rings. Ring it up. What was your religious experience? Twinkle, twinkle. Tell us the crap that you're about to share. Report an error

1:29:34 Because, of course, nothing that you have to say has any validity whatsoever. It's religious experience. Need I say more? You know, it's very common. Very, very common. So, William James has an answer for that as well. He said, let empiricism once become associated with religion, let it become associated with religion. Report an error

1:29:58 In other words, take your religion, Christianity, Buddhism, whatever, and reinstill the spirit of empiricism. Come back and emphasize, highlight. Refine your first-person experience and tell us what you report. Let empiricism once become associated with religion as hitherto through some strange misunderstanding it has been associated with irreligion. Report an error

1:30:19 So religion over here and empiricism totally diametrically opposed. Big mistake. But let the two become conjoined and I believe 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. In other words, not just clapping your hands in debate or writing one more Dharma book, arguing about it, about reincarnation and so forth. Report an error

1:30:49 Why not acknowledge all that as its place but then come back to experience? Is anybody now recalling past lives? And if so, why do you think it's a recollection and not a fantasy? And what was your training? What gives you the belief that you're... Mental appearances are actually factual. That's empiricism. And William James, we're almost finished here, he proposed a science of religion that differs from philosophical theology. Report an error

1:31:15 My father's a theologian, so I know something about that. He proposed 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. So he's saying that which is diametrically opposed to that fellow Robert Scharf at UC Berkeley. Report an error

1:31:36 Saying, experience is meaningless, wiggles will lead nowhere at all. He said, well, I beg to differ completely and in every way that we should be exactly interpreting religious experience rigorously, objectively, rationally to see what religious people discover. Report an error

1:31:52 We should start taking their experiences seriously. And he wrote a brilliant textbook or text called Varieties of Religious Experiences that remains a classic. He says, such a science of religion can offer mediation between different believers. So imagine Christian contemplatives and Buddhists and Hindu and Taoists coming together in one contemplative laboratory following their own tradition. Report an error

1:32:15 Not trying to make a big mushy mega religion. No, Buddhists do your stuff. Christians do your stuff. Hindus, Taoists and so forth. Go into your experience. Develop your samādhi. Do whatever you're doing. That is truly contender of inquiry. And after you've spent months, years, whatever, you're ready to report your finding. Then we'll have a group seminar. Report an error

1:32:35 Okay, you Christians, what have you been discovering? What have you found? Okay, Hindus, what's up? Taoists, what's up? Buddhists, what do you find? Theravāda, Zen, Tibetan Buddhists, what have you been discovering? And now let's talk. Is there any common ground here? How about common ground and methodology? Any overlap? What about discoveries? Are you replicating things given your different frameworks? Report an error

1:32:54 Christians are theists, the Taoists are... Taoists, Buddhists are anomalous. Hindus are polyethists and so forth, coming from different frameworks, different methods. Are you discovering anything that you're replicating across frameworks? That's the science of religions. And if we're all getting together in an open-minded fashion, critical, open-minded, he said this might provide compelling evidence, there's that big term again, that would be valid across lines. Report an error

1:33:24 All you Christians have made that discovery about unconditional love by way of prayer, by devotion. But we really see evidence you've really experienced unconditional love. That's impressive. Thank you. Maybe we Buddhists can learn more about that. Maybe you have something to share. We don't believe in your creator God. And maybe we can find a way to make your approach relevant. Report an error

1:33:45 And then the Tao has come up with something. And maybe we can actually learn from each other while being really holding to our own tradition. But being aware that no one tradition has all the answers. Not Buddhist, not science, not anything else. So he says, such a science can offer mediation between different believers and help to bring about consensus of opinion. Report an error

1:34:02 In other words, consensual knowledge on which you can build. What scientists have done, philosophers and theologians have not. And then he continues, even the personally non-religious might accept its conclusions on trust, much as blind persons now accept the fact of optics. It might appear as foolish to refuse them. Report an error

1:34:26 Science was a visionary, writing more than a century ago, envisioning sets of science and religions, where there would be so many replicable discoveries across boundaries, that even if they're not religious at all, some people say, I just don't have a religious sentiment, I'm just not there, I have this disposition, I just don't have no interest in meditation. Report an error

1:34:48 And some people have no interest in cooking. And some people have no interest in biology or physics or chemistry or mathematics. But nevertheless, even if you're not a mathematician, you can believe, you know, a lot of us believe great mathematical discoveries made by brilliant mathematicians. Don't really understand them. They say, yeah, that's a very distinguished discipline there. A lot of very smart people. And they have a lot of consensus among themselves. Report an error

1:35:12 So, yes, I take that very seriously. I'm not really that interested in mathematics. So he's suggesting people who are not religiously gifted. Report an error

1:35:21 Might accept very rationally religious discoveries, especially when they say that it's not, when they see it's not partisan. The Buddha is trying to replicate Buddhist beliefs. Hindu is trying to affirm Hindu beliefs. So no, these people are being objective. They've earned my respect. There is a close analogy here. Report an error

1:35:41 And it's remarkable what I think. It is mathematics. What constitutes compelling evidence for a mathematician? Report an error

1:35:52 Somebody comes up with a new proof. Wins the Fields Medal. That's their Nobel Prize in mathematics. It's brilliant. It's something mathematicians have been struggling with for 200 years and then some incredibly brilliant person comes up with a proof and he said, and it's Eureka. I said, wow, I did it. Now, who can I show it to? Well, not your plumber, not your gardener, not your dentist. Report an error

1:36:19 They'll say, that's a lot of interesting squiggles you got there. Why are you showing it to me? If it's really brilliant, you probably want to show it only to brilliant mathematicians. This other one might not even understand what you've done. But you know somebody who knows somebody. Please send this to this world-class Penrose, Roger Penrose at Oxford. Maybe the best in the world, mathematician. Report an error

1:36:44 Please send this to Michael Penrose. Get this in front of his eyes. I think I've proven this. That nobody's been able to for the last 200 years. Please show it to him. And they take you seriously and have, okay. Off the penrose it goes, and he reads it, by cracky, you've done it, congratulations, and he shows it to colleagues, look, he shows it to colleagues of his level, look at this person, he's proven it, there it is, look at it, and they go, cracky, he did, fantastic, and we're getting, oh, this guy is for the Fields Medal, for sure. Report an error

1:37:13 You show it to a high school mathematics teacher and say, I don't get it, I can't quite, I don't know, it doesn't prove it, I don't quite understand it. Report an error

1:37:24 This is really hard. Okay, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. We have this top level. We have proven it. Right? That's how it works. You don't ask the junior high school math teacher his opinion. You go to the top of the top. And then when you see consensus there, you say, okay. Now, the rest of us don't have a clue. But we read about it and say, wow, impressive. And they got a Fields medal. Right? Where is the compelling evidence that actually is a proof? Report an error

1:37:56 Where's the compelling others? I mean, Michael Sherman said, don't believe anything without compelling others. You and I are not mathematicians, I presume. Well, you and I, we're not mathematicians, right? But shall we therefore not believe anything those dogma mathematicians say? Because what do they know, after all? I am a Buddhist scholar and you have your profession. What do they know? You sound like a bunch of stupid hillbillies, if that's our view. Report an error

1:38:18 What do they know? A bunch of eggheads, ivory tower types, what do they know? You sound like an idiot, right? Don't you know that these people have incredible expertise? Are you foolish? Are you, Billy, what are you? Intelligent, educated people say that's impressive. I mean, I heard that this was corroborated at MIT and University of Melbourne and Sorbonne and Oxford and so forth. Where's the compelling evidence? Report an error

1:38:44 Because they say so. Where's their compelling evidence? Oh, I remember that which doesn't exist. Introspection. How did Roger Penrose know that he... That he got the proof. How did he know that he got it? That he looked at the squiggles on the paper and that it proved something to him. How did he know that? Report an error

1:39:09 By watching his behavior or doing a brain scan? He knows in only one possible way and that's called introspection. I learned this when I was studying advanced calculus at Amherst College, another superb college in the United States. And I asked my professor, when does a proof take place? A proof, that's very important in mathematics. That's the bread and butter of mathematics. Report an error

1:39:32 Proven or not proven? Where's the QED? When does it happen? And he said, when you get it. It's not when you write QED. Anybody can write QED. A monkey can write QED. A monkey, well trained, can write all the equations. A robot can be programmed to write equations. The robot knows nothing. The monkey knows nothing of what he's doing, except for squiggles. Where does the proof take place? In your mind. Report an error

1:39:59 And no place else. And mathematics is the foundation of all the natural sciences. So you see how these people shoot themselves in the foot multiple times, like with a machine gun. By denying the validity of first-person experience, they've blown away all the foundations we're called in neuroscience, but they've also blown away all the natural sciences, which are based on mathematics, which is inside subjective jar. Report an error

1:40:24 So somebody needs to rescue these poor people. It's Buddhist to the rescue. Report an error

1:40:33 But again, we have no monopoly. It is an immensely rich tradition. I've studied some of the Christian and some of it is wonderfully rich. I've studied some of the Hindu, wonderfully rich. Some of the Taoist, very rich. Some of the Sufi, very rich. So happily, we're not the only show in town, in the town of planet Earth. And so I think William James nailed it. Report an error

1:40:58 Reintroduce radical empiricism into religion, its best ally. Have a science of religion that is not dogmatic or biased. Learn from each other, come up with replicable discoveries, and like the community of mathematicians, report your consensual and replicable findings to the public and do so with confidence. Report an error

1:41:19 And if they don't accept it, that's because they're killbillies. They're uneducated and their opinion doesn't count. So wonderfully, His Holiness the Dalai Lama has proposed exactly that. Report an error

1:41:38 A couple of years back, I'm about to finish, we'll all take a break. And actually, it will just end early because I kept you a long time. But this will be the only time. Very often when I'm leading your teeth, I go on at length the first one, and it won't happen again. Because I know it's very long, but I wanted to lay this out. As you can tell, I have a lot of passion and very strong conviction, and this is important. But I'll tell you now, end of notes. Report an error

1:41:59 From now on, we'll go back to the practices of cells. See whether what I'm saying lives up to the challenge that I've just presented. Because I think we can all see it's quite dying. Report an error

1:42:08 So, a couple of years back, I contacted His Holiness, who, for those of you who know the kind of things he's been emphasizing over the last number of years, one of these is the great Nalanda tradition. Nalanda was one of the greatest universities on the planet about 1,000, 1,500 years ago. A tract is followed from all over Asia, as far as away as Japan, China, the New East. Report an error

1:42:40 It had tremendous intellectual integrity. It had a 9 story library, 10 to 1 ratio of professors, of students to professors, 10,000 student body, one of the academic masterpieces of all of human history in Lama. It wasn't the only one, it was Victor Meshila, it was like Oxford and Cambridge, and then around a thousand years ago it was destroyed, it was washed away, by various factors, but I won't go into detail, but it was destroyed, even it was at news. Report an error

1:43:12 The Muslims who destroyed it, destroyed it so effectively, couldn't even find the foundation stones. They really had a mission. This has to be obliterated so everybody forgets about it. Well, they didn't, because that whole Nalanda tradition was brought over the Himalayas before it was destroyed in India. Report an error

1:43:26 And the Satya Bandita, the Tsongkhapa, the great scholars of all the traditions about Buddhism, have maintained that tradition of tremendous intellectual sophistication, of logic, epistemology, of contemplative inquiry. But was embedded within a much broader framework of knowledge, of reasoning, of logic, of medicine, of technology, and so forth. Report an error

1:43:49 And so as Horan is, I think, seeing, obviously, I mean, it's obvious to anybody who's looking closely, that Buddhism after this devastating 20th century where genocides struck down Buddhism throughout most of Asia, that Buddhism is now an imperiled wisdom tradition in which you can either just slip into... Report an error

1:44:10 Simply a faith-based religion, of which we already have plenty, or into new age scattering of techniques. And His Holiness feels very passionate to let us maintain the depth, the richness, the integrity, the majesty of the Ananda tradition. Report an error

1:44:31 And so I wrote to His Holiness a couple of years ago and said, Your Holiness, I absolutely agree with you. A very important message for the modern world, for the preservation and revitalization of Buddha Dharma. In the modern world, and it's also true that among the great academic institutions of our modern world, the great universities that we have, they consist not only of classrooms and libraries, study and exams and debating and so forth, but they also include research laboratories. Report an error

1:45:05 If they have an astronomy department, they have access to some observatory, some place. Neuroscience, they must have a neuroscience lab, and likewise for the other branches of natural sciences. They have laboratories where they're doing cutting-edge research and not simply reporting on research that earlier generations have done. Report an error

1:45:21 So if we are truly to revitalize the Nalando division in the modern world, isn't it necessary in such institutions to also include laboratories of the old-fashioned time, contemplative laboratories, environments that are set up, designed? To support long-term, professional, sophisticated, contemplative inquiry. Because all of the great masters like Tisha, Shantideva, Shantarachita, Aryadeva, the list goes on and on and on. Report an error

1:45:53 They were not just great scholars, they were great adepts, Naropa and so forth. But Sakyapandita, Sondapa himself, they were brilliant scholars, but they were equally brilliant contemplatives, highly realized beings. They were both. So don't... If we're to support one, shouldn't we be supporting the other as well? Laboratories. And provide the context, the training and so forth, the financial support, which is very modest to support people, going into research for 5, 10, 15, 20 years. Report an error

1:46:24 As outstanding scientists all over the world, we get lifelong grants. One of my dear late friends, Francisco Varela, he was so good as a neuroscientist, he got a lifelong grant. He didn't have to teach ever again. The French government just said, you're brilliant. Just continue. We'll just pay for you for the rest of your life. Unfortunately, it was too short. But the really good scientists, they just get a freebie from them. They don't even have to teach. Report an error

1:46:48 If they're good enough, they and their graduate students and so forth, well, we'll just support you. Do five years of research. Do ten years of research. We love what you're doing. It will be helpful to humanity. So shouldn't we have something for first-person science and contemplative science? So they said, good, yes. Do it. Report an error

1:47:07 I didn't see that one coming. I thought he would do it. He would do it. Write up a proposal. So, then he expanded it. Because my idea was to focus on Samad and Vipassanā, the very core Buddhist inquiry. The first is technology, the second one is science. Refine your instrument and then use it. As we will be doing for the rest of this time. So we're almost finished here. Samad and Vipassanā. And I thought, let's be really non-sictarian here. Report an error

1:47:37 Why not create a contemplative observatory? Focus on Shantideva Paschana, the very heart of Buddhist mind science, and have it be totally non-sictarian, and that is, of all the schools of Tibetan Buddhism, come one, come all, gender blind, monks, nuns, and you don't need to wear a red robe to come. If you're very dedicated, have strong renunciation, be a serious layperson, fine, come. Many of the greatest Tibetan yogis in history have been not ordained, and many have been ordained, so have it open to all who are really qualified. Report an error

1:48:07 And prepare to engage in very serious, sophisticated, sustained training. So that was my idea. So they said, very good. But we'll include all religions that have comparable modes of contemplative inquiry. The training of introspection, the training of attention, an active contemplative inquiry in the nature of the mind, the soul, nature of consciousness, the role of mind in nature, the role of multiple dimensions of consciousness, including the transcendent, the divine. Report an error

1:48:37 Let's bring in the Taoists and the multiple schools of Hinduism. Bring in the Christians. Invite them all. In other words, I don't think he's ever read William James. Report an error

1:48:47 He came up with the same notion. And so that's what we are now envisioning in the heart of India. I have a newly established university there called Sanchi University of Buddhist Indian Studies. He told me, I said, okay, Alan, send me a proposal there. It's a newly established university based on the Nalanda model. Report an error

1:49:08 Right? In the very heart of India. And so see if you can see if they're interested to establish a contemplative observatory there, which then completely fulfills William James' vision. And nobody else on the planet, as far as I can tell, is doing. Not in Tibet or outside Tibet. So what we are doing here is a little branch of that contemplative observatory to be. Report an error

1:49:33 And hopefully there will be something like that here in Australia. There's a good deal of groundswell moving in that direction. For what's already created, I hope to capitalize in Mexico, seven people now in full-time retreat. Land has been purchased in Mongolia. We're very actively working to create one in Santa Barbara and almost on the verge of purchasing land for both the Mine Center and Contemplative Observatory in Scotland. Report an error

1:49:58 And in Mongolia, I think I mentioned they have land. In Thailand, the land is there. We just need to have more financial stability there. So the vision here is not just one place. The vision is a network, like the human genome project that didn't belong to MIT or to Berlin or the Sorbonne. It's collaborative, and it had to be collaborative. Report an error

1:50:19 To make that project competitive would have been crazy. So much redundant research would have been done. It would have been foolishness, and the scientists were not foolish. They were collaborative. And when they finished it, they all collectively stood up for the bow and received congratulations. What is the nature of the mind? Report an error

1:50:39 Does consciousness originate from the brain or does our flow of consciousness precede the formation of this brain? Does death mean the termination of consciousness or is there a continuity of consciousness at some level that is not contingent on the brain? Are we morally responsible for our behavior at all? And if so, how does that work? And do we experience consequences of our actions beyond the course of this lifetime? Report an error

1:51:04 What is the potential of the mind for introspection? Does it have multiple dimensions? What is the role of mind in nature as a whole? I don't think I have just raised any trivial questions. They are questions for which modern science has no answers, just beliefs and uncorroborated opinions. Report an error

1:51:26 So create the observatories, the laboratories, and we might actually catalyze the first true revolution in mind sciences, which our world, I think, desperately needs in so many different ways. Report an error

1:51:45 That was a long talk. Nobody fell asleep, for which I thank you. But that places us in the 21st century. I hope I've, to my mind, I've persuaded myself that the stakes here are very high. That these are important issues. I wasn't picking out anomalous weirdos. That people are representative, not everyone in their discipline, but many people in the discipline. And their views are having tremendous impact throughout the entire world. Report an error

1:52:12 There are children in Bhutan. Which is overwhelmingly Buddhist country, who believe you can't believe in science and Buddhism. That's the way they've been presented, science has been presented to them. Science is being totally fused with beliefs of materialism and you can't believe in materialism and believe in a Buddhist. They believe in Buddhism, they're completely incompatible. Report an error

1:52:34 So their Bhutanese children are being indoctrinated into pseudo-science and thinking they really like science but they like Buddhism, now they have to choose. That's tragic. That's pseudoscience. So that's a pretty remote part of the globe. Bhutan is very protected from us. And yet it's even getting in there. Report an error

1:52:55 It's gotten to Mongolia. It's saturating all of China. Major influence in India. The whole academic system from elementary school all the way through. Heavily influenced by materialism. Almost everybody studies science. They get a big, big dose of materialism at the same time. Report an error

1:53:15 The knowledge of science and the beliefs of scientific materialism completely fuse together as if they're the same. The people all over the globe are being deluded into pseudoscience and the results are very catastrophic and I think you will see them becoming more catastrophic unless there's some really powerful countermeasures which means discovery, not laws, not punishment, not retaliation but meet delusion with insight and let the insight crush the delusion. Report an error

1:53:45 And free people can do it. So that's all. From now on, tonight I think, there will be no lecture tonight. So just generally, the evenings will be open. We'll have meditation, but it won't be guided. We'll have time for open discussion. There will be no lecture. And so that will be always evenings for all of them until through Tuesday night. So even if you're a little pooped out, a bit oversaturated with information by the evening, don't worry. Report an error

1:54:15 There will be no more lectures in the evening. And for the afternoon, morning and afternoon sessions, the Dharma talks will be relatively short. We'll have time for meditation, guided meditation every morning, every afternoon, and time for discussion on most of those occasions. So that's what we have to look forward to. Final note, and we'll just take a break. We'll be finished a few minutes early this afternoon. I just want to come back very briefly to the issue of silence. Report an error

1:54:39 I suggested at the beginning that we have that as our default mode. That is in baseline, that's where we rest in silence. Throughout the course of this week, if there's somebody here, some of you are coming with spouses or friends or what have you, and if you feel during one of the breaks, Report an error

1:54:56 there's certainly something you'd like to discuss, something very meaningful, pertinent to the Dharma talks, the meditation, your own experiences, and you'd really like to have some Dharma conversation with a friend, and that friend is happy to speak with you, maybe write him a note or something, and it would be very relevant to you. Report an error

1:55:12 Related to what we're doing here. Then you're perfectly free to do something. I would just ask that you go for a walk. So other people are really dwelling in silence. They don't have to be part of your conversation. As you go far enough away, there's a private conversation. But at any time, if that's your choice, if you find that more meaningful than to sustain silence, it's fine. Report an error

1:55:33 No problem at all. Nobody's looking, nobody's judging. But when we are not moved to really meaningful speech... Or utilitarian, you know, not have to do everything with sign language, just something like, did I leave my notebook here? But it is time to rest in silence, so that's our baseline, so that when we speak, when we think, we just look consciously. Report an error

1:55:57 So, it's a principle, but not a rigid law. Report an error

1:56:06 That's the 21st century, the 20th and 21st century, and why I feel what we're doing here is tremendously relevant. you very much. Report an error

1:56:13 It's a fulfillment of William James' dreams, and it's quintessentially Buddhist. But what we're doing here, you don't have to believe something first, except for maybe this would be meaningful. But you don't have to believe in any aspect of Buddhist worldview, of reincarnation, karma and so forth, but your experience guide you and see where it takes you. So this, our approach will be very scientific, but I will say I have confidence that this can be very, very Buddhist. Report an error

1:56:39 That is one of my prime directives. I am... Here to represent the Buddha's teachings, and I do so with great reverence. So the worst thing I can do would be to distort or misrepresent the teachings of the Buddha and the teachings of the various lineages that I've received. So my prime directive is don't screw up the teachings that I've received. Don't misrepresent them. If I do, then I stop. I'll fire myself. Report an error

1:57:04 That's my primary responsibility. Don't distort it. Don't contaminate it. That's my job. And so that's why you have a bunch of notes. You can see where my sources are. You can evaluate whether I'm reasonably interpreting the sources, but you see what I'm in dialogue with. And I think that's very important nowadays, because there are people who call themselves Buddhists, who say, there are quite a few of them, especially Westerners, but some Asians as well, who say they are Buddhists, they say they're giving Buddhist teachings, and the teachings they're giving are completely in opposition to what the Buddha talked. Report an error

1:57:39 And there's a lot of that around. And if they become popular, they become authorities. Because many people believe in what they're saying. I think it's very unfortunate that if people don't believe in core teachings of Buddha, that's perfectly fine. I have no qualms about that at all. But reincarnation comes with me. If you don't believe it, that's fine. It doesn't give me any qualms at all. I hope you believe in something that's beneficial. Report an error

1:58:03 But to not believe in those and say, I'm a Buddhist teacher, and then refute the Buddha, or say he never said it, that's hard to me. It's really, really fraudulent. I think it's very, very harmful. And other people who are watering down, coming up with their own definitions, their own ideas and things as Buddhists, that's really terrible. Report an error

1:58:21 That's pseudo-Buddhism. As there's a lot that goes under the name of science, it's pseudo-science. So I'm equally opposed to both. Try to avoid both extremes myself. So what I'll try to do is give utterly authentic Buddhist teachings and resent them in the 21st century. And where pertinent, maybe relate them here and there to aspects of modern science, we're really going to be focusing on the Buddhist practices from now on. That was a long preamble, but it's over. Report an error

1:58:48 And then we'll have a much more leisurely phase from now on. And you won't have to hear me go on for almost three hours. Once only. And you're still upright. Nobody's keeled over unless you began keeling. No, nobody's keeled over. Amazing. Good. So my congratulations on your stamina. Report an error

1:59:07 And I look forward to seeing you. In silence this evening, we'll have time for discussion and meditation. That's awesome. Enjoy your afternoon and a nice long break. Report an error

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Talk by B. Alan Wallace. Original at Vajrayana Institute via Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/FourApplicationsOfMindfulnessRetreat2013. Licensed CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. Transcript generated automatically and may contain errors; the audio is the authoritative version.

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