Dalai Lama: Body, Mind, Science at University of Strasbourg

Strasbourg, France, 16 September 2016 - The sky was overcast this morning as His Holiness the Dalai Lama drove across the city to the University of Strasbourg to take part in a dialogue with the scientific community, at the interface of modern science, engagement, and meditation. He was welcomed to the University by Theologist Michel Deneken, who just yesterday was promoted to become the University’s new President, Dean of the Medical School, Jean Sibilia and Rheumatologist Jean-Gérard Bloch. They escorted him directly to the small auditorium where an audience of just over 140 staff members were gathered, although another 1300 students and staff were watching elsewhere in the building via a live webcast.

Michel Deneken opened proceedings by asking how His Holiness preferred to be addressed, noting that he had recently told an interviewer that he would be happy to be called ‘brother’. His Holiness said he’d love that. Deneken introduced the University as one of the great Universities of Europe established on both sides of the Rhine, being Catholic and Protestant, French and German, and with a reputation for openness. He concluded by telling His Holiness how delighted he was by his presence.

The first session, Neurosciences, set out to examine the regulation of attention and emotions by mindfulness meditation, and was moderated by Michel de Mathelin. Wolf Singer a distinguished neuroscientist interested in the relation between the material and spiritual asked how meditation acts on the mental substrate and how insight influences the brain. His Holiness responded by looking back 3-4000 years in India to the emergence of the practice of shamatha meditation in which the mind is focussed on a single object. Subsequently, vipashyana or special insight meditation emerged which was more investigative. Through concentration and analysis these practices became the basis for coming to understand the workings of the mind.

He mentioned the sensory consciousnesses that are very much related to the brain and mental consciousness.

“Ordinary mental consciousness is quite coarse,” he explained, “but during sleep, when the senses are shut down, consciousness is a little subtler. When there is no dreaming it’s subtler still and when we faint even subtler. My friend Richie Davidson is now investigating the subtlest consciousness that manifests at the time of death. There are cases, and there have been maybe 40 since 1959, when the heart has stopped, the brain has died, but the body remains fresh. My own tutor remained in this state for 13 days after clinical death.”

Antoine Lutz spoke about work he and Gaël Chételat have been doing to investigate the impact of mindfulness meditation among several strategies for tackling ageing and Alzheimer’s disease in particular. He mentioned its successful role in relieving depression which is a problem associated with ageing.

In the second session, Clinical Aspects, Jean-Gérard Bloch and Gilles Bertschy, with Cornelius Weiller moderating, spoke further about the impact of mindfulness meditation on depression and pain. Depression is a public health issue that Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) is 30% effective in dealing with. MBCT seems to help when there are difficult issues to cope with.

Bloch asked His Holiness whether language was needed to meditate, prompting His Holiness to speak briefly about the difference between conceptual and non-conceptual thought. He confirmed, however, that simply on the basis of conveying meditation instructions language was required. He also remarked that this is an area in which the Tibetan language is the most accurate medium of communication.

Bloch also asked His Holiness if there is a difference between pain and suffering and he told him that pain is related to physical experience, whereas suffering has more of a mental character. Regarding meditation, His Holiness clarified:

“I’ve already distinguished between concentrative and analytical meditation. The difference lies in how the mind engages with the object. From a traditional point of view the four mindfulnesses are understood as follows. Mindfulness of the body relates to understanding the nature of suffering; mindfulness of feelings relates to understanding the origin of suffering; mindfulness of the mind relates to cessation; while mindfulness of the way things are corresponds to understanding the path.”

After a break for lunch, in a third session, Tania Singer and Ven Matthieu Ricard discussed empathy and compassion, with Michel Deneken moderating. On the one hand Tania Singer’s research is examining the impact steady training in meditation on empathy and compassion has on the brain, but on the other is also seeking to find training and practice to offset the empathy burn out frequently encountered in the medical and other caring professions. She defines empathy as feeling or identifying with others’ pain, whereas compassion is feeling for their suffering—and doing something about it.

His Holiness distinguished between a basic biological sense of compassion that tends to be biased and partisan and a genuine compassion based on reasoning such as the argument that others want to live a happy life and don’t want suffering, just as I do. Ricard pointed out the degree of courage involved in cultivating great compassion. He also observed that co-operation is far more effective than competition.

The fourth and final session, Consciousness, was moderated by B Alan Wallace. He introduced Steven Laureys a neurologist who studies coma and Michel Bitbol a polymath who functions as a philosopher. Laureys, who had brought a brain with him to illustrate what he had to say, declared that he wants to know, “What happens when matter becomes mind?” His Holiness remarked, “I really doubt that it does.” And Laureys retorted, “Can you be conscious without your brain?” He made his approach clearer when asserting that the scientific proof of life after death involves organ donation.

Speaking in Tibetan, which Alan Wallace translated, His Holiness said:

“It’s difficult to explain consciousness if you only take a materialist approach. What we can do is to employ shamatha or concentration focussed on our own consciousness. This reveals its clarity of awareness and knowing.”

He explained that there are further stages of investigation related to employing techniques from the tantras. He observed that Hindu and Buddhist tantras overlap and share features in common. What distinguishes them is the Buddhist view of emptiness of intrinsic existence.

Laureys stated: “Consciousness exists. I try to understand it.” He repeated his question asking whether His Holiness thought there was consciousness without a brain. As time ran out Michel Bitbol spoke about how Edmund Husserl whose work on phenomenology influenced foremost 20th century philosophers like Sartre and Heidegger.  The later Francisco Varela, old friend of His Holiness and founder member of Mind & Life found inspiration in what Husserl had to say about ‘consciousness in the first person.’

Winding up a stimulating day of discussion, Michel Deneken thanked His Holiness for coming and contributing to the conversation. His Holiness replied, “I came because you invited me.” Tomorrow, elsewhere in Strasbourg, he will begin to teach Nagarjuna’s ‘Commentary on Bodhichitta.’

original link with photos http://dalailama.com/news/post/1455-body-mind-science-at-university-of-strasbourg

Dalai Lama on Seeing Science Through A Spiritual Lens

New Delhi, India, 18 December 2010 (By Amy Yee, Special to The Washington Post) - The northern Indian town of Bir was greeted with an unusual sight when Scott Schmidt carried six-foot-long plywood sheets on his head through the streets. Schmidt, who develops exhibits for the Smithsonian, had retrieved the wood from the village carpenter and toted it on his head to the Buddhist institute he was visiting. "I got impatient," said Schmidt. "I probably broke every rule of how a Westerner is supposed to act in a village in India."

Schmidt was helping a group of 30 Tibetan monks plan "The World of Your Senses," a bilingual science exhibition displayed last month in New Delhi at the India Habitat Center, an arts and culture venue in India's capital.

The wood was used to build a prototype of the display panels. Schmidt's effort - and sore head - were worth it. The exhibit showcasing Western and Buddhist perspectives of the five senses was inaugurated by the Dalai Lama and viewed by hundreds of visitors over five days. Plans are underway for the exhibit to tour in India next year and possibly at a Smithsonian museum in the United States.

The exhibit was the latest effort in a 10-year-old initiative to teach science to Tibetan monastics, started at the behest of the Dalai Lama. In 2001, the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives in Dharamsala, the Dalai Lama's exile home in India, and the U.S.-based Sager Family Foundation began bringing Western scientists and educators to India to teach science to Tibetan monks. India is home to about 120,000 Tibetans - the largest population outside of Tibet.

After a decade of instruction and workshops in the Science for Monks program, an exhibit was the next step in the monks' dialogue with science, says Lhakdor, director of the LTWA. (Like many Tibetans, he goes by one name.)

While the Smithsonian works with various communities to tell their stories, "The World of Your Senses" was a more hands-on project that immersed Smithsonian staff in a culture far from the museums of Washington. The exhibit's cross-cultural, interdisciplinary combination of science, philosophy and art - the panels were painted by a Tibetan thangka painter - also made it unique.

Tibet's spiritual leader, known for tinkering with watches and engines as a boy, has long been fond of science. The Dalai Lama considers science and Buddhism as complementary "investigative approaches with the same greater goal, of seeking the truth." Modern education is critical to the survival of Tibetan culture and identity for the Dalai Lama.

Tibetan children in India learn science in school, but Tibetan monks and nuns have followed a traditional curriculum largely unchanged for centuries. Until a decade ago, Tibetan monks had learned no science at all. Since then it's been a crash course in science for some monks, with classes on topics ranging from cosmology to neuroscience.

As part of the Science for Monks program, a select group of geshes (monks who are the equivalent of PhDs) from monasteries across India attend biannual workshops taught by scientists and educators from the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Arizona, the Exploratorium in San Francisco and, most recently, the Smithsonian. The program is funded by Boston philanthropist Bobby Sager.

At the exhibit in New Delhi, Indians, Tibetans and overseas visitors perused seven-foot-tall panels depicting colorful images of anatomy alongside dancing Buddhist deities, all painted by a master Tibetan thangka painter. Red-robed monks explained to visitors in English and Tibetan the nuances of how sound waves vibrate in the inner ear, as well as abstract Buddhist concepts for how sensation is perceived.

Ultimately, the exhibit looked polished, but it was a frantic rush to put together in six months what would normally take a year by professional standards. A team from the Smithsonian traveled from Washington to India for two-week stints from December 2009 through last month to help the monks conceive, develop, execute and stage the exhibit.

Stephanie Norby, director of the Smithsonian Center for Education and Museum Studies, helped the monks launch a science fair in June 2009 that was a precursor to last month's formal exhibit. "We gave a broad overview of what might be done but were sensitive that the monks do it on their own. We wanted it to be their exhibit," said Norby.

The interdisciplinary nature of the exhibit was amplified when the monks decided that the panels should be painted like thangkas. Thangkas are a traditional Tibetan style of religious paintings that typically depict ornate Buddhas and deities, not human anatomy. Visitors to the exhibit saw the striking sight of a gigantic brain painted with fluid brush strokes resembling water, and blood vessels behind an eyeball reminiscent of delicate tree roots.

"I've been working on bringing science to monks for the last 10 years, and this is the first thing I've worked on that had such an aesthetic quality," said Bryce Johnson, director of the Science for Monks program. "To see the beauty at the intersection of science and Buddhism - that was a really unique experience."

Schmidt, an exhibits fabricator at the Smithsonian's Office of Exhibits Central, took two trips to India this year, in May and November. After his visit in May, the monks' sketches and draft text were sent to Tracie Spinale, program manager at the Smithsonian Center for Education and Museum Studies, and media designer Darren Milligan in Washington. They were charged with creating a Smithsonian-quality visual framework to explain the Buddhist and Western perspectives of the senses.

It is no easy task to distill explanations about photons, bony ossicles and microvilli into a few paragraphs of English and Tibetan text. But articulating complex metaphysical Buddhist concepts was even more difficult. The Buddhist explanation for sight, for instance, relies on the "objective condition, dominant condition and immediately preceding condition." According to Tibetan Buddhist texts, there are six categories of tastes "due to the dominance of two of the four elements: earth, water, fire and wind."

While the Western images were based largely on pictures from standard science textbooks, the Buddhist senses had never been explained in a mainstream, pictorial way. "We had to design visual representations for concepts that did not currently exist," said Spinale.

The Smithsonian team researched thangkas and visited Buddhist art collections at the Sackler Gallery and the Rubin Museum of Art in New York. Yet they were still looking for ways to convey the Buddhist perspectives in an accessible way. They eventually came across pictures in Buddhist medical texts that inspired the look of the panels.

"We tested the graphic concepts on a range of people, from a neuroscientist, to science educators, to exhibit designers, to my first-grade daughter," said Spinale. "If she didn't understand what one of the graphics represented, then it wasn't used."

The final graphics were adapted to the subject matter in innovative ways. For instance, a typical Buddhist image of a hand mirror morphed into a five-armed mirror to depict the "five concomitant factors" that are part of the Buddhist perspective on sight.

Thangka painter Jampa Choedak took a reassignment from his regular duties at the LTWA to paint the panels. Choedak, 36, has been painting thangkas for 23 years, and had never studied science. Painting large images of the inner ear, cells and other anatomy surprised him with "how delicate the human body is."

The Smithsonian team worked on the science exhibit on top of their regular work and during off-hours. Yet all of them waxed enthusiastically about the experience of working with the monks and science program staff to create the exhibit.

"Helping people to learn and then to share what they have learned is exactly what the Smithsonian is about," said Milligan.

Original link and photo: http://www.dalailama.com/news/post/632-seeing-science-through-a-spiritual-lens-with-the-smithsonians-help