Customer Reviews

Contemplative Science: Where Buddhism and Neuroscience Converge (Columbia Series in Science and Religion)

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Readers be warned: the subtitle to this book,"Where Buddhism and Neuroscience Converge" is quite misleading--there are only a few very cursory references to anything about neuroscience. Based on the title and introduction, I purchased this assuming it might explain how scientific research on the brain illuminates the practice of meditation and the contemplative tradition (and vice-versa). It does not. For those interested in the connection between meditation and Western neuroscience, you'll find little here to satisfy you.

The book you want is Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain, by Sharon Begley. The unfortunate title suggests little more than standard pop-psych self-help, but Ms. Begley's book provides a solid, readable account of neuroscience research from the last 10-15 years that relates specifically to the potential changes brought about in the brain through the practice of meditation, including recent studies on the brains of highly experienced meditators. I cannot recommend that book highly enough.

Unless you are involved in neuroscience, it is difficult to appreciate the magnitude of the seismic shifts that are occurring in our knowledge about the brain, and the extraordinary consequences for our understanding of what it means to be human. Or the important implications of the new brain sciences for such issues as education and legal responsibility.

There is a robust and growing literature on Buddhism, Western psychology and cognitive science, consciousness and the brain. And this book is a new installment that summarizes some of this work.

The author of this fine book is B. Alan Wallace who spent fourteen years as a Buddhist monk and was ordained by the Dalai Lama. He is also the founder and president of the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies. He has also translated a number of Tibetan Buddhist texts and is the author of several other books.

His central thesis is that although objective science has long said that religion, faith, belief and other subjective experiences are no more than epiphenomena of physical processes, that can and should change. He proposes that Western science and contemplative practices of Buddhism, and for that matter Christianity and Taoism, can be integrated to create a single discipline that he calls "Contemplative science." Alan contends that the development of this science is already underway and promises to illuminate both objective Western science and contemplative practices. It will in all likelihood bear many other fruits as well.

I am persuaded by what he has to say. I have never felt that we could or should relegate important human experiences to epiphenomena. Not only does it belittle meaningful experiences, it diminishes science.

As Albert Einstein once said, "Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind." This book presents us with a roadmap to abolish both of those handicaps.

This is a must read for anyone interested in consciousness and human potential.

Highly recommended.


Richard G. Petty, MD, author of Healing, Meaning and Purpose: The Magical Power of the Emerging Laws of Life

This is the fifth Alan Wallace book that I have purchased, the fourth that I have finished reading. This one is more detailed than the others. Alan presents justification for a science of meditation. Then he presents some observations by skilled Buddhist practitioners as seed areas for initial investigation using skilled meditation practitioners in this new proposed contemplative science.

Buddhists don't talk about their personal progress, so it is difficult for an interested observer to see details of their path. This book contains the clearest explanation and illustration of what it is like to be at various stages of the path towards enlightenment that I've seen anywhere.

I especially like the notes section which gives extensive references. It is surprising just how many of the references that Dr Wallace uses are to his own books and his original translations.

I would not recommend this book for those interested in an introduction to contemplation. It is an excellent reference work and ties together many thoughts that are only hinted at in introductory works.

Disclaimer: I am an interested observer of Buddhism and follow several different meditative practices. I attended a one week Samatha retreat presented by Alan Wallace several years ago.

B. Alan Wallace is a leading scholar and author on this subject. His way of writing in simple language about complicated concepts makes for very informative and fascinating reading. His insights can bring about a major shift in our perception of the relationship between science and spirituality.

dr wallace is a sophisticated scientist who is very experienced in talking about the details of buddhism. he understands the thousands of years of studying the mind from a buddhist perspectice and how to integrate it with modern science. he has the input of the dalai lama too, having been a translator for him for years. i encourage the serious reader to take a look.

B. Alan Wallace seems to be an ideal candidate to write books on the theme of "contemplative science", having training in both Tibetan buddhism and physics for many years. His familiarity with standard Mahayana Buddhist doctrines is evident throughout his writings, which is a plus when trying to integrate Buddhism into modern science, which he is trying to do. In this sense, Wallace's writings can be seen as extensions of the Dalai Lama's excursions into science.
However, as I mentioned in my review of the Dalai Lama's efforts to "converge" Buddhism with modern science, the marriage, so to speak, has more problems than is evident in this style of writing. Yeah? Like what?, the true devotee asks...

Wallace, of course, views much of modern science as "externally" focused, with too much attention placed on the physical universe and not enough on inner, "subjective" experience, especially as accumulated over thousands of years in the great religious traditions (certainly understandable, for a devout Buddhist...). Accordingly, Wallace decries what he sees as the mental aspect being relegated to secondary status, as a mere epiphenomenon of the material world. Wallace hence is suspicious of modern theories of complexity being adequate in explaining the mental side of humans. His own ideas on consciousness seem to be based much on ideas of the great early American psychologist William James, as well as on current "hard-problem" observations by David Chalmers and others. What Wallace comes up with as a basic ontology, then, is that consciousness is actually primary in our physical universe and we need to shift our thinking (I hate to use the New-Age term "paradigm shift", so I won't. You did NOT just see that phrase here).

Consciousness is, of course, a difficult subject for everyone. Physicists are trying to get it out of pure quantum mechanics, neurophysiologists are trying to determine a physical basis for it, Whiteheadians posit it must be fundamental (as Wallace does), Chalmers himself wants a physical description that goes beyond merely functional descriptions, etc. etc. So everybody has problems with consciousness. Wallace has training as a physicist, but he glosses over the problems in injecting consciousness into quantum mechanics as he tries to do. The vast majority of physicists do NOT see consciousness (human or otherwise) as important in quantum mechanics, despite some popular efforts to make it important. The word "observation" has been long misused and misunderstood in this area, and this isn't the place to rehash the sloppy use of such words. In this respect, Wallace does the reader no favor, offering as he does a viewpoint that is on the "fringe" area of orthodox physics. And he does the research of neuroscience no real favor, either- rather casually linking metaphysical buzzwords with current neuroscience buzzwords, as if we are now on friendly "converging" grounds. Neuroscience itself, alas, has hardly been successful (as of yet) capturing the rich inner world of subjective human experiences, and while foreign philosophical concepts (such as Buddhist doctrines) may provide some fresh exploration, the speculative nature of the "parallels" should be admitted up front. But a candid admission of speculation usually doesn't happen, as an author tries to build his/her own agenda. The problem is, the more that scientific terms are presented in the same context as purely metaphysical concepts, the more likely the speculative nature of the discussion will be obscured.

Buddhism itself is problematic in regards to empirical science, despite what many "convergers" (hey! a new word I just coined, don't be stealing it) have described. I have briefly commented on some of the problems in another review and won't go over that now. Here, I would like to briefly comment on the so-called "no-self" (anatta) doctrine, which asserts that there is no such thing as a permanent ego-self. In other words, your human personality is a makeshift construction that is being replaced moment-by-moment and has no real substance. We can all agree that the topic of what the "self" really consists of is another difficult topic, but it is questionable whether the Buddhists got this right or not. Some scientists and philosophers have indeed found Buddhist ideas of the "no-self" congenial to their understanding, but many others have not. Common sense certainly seems to throw some doubt on the doctrine that your personality has no real "core". Just think back to your early childhood- honesty will tell you that you indeed have a continuous personality from square one, which seems rather mysterious if we grant the Buddhists are correct that we are looking at something that is fundamentally illusory. That just doesn't seem to jive with personal experience, if one is honest with oneself.
Moreover, just what is it that keeps interfering with the bliss of "no-self", so that practitioners always need to keep fighting against the tendency to lapse back into reacting from an illusory "I"? Forgive this heresy, Buddhist devotees, but could it possibly be there **IS** a real self (a real personality) after all, and all these attempts to minimize it on a constant day-to-day basis perhaps are little more than going against the grain of an actual psychological reality? Yes, I know this crazy thought goes against what everybody learned from their Buddhist teachers :-). But didn't Shakyamuni himself supposedly caution folks to examine the doctrines personally? Have YOU done so, Amazonian? (I like that term, it sounds like a jungle warrior instead of some nerdy bookworm, too bad it's the latter).

At any rate, simple observation of the animal kingdom seems to throw *some* doubt on the "no-self" doctrine, at least as a moment-by-moment construction phenomenon. Looking at animals for some clues is instructive simply because there is no human bias or dogmas (ha! get it? dog-mas) involved. Simply put, animals ALSO seem to show signs of having continual individual personalities, which is rather odd if the "no-self" doctrine were an assured psychological (neurological?) truth. (Pet-owners and zoo-keepers can no doubt vouch for the truth of animal personalities). And this observation gives us a clue for what I respectfully propose as a *better* interpretation of the "no-self" teaching: instead of looking at the "self" as a moment-by-moment event of makeshift construction, maybe devout Buddhist fans would be better off viewing "no-self" in a broader sense, merely as the impermanence of all biological organisms- i.e., the lack of permanent existence for an individual's biological life in general. Yes, contrary to orthodox Buddhist interpretations, individuals DO have continual personalites, as even common sense shows, but people just don't live forever :-). This suggestion at least has the virtue of not offending either science or common sense; I offer it as a possibility, worth what it cost you- (i.e., free). Observing animals also seems to call into question, BTW, some common doctrinal assumptions such as an "ego-self" supposedly occuring because of "our deluded perception". But is it accurate to assign the blame to faulty perceptions? Can someone explain why even animals, since they obviously act from a sense of self-interest, have erroneous perceptions of a "self" and turn out (according to this view) to be "deluded"? This is remarkable...apparently humans aren't the only critters who have a faulty perception of the world- animals are just as guilty! I guess mere self-preservation instincts and everyday self-referential behaviors in the animal kingdom qualify as "delusions of self". How unfortunate, then, that animals haven't had Buddhist teaching to set them straight. Maybe Buddhists need to start preaching to animals- and good luck getting your goldfish to listen.

A much simpler explanation is that basic reactions of self-preservation and self-interest simply are part of millions of years of biological evolution, and humans aren't the only critters who act and react in terms of "self". All biological creatures do. It isn't a matter of "self-delusion", it's simply a brute reality of competitive evolutionary self-preservation :-). It seems to me, anyway, we'd all be better off acknowledging our obvious biological tendencies (which doesn't mean we need to be controlled by them), instead of labeling these "self-delusion" and hoping they are merely mental mis-perceptions we can train ourselves to eventually discard. It's hard to get anywhere relegating fairly obvious realities to imaginary "phantoms"! And, sadly, the day when these (supposed) self-delusions are finally discarded never seems to actually arrive- you'd think devotees would start to question some of these maxims when the success rate, for everybody (including our author Wallace), is 0% :-). Folks - both lay and professional - seem to tie themselves into knots concocting elaborate theories about human psychology, often to the horror of their simple common sense...only to end up up with a lot of "sound and fury", as our British muse Billy Shakespeare reminds us, "signifying nothing".
Until neuroscience/clinical-psychology can actually come up with some solid empirical data on HOW one's rich, subjective individual inner life (including so-called "qualia") occurs and functions as it does (and there's no reason to suppose science won't eventually tap into purely subjective phenomena) - we're all guessing...Buddhists included.

At any rate, here's another observation for Amazonians: what is responsible for the following phenomenon: if you stomped on the foot of the most "enlightened" Buddhist around, for example, despite their insistence there is no self, you will probably hear evidence of a "self" instantly. [It's a traditional Zen koan, anyway-if there is no "self", just what is it that is in pain?].
I mention this example not as a deep Zen exercise, however, but merely to point out that these lofty Buddhist doctrines of "emptiness", "no-self", "everything is buddha-nature", etc. can easily become mere rhetoric, even with long-time devotees. It's truly difficult - in spite of the buzz people spout - to eliminate a personal reaction to events...especially events which tend to rain on our own personal parade - such as the bad driver in front of us, or someone saying something negative to us... These moments, when negative events provoke our knee-jerk reactions, as they invariably do, can be very instructive as a revelation of our "real" personality, hidden behind our outward social masks and perhaps our spiritual posturing :-).
Naturally, these instantaneous self-reactions are not any "scientific" observations supporting the concept of a "personal self", nor are they any indication the no-self doctrines themselves are "wrong", per se, but they ARE instructive as to how platitudes such as "no-self" can easily turn into mere verbiage...good only when circumstances are peachy :-).
But then again- you have no "person"...so why are you reacting at all?

Let me end here with the observation that many Buddhists seem to be looking at subjective experiences of personal self-awareness "dissolving" in mystical experiences, and elevating these to questionable ontological assertions. Myriads of subjective experiences are human events across all cultures, and indeed, I've experienced some myself. But this kind of thing is hardly any empirical "proof" for a "no-self", much less an ontological "proof", and shouldn't be used to assert any kind of assured ontological certainty.

the perfect book to understand the link between science and the arts of the mind.
well written and clearly presented