79 Why do Scientists Refuse to Look through Buddhists’ Telescope?

00:04 Olaso! So one of the things I find really very enchanting really about this text by Panchen Rinpoche is that he’s taking very deep issues obviously the very nature of reality itself, but putting it together in a very sequential, very coherent path like fashion, and he’s just keeping it to the essentials. He does make little excursions here, but then he stops you know off into the complexities of Buddhist Buddhist thought, but in fact what he’s presenting is actually quite simple right, really is quite simple. And so we have these basic two-fold distinction between the so called space like meditative equipoise right, that’s where we engage in some type of ontological probe and most importantly in this Mahamudra or Dzogchen context fundamentally or primarily it’s focusing in right upon the actual nature of existence of your own mind in order to realize that. And in this sutrayana approach because bear in mind he commented earlier on very early in the text, there’s a vajrayana approach and the sutrayana approach to Mahamudra. And vajrayana approach is embedded in this Kagyu tradition, Kagyu tradition in stage of completion stage of stage generation, stage of completion and the Mahamudra really is kind of in the culminating phase. Its placement is in the culmination of culminating phase of stage of completion. So, the assumption would there would be that you’ve really laid a solid foundation in your sutrayana practice, bodhichitta, realization of emptiness, renunciation, moved on into stage of generation, moved on into stage of completion, the six dharmas of Naropa, are often called the six yogas of Naropa and then as this kind of this cherry on the cake really, culmination of these six dharmas or six practices of Naropa, then the Mahamudra, you know.

(02:02) And then there the Mahamudra is very very clear, that you, what you’re realizing is not simply the emptiness of the mind or an emptiness of all phenomena because that’s back there in the sutrayana and it saturates the stage of generation and completion. It’s all the way through and it’s the same emptiness, bear in mind it’s the same emptiness, sutrayana, vajrayana, whatever Mahamudra, Dzogchen, emptiness is emptiness. There’s no higher or lower but the difference there is that in this vajrayana approach to the Mahamudra that you’re not only realizing emptiness but you’re realizing emptiness and viewing all of reality from the perspective of the indwelling mind of clear light, which is rigpa, yeah. So that’s the big deal. And you access that you you’ll prepare yourself very thoroughly through the stages of generation and completion but then he says okay but that’s not what I’m going to do here right. And then he says, and then he lays out the sutrayana path. Well by and large his sutrayana path is shamatha and vipassana, and it’s really overwhelmingly about the fathoming the empty nature of the mind, because he said I’m doing sutrayana approach here. Well in sutrayana you don’t have methods you know for realizing emptiness from the perspective of rigpa or the indwelling mind of clear light. You don’t have that. That’s vajrayana practice, it’s Mahamudra and very very much Dzogchen practice. So but not just coming back here to this context because we’re getting towards the end of this presentation here there’s some very interesting things coming up but to the simplicity of it when you’re resting in meditative equipoise the point there centrally is to realize the empty nature of your own mind and in that openness that expansiveness that emptiness there is the luminosity of your own awareness realizing emptiness. There’s the union, the non duality of the luminosity of your awareness and the emptiness which is emptiness itself and you dwell in that this space like meditative equipoise right.

(04:04) And insofar if you’ve truly immersed in that relative truth, conventional reality fades out, it’s not there, just this open expanse of Dharmadhatu right. Saturated by your awareness your, your wisdom of it. But then sooner or later you have to come out. You come out, you get off the cushion and then you enter into the so called post meditative state but of course you would like to have that be as seamless a segue or transmission as possible. So that the insights you’ve had while dwelling in meditative equipoise are brought right over into your post meditative experience but now you’re experiencing this whole range of phenomena these appearances of these six elements by way of the six sense doors and so forth. And then the central theme is to sustain this dream like right or this illusion like awareness of all phenomena. And the critical point there is to be able to see, I mean this again if it’s not a belief, it’s not a catechism, it’s not simply something you re-, repeat to yourself a hundred thousand times, it’s actually viewing viewing reality, seeing how phenomena exist as mere inputations or as merely imputed, seeing them how they exist as merely imputed. Which means as if I clearly see and this is pretty easy I mean taking the easiest example here’s a cell phone in my hand is it really mine or is that merely imputed? It’s merely imputed. I mean that’s, I got it. I got it ‘cause that’s about as easy as it gets. But how about the cell phone itself because it’s perfectly clear to me I think almost everybody that the the ownership of this cell phone, who does it belong to? Who does it belong to? Is that in the very nature of the cell phone itself? If you find my files on it, which you would of course. Is that the indicator? It’s really mine, you know, my files, my personal data, my, my, my. Does this mean it’s really mine? No. It’s just a cell phone that has my data on it, right.

(06:02) And so, we know that. That it’s not the ownership is not from the cell phone side but how about the cell phone, click-click-click as as a self, apparently, self-existent cell phone, it’s my apparently self-existent head, you know. So there it seems like something else is going on. That the cell phone appears to be inherently existent and that’s going to be the way it is but then the question is and this is the real challenge in the intermediate in the post meditative state is can you tell when you are viewing or seeing or ascertaining phenomena as being merely imputed. And can you tell when you not only conceptually designate them, which is fine, but once you, when having conceptually designated them, you reify them. Can you tell when your way of apprehending these myriad phenomena is apprehending them as merely nominal, not existing from their own side, as opposed to apprehending them as existing from their own side. That’s the challenge. If as soon as you’re off the meditation cushion you’re right back into business as usual and reifying everything about you, well then that was not very significant, if it doesn’t change your way of viewing reality when you’re off the cushion. And whatever it is doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter that much what you’re doing on the cushion because you know the rest of your life is untouched. So how do you do that? Well again I think he’s he’s making a point that’s actually quite simple. I’ll maybe give two examples and then we’ll go right to the meditation. And we’ll do the post meditative state in meditation just so we can prepare for the most post meditative state when it comes right.

(07:47) So here’s one example and if many of you have had, had lucid dreams I’m sure, and many of you have not, but those who’ve not, it’s not that hard to imagine you won’t really know what it’s like but you have some idea what it’s like. And so imagine that you’re in a very lucid dream which is to say very lucid meaning you really get it, you clearly comprehend the dream as a dream right. So there you are, maybe you’re flying about or doing kind of cool things, showing your siddhis within the dream. And now imagine in the midst of that dream you see someone over yonder right. You see Marie for example. And Renata asked me within the dream and I’m very lucid. I’m very lucid and that means I know I’m not really here, this person within the dream. I’m not really here, we’re not, you’re not really over there. I got it. I got it, I’m dreaming you know. You don’t need to remind me, I got it. But within the dream then Renata said, is Marie? I didn’t see Marie. Is she sick? Is she, is she here? No. No, don’t worry Renata, she’s she’s right over there. And that’s what you’d say you know. Holding ordinary conversation, but of course you’re in the dream but not of it. And and she says and if she said, where is she? She’s right over there, where my fingers pointing. And you’re lucid so you know exactly what you’re doing. You know that within the context of the dream without (? Tibetan 09:14), without investigating, without analyzing, without probing, but is she really there? Is she there from her own side? Is she her body? Is she, is she her mind? Is she separate from her body? Ah, leave all that in a manner of speaking because that’s what we’re doing we are in a matter of speaking speaking she just asked where’s the person that we know as Marie and she’s right over there right.

(09:34) So then that is recognizing, that which is merely nominally existent, not existent from its own side but having said that, she’s not just nothing. Because because Marie might notice that I’m pointing to her, and she says oh, did you want something? And and then we might start a conversation and Marie would talk with Renata and talk with me and then we start planning what to do next Saturday when hopefully anybody who would like to we’re heading up to the land. If you don’t want to go you certainly don’t need to but I’ve spoken with the director of the Institute, they’re going try to arrange all the cars and vans needed go up there with a big pooja and please all the devas and the nagas. Apparently there’s nagas up there, yeah. So we want to be friendly with the nagas it’s very good advance. (light laughter) And so so if anybody doesn’t want to go you can let us know no harm no foul. But there it is you know, within this context of the dream where no one’s existent from their own side, not Renata, not me, not Marie, not anybody else. Nevertheless we’re interacting with each other, influencing each other, and so forth. That’s the interesting part you know. Now within a non lucid dream, within a lucid dream of course there there’s only actually one subject, that’s the difference, right. There’s only, because it’s your dream and everybody else they’re just purely apparitions of your own mind.

(10:55) Now we go to the waking state where of course that’s not the case. I die everybody remains living and so forth. Other people die I’m still here. So not the same, not the same. But in the waking state then can you see when you point to someone, when you identify something, that this is light as non reifying as if you were in a lucid dream? Can you see when that happens? You can imagine if you’re in a very lucid dream and something very attractive appears, you would not be so inclined to be grasping onto it, clinging, oh that person will make me happy, that person will, because you know come on, it’s an image, it’s empty. That’s gonna make you happy? Come on, you’re already happy. And then you’re lucid to be happy. And so you can imagine that distinction in a non lucid dream we pretty much reify everything and we’re caught in every bit of the drama of the dream right. And then our emotions are just flip flopping all over the place because of the reifying, okay.

(11:58) So to see when as you’re resting as we will momentarily know, when an object comes to mind, something that’s designated, something is identified, whether the identification is simply a recognition of its nominal presence, in a manner of speaking. Or whether when it comes to mind there’s reification. It’s subtle, but it’s not complex, not complex. Final example, this is very common and everybody’s had the experience. Watching a, watching television or watching a movie, have you ever been afraid when you watched a movie? People pay to get afraid, right. I think they’re called horror movies. They pay for that right. Have you ever felt sad when something happens, have you ever felt happy, have you ever felt sorrow and compassion and empathy and so forth? Why are you doing that you know? They’re images on a screen, nobody’s there. (laughing) It’s kinda moving, the cinema is a kind of place, delusion here, it will cost you $8 you know. Come here and be deluded, it will be entertaining for two hours, you can be totally delusional. It will be an escape from your relatively uninteresting life. Because if your life were more interesting than the movie, you’re not gonna go to the movie. But then you know how many of your how many of your lives are as interesting, as interesting as the dude who got to go to the Avatar. So, we go to movies, we watch television, and so forth, and especially when it’s just, we know it’s pure fiction. Documentaries, news, and so that’s that’s something different because it is representing something outside the film.

(13:49) But when we know we’re going to see a fiction movie, watch. Watch, to see the reification of something that with one part of your mind you know perfectly well, you’re at home watching television, in a movie theater, paid good money, money to sit in the dark and fantasize. And observe the difference. I find myself when I watch because I enjoy watching movies but I watch myself flipping flipping back and forth. Sometimes when I’m supposed to be really horrified I start chuckling, not like I’m above it all, it’s just that I know what the director wanted to do with my emotions, and I gotcha [laughter], you know and intestines flying all over the screen, you got holding (laughing). So there we are. Okay let’s try it let’s keep it real simple this time. Find a comfortable position.

(14:54) Meditation begins, bell rings three times.

(15:09) Let’s relax. Just set the body at ease, the breathing in its natural flow, release all grasping of the mind, and let your awareness settle in its natural state.

(16:10) And then in the spirit of grounding earth and sky let’s begin by letting the awareness be grounded in the space of the body, right down to the earth element where your body’s in contact with the cushion, the chair, the floor. Let your awareness illuminate the whole space of the body. Be selectively aware of the sensations of the breath and relax more and more deeply with every out breath, releasing thoughts, settling in a non conceptual flow a cognizance.

(20:18) After this time of soothing, calming, quieting the mind and release the effort of attending to the sensations of the respiration and for a little while just let your awareness rest with your eyes open your awareness evenly resting in space without focusing on any object and simply progress just for a short time resting in the present moment sustaining the flow of mindful presence without distraction, without grasping, doing nothing, being aware.

(22:37) Then releasing all constraints on the mind, no preference for the mind to be still. Letting the mind, the conceptual mind rove at will, rove freely. Let your awareness remain still, discerning, clear, intelligent. And let your mind off the leash, let it run, but without being carried away by it. Observe how appearances arise to all the six doors of perception but note how your your mind is often not content, it’s not satisfied, simply to see appearances as appearances but rather on the basis of appearances the conceptual mind designates objects and subjects. Observe how it does that. Observe the basis of designation. Observe what is desig, what is designated, the entities that are literally conceived by the conceptual mind by the process of designation.

(28:20) You can see now the rule of shamatha, the ability to sustain that stillness in the midst of motion and not be carried away. If at times you need to come back to simple Shamatha practice of resting in the stillness of awareness or settling the mind in its natural state, do so. Ground yourself, get your bearings and then once again observe how your mind identifies objects, entities, the basis of designation and the designated objects and examine closely, are these objects being reified or lightly being apprehended as merely nominally imputed? See if you can tell the difference it’s very subtle so you’re definitely using the top of the pyramid, the clarity, vividness, acuity of your attention to see such clear but subtle distinctions of a delusional mind and non delusional mind.

(33:39) And insofar as you recognize that all entities that are apprehended by the mind have only a nominal status and do not exist from their own side, not from elementary particles up to galactic clusters, nothing from its own side. Neither time nor space exists from its own side. Then you see what is meant by the statement that all phenomena are nothing but appearances to the mind. All phenomena are like illusions, they appear, they have causal efficacy, and yet they’re not there, not on their own side by their own nature, neither objectively nor subjectively. Sustain that way of viewing phenomena. If and only if you find it to be true. If not, investigate more deeply to determine for yourself, is it so or is it not? Examine your own mind.

(37:06) Whether in meditative equipoise or in the post meditative state, there is this recurrent persistent theme, homogeneously present and that is the non duality, the union of luminosity and emptiness. Let the stillness of your awareness rest there and view all phenomena from that perspective.

(38:55) Meditation ends, bell rings three times.

(39:16) So, let’s go right back to the text. So, there was just the quote by Tsongkhapa and now a follow-up from Chandrakirti, Chandrakirti in his Madhyamakavatara. Also it says in Chandrakirti in his introduction to Madhyamaka, the middle way, Although all phenomena thus are empty they actually arise from emptiness. Although there are two truths, there is no inherent nature. And a crucial point there is that emptiness also is not inherently existent any more than phenomena, other phenomena. So phenomena are neither permanent nor destroyed. And again these showing the two extremes of inherently existent and therefore by implication permanent unchanging, nor are they destroyed as in not existing at all, so avoiding the two extremes of substantialism and nihilism. Also, regarding Nagarjuna, says, Someone who knows the emptiness of phenomena and yet accepts cause and effect the absolutely crucial point this is more marvelous than marvelous this is more wonderful than wonderful. Because the natural and utterly understandable inclination, powerful draw, is if you start getting some intimation just a little taste or fragrance that phenomena aren’t really there from their own side, that immediately implies to almost everybody’s mind, then they’re not there. Which means they’re not there, they have no efficacy, because they’re not there.

(41:20) So cause and effect is gone, but then we have to come back after we’ve had our little you know a little excursion into emptiness we come back and we get sick, we get a cold, we get hungry, and we’re back in the world of cause and effect and suddenly everything’s real again. And so we’re just oscillating between two between two extremes nihilism and substantialism. But when as Tsongkhapa said, your realization of emptiness actually accentuates your awareness of this world of phenomena of dependent arising and your insight into the nature of dependent arising including very much cause and effect, accentuates your insight into emptiness, then you found the sages, this view of the sage. And Panchen Rinpoche says just quite nonchalantly, this is easy to understand (laughter). If your Panchen Rinpoche, I’m sure it’s very very simple. And intellectually it’s not that hard then to go from an intellectual stance, to actually seeing whether it’s true, to actually viewing it. Well of course that’s where the challenge is. So, Thus by sustaining Mahamudra while mounted on the steed of serenity, you know serenity is shamatha. So there it comes again, by sustaining Mahamudra while mounted on the steed of shamatha when by the power of and examination focused on emptiness, you obtain a concentration or samadhi that is imbued with bliss, the bliss of physical and mental pliancy, you’ll obtain the warmth stage of the path of and I’m going to call this application, for reasons that will become clear later. I think actually preparation is fine, joining is fine, and application is fine. I’m just gonna right now I don’t have a strong preference because I’ve seen the etymologies and why any of those would be appropriate. So I’m just going to go with application, it’s the second of the five paths.

(43:06) So the first of the five paths there’s very obvious translation I think is uniform path of accumulation and following that is the path of application. And what he’s saying here is this is the first of four stages. Naturally we’re gonna look into this a little bit not in excruciating detail but enough so that it means something. That’s when you, having achieved shamatha of course and really matured in the path of accumulation with its three stages, which we’ll look into briefly later on, and then you do having investigated doing the ontological probe you have really identified emptiness albeit by way of generic idea. That is it’s still conceptual but this is a subtle point that we don’t have this in the West, so it’s a subtle point. We have to understand this isn’t part of Western thought and that is this is an actual realization of emptiness. It’s simply thinly veiled by a generic idea okay. In contrast to, this is all very important, if one is interested in the path this is really crucial. When you achieve the path of seeing, the third path, everybody transits that way, tonglam, path of seeing very easy, complete consensus here, Theravada, Mahayana, Vajrayana, Tibetan Buddhism, Indian Buddhism and so forth. That when we become an arya, whether sravaka arya or arya bodhisattva, whether you’re a vidyadhara, when you have the direct realization of nirvana in the Mahayana context this is equated to nirvana equated to dharmadhatu. When you have that unmediated, non-conceptual, non-dual realization of emptiness, or call it nirvana or dharmadhatu, it’s absolutely non conceptual, completely non conceptual and that is what profoundly liberates from the root.

(44:55) And if you and it must be conjoined with shamatha. It must be conjoined, at least with access to the first jhana. The Theravada scholar that I for which I shared you a magnificent text by his, by him The Way of Buddhist Meditation. He argues just a little twig higher than that. First jhana, achievement of first stage, the first jhana itself. This may very well be I think it is because the Buddha himself in the Pali Canon never made any distinction between access to the first jhana and the full achievement of the first jhana. I think it’s a very real distinction the Theravadas acknowledge it, the Indian Buddhists acknowledge it, Tibetans do and there’s this wide widespread consensus in Indo Tibetan Buddhism that access to the first jhana is sufficient degree of samadhi to enable you when unified with vipassana to actually achieve the path of seeing to become an arya, right. But there’s a consensus there, it’s non conceptual. But here on this first stage, first out of four stages of the path of application, the second path, then you you do have this union of shamatha and vipassana and you are focused on an emptiness and you’re realizing emptiness. It’s just not conceptually unmediated yet but it’s way way way beyond a mere conceptual understanding, an intellectual understanding that you can talk about with other people and so forth. Give a nice dharma talk, give a university lecture, immeasurably out beyond that. This is life-transforming, this is really cutting to the root, it simply has subtle veils which through perseverance as you go through the fourth stages of this path of application, they thin and they thin and they thin, and then they’re just gone. And then it’s like your mind and emptiness like pouring one glass of water into another.

(46:41) So, we’ll discuss this warmth stage, it’s called warmth because the direct unmediated realization of emptiness on the path of seeing is likened to fire, blaze, and here on this first stage of the second of the five paths, you’re picking up the warmth. So it’s like I’ve said looking at a moon through different layers of clouds. Well if you’re out there on a cold night and then you start feeling warm, you’re going to be near the fire and then you just get warmer and warmer and warmer and then you torch yourself, you torch your mental afflictions. So there it is. So some some earlier Kagyu masters systematize Mahamudra into four yogas. There’s a very very, there’s a very broadly accepted and you’ll see two big chapters very dense rather complex chapters in Naked Awareness which we’re not going to get to. It’s much more complex than we need for an eight-week retreat. But it goes into these four yogas and really slices and dices them really analyze them in precise detail and with with great authority, Karma Chagme in Naked Awareness. Here’s a very brief synthesis of this. When you focus your mind single pointedly there is single pointedness. This is the first of four yogas, single pointed yoga. When you realize that the mind is free from elaboration of this conceptual elaboration there is non elaboration. This is (? Tibetan 48:07) this is conceptualization, that’s the second one. When you see that your mind is and this means absolutely free of conceptualization, way way beyond the substrate consciousness and mere shamatha. That’s the second one. When you realize that appearances in the mind are of a single taste of one nature there is single taste the third yoga. And when when meditation is without signs, without any type of referent, any kind of reified referent whatsoever there is non meditation. That’s the fourth, and very quintessentially here. So those are the four, those are the four yogas that set out the entire path from the path of accumulation all the way up to the highest bhumi’s, just in terms of four yoga’s all within the context of Mahamudra.

(48:52) In demarcating the five paths, (? Tibetan name), one of the great Mahamudra Masters of Tibet explains that essentially the first yoga is the aspirational practices, and we can see by context aspirational practices refers to, path of accumulation and path of application. So that first yoga just the yoga of single single point single pointed yoga is covering the first two out of five paths. The second, when your mind is completely free of conceptual elaboration, not surprisingly this corresponds to the path of seeing. Then you when you go to the one taste, the yoga of one taste, this corresponds to the the third is the second through the seventh stages, arya bodhisattva bhumi’s or grounds. They’re called this the first to the seventh are called the impure, impure because you you still are subject to mental afflictions, albeit on a subtler and subtler level. So that covers a lot of territory, the yoga of one taste, it’s a lot of bhumis, second through seventh. And then the fourth of non meditation corresponds to the pure stages and that’s the arya bodhisattva stages eight, nine, and ten. And then you’re a Buddha. (? Tibetan name) Rinpoche again he’s citing another great Kagyu master, another master of Mahamudra. When the when this single Mahamudra, and bear in mind on the one hand, single Mahamudra is just this non duality of dharmadhatu and dharmakaya. When the single Mahamudra’s cut up, the fool is mistaken into listing stages and paths, bhumis and margas. Still for those who enjoy delusion (laughter), the stages the stages and the paths and stages of the vehicle with characteristics will be listed explicitly here, it’s called (? Tibetan phrase 50:40), vehicle with characteristics. So he said you know if you’re viewing this from the perspective of rigpa, then the whole notion of divvying it up into stages and all of that just is like a joke. But if you’re not yet able to view this from rigpa, then you’re back there you know as as a samsaric being in order and so therefore to try to make some sense of this give me some idea that where I’m going, even though I can’t really fathom it.

(51:09) And so for thus for such people like us then this is laid out, benevolently, to give us some idea of where we’re going. His his way of listing is like that od (? Tibetan name). So how does he map the four yoga’s with the five paths I like (? Tibetan name). So, we will pause there. Because I’ve got an agenda. It’s I must say very pleasant, very relaxing to me the dharma teacher because I teach in a wide variety of contexts. I’ve lectured at Caltech, at MIT, at Oxford, and that’s not tooting my horn, these are very different contexts. And I’ve given dharma talks in churches and in universities, and in the Advaita Vedanta group out in the Bahamas and so forth. And to Theravada and Chan Buddhism and in centers of all square, all four schools of Tibetan Buddhism. So, I’ve gotten around, I’m very happy, very happy about that. It’s not something to be proud of, it’s just I’m very very happy with this diversity but that means of course that when you’re speaking in one content context or another, as I as I spoke on one occasion to young athletes who are chosen to be potentially you know professional football players in Mexico, I’m not going to talk to them like I’m talking here, right. You wouldn’t quite get it. The soccer ball is only conceptually imputed, (laughter) no attachment, no aversion I don’t think that would and they’re like 15 years old you know, you know, so you have to be. And then my grandson years ago asked me to teach him meditation, a couple of years ago, so so obviously you teach in different ways it’s just anybody does. But it’s very relaxing for me when I just get to just be totally spontaneously from my own view, from my sense of refuge, from what little understanding I have and so forth.

(52:56) But of course as soon as this retreats over, the people who you’ll most likely bump into, will not be people who’ve been immersed in shamatha and vipassana and the magnificence of the path and the union of Kagyu and the Gelugpa traditions of Mahamudra and the glories of Dudjom Lingpa’s Direct Path to Awakening in one lifetime and the possibility of rainbow body. If you should kind of chat up people about that [Laughter] they might not get it, it’s a real chance. And so to prepare you a little bit, a friend of mine sent me an article it’s on the whole it has a lot of merit to it a lot of merit to it and I’ve given you the source and it actually pertains very much to what we’re doing here but not for the next eight days or whatever it is we have here but for all the days afterwards when we’re engaging with people who are not immersed in this worldview and this mode of meditation and way of life and aspirations and so forth. But all of our fellow sentient beings you know who are very diverse but obviously there are a lot of common ideas that we’ll find very prevalent in the media in education in just society around us and wherever we are whether in Singapore, whether in Australia, South America, North America, Europe and so on. So the article in question is called very provocatively Buddhist Meditation and Cognitive Sciences. And I was impressed by the degree of research the writer did and I’ve given you the source so you can read it online. And I’m just going to quote a few things that I think are provocative and weren’t a meaningful response. So, the article written by a fellow named Daniel Simpson, just stepped I just want to make sure I didn’t mistake that, Daniel Simpson, yep Daniel Simpson, interesting interesting fellow. I’ve never met him he lives in England but judging by the way he writes and some of it (? 55:00 inaudible) sounds, it sounds great, I’d be happy to meet him one day, hope so. But he writes, Regarding the kinds of dialogues that are promoted by the Mind and Life Institute of which I’m very familiar since its inception, anthropologist [Geff and] Geoffrey Samuel comments Geoffrey Samuel is a very fine scholar of Buddhism he’s done written a book Civilized Shamans, very respected, an anthropologist by training but he spent a lot of time studying the spiritual traditions let’s say of the Himalayan tradition or Himalayan region. So, anthropologist Geoffrey Samuel, highly regarded scholar in this field comments, and I quote, much of what happens in this process that is in the mind and life conferences and Institute’s and so forth, is less a dialogue between equal systems of thought than an assimilation of the more ‘acceptable’ in quotation marks, ’acceptable’ elements within Tibetan Buddhist thought into an essentially Western context.

(55:56) He said, I think what he meant very clearly and that is it’s not simply a meeting of two different cultures as in the sense of parity and sense of let us learn from each other as equals and challenge and let all of us challenge our own assumptions by the encounter with the other. But actually there’s a profound asymmetry here which has been going on for about 15 years of much more an assimilation of elements of Tibetan Buddhist thought. They’re acceptable that is do not are not jarring, do not challenge are not incompatible with, an essentially Western context and the essentially western context is scientific materialism. So let’s have talks with the Dalai Lama and the Buddhist scholars and so forth. But let’s talk about those areas where we feel comfortable we asked Western scientists and please don’t rattle our cage because we like the cage and the cage is in a marvelous piece of writing of science and scientific history called and I really highly recommended it, it’s called the Huxley’s Church and Maxwell’s Demons. It’s really outstanding scholarship. I read it like a thriller and and the author here excellent historian of science shows exactly how it was in the mid to late 19th century how the metaphysical dogma ’cause that’s what it is, metaphysical dogma of scientific materialism, actually swallowed science and it was deliberate, it was strategic and it was a genius of marketing and propaganda by a biologist named Tom by the name of Thomas Huxley Thomas H Huxley, very good scientists brilliant marketing, brilliant propagandist. In one generation he moved science in Great Britain and then over to North America from being a discipline where people could have multiple perspectives, religious and non-religious, and made it basically unacceptable to teach, to practice, or to study science outside of a context of scientific materialism. Breathtaking what met one man could do and he was enormously successful, so and that’s what we’re, that’s what we’re to my mind burdened with and not only us but Mind and Life Institute is now carrying that burden. He continues here one minor life scientist, Richard Davidson, has bent and this is a quote, has bent over backwards to avoid causing a fence while defending materialism. So here’s the premier Institute that is designed to facilitate dialogue between Buddhism and science and yet it’s now being run for the last 15 years in a way that you never question materialism which is absolutely from its core incompatible with everything Buddhist, so that’s an odd way to have a dialogue after, that’s my comment.

(58:57) He comments, he comments Richard Davidson this is a direct quote, certain scientific assumptions, the wording is so interesting here, certain scientific assumptions are themselves based on well-established principles, So it’s an assumption that it’s based on well-established principles and, adding (via the circumloc circumlocution “some would say”) that: the depends dependence of mind on brain is one such assumption that has been subjected to countless empirical tests, and each and every one of them has provided support for this general claim. That the mind exists only in dependence upon the upon the brain. I’ve known Richey for twenty four years and I have to say I’m astonished. I mean it actually takes my breath away. That the dependence of mind on the brain of course I mean on the one hand it’s kind of like duh I mean of course like if you have brain damage your mind is damaged if you drink a lot of alcohol you get drunk nobody needed to show us that. But what he’s saying is something much more than that because you know everybody knows that. Who doesn’t know if you drink a lot of alcohol you go loo loo, you know. So yes the mind arises in dependence upon the brain we’ve known that for an awful long time, brain damage, sickness, insanity, dementia we’ve known that but he’s going much further than that he’s saying mind as a whole does not exist without dependence upon the brain. The mind is what the brain does that’s the slogan. If you want the sound bite, the mind is what the brain does and he says that this has been subjected to countless empirical tests and each and every one of them has provided support for this general claim. I have to say and I respect Richey as a human being and he’s a lovely man and he’s an ethical man and this is such bullshit, I can hardly stand it. I’m almost left speechless. I sent Richie just a month or two ago a set of powerpoint slides that I prepared with a lot of care and showed I think very effectively and he never refuted me, that there is in fact no scientific theory of the relationship of mind and brain. A scientific theory unlike a philosophical speculation or religious belief is one you can test. There is no scientific theory, therefore to say it’s been subjected to countless empirical tests, it just has not even a shred of truth to it. All of the empirical tests are based on the assumption that the mind is just a function of the brain, they never question it.

(1:01:38) So these are two radically different kinds of strategies, never questioned the assumption and now let’s proceed with the assumption that the mind is what the brain does and of course if you really want to know what, what’s happening in the mind, you study its underlying neural mechanisms, because that’s what’s doing it. One could say, stupid. There are multiple theories. There’s panpsychism, advocated by people of you know very distinguished scientists like Christof Koch and Guilio Tononi. That’s one theory, but then there are others like Michael Michael what’s his name out there in Princeton? (retreatant answers Graziano) Graziano Michael Graziano that says consciousness doesn’t exist, that’s different. And there’s others that say that the mind is equivalent to brain activity, and others say it is an emergent property of brain activity, and others say it’s functions of brain activity. None of these agree with each other and none of them are tested and none of them are testable. There is not one hypothesis that is even testable let alone has been tested. And so to say that each and every one of these countless empirical tests has provided support for this general claim is simply a false statement, flamboyantly false, and it ignores all the contrary evidence.

(1:03:12) There’s an outstanding book there are many many such books but this is maybe the best one and it’s called Irreducible Mind. I’ve cited it here, Irreducible Mind and I’m sure it’s there, ah it’s not there, I will put it in yeah. I thought I put it in, I don’t see it right now, yep. And it’s written by some psychiatrist at the University of Virginia it’s a big fat book, it’s jam-packed with scientific research, very meticulous, rigorous scientific research. Some of it on evidence for past life experiences, children recalling past life very rigorous, others for experience after death, others for a wide variety of phenomena, and time in and time and again showing that there are dimensions of consciousness that are operative independent of brain activity and it’s it’s been going on for decades and it’s outstanding research. And you can check it on Amazon, it’s very easy to find, Irreducible Mind by Kelly, Edward Kelly and I can’t, Emily his wife, I presume his wife I don’t know that. A big book, I have a copy, it’s outstanding and it’s not just a chronicle of a whole bunch of research, it’s then contextualized within the theory that is radically non reductionistic, challenges to the very core the assumptions and that’s what they are of scientific materialism, and it’s gotten excellent reviews, excellent reviews, by outstanding scholars and scientists. And there it is and yet a person of the intelligence and stature and he travels widely it would seem that Richie doesn’t even know that book exists. I find that astonishing. Well there’s a close colleague of Richie’s and I’m not picking on Richie here, because Richie is speaking for his whole discipline here. If Richie were kind of an oddball then I’d be picking on him and I don’t like picking on people I don’t who they are I don’t even really like picking on Donald Trump, let alone a very fine man like Richard Davidson. He’s representing thousands upon thousands and thousands of neuroscientists, cognitive psychologists and so forth who would say of course yeah why are you saying the obvious. Of course we know that the mind is nothing more than a function of the brain, there’s no contrary evidence.

(1:05:37) The Chinese communist government is desperately trying to protect its populace, that is protecting themselves, but to protect themselves they have to protect their population, 1.3 billion people, from learning of ideas, insights, discoveries, that might challenge the status quo of their power. And that means shutting down websites and monitoring cell phones and apps and all kinds of stuff. It’s desperate. Can you imagine what an awful job that would be? 1.3 billion people most of them have cell phones and prevent them from getting access about the Dalai Lama for example. Prevent them from getting access to any authentic information about Tibet. And so ask almost any Chinese educated people, what’s the history of Tibet? They will say almost uniformly, Tibet’s always been a part of China. There’s no evidence to the contrary, we all know that. They’ve been very successful. Anybody who’s not within this zone of silence, knows perfectly well that’s complete bullshit. There’s enormous evidence that Tibet was an anonymous country for centuries, upon centuries, upon centuries. And China was just bigger and gobbled it up because they could, and then rewrote history you know. But if you’re a Chinese person, educated, well intended, quite possibly very ethical good person, you’ll have not a clue about that. And you will be you’ll be quite well informed that the Dalai Lama is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, hypothetically trying to gain, you know, gain regain his kingdom and get back in power at the age of 80 as a monk. And you’ll believe it. Well I really sympathize with the people of China because you know they’re under this iron heel of a despotic, totalitarian, and in some respects, very vicious government. They’re suppressing human rights since its inception and it’s perpetrated unspeakable genocide on multiple minorities. I sympathize with them.

(1:07:36) But when the community of cognitive scientists, nobody will kill them or imprison them or torture them if they read something they shouldn’t read, and yet they don’t. I know a colleague of Richard Davidson and another very very fine man and a very fine cognitive psychologist he wrote an essay that he sent me and he very casually commented because he knows something about Buddha he has some exposure to Buddhism and he said well of course the Buddhist theory of reincarnation cannot be tested scientifically. And I wrote back to him I said, I coming home John, John Smith. John because we have a very nice relationship, said John, ah that’s just not true. That is, in the University of Virginia there are very very good scientists rigorous, sophisticated, precise, critical, sceptical, they’ve been studying not the Buddhist theory but reincarnation for forty years they come up with a great deal of evidence, carefully screened to throw out you know signal and noise signal and noise throw out all that noise all that nonsense if you know other ways that you know children could be you know pretend to be recalling past life. And they come up with this minority of cases where they’ve got veridical information and you just can’t see any reasonable way they could possibly have that information, except they’re recalling past lives. I said we have book after book after book by a very responsible scientist at a major research university, this has been studied, is being studied, and how is it you don’t know this? Because I’m not sure Holmes, you know I’m just interested. And I think I told him something he never heard before you know.

(1:09:14) Well I asked Jim Tucker, that is Ian Stevenson was the man who really started this and he was the head of the head of psychiatry at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. You don’t get there by being a flake right. And in that position he started this rigorous research on alleged accounts of children or accounts of children allegedly recalling past life. And he went about it with no religious beliefs in about it just curious which is supposed to be a good thing scientifically. He came out with a book and then waited twenty minutes twenty years came out with another book and then he passed away eventually, Jim Tucker’s come out with one book, two books. maybe it’s three books now and I asked Jim Tucker about a month, just a few months ago because we I’ve met him and we have you know professional relationship and I said Jim in all these 40 years of all the research you’ve published, including a lot of it published in this book Irreducible Mind, have you ever in 40 years received one open-minded, critical, scientific evaluation of your research? An open minded critical could shred it. That’s what sometimes happens with the research is crappy you come in with an open mind critical and you just torch it you show this it’s defective here and here and here and they drew this and this and this and then you get, you should really should get a standing applause for that if people do crappy research right. To show them they’ve done crappy research is actually a service and if they’ve done great research then applaud them and say well well done or if they done sometimes good sometimes bad then show where the strengths are where the limitations are. So that’s scientific evaluation of research right. That’s what is done. And I asked Jim Tucker in 40 you know the answer already, in 40 years of publishing book after book research after research paper, have you ever received a fair open-minded critical scientific valuation of any research? He said never, not once. I find that very very very sad because I love science and I know so many good scientists and they will say that all the evidence points to affirming their view by ignoring, ignoring deliberately, any evidence to the contrary and then passing it around it’s almost like a zone of silence but it’s like mutually agreed-upon self-hypnosis. We will all persuade ourselves that what we believe is scientifically validated and yet show me the test, I dare ask anybody, show me the test where they’ve taken a scientific theory that equated mind with brain function, put it to a test, could be verified or repudiated, and they reap and they verified it. Show me the test and I can tell you already, it’s never happened. They just assume that from the beginning and then of course all the conclusions are based upon that.

(1:12:06) It’s like I’ve been saying all along with cosmology, ask a physical question, you’re going to get a physical answer. So don’t tell us when you’ve written your book on cosmology see there was no evidence for anything non-physical in the universe. I mean really that’s just flat-out stupid and scientists shouldn’t be stupid, their tradition is glorious but to pretend as if that’s a conclusion when you never get any gave any contrary conclusion any chance to begin with because all your questions are physical. That’s just absurd, that’s such pseudoscience that it makes one weep for the scientific community that would stoop so low. And here it is specifically in the cognitive sciences to make this statement as if this assumption has been subjected to countless empirical tests and each and every one of them has provided support for this general claim, then you don’t call it an assumption, you call it a scientific fact. But he has enough candor to say it’s an assumption but then he contradicts his own statement by saying no contrary evidence and every single study has shown it’s true. Then why not just say it’s true but, he he knows it’s an assumption, which means it’s never been scientifically demonstrated and they shield themselves willfully from every, any contrary evidence and they do that systematically, institutionally and if you deviate from that you will be punished. You will be punished. First of all you’ll be ignored as Jim Tucker and all of his colleagues have been. If they deign to acknowledge that you exist, the next line of defense is ridicule, and that pretty much finishes you, because if you’re ridiculed within the scientific community you lose your reputation. You lose your influence and you lose your funding. If you lose your funding, your ability to research now is finished because no no researcher is free. And if you’re trying for tenure you won’t get it. If trying to get a job you won’t get it. And if you’re trying to finish a PhD you won’t get that either. They find a way to terrify the whole community and they’re living in, in an institutional context of fear.

(1:14:12) I asked when I sent Richie these powerpoint slides just showing here it is. I mean there’s just no evidence for any of these series that they put together, panpsychism, emergent equivalence, consciousness doesn’t exist, I just show one by one I mean it’s not that hard. No evidence no evidence no evidence just belief, just belief, just belief and I said Richie you know why not hold a Mind and Life Conference on this? And oh by the way there’s lots of evidence for reincarnation from Buddhists, from Hindus, from Taoists, from early Christians, from Sufis, from Kabbalah, and from the shamanic traditions all over the world and it’s been going on for and let alone Pythagoras and Socrates and Plato you know, there is evidence out there. And I said why not. He said Oh that’d be stepping onto a minefield. I say that with respect. There’s a real problem in science. See I’m not in the scientific community, I really have nothing to fear. If they all ignore me well they’re doing a pretty good job of that anyway so that doesn’t hurt. And if they really kill me you know I mean 66 years old what do you want me to do pull out my teeth? (laughter) Really, I mean what do I have to fear for, you know they’re not, they’re not Gestapo. They’re not the secret police in communist China. I’m not really fearing for my life. I don’t have to have a bodyguard because they’re not that bad, you know, they just ignore me and laugh at me every night but mostly just ignore. That’s okay I can, the more they ignore me the more time I have for retreat so no skin off my nose. But if I were a scientist, this is no laughing matter at all, no laughing matter at all. You lose your reputation, you’ve just become a nonentity you know. Keep your reputation, gain a reputation, increase your reputation, increase your funding find avenues to let the millions flow in and get in positions of more and more influence, appear, get get quoted in Time Magazine, Scientific American, National Academy of Science, and so forth. Then you really have some influence.

(1:16:07) So I think Richie is doing something in a way very smart. I want to be as charitable as I possibly can while thinking feeling and I mean a strong conviction he’s profoundly wrong here. But as a neuroscientist even to study meditation at all, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, oh you are out on the edge they say you’re on the edge, buster, you know really his his community, his Society for Neuroscience they said, look out, you’re on the edge, you’re studying meditation, look out. And Richard Davidson and others, Cliff Saran and others, they went out on that edge they were brave. To even study meditation, you’re flirting with the devil there, you know. And so I think his motivation I think is really quite wonderful, he’s such a fine man. And I think he’s trying to preserve the integrity of the Mind and Life Institute in the face of the establishment, establishment academia in general, scientific neuroscience, the American Psychological Association and those institutions are absolutely committed without question to scientific materialism. And so he has done so, he’s done a very good job that Mind and Life Institute has really some reputation, some integrity, some clout, some influence within the scientific community because they have not, precisely because they have not, challenged scientific materialism. So, I see, I think in some ways he’s been very effective, very skillful means, in other ways so tragically misleading.

(1:17:40) There’s another person who’s been involved in Mind and Life, he’s he’s another one of these adventurous souls I have to say, he’s a very fine philosopher, his name is Jay Garfield, a very established analytical philosopher at a prestigious private college. But he’s done something again like Richie has really gone out there on the edge to even study meditation, to meet with the Dalai Lama, to go to India. For many people the really hardcore conservatives, they say ah man look out for him you know, he’s already out there. Well Jay Garfield, a very fine philosopher, I’ve known him for some years now, he’s studied Madhyamaka philosophy you know, Oh hardly any philosopher would touch that with a ten-foot pole, of those non-westerners, those woolly minded Indians you know, who don’t even know Aristotle and Plato. Don’t know why are you studying them? I mean they’re religious for God’s sake, they believe in reincarnation you know. And Jay has done so. He studied Tibetan, he spent years studying in India, yeah he’s done some very good translations of Madhyamaka literature. He says in this article, ”Our introspective awareness of our cognitive processes, no matter how sophisticated this introspective awareness of just what you’ve been doing right, is as constructed, and hence as fallible as any other perception,” so reported experiences of pure consciousness may be illusory. And again in quotation. ”Perception we learn from empirical research is never immediate, never devoid of inferential processes. It is guided by attention and pretension, mediated by memory and low-level inference.”

(1:19:21) And the author of this article said well that pretty much undermines Alan Wallace’s whole schtick of contemplative science. And if that’s true, then the author of the articles is quite right. That if what that, if that’s it, if that’s the whole truth and nothing but the truth, that introspection is by nature flawed, it’s just by nature flawed. It’s always conceptual, that’s what he just said right, it’s always conceptual, it’s always filtered. But that means that all of the scholars and all of the contemplatives from whom we’ve been learning in this, they’re all wrong. Jay Garfield’s right, and all the, the Buddha himself is wrong. The whole Theravada tradition is wrong, all of Indian Buddhism and Zen and Chan and all of all schools of Tibetan Buddhism, they’re all wrong. But let’s go let’s go supernova here, Aldous Huxley has written a wonderful book I read forty-five years ago called Perennial Philosophy, showing how the great contemplative traditions really seem to be converging in upon a common reality. It’s ineffable, inconceivable, beyond all conceptual frameworks right. We find it in Christianity, it’s the Kabbalah, it’s in Taoism, it’s in Advaita Vedanta, it’s in all schools of Buddhism. And he’s saying there’s profound convergence here and this is the perennial philosophy, this is the highest of all knowing. No, they’re all wrong. Jay Garfield’s right. It’s either Jay Garfield’s right, or they’re all wrong.

(1:20:46) Now Jay Garfield is simply speaking for his whole community. Again I’m not I’m not just picking on him, he’s he’s been very adventuresome, he’s been courageous. To study Madhyamaka at all, because he will be ridiculed by that no doubt right. And yet for all the time he spent with Tibetans he’s never taken any of their claims seriously. That this is what we’re meditating for, is to transcend the limit limitations of the conceptual mind, to transcend our anthropocentricity, as we seek to view reality as it is and plumb the very depths of the mind right down to its ground. And what’s the base of this empirical research because we need to have a response to this. This is an intelligent man and he’s making a statement that as far as he’s concerned is a very well thought out and thoroughly based on empirical research. But I have a very simple question, we learn from empirical research, who were your subjects? Who were your subjects of your empirical research? I can tell you, it’s no mystery, ordinary people, people with brain disease, people who are, are pathological cases, ordinary, brain disease, pathology and meditators who meditate 20 minutes a day. Long-term meditators, the term is used, long term meditators meditate 20 or 30 minutes a day for years, they’re long term meditators (chuckling). They’re the serious ones. Oh how long have you been meditating? 20 years. How many? Well when I can get to it I try to get to it every day you know except for when I’m busy. How long? Oh on a good-day an hour. That’s a long-term meditator. That’s who they study. On the basis of that all the subjects they’ve studied, that’s true. And now we just extrapolate, well these Taoist and Christian and Buddhist and Hindu and so forth Yogis who spent 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years in retreat, they don’t achieve anything that people who meditate only 20 minutes a day. They don’t achieve anything. They claim they do, but they don’t because they don’t know the empirical research we’ve done on ordinary people and of course why should we believe they’re unordinary just because they say so. So, it’s wildly ethnocentric, tragically, pathologically ethnocentric and it’s normal, it’s widely accepted in philosophy of mind, in psychology it’s everywhere. They’re taking their limitations and universalizing for all of humanity. And thereby blowing out the light, snuffing out the light of contemplative insights throughout millennia. That is the culmination of the path of liberation and they blow out the light. I think from, very sad.

(1:23:31) In the same article, we’re almost finished here, neuroscientist Jonathan Cohen, I met him, he is one of the leading neuroscientists in the whole country and he was at a Mind and Life meeting we organ we held we held at MIT in the year 2003 and I have a very soft spot in my heart for Jonathan Cohen because we got to know each other and I really liked him a lot. And he taught me how to use powerpoint. I didn’t know what powerpoint was and so he taught me. He got he gave me oral transmission (laughter) and I’ve been using it ever since. I was never a good student so if anybody’s seen my powerpoint you kind of like you’re in you’re in kindergarten right. Well yeah but he taught me so I’m very indebted to him. And but he’s like I think his laboratory there at Princeton I think is 100 million dollar laboratory. He’s really one of the creme de la creme of neuroscientists in North America. And he says in this article, Neuroscientists want to preserve both the substance and the image of rigour (laughing) and we want to preserve both the substance and image of rigor in their research, he explains. so one doesn’t want to be seen as whisking out into the la-la land of studying consciousness. That is a direct quote. That if you even study consciousness in any fashion whatsoever you’ve just been whisked off to la-la land. As you might know, I’m the president and founder of the Santa Barbara Institute for La-La Land (laughing). And I’ve heard this term many times, I thought it kind of referred to Los Angeles, but I checked it out you know because I’m being such a rigorous scholar and I found the definition of a la-la land. It’s on it’s online you can find it. And here it is. You know when you see someone and think wow they’re in a world of their own. They’re in their own world. Wow they’re in their own world. Well that world is la-la land (laughing). You’re in the center of your mandala, (Alan chuckling) you are, you’re in la-la land and I’ve been guiding you there all week (laughing). And I’m in la-la land and it is inspired by Los Angeles with Hollywood and all of that and I was born in the vicinity of la-la land. And so I was born there, raised there, and I’m frolicking in la-la land all the time because I’m devoting my whole life to studying consciousness and clearly I’ve been whisked away.

(1:26:00) So he’s basically, as one of the premier, most influential scientists in the country is this is if that’s not a warning sign I don’t know what is. Don’t study consciousness. We can’t define it. We can’t measure it. We don’t know what it is. We don’t know what causes it. We don’t know how it interfaces with the brain. We just can’t make any sense of it at all within of course our materialistic paradigm and that’s the only paradigm we’re even willing to talk about. So, therefore since we can’t make any sense of it in our paradigm, if you study it, we’re gonna say you’ve been whisked off to la-la land and be prepared to reap the consequences. Francisco Varela told me 20 years ago, this is in the 1990s, as again a world-class neuroscientist he said, my field you can’t even talk about consciousness not in a laboratory. You cannot use, do not use the word c, the c-word, don’t talk about it, don’t refer to it, make no reference whatsoever. If you have to talk about it, it’s over tea, off the record really. Like off the record, nobody’s listening, nobody’s recording, what do you think about consciousness? You don’t know either, huh? Me neither but on the record we go right back to Richards, Richard Davidson’s statement. Well each and every one of the scientific studies has supported the claim that consciousness is simply a function of the brain. So where does that leave us? I invite you to read the article, it has many strong points and I think some very weak but that’s just my evaluation.

(1:27:35) But here we are so much strong so strongly emphasizing the first person but not just the first person but refining, increasing, making more sophisticated, more precise, something that apparently Jay Garfield for all of his 20 years or so of a lot of contact with Tibetans, it doesn’t seem like he even raised the issue that, you know, can our introspective abilities be refined? Can they be less encumbered by conceptualization, by cognitive bias, by cognitive hyperactivity, and cognitive deficit? Don’t even raise it. Well there’s a long history behind this, for the whole 20th century, with it’s enormous increase in knowledge of the, of the mind and brain by way of cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists and so on. They didn’t study the plasticity of attention for a hundred years. The simple question can attention be trained? They didn’t study it. It’s the most important thing about attention there is and they didn’t even bother to study it. They simply assumed it couldn’t be studied, it could not be trained and they of course they had a biological explanation. All of our cognitive abilities come through natural selection and it’s not to our biological advantage to be able to go into very deep concentration because we could be oblivious of the saber-toothed tiger that’s about to eat us. And therefore it is disadvantageous to develop deep samadhi, therefore we can’t do it, therefore nobody can do it. Therefore we don’t need to study it because we already know the answer to the question before we even pose it, therefore we won’t pose it, attention can’t be trained. And that was the reasoning and it worked for 100 years until the beginning of this century when they found that people trained training their attention for 20 minutes a day for six weeks they can develop their attention. It wasn’t exactly brain science, pardon the irony. But there’s an underlying assumption here and that is, that the just the first-person perspective is so fundamentally flawed it’s hopeless.

(1:29:33) And in the year 2009 I worked with a, actually I conceived of the idea for a Mind and Life meeting. It was accepted by the board and then I invited a very fine cognitive psychologist from the University of Michigan. So the two of us together put together a five-day meeting in Dharamsala and one of the very fine scientists invited to this meeting was the Princeton psychologist, Anne Treisman, world class. And her area of specialization for like 40 years is attention, attention. Michael Posner at the University of Oregon, she at Princeton, like there’s two pillars, the two the great man, the great dame of the scientific study of attention for like 40 years. And so she spoke, and she told, she in her and she had like two hours to speak so she gave a, discussed a wide variety of studies they had done. Never ever raised the issue of whether attention could be trained. Never came up. 40 years of research never even came up. But she commented in this and this is a very close paraphrase, I was there. I helped organize it, organize the conference and her [commentary], she commented that perception is a kind of externally guided hallucination. So, when you’re looking out you know at anything, it’s an externally guided, that is photons are coming in, and sound waves are coming in, and what you’re experiencing is a hallucination. In other words basically you’re under datura all the time right. Well we’ve heard, we just finished a meditation right, view all phenomena as being like illusions. So in a way say oh really you’re kind of Buddhist here huh? No! Actually, no. But, so far it sounds like whoa this is a deep parallel, well, we believe everything is illusory to. You do to, cool. She says we create experience rather than photographing it. Cool that’s very true.

(1:31:22) But now consequently what do you, what do you conclude from this? So psychologists regard subjective reports as data rather than as factual accounts. So whenever you interview anybody there a subject in your study. They will and you might ask them what are you experiencing? What’s your perception? What’s your feeling, your emotion, your desire? And they will respond. They’re getting paid $10 an hour, they’re gonna respond. And you don’t take literally anything they say. You so profoundly distrust their perspective. They do lend credence to nothing that they say. We’d rather their subjective reports as data, it’s a factual statement that, that at 3:15 the subject said this, but we will not even ask about whether their first person report was valid, it’s so fundamentally not to be trusted that we won’t even consider trusting it. We won’t even consider that the first person perspective might be reliable, except, our first person perspective. We’re the exception. So, don’t rely upon your experience because you’re schmucks, you’re not even scientists, but we psychologists, our first person perspective, I should say our third person perspective, there’s more of us, there’s at least three. Our perspective is valid because our first person perspective is the sacred cow, that’s not to be, not to be challenged. No reference here to the possibility of gaining insight into the nature of the illusion. No possibility not even the prospect raised of whether your introspective modes of inquiry might be refined, refined made more rigorous, more replicable, more intersubjectively subject to validation or repudiation. Doesn’t even come up. The question doesn’t come up at all. You’re just intrinsically screwed and the only people that really know what’s going on are the scientists.

(1:33:31) It’s very reminiscent of the role of the Roman Catholic Church in the 17th century, the 16th century, 15th century. Whatever experiences you have, take it to the priest first, and the priest will tell you if you’ve had some mystical experience, any kind of unusual experience. Don’t trust it because it may very well be the devil because this is right in the middle of the witch hunting craze. You may be demon-possessed. If you have any special abilities you’re probably demon-possessed. You probably don’t want to talk about it, certainly not to us, because we know what to do with people like you. If you have any kind of unusual experience at all don’t trust it, take it to us and we will tell you, you’re either a saint or you’re really screwed, because we and we alone we the church have the one valid perspective and don’t you forget it. If you do forget it we have something called the Inquisition and you really don’t want to know much more about it. And they had no qualms about torturing people, torturing people, imprisoning people, excommunicating people, that’s even worse. You’re really in hell forever. And so, Galileo comes along into the midst of that, early 17th century. And he’s challenging the church, challenging beliefs that had been there for centuries upon centuries and had been verified by multiple experiments. Assumptions for which there was no contrary evidence ever and that is that the earth is in the center of the universe. It’s in the Bible and it’s in Aristotle and that should pretty well seal it. And there’s no evidence to the contrary and we’ve run many many studies of this and it’s all come to the same conclusion. Our assumption is unquestionably true right. Galileo didn’t believe it, but then he got out his telescope, got out his telescope, and all the debates going back and forth. Is the mind an emergent property of the brain? Does the mind even exist? Bla bla bla bla bla bla. Do human beings have free will or does not? How does how does the placebo effect work? Does it even exist? Maybe it doesn’t exist. How does it work? Shouldn’t…, well stop asking the question. It’s exactly that type of discourse with 250 definitions of consciousness now among you know the cognitive scientists, 250. That’s about 249 more than you need which means really all of them are about equally valuable which is nothing.

(1:36:01) This is exactly what was occurring at the time of Galileo. So, Galileo took his telescope refined it and then made observations nobody had ever made before right. But I checked up on this because I’ve known her for years but I wanted to say something that was firm not just speculation hearsay. I had heard I’d heard for years that among Galileo’s peers as he would be looking through his telescope and seeing that Jupiter has moons, the earth, the moon has craters, the sun has spots. All these you know observations that completely shredded one assertion after another by Aristotle who was considered to be infallible. I’d heard that there are people that just when they heard what he was observing, wouldn’t look. They would not look through the telescope you know. And so I just wondered I just checked checked it out this morning, was that true or was that just sometimes stuff you hear you know just hearsay. Well it turned out it’s true. And this is interesting so we’re going to stay on this a bit longer. Cesare Cremonini, Cesare Cremonini. (retreatant repeats the name Cremonini) Cremonini, Cesare Cremonini. (corrects pronunciation) Cesare, thank you, thank goodness, was a friend of Galileo and among his contemporaries who refused to look through a telescope to confirm or refute Galileo’s discoveries. So, he’s a friend but he still wouldn’t look, why? He explained Cesare Cremonini explained his refusal with the words and this is a quote, I do not wish to approve of claims about which I do not have any knowledge (laughter) exit Cremonini, insert Jay Garfield, insert Richardson Davidson, insert Jon Cohen, I do not wish to approve of claims by the Dalai Lama himself that he can recall his past lives, claims of countless Tibetan Yogis a number of whom they’ve met, who have seen siddhis and remembered past lives and so forth, so I do not wish to approve about claims about which I do not have any knowledge. If I don’t know it, you don’t know it. about things which I have not seen…and then to observe through those glasses gives me a headache. (continued laughter)

(1:38:27) Basta, Enough! it has to be basta, my favorite word in Italian language, basta. It gives me a headache to look through your excuse me your fucking telescope. It gives me a headache. Basta! I do not want to hear anything more about this. He just spoke for the whole neuroscientific community and the entire all of academia when it comes from claims from anybody outside of academia, like Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, Christians, Sufis and so forth, don’t want to hear about it. You’re making claims about which I don’t know, I don’t understand, and I don’t want to look. And therefore I will not look through your telescope because it’s a headache, basta. And stop talking about it god damn it. That’s what he said that was my quotation mark. So I’ve participated in multiple scientific research projects on meditation and the remarkable thing is that none of the scientists I’ve collaborated with meditate, while showing the benefits of meditation, they don’t meditate. They won’t look through the telescope, let alone come to an eight-week retreat, my god they’re too busy for that. Or and he doesn’t talk about me anybody maybe a 10 day retreat, mindfulness meditation, that’s about you know baby food is about all they can take. So Cremonini was paid to teach Aristotle. In fact he said when under investigation by the Inquisition that he would have to return his pay if he declined to teach Aristotelianism. In other words his job depends on it. If he should look through the telescope and be honest, he’d lose his job. If neuroscientists should start meditating seriously and look and then report on what they find, they’ll lose their jobs. They will be excommunicated, the Inquisition is called the National Academy of Science. More generally the heavens in Aristotle were supposed to be incorruptible and hence there are no sunspots, so why look through a telescope? They mustn’t be there, they shouldn’t be there, therefore they aren’t there. Doesn’t matter how many people see them, especially if they’re from a non Italian culture. Cremonini’s reasons were thus philosophical and ruled out Galileo’s up observations a priori, so there was no need for telescopes. As for the whole scientific community there’s no need for meditation if you want to understand the nature of the mind, the last thing you need to do in understanding the nature of mind is look at it.

(!:41:10) There was one other person then we’ll finish. Giulio Libre, okay? Giulio Libre, Libre, Libri, (one of the retreatants repeats Libri), Libri. Giulio Libri was an opponent of Galileo. So, we have one who’s a friend refused to look on ideological grounds. It shouldn’t be there, it mustn’t be there, therefore, I won’t look because if I saw it then I’d be screwed. Giulio Libri was an opponent of Galileo who refused to look through a telescope but his reasons appeared to have been more practical. In his book, Natural Magic, of 1589 Giovanni Battista della Porta had shown that all manner of optical illusions were possible and at the time of Galileo no complete theory of optics was available to distinguish between genuine effects and tricks or self defect, self deception, signal noise. And so maybe even if the telescope is fine what he’s seeing is an optical illusion and therefore since that certainly could be the case let’s assume it is the case and therefore let’s not look. What people perceive in meditation, could be an optical illusion, it could be simply a construct of their own imagination, it could be, it might be, we can’t say that it isn’t, so let’s not look. We are now in the medieval period, the Dark Ages in the scientific study of the mind. William James comments here, Introspection is difficult and fallible; and… the difficulty is simply that of all observation of whatever kind… The only safe safeguard to the difficulties, the fallibility, the possibly making error, The only safeguard is in the final consensus of our father knowledge or later knowledge about the thing in question, later views correcting earlier ones, until at last the harmony of a consistent system is reached. He’s saying the scientific study of the mind should be driven by introspection as in all other branches of science be willing to make mistakes and then keep on looking with greater and greater precision and let the later observations correct the earlier ones until you come to greater and greater consensus. But the scientific establishment says no we have a better solution don’t look at all and only observe brain behavior and interview people but don’t believe anything they say, just believe they said it.

(1:43:29) So, William James concludes here, Psychology, indeed, is today hardly more than what physics was before Galileo, what chemistry was before Lavoisier. It is a massive phenomenological description, gossip, and myth, including, however, real material enough to justify one in the hope that with judgment and goodwill on the part of those interested, it’s study maybe so, may be so organized even now as to become worthy of the name of natural science at a not very distant day. It’s now a hundred and 26 years I think 26 years, since he made that statement. We haven’t gotten there yet but it could happen. I’m seeing young scientists who have not bought into the system and the refusal to look at evidence that’s uncomfortable and the refusal to ask questions that are heretical, I think the time is getting very ripe. And here in Italy I say really now with rejoicing, it’s a day for Mudita after all, I’m finding here just in the time I’ve been here such openness from three scientists at very prestigious institutions. Two of them are, one is a psychologist, the other one is a neuroscientist, the other one is world class working in the field of virtual reality and showing openness, keen inquiry, very interest and the University of Pisa where I’ll be speaking next I thinkThursday on the 19th. I said I’ll talk about whatever you like. Would you like, I didn’t know quite how to say, you want something safe? Because I’m not here just to make people unhappy or I don’t want to insult anybody. Want something to say, how about the four aspects of mental balance you know make your day. Or if you don’t wanna be safe how about a radically empirical approach to the study of consciousness? Which just takes the bazooka out to one unverified bullshit belief after another. (laughter) I said which do you want? They say give us the radically empirical approach.

(1:45:51) That’s where I’m going on Thursday and the fellow I spent 90 minutes in conversation with last Saturday, I think it was last or last before, from the University of Trento, oh what a fine scientist! So open really open they have a whole network of different institutions there and really open. And then I’m going to scuola tomorrow, Scuola Superioré Sant’anna, and we’d be brought to the lab. Oh, I wish I could bring everybody with me, I just can’t. But it’s into a world-class laboratory of virtual reality and that should be interesting. And this man is so open. I’ve known him for years, really open. So, there is enough however real material enough to justify one in the hope that judgment and goodwill and on the part of those interested with open minds that it’s study, the scientific study of the mind, open, free of all dogmatic constraints, free of fear, may be so organized even now is to become worthy of the name natural science that are not very distant day. I wanted to end on a note that is uplifting, but when you come out I’ve just given you a pocket full of ammunition, not to harm anyone, but simply if people throw up bullshit objections be merciless, merciless you know. Just with reason. And I hope it’s been very clear it’s been very much my intention and I’ve thought about it a lot because I know I was going to talk about this. There was no sarcasm, no ridicule, no diminishing at all of these people. I know them personally, they’re fine people, they’re fine people but they’re under massive institutional constraints and I just am enormously grateful that I have the freedom not to be in those and be able to make a living, you know. Because if you’re there and you violate those constraints, you’ve impaired your families, your children. You want to get your children through college how do you plan on doing that now, you know? So I have great sympathy for them. And respect for people like Richard Davidson and Jay Garfield who’ve already gone out, out on the edge of the herd, you know. Even to talk about these things, to research these things, that’s very respectable. Much more daring than what I do. I’m just a loose cannon you all know that you know. Very good. Enjoy the evening. See you tomorrow. No day after tomorrow.

Transcribed electronically by Bob Hiller

Revised by Kriss Kringle Sprinkle

Final edition by Rafael Carlos Giusti

Discussion

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