When Charles Darwin proposed the crowning scientific theory of the 19th century, a wide public understood enough of it to passionately debate evolution and natural selection. But not even physicists today fully understand the similarly significant theories of quantum mechanics, first proposed early in the 20th century. With Western scientific thought apparently at its limits, a group of scientists recently looked for help from a man who, until he was a teenager, believed that the world was flat: Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama.
The resulting dialogue between the Dalai Lama, several other Buddhist scholars and a group of Western physicists and philosophers (including Harvard's Tu Weiming, formerly of UC Berkeley) makes up physicist Arthur Zajonc's graceful and insightful new book, The New Physics and Cosmology: Dialogues With the Dalai Lama. This five-day conference at the Dalai Lama's compound in Dharamsala, India, in 1997 was not the first or last of these conclaves. Since they began a decade earlier, there have been 11 discussions convened by the organization created to arrange them, the Mind and Life Institute.
Seven books have resulted so far, and DVDs of the most recent conference, at MIT in Cambridge, Mass., last fall, are available from http://www.mindandlife.org/. Several books have emerged from discussions between the Dalai Lama and Western scientists, but the Mind and Life series is itself a kind of story, one of continuing and fascinating cross- cultural collaboration -- even a kind of convergence -- on subjects suddenly of common importance.
Most of the conferences with the Dalai Lama didn't deal with physics. They began with topics on the mind. Though largely self-educated in Western science, the Dalai Lama expressed keen interest in new developments in brain sciences and related fields, wishing to test his belief that ethical behavior is inherent in human nature and can be nurtured without reference to any religious doctrine. As leader of Tibetan Buddhism, he was also intrigued by what Western science had to say on workings of the mind that Buddhist scholars and advanced meditation practitioners had been exploring for several thousand years.
At the same time, neuroscientists using the latest technologies were challenging old assumptions about the relationship of brain and body. Psychologists were trying to account for abilities to change physical states (such as body temperature), as specifically demonstrated by individuals adept at meditation, when such influences on the body by the mind was thought impossible. Western science had emphasized external influences and was just beginning to investigate human life from the inside. So in various disciplines loosely grouped as mind sciences, some scientists were eager to experiment with more advanced meditation subjects, and they were ready to hear different points of view.
The mood of the early conferences seemed eager but uncertain, with the participants especially amazed by the Dalai Lama's scientific mind. Scientists exclaiming that his questions anticipated their next area of research, or otherwise demonstrated remarkable analytical acuity, is a recurring theme throughout these books, as is the Dalai Lama often repeating that if science can prove a Buddhist assumption wrong, that assumption should be discarded. Trust is established as the Buddhists find the scientists both forthright and respectful, and the scientists appreciate the sophistication of Buddhist thought, which is based on rigorous training in logical debate as well as introspection.
While personalities percolate more obviously on video, they manifest in print as well through questions, quick exchanges and doggedly systematic, briskly trenchant and passionately eloquent presentations. These dialogues had to navigate continuing disagreements and deeply different assumptions (just the differences between Buddhist enlightenment and the European Enlightenment are revealing), but the findings and methods of each tradition illuminate the other, so for readers these books become an education in both.
By the time of the conference in 2000, which was covered in Destructive Emotions: A Scientific Dialogue With the Dalai Lama, edited by Daniel Goleman, scientists were collaborating with Buddhists in designing and conducting new laboratory experiments involving advanced meditators and their ability to influence measurable brain activities, and were brainstorming on educational programs on emotional literacy. Some scientists took their own research in new directions partly as a result of these dialogues. (Participants from the Bay Area included UC Berkeley psychologist Eleanor Rosch, UC San Francisco psychologist Paul Ekman, psychologist Jeanne Tsai and professor of religion Lee Yearly of Stanford.)
Zajonc's "New Physics" suggests the dramatic quality of the dialogues and the emotional impact of the conference experience. Physics became a topic partly because of the Dalai Lama's curiosity, but Western scientists had their own reasons. Because quantum physics implies an apparently determining role for the human mind on the phenomena observed, it shatters Western notions of objective reality. Tibetan Buddhism has been investigating the correlations of thought and reality for centuries. The nuanced Buddhist ideas of "dependent arising," which explore relationships of perception, expectations and reality, were particularly intriguing to both physicists and mind scientists. The physics dialogue didn't create a new way of understanding quantum reality but did suggest a path to it. The new physics and mind science both lead quickly to questions once considered the sole province of spirituality, and also to other traditions, not only to Buddhism, but as Tu Weiming points out, to indigenous thought such as Hawaiian, Maori and American Indian.
"I think the time is ripe for imagining a new kind of education," he asserts. "It is highly desirable, maybe even necessary, that this new education integrates the self-cultivation of the Buddhist and other traditions. ... It will enhance the communal, critical self-awareness of some of the most creative and reflective members of the scientific community. This is absolutely necessary for a new breakthrough."
For the Dalai Lama, the emphasis on the human mind's profound role in reality has an ethical dimension. "Therefore, the future of humanity is in the hands of humanity itself," he says, concluding the physics dialogue. "We have the responsibility to create a better world, a happier world, and a more peaceful world." These books illuminate just how deep, common and unavoidable a responsibility that is, even if we don't believe it.
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