Buddha’s science at Chintan Bhawan

Session-2 of the international conference on “Science, Spirituality and Education”, scheduled for Tuesday, 21 December, will take participants on a journey of discovery, covering the scientific core of Buddha’s discovery, introducing them to the role of science in the dissemination of Buddhism and sharing how Theravada Buddhism perceive the human mind.

This session, themed “Understanding our Mind”, will be chaired by Prof. B. Alan Wallace, Director and Chairman, Phuket International Academy Mind Centre, Thailand, who will also be delivering the key-note address on the inaugural day of the conference a day earlier, on 20 Dec.

The three speakers for this session are ranked among the leading academic minds on Buddhist thought: Prof. Robert AF ‘Tenzin’ Thurman, Prof. JL Garfield and Prof Asanga Tilakaratne.

Prof. Thurman, the Jey Tsong Khapa professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies in the Department of Religion at Columbia University and President and co-founder of Tibet House US, a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and promotion of Tibetan civilization, will deliberate on how, when the Buddha made a scientific discovery and not just a religious belief when discovered that “the mind” (citta) is the CPU of sentient experience, and the main determiner of the quality of the life of a being.

An abstract of his paper for the conference points out that Buddha also “discovered that it is free of any non-relational core (svabhava) or soul-essence (atma). This was a scientific discovery, not a religious belief. Through his discovery of the absolute truth of voidness, he founded a tradition of empirical science, asserting that ultimate reality transcends anyone’s relative description.”

Prof Thurman, who is also Editor-in-Chief of the Treasury of the Buddhist Sciences, a long-term translation and publication project of the Tibetan Tengyur canon, and a personal friend of the Dalai Lama, adds that “there are various levels of analysis, Abhidharmic, Sastric, and Tantric, which last has the most subtle schemas. Its fine analysis of conscious and unconscious mind is specially germane today, to bring Buddhist “Inner Science” into fruitful dialogue with physics, neuroscience, and psychology.”

Prof. Thurman is also the first American to have been ordained a Tibetan Buddhist monk.

Prof. Garfield, will be following up on this address with a meditation on the “value of cognitive theory for developing Buddhist insights in the 21st Century, and the role of science in the dissemination of Buddhism in the world”.

He will be detailing this aspect, emphasising the importance of recent research for understanding the “deep phenomenology of human experience which is also the target of much Busshist psychology and philosophy of mind”.

A Doris Silbert Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Philosophy, Director of the Five College Tibetan Studies in India Program and Director of the Logic Program at Smith College, adds in his abstract: “Enthusiasts for the scientific character of Buddhism wax eloquent regarding the insights that the Buddhist tradition can deliver to Cognitive Science, and the contributions that meditative technique can make to understanding cognitive and affective processes. To be sure, there are contributions in this direction, though their significance may be overestimated. Less attention is paid to the value of cognitive theory for developing Buddhist insights in the 21st Century, and the role of science in the dissemination of Buddhism in the modern world. I will pay some attention to that value, emphasizing the importance of recent research for understanding the deep phenomenology of human experience which is also the target of much Buddhist psychology and philosophy of mind. I conclude with some remarks on the potential value of Buddhist psychology to the development of moral psychology, an area in which Buddhism has a great deal to contribute.”

The third paper for this session will be presented by Prof Asanga Tilakaratne from Sri Lanka who will speak on what is mind from the Theravada perspective. “A way to approach this question is to examine some key terms used in the early discourses of the Buddha to refer to mind,” explains the Professor who completed his Doctorate from the University of Hawaii in Comparative Philosophy writing his thesis on the problem of ineffability of religious experience.

In 2004, with a group of academics and professionals, he formed Damrivi Foundation, a Buddhist organization for spiritual, social and economic development, and functions as the chairman of its board of trustees.
This intense session will definitely benefit from Prof Wallace on the chair. Prof. Wallace is respected the world over as a a dynamic lecturer, progressive scholar and one of the most prolific writers and translators of Tibetan Buddhism in the West.

Prof. Wallace is respected in academic and spiritual circles for his consistent pursuit of innovative ways to integrate Eastern contemplative practices with Western science to advance the study of the mind. A scholar and practitioner of Buddhism since 1970, Prof Wallace has been teaching Buddhist theory and meditation since 1976 and is himself a Tibetan Buddhist monk, ordained by the Dalai Lama. He holds an undergraduate degree in physics and the philosophy of science from Amherst College and a doctorate in religious studies from Stanford.
Refining the arguments presented by the three speakers will be an impressive panel of respondents: Prof. Sundar Sarukkai, Geshe Dorji Damdul, Dr. Tseten Dorji Sadulsthang and Prof Laurent Nottale.

Prof. Sarukkai, trained in physics and philosophy, has an MSc from IIT, Madras, and a PhD from Purdue University, USA. His research interests include philosophy of science and mathematics, phenomenology and philosophy of language, drawing on both Indian and Western philosophical traditions. He has been a Homi Bhabha Fellow, Fellow of the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies at Shimla and PHISPC Associate Fellow. Other than numerous papers, he is the author of the following books: Translating the World: Science and Language (University Press of America, 2002), Philosophy of Symmetry (IIAS, 2004) and Indian Philosophy and Philosophy of Science (CSC/Motilal Banarsidass, 2005). Presently, he is the Director of the Manipal Centre for Philosophy & Humanities, Manipal University.

Dr. Tsetan Dorji Sadutshang was born in Tibet in 1952 and holds a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery, Jawaharlal Institute of Post Graduate Medical Education and Research, Pondichery. He was appointed Chief Medical Officer at Tibetan Delek Hospital, Dharamsala, India (1983-87) and Junior Personal Physician to the Dalai Lama in 1988. He is currently the Chief Medical Officer, Tibetan Delek Hospital.

Dr. Nottale is Director of Research at CNRS (French National Centre of Scientific Research). Laboratory: LUTH (Laboratory ‘Universe and Theories’), Paris-Meudon Observatory, France. His research interests are in astrophysics: cosmology, gravitational lensing, planetology; Theoretical physics: relativity theories, quantum mechanics. Theory of Scale relativity and Fractal space-time: applications to various sciences.

The conference, it may be recalled, is the Government of Sikkim’s initiative to infuse formal education in the State with refined ethics for the new millennium and grooming a generation of responsible citizens who are compassionate at heart and resolutely ethics-driven towards their universal responsibility.

The effort to harmonise science with spirituality for adoption as a curriculum for school education in Sikkim is inspired from His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s leading role in encouraging a dialogue between science and religious philosophy to fashion a life science in which the two are not in conflict and in fact collaborate to deliver intelligence with compassion. This alliance has already made substantial strides and will, with the international conference coming up in Sikkim, mark the first substantial crossover from deliberations in conferences to actual on-ground implementation with inclusion as part of school curriculum.

(Pema Wangchuk Dorjee, Media Consultant to Namgyal Institute of Tibetology for the “Brain and Mind, Our Potential for Change: Modern Cognitive Sciences and Eastern Contemplative Traditions” Conference.)

Courtesy: Sikkim Mail