What's Left for Us?

I think you have to be right.

I agree, even if there was some way of measuring brain activity or something to show that people were having the same "experience" each person would deal with and look at the experience in an infinite number of different ways. The variables are immeasurable, I bet.

If the New Yorker article is right, most of what he is learning will turn out to be wrong over time.

I met early this week with a researcher in this field. He's learning much more than you might think about the effects of meditation on human beings. I was impressed with what can be gleaned from standardized testing instruments and in-depth in person interviews. Maybe we should be careful not to tar science with the same foibles we're accusing science of suffering from.



-cmarti

I wish that dude would just publishing something already, or keep a
blog, or something. I keep hearing hints about it, and I'm fascinated
to know more...

HI everyone--
@Ian-- oh yeah, Dan's the man! Is one of those links to the ten-part mindsight seminar from this summer at Upaya with Joan Halifax? Chock full of absolutely amazing stuff.

@Chris-- yeah buddy, that's what I'm talking about! Let's not get caught up in an idea of "science" that's two hundred years old. This basic approach can really be illuminating in the domain of contemplative/yogic experiencing. Both in terms of brain stuff, a la James Austin's speculative neuro-phenomenology, or Dan Siegel's concrete research. And in terms of intersubjective interview techniques, like the Loevinger sentence completion test and many other formal intersubjective conversational measures. Put hose two together with the phenomenological explorations of contemplatives and you've really got something.

It'ss be interesting to see what Siegel does with his research as his relatively new practice deepens.

I can't remember if it was Austin or Shinzen Young but someone has called for an emergence of accomplished contemplatives who are trained scientists-- neuroscientists, cognitive scientists, and so on.

For myself I aspire to a life of scientific endeavor, artistic and musical exploration, rigorous philosophical reflection, and benefiting others all interweaving in the light of ever-deepening contemplative insight... So that's what's left for me!

Chris, did you read the New Yorker article?

For the record -- I love science but I can't prove it.

The vast strength of science, the absolute rock bottom value of it, is that it is almost always wrong and happy to be so.


-cmarti

"Happy to be so" is true enough in theory, I think, but not necessarily in practice. We humans (me included) love to immortalize our ideologies. I think that is perhaps why Mike asked if you'd read the article, as it points out that there is often a selection bias in peer-review journals for positive results around real hot-topic items. Not that that's good or bad, but we shouldn't forget that its there.

Besides, my point is not that "science is wrong". I more want to investigate the ways the scientific method might be usefully turned toward the results of meditative practice. I'm just not sure that science as we use it now will ever achieve the level of direct-knowing-of-the-transcendent that other culture's methods have.

Which is, admittedly, pure speculation on my part, but there's a pattern to science of relying on tangible, repeatable results, that I think is incompatible with spiritual inquiry. It's someone wearing those flashlight glasses trying to shine the light on their face. The light of science begins within the realm of time, and as such cannot be turned around in order to investigate the timeless. The human mind, on the other hand, can investigate the timeless because it springs out of the timeless. That's the "backward step" of Dogen. I'm not sure science is in a position to be able to make that step.

Yes, Mike, I read it last week. It was referred to me by a friend who is, believe it or not, a physicist. I've been participating in a discussion about it on another message board called "The Well."
Why do you ask?

-cmarti

For some reason I wasn't sure you'd seen the material on the basic scientific method which seemed to me to show that sometimes, maybe, scientists aren't always willing to admit or see when they are wrong, if only unconsciously.
But, never mind, if you've read it, I'm sure you've digested it.

Finally have a chance to read that "Lies, Damned Lies..." article, Chris, and I totally see where you're coming from on this.

This, for me, was a particularly sobering bit:
"Simply put, if you’re attracted to ideas that have a good chance of
being wrong, and if you’re motivated to prove them right, and if you
have a little wiggle room in how you assemble the evidence, you’ll
probably succeed in proving wrong theories right."

Shows just how hard it is to get something actually right. And, as a wild theorist myself, it shows the futility of chasing anything but actual truth. : )

This is fascinating information, Chris-- if WAY beyond my simple poet's mind, which responds with a snatch of Walt Whitman-- 'I sing the body electric'-- and an Alex Grey image of a bioluminescent nervous system. And the perennial question: what does it mean?

Neuroscience is not a strong subject for me, but wow. While I don't really understand the details, it seems to point to the idea that things are even more complex and non-Newtonian than we thought. It would seem that the line between order and chaos is not so clearly defined.

Chaos, bow to your partner. Order, bow to your corner. Now allemand left with your right hand, do-si-do... and 'round we go...

Chris-- at the risk of disingratiating myself by adding to your towering pile of stuff to read, I found something at the bookstore today...

Measuring the Immeasurable: the Scientific Case for Spirituality. It's edited excerpts from all the usual suspects, including the one from Dr. James Austin that made me pick it up off the remainder table.

THE ATTENTIVE ART OF MEDITATION

CONCENTRATIVE MEDITATION // RECEPTIVE MEDITATION

A more effortful, sustained attention // A more effortless, sustained attention,
focused and exclusive // unfocussed and inclusive.

A more deliberate, one-pointed attention. // A more open, universal, bare awareness.
It requires voluntary, top-down processing. // It expresses involuntary modes of
// bottom-up processing.

More Self-referential. // More other-referential
May evolve into absorptions // May shift into intuitive, insightful modes.
"Paying" attention. // A bare, choiceless awareness.

-- Jake, can I hear another chorus of 'Shi-ne<----> Lha-tong'?

There is a great deal more, of course: more comparison charts; diagrams of brain-parts and their discrete functions, very clear explanations... And that's just one of the couple dozen writers represented.

All-- pardon my failed attempt at the vertical lines in the chart: it ain't pretty, but I guess it will serve.

Oh, nice... one of my instructors used a simplified version of this chart in class last week when trying to explain the dynamics of meditation to those without experience of it. There is a really really interesting Buddhist Geeks 2-parter with Mr. Austin in which he describes some possible neural correlates for absorptions and more interestingly for kensho, or "seeing it as it is". He has some fascinating descriptions of the probable neural proccesses correllating to the cessation of self-referencing, and draws interesting distinctions between higher-level self-referencing (narrative-imaginary-emotional) and deeper layers of self-referencing (proprioceptive; the sense of being "in" one's "body" looking/sensing things "out there").

So by this interpretation Kensho is reminiscent of the second half of Dogen's phrase "to study the self is to forget the self, to forget the self is to be enlightened by all things".

It also reminds me of Bankei's unborn buddha mind. Bankei is pretty clearly pointing to this distinction between voluntary top-down attention (which is samsaric, whether in the world of desire like animal, hell, hungry ghost realms, form or formless absorptions) and involuntary, bottom up attention (natural function of unborn buddha mind). He's always pointing out the latter by pointing to involuntary acts of hearing, touchiung seeing and so forth including the thoughts/memories which arise spontaneously in response to the sensory impressions of the environment. This bottom-up natural activity of unborn awareness takes place spontaneously with no referentiality. Neat!

That Neurobiology article is really interesting! The phrase "extracellular electric fields" and the description of how these files influence communication between neural cells brings to mind the benefits of Chi Kung and other body-energy related practices. A field that is both generated by the neural exchanges and also assists in neural exchanges seems to me to be something that might be described as an "energy body" by anyone with the necessary level of awareness of physical sensations, but lacking the framework of scientific language.

Also, this was fascinating:

"Few studies, however, had actually assessed the impact of far weaker—but
very common—non-epileptic fields. "The reason is simple," Anastassiou
says. "It is very hard to conduct an in vivo experiment in the absence of extracellular fields," to observe what changes when the fields are not around."

How can we measure something like this when its something that never shuts off? It's something who's influence is bundled into our base-level-understanding of reality. It's hard to do experiments when a non-effected control groups doesn't exits.