Buddhist Meditation and neuroscience

Transcription

1 Buddhist Meditation and neuroscience Bernard Faure As a recent book by Donald Lopez, Buddhism and Science, shows, the question of the compatibility of Buddhism with science was first raised in the late 19th century. Since then, the partners in the "dialogue" between Buddhism and Science have changed several times, while the discourse on both sides has remained essentially the same. Lopez points out that, since the 1990s, and largely through the influence of the Dalai Lama, Tibetan Buddhism has displaced Zen as the chief referent in this dialogue. In order to become "compatible" with science, however, Buddhism had to be "modernized" by eliminating much of what had been deemed essential by traditional Buddhists.[1] With the recent emergence of neuroscience, an even more significant change has taken place. While neuroscience remains in the continuity of biological sciences, its claims to offer privileged access to domain that was until now seen by some to be the preserve of Buddhism, namely the mind, forces Buddhists to redefine their position more specifically regarding that claim. This transformation is particularly obvious in the "dialogue" between Buddhism and neuroscience initiated by the Dalai Lama and his Western disciples. While such a dialogue is important, and necessary, I believe that, because of its problematic premises, it has not been able to achieve as much as its partisans initially hoped. It is of course impossible to discuss in a short paper the ground covered over the last three decades, and I will limit my comments to a few salient points. 1. Prolegomena for a renewed dialogue The common model used by the advocates of a "dialogue" has been that of a convergence between Buddhism and neuroscience[2]. This model is based on an outdated conception of comparativism, in which comparing means to find common ground. An alternative model is that of a mutual challenge, in which the two sides challenge each other and shed light on each other, precisely because of their differences. A third possibility remains, that of a dialogue of the deaf, in which the two sides share no common ground and talk past each other. Hopefully, the current dialogue does not belong to that last category. The first thing to notice is the asymmetrical relationship between the two interlocutors. Neuroscience has become the modem paradigm, whereas Buddhism, while it has made some significant headway in the West, has lost the dominant ideological position it once held in Asia. Thus, before considering the possibility of a convergence between neuroscience and Buddhism, one must solve the problem of the translation of one discourse into the other. For this, we need to draw a distinction, not only between traditional Buddhism and neo- Buddhism whether Western or Asian but also between neuroscience as experimental

2 practice and neuroscience as a form of scientism, that is, as an ideology that claims to be the new truth for our time. From that standpoint, while the dialogue between Buddhism and neuroscience has been presented by the media as a historical event, I see it rather as a missed opportunity[3]. Without a preliminary self-critical examination on each side, it is not too clear what such a dialogue would entail. Preliminary conditions to a meaningful dialogue would probably include finding ways to avoid apologetic temptations, implicit hierarchies, and reductionist tendencies, beginning with the reduction of Buddhism to meditation and to a "recipe for happiness." We need first of all to question the following premises of the current dialogue: 1) First, the claim that Buddhism, like science and unlike religion, is "experimental." In the words of one of the foremost advocates of convergence, Alan Wallace: "Buddhism, like science, presents itself as a body of systematic knowledge about the natural world, and it posits a wide array of testable hypotheses and theories concerning the nature of the mind and its relation to the physical environment. These theories have allegedly been tested and experientially confirmed numerous times over the past twenty-five hundred years, by means of duplicable meditative techniques. In this sense, too, Buddhism may be better characterized as a form of empiricism rather than transcendentalism[4]. However, faith plays an important role in Buddhism, as the Dalai Lama, who is himself the object of blind faith on the part of many of his followers, knows well. Paradoxically, his statement that Buddhism, like science, gives a supreme value to experience (or experiment) is repeated like a mantra. Neuroscientists, being in principle skeptical, should require some proof or should at least try to get more information on Buddhist practices before endorsing them. We do not need to look very far to find counterexamples. Indeed, obedience to the monastic rule and imitation of the Buddha and of the past masters is what defines a monk. To be a Buddhist means to take refuge in the Three Jewels (Buddha, Dharma, Sangha) and never raise doubts that may divide the community. There are indeed a number of Buddhist texts that advocate a critical mind, but Buddhism cannot be reduced to any of those texts. 2) The second questionable premise is the notion that traditional Buddhist is largely outdated and must be modernized. In a problematic spirit of concession, the Dalai Lama asserted that Buddhism should abandon any doctrinal element that is disproved by science. Either this is purely rhetorical statement, given that much of Buddhist doctrine is metaphysical and therefore beyond the pale of science; or it is a kind of sell-out. In this oft-quoted statement, the Dalai Lama gives as an example Buddhist cosmology, which is in his eyes outdated. At the same time, he declares that the doctrine of karma is out of bounds while this doctrine is intertwined with cosmological notions such as the Six Paths of rebirth. As others have pointed out, the Dalai Lama's move was not exempt of political motivations[5]. 2. Meditation techniques and technical problems Western media have made much noise about the experiments done on Buddhist meditation. Indeed, for a majority of people, meditative practice is the ultimate point of convergence between Buddhism and neuroscience. It is believed to transform the brain, a result that seems

3 to illustrate the recent dogma of neuroplasticity. Meditators are said to experience dramatic transformations in cognitive function and neural activity. They are even said to produce at will such enviable mental states as compassion and happiness. The possibility of finding the neural correlates of such mental states and therefore to reproduce them at will seems to open the gates to a Brave New World[6]. Yet the first experiments with Tibetan monks in Dharamsala yielded few results, mainly because of cultural differences. Only when the neuroscientists started working with an eager French monk, Mathieu Ricard, did things suddenly improve, creating high hopes on both sides. In fact, things are much less clear, and much less promising than the media (and some of the advocates of the dialogue between Buddhism and neuroscience) would have us believe. To claim that meditation produces changes in mental activity may seem in itself rather trivial to anyone who is familiar with Buddhism. To be sure, any activity performed with some consistency whether playing the piano or riding a bicycle, or even drinking beer will significantly alter one's mind. We know for instance that the hippocampus of London taxi-drivers, who have to memorize the city's map (or rather had, before the advent of GPS), is more developed than that of ordinary pedestrians. Does it mean that there is some intriguing convergence between neuroscience and taxi-driving? Probably not. Likewise, when one reads attentively the results of such experiments on meditators, one is led to a much more sober assessment. An oft-quoted article by Antoine Lutz and others, entitled "Meditation and the Neuroscience of Consciousness"[7] acknowledges that, in spite of thousand publications on meditation in Western languages, still little is known about the impact of meditation on the brain. Lutz and his colleagues are well aware out that the literature on meditation has a tendency to ignore cultural differences in order to emphasize some vague universality in human experience."[8] But the real problem lies elsewhere. Even if meditation can provide some significant data to neuroscience, how are these data to be interpreted? Do they actually contribute to the thesis of the "convergence" of Buddhism and neuroscience? And do they serve the cause of Buddhism? Buddhist monks may fare better than mice as guinea pigs under EEGs and fl\4ris, but this is not very comforting. While mental states achieved by practitioners may be "interesting" for neuroscience, like those of some psychological oddities of the "idiot savant" type, their soteriological context, which matters most to Buddhists, is deemed irrelevant by scientists. Lutz defines three neuroscientific agenda with regard to Buddhist meditation: neuroplasticity, interaction of mind and body, and the possibility of neural counterparts to subjective experience. The recent interest in neuroplasticity has prompted an explosion of research. The possibility that practices specifically designed to cultivate positive qualities such as equanimity and loving kindness will produce beneficial alterations in the brain is obviously appealing. Data collected on a small group of meditators indicate a possible relationship between meditation and changes in brain Structure (cortical thickness). The same meditators have been found to have a significantly greater antibody response to influenza vaccine (the same meditators who had greater prefrontal brain activity)[9]. The experiments are said to reveal an increase in alpha and theta activity ill various types of meditation (Zazen, Yogic concentration, MBSR (Mindfulness-based stress reduction),

4 etc.). However, the neuroelectric signatures of these various meditative techniques have not yet been firmly established. Long-term Buddhist practitioners show high-amplitude gammaband oscillations and phase-synchrony during non-referential meditation. Some preliminary data suggest that these gamma-oscillations are correlated with self-reports of clarity of meditation[10]. Unfortunately, the lack of a control population makes it difficult to interpret whether the brain patterns reflect specific meditative qualities or the cognitive processes induced by the instructions[11]. The first claim made by Lutz and his colleagues is that the brains of Buddhist practitioners are more stable, their amygdalas are less "trigger happy." The second claim is that they have baseline levels of positive affect, or happiness, that are notably higher than that of ordinary people: fmri (functional magnetic resonance imaging) scans show higher levels of left prefrontal activity, which are supposed to be associated with well-being. The third claim is that they synchronize different elements of experience more effective, which is believed to have some functional significance. The fourth claim is that their brains are capable of compassion as levels unknown in the West a claim that seems at first glance hard to document. Gamma waves (indicative of intense alertness) 30 times as strong as that of a student compassion group[12]. Now the association of college students with compassion may sound very much like an oxymoron. Probably any other human group (with a few exceptions) would show significantly higher levels of compassion, without resorting to meditation. Meditation: Generic or Particular? Meditation is part of a broader field of practice and discourse that includes many other types of bodily and mental techniques, including ritual. While Tibetan meditation, and to a lesser degree Japanese Zen and Burmese Vipassana, have been the subject of most recent research, they by no means represent the wide variety of Buddhist and non-buddhist meditative techniques. Furthermore, contrary to a notion widely held in the West, meditation is not the central practice of Buddhism. Many Buddhists never practice meditation, or only rarely. An influential Chinese work, the Lives of Eminent Monks, mentions meditation almost in passing, as one among a dozen of rubrics of Buddhist practice. Many Westerners oppose meditation to ritual, when it is actually a form of ritual. In Sōtō Zen or in esoteric Buddhism, for instance,, it is described, not as an introspective search (as in the Romantic view that characterizes neo-buddhism) but as a way to ritually emulate the Buddha by adopting his physical posture. Many Western practitioners claim to be uninterested in the cultural context of meditation or in its ritual paraphernalia. Yet the question is: To what extent can meditation be separated from such contexts? To give just an example: traditional Asian Buddhists hold that a practitioner is liable to be attacked by malevolent forces. Such hostile forces may be mental projections or real external forces, the fact remains that meditation can be dangerous, and that the increased awareness of the practitioner can increase the negative forces that assail him or her. Meditative practice therefore requires preparation, support from a group, and guidance from a more advanced practitioner. Yet Western practitioners and neuroscientists, intent on studying only the positive effects of meditation, seem blissfully unaware of these major caveats.

5 Buddhist meditation must also be understood in the context of faith and morality. In the traditional view of the Buddhist Path, morality (śila) is the preliminary stage, meditation (samādhi) the intermediary stage, and wisdom (prajña) the ultimate stage. If any of these three is lacking, however, the practitioner soon reaches a dead-end, he or she becomes trapped in the "dark pit." Thus, meditation is not a free-floating practice, it has specific cultural, ritual and soteriological conditions and meaning. Above all, it is aimed at enlightenment not just happiness. If Buddhist practitioners were just searching for wellbeing or happiness, Prozac or similar medications would probably do the trick. Early Buddhists appropriated Indian techniques of meditation, but they drastically changed their meaning, sometimes emptying them from their content. Hindu yoga is aimed at the realization of the Self or atman. Early Buddhist meditation, through the same bodily techniques, aims at the opposite: no-self (anātman). This apparent indeterminacy of meditation should raise some questions for neuroscientists. So far it has not. Buddhists traditionally distinguish between meditation "with content" (for instance, the meditation on the Four Noble Truths or some other Buddhist rubrics) and meditation "without content." In Indian and Tibetan Buddhism, teachers like Tsongkhapa ( ) advocate a form of analytical meditation. The analytical description of mental states found in the scholastic tradition (Abhidharma), however, may not be the mere outcome of contemplative practices, as it is usually taken to be: it may rather constitute a kind of analytic philosophy or constructive theology. Conversely, in Chan Buddhism (and its Japanese avatar, Zen), the goal of seated meditation is said to be "no-thought" (wunian) or "no-mind" (wuxin). Whether or not this total lack of any mental process has neural correlates is a question about which Chan practitioners may disagree with neuroscientists. For this particular Chinese Buddhist tradition, analytical meditation is of little use, and it may actually constitute a stumbling block. Furthermore, Chan was divided along sectarian lines in regard to practice. The question of whether Buddhist practice and awakening are sudden or gradual was the object of major controversies in China and Tibet. In China and Japan, adepts of the Linji (Rinzai) school disparaged the practice of the Caodong (J. Sōtō) school as a form of quietism or attachment to stillness labeled "Chan of silent illumination" (mozhao chan), whereas adepts of the Caodong school criticized the practice of the Linji school as a form of attachment to words, which they called "Chan of examination of words" (kanhua chan). In some Buddhist schools, visualization is of central importance to the practice. In the Chinese Pure Land school, the practitioner must visualize the Buddha Amitābha and/or constantly recite his name (again, not unlike the mantras of esoteric Buddhism). Many types of esoteric Buddhist meditation imply a visual unfolding and dissolution of the cosmos (in the form of a mandala). The goal is for the practitioner to visualize one or several specific deities in order to identify with them; or, at the higher level, to become identical with the cosmic Buddha Vairocana. I could continue listing forms of Buddhist meditation, past and present, ad nauseam. Among all these forms, neuroscience has tended to focus on one particular type, namely mindfulness. Yet this form is meditation is usually perceived as a preliminary stage, a basic condition for higher forms of meditations.

6 For all its diversity, Buddhist meditation was not always well considered. The most famous critique of Buddhist meditation is probably that of Linji Yixuan (fl. ninth-century), the founder of the Linji school of Chan: "There are a bunch of blind shavepates who, having stuffed themselves with food, sit down to meditate and practice contemplation. Arresting the flow of thought they don't let it rise; they hate noise and seek stillness. This is the method of heretics." When they consider meditation to be the paradigmatic practice of Buddhism, neuroscientists do not seem aware of these critiques, nor of the historical and cultural contexts in which both meditation and anti-meditation trends developed. Meditation has never been a neutral, unproblematic practice; it has always been performative, constituting a stake in sectarian struggles. To decontextualize meditation techniques and lump them together with other rival types of practice under a vague, generic rubric is to misunderstand these practices, as well as their potential effects on the human brain. 3. Methodological and theoretical problems As Antoine Lutz points out, "The lack of statistical evidence, control populations and rigor of many of the early studies, the heterogeneity of the studied meditative states, and the difficulty in controlling the degree of expertise of practitioners can in part account for the limited contributions made by neuroscience-oriented research on meditation."[13] Significant changes in brainwave patterns and the like during practice tell us nothing about the experience itself, let alone about and its value for the practitioner. Buddhist meditators are said to provide a much-needed first-person account of spiritual or mental processes. However, first-person accounts are not entirely reliable. Indeed, from a neuroscientific viewpoint, the visions experienced by some Buddhist meditators have no more grounding in reality than the hallucinations of schizophrenics, and they can be explained away as pathological. The protocols of the experiments also raises a number of issues. One of them is the interference of the experimental apparatus with the practitioner's meditative state. As Lopez nicely puts it: "As the monk contracts the muscles of his lower body, his concentration is broken by the discomfort of the rectal thermometer and the electrodes attached to his body."[14] Another obvious problem is the vagueness of the object of study: while mindfulness can be relatively easily studied, higher mental states like compassion and happiness are by nature elusive, and finding their neural correlates seems like tall order, leading to tall tales. Furthermore, compassion and happiness are culturally-determined notions. Christian compassion, for instance, has little in common with Buddhist compassion. The former implies a strong attachment to the value of the person, while the latter is supposedly based on the realization of emptiness and the inexistence of a self, both in the agent and the recipient. In fact, Buddhist compassion tends to be self-serving, in the sense that it is perceived as a positive mental factor for the practitioner. Indeed, a major Mahāyāna text, the Dazhidulun, explains that, until the practitioner reaches a very advanced stage on his path (namely, the eighth stage, close to awakening), his or her compassion has no impact whatsoever on others. It should be cultivated for itself, not with the deluded notion of helping others (who have no real existence anyway). It is not clear how this kind of compassion might be of any help to

7 neuroscience (or to anyone). The first task of a serious researcher should be to understand the culturally- specific meaning of the mental state he or she is about to study. Yet the literature on the subject shows no trace of such a culturally-sensitive approach on the part of neuroscientists, only bold references to vague, generic, uncritical notions. In fact, neuroscientists are usually quick to dismiss anthropological approach as the very kind of 'cultural relativism' that neuroscience will ultimately disprove. This is, incidentally, a feature they share with neo- Buddhists. Awakening itself is said to be a supra-mental experience that is, technically no longer a "mental" state and as such it is not supposed to have neural correlates or signatures. According to Buddhist orthodoxy, many of the benefits or "powers" obtained by meditation are mere by-products and should not be desired for themselves. The same could perhaps be said of mental states like well-being and happiness. Indeed, all these apparent benefits of Buddhist practice may prove to be stumbling-blocks on the path. In light of this, Alan Wallace's definition of Buddhist practitioners as "mental athletes" seems particularly misleading. The interpretation of the data is in itself problematic. According to Thomas Kuhn, what scientists observe and how they observe it is already tied up with their dominant paradigm[15]. And this paradigm is at odds with the Buddhism paradigm, in spite of all declarations to the contrary. Neuroscientists cannot have access to what the practitioner is actually experiencing, the qualia of meditation, and they cannot help interpreting the practitioner's account in their own ternis, according to scientific presuppositions that leave no room for an authentic Buddhist experience. Their observation is far from neutral inasmuch as it confirms a Western way of thinking that denies the reality of the Buddhist worldview. At a more technical level the measurements of the practitioner's brain lead to unresolved questions about their meaning. What exactly does an increase of prefrontal activity or cortex thickness, increase of gamma rays, and the like, mean? EEGs and frmis may provide a wealth of data, but they are usually inconclusive. Neuroplasticity is not or should not be an end in itself, and it remains meaningless unless a clear goal is defined. All measurements are not equal, and neither are the data resulting from them. You can measure anything you like, of course, but truly experimental data cannot be the blind results of new scanning techniques, they must be a response to well-asked questions that justify specific measurements. Unless these conditions are met, experiments obey a blind logic of accumulation in which all observations, instead of being creative, are equal and equally arbitrary, and recorded in the hope that some distant day they may somehow make sense[16]. One cannot in this respect fail to be struck but the fact that all the interpretations of the data on meditation are put in the conditional tense: an increase of gamma rays "might mean this or that" with a lot of wishful thinking. Another issue has to do with the subjects of the experiments. Some scholars have already pointed out the problem raised by their limited number: in one case,, only one "Tibetan" practitioner (Matthieu Ricard) was involved, and he happens to be French! Admittedly, the said practitioner was humble enough to recognize that, in spite of his many hours of practice, he is by no means an advanced practitioner. Yet the results obtained in this single experiment made the headlines of the media, leading the general public to believe that Buddhism is the gateway to wellbeing and happiness.

8 Not only is the contrast drawn between "advanced" practitioners and beginners highly problematic, but there is also the fact that the former are usually reluctant (or sometimes unable) to speak of their experiences. Even when they do speak, they tend to fall back on ready-made Buddhist terminology to describe their experience, erasing by the same token all the significant individual nuances. In most cases, experiments were performed on Westerners because it is easier to communicate with them; and they involve simplified Westernized forms of meditation like TM (Transcendental Meditation) or MBSR (Mindfulness-based stress reduction). In spite of all the mediatic attention they received, I am afraid that there is no key to be found there or at least, not the key to Buddhist enlightenment. This reminds me of the joke about the man who looked for his keys at night under a lamp-post, not because that's where he had had lost them, but because there was more light there. Finally, a major question is the long-term purpose of the experiments: is it that the neuroscientists,, having been lucky enough to find the neural correlates of some beneficial mental state, will be able to reproduce these states artificially, chemically perhaps (and with some major financial benefit)? Buddhism in this case would be reduced to another variety of neuro-enhancement of the same type as those advertised by pharmaceutical companies. Clearly this reductionistic view should be rejected. On the neuroscientistific side, there has been no serious engagement with Buddhism, just a random gathering of data. Neuroscience is merely interested in the brain, and sees Buddhism as ancillary to its purpose. Unless it can be proved that "Buddhist brains" are significantly different, Buddhist monks represent just another type of population for neuroscience. One may object that this instrumental approach is due to the fact that these experiments and dialogue are still at the incipient stage. But precisely, since so much depends on the preliminary stages, it would have been particularly important to set the record straight. And this is not, in my opinion, what happened. On the contrary, the desire to obtain quick results preempted robust critical questions. Most studies on the topic provide an optimistic and charitable interpretation of the dialogue. A more realistic approach would look at its ideological and economic motivations, noting for instance that the mutual validation of Tibetan Buddhism and neuroscience has generated a lot of funding on both sides. Other vested interests include those of the pharmaceutical industry, always quick to inflate claims for marketing purposes, and to downplay the obvious limitations of neuroscientific experiments. All these various hidden and no so hidden agendas have given birth to a new field of discourse, which has taken a life of its own. This discourse has been from the start inscribed in the framework of neuroenhancement and consumerism, a framework that constitutes, to say the least, a Procrustean bed for Buddhism. For this discourse to have any real value, however, it needs to be stripped of its ideological underpinnings and to be dissociated from Tibetan Buddhism. By rushing to conclusions, enthusiastic advocates of the dialogue between Buddhism and neuroscience have raised expectations that they cannot meet. When all is said and done, does Buddhist doctrine make a difference in the dialogue between Buddhism and neuroscience? Apparently not. Does this mean that Buddhist claims are false? I believe that it simply shows that they belong to a language game that is different from scientific discourse and therefore cannot be reduced to it. As the Dalai Lama himself pointed out, enlightened states of mind may not have a neural signature or neural correlates, and it would therefore be a waste of time to search for the "Buddha-spot" in the brain. This view flies in the face of basic

9 neuroscientific beliefs about the physical closure of the world, according to which there can be no mental event without a neural correlate. It will depend on the willingness of neuroscience to accept the possibility of such higher states of mind whether a meaningful dialogue and mutual enlightening of Buddhism and neuroscience are possible. The mere readiness of the Buddhists to abandon their metaphysical claims in order to pass the tests of neuroscience may provide some short-term benefits, but in the long run it will probably condemn this dialogue to irrelevance. For a real dialogue to take place, both protagonists must accept each other's otherness, and the possibility that convergence may never be reached. Footnotes 1. Donald Lopez, Jr., Buddhism and Science: A Guide for the Perplexed, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008, pp., xii-xiii. 2. See for instance: His Holiness the Dalai Lama, The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality, New York: Morgan Read Books, 2005; and B. Alan Wallace, Contemplative Science: Where Buddhism and Neuroscience Converge. New York: Columbia University Press, A similar view has been expressed recently by Buddhist scholars like David McMahan and Jay Garfield at a panel on Buddhism and Neuroscience at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Atlanta (November 2010). 4. Wallace Harrington, p On this question, see Austin, Zen and the Brain. 7. Antoine Lutz, John D. Dunne, and Richard Davidson, "Meditation and the Neuroscience of Consciousness, in Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness, ed. P. Zelazo, M. Moscovitch, and E. Thompson, Cambridge University Press (forthcoming), pp Lutz et al., pp Italics mine. 10. Lutz et al., Italics mine. 11. Lutz et al., 98. Italics mine. 12. Harrington Italics mine. 13. Lutz et al. 14. Lopez, Buddhism and Science, Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, Isabelle Stengers, Cosmopolitics I, trans. Robert Bononno, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010.