In the very construction of the methodology for studying the mind with its various states, Buddhism and modern science proceed from completely different premises. Science focuses its efforts primarily on the study of basic neurobiological structures and the biochemical properties of the brain, while Buddhism, in its study of consciousness, deals primarily with the experience of subjective experiences. Dialogue between these areas can open up new ways to study consciousness. Buddhist psychology bases its approach on a combination of meditative practices (which can be understood in this context as phenomenological research) with empirical observation of human motivations as manifested in emotions, thoughts and behaviors, and with critical philosophical analysis.
The main goal of Buddhist psychology is not to catalog the products of mental creativity or even to describe the functioning of the brain; its fundamental task is the elimination of suffering, especially in the psychological and emotional spheres. In classical Buddhist sources there are three different directions for the study of consciousness. Abhidharma deals with the reasons behind the emergence of hundreds of different states of mind and emotions, as well as the study of our subjective experience of their experience and influence on our thought process and behavior. All this relates to the field that in modern science is called psychology (including cognitive therapy). The second branch, Buddhist epistemology, studies the nature and characteristics of perception, knowledge and the relationship between thought and language in order to provide a conceptual framework for understanding the various aspects of the manifestation of consciousness – thoughts, emotions, etc. Finally, Vajrayana uses visualizations, thoughts, emotions and various purely physical techniques (such as yoga exercises) to intensively develop positive states of mind and eliminate its defilements. This is done not by discovering some independent and unchanging entity called “mind”, but by transforming our ordinary, empirically given mind into a pure, uncontaminated state based on an understanding of its nature.
The Buddhist approach to the study of consciousness is based on considering possible states of mind and the ways in which it functions, as well as understanding the causal dynamics of these processes. It is in this area that Buddhist understanding is most likely to be of interest to modern scientists because, as in science, most Buddhist research on consciousness is based on empirical experience.
I myself began to comprehend various aspects of the mind in the process of studying a branch of Buddhist knowledge called lorig (Tib. blo rigs), which can be translated as “mind and knowledge.” This subject is studied in the process of monastic education, usually at the age of about nine or ten years, despite the fact that acceptance of monasticism occurs, as a rule, at the age of eight. First of all, my mentor, who at that time was Ling Rimpoche, made me memorize working definitions of the nature of mental phenomena and the main categories of cognitive and emotional states. And although at that moment I did not have a clear understanding of what all this meant, I knew that the Buddhist definition of mind, in contrast to matter, characterizes it as something entirely subjective. Material objects are characterized by the presence of spatial extent and can interact with other material objects. In contrast, mental phenomena must be understood in terms of temporal sequence and as being, by their nature, exclusively subjectively experienced.
I spent a lot of time learning the differences between sensory and mental experience. A distinctive feature of sensory perceptions is their connection with a specific sense organ – the eye, ear and others. It is quite obvious that each type of sensory perception is different from the others and has its own specific area, so that the eye cannot perceive sound, the ear cannot perceive taste, etc. As was already pointed out by early Buddhist thinkers, including Vasubandhu and Dharmakirti, there is a fundamental difference in the processes of perception by different senses of their objects in terms of spatiotemporal characteristics. Visual perception can be carried out at a great distance, auditory perception at a much shorter distance, while a certain smell can only be distinguished at close range. The other two senses—taste and touch—perceive their objects only through direct contact. I believe that from the point of view of science we must explain these differences using ideas about physical particles coming to us from the object of observation, such as, for example, photons.
The defining characteristic of mental experience lacks reference to a specific physical organ. By this experience, which in Buddhism is considered the sixth sensory faculty along with the five senses, nothing mysterious or mysterious is meant. For example, if we look at a beautiful flower, its immediate perception in all its richness of color and shape belongs to the field of visual perception. If we continue to look at it, a repeating sequence of the same visual perception will appear in our minds. Mental perception occurs when a thought arises while observing a flower—for example, if we focus on a particular aspect or quality of it, such as the shade of a color or the shape of the petals. The domain of mental consciousness includes all the many factors of cognitive experience, including memory, recognition, discrimination, intentions, will, conceptual and abstract thinking, and dreams.
The sensory experience is immediate and seamless. We can smell the scent of a rose, see its color, and feel the prick of its thorns without any conscious thought accompanying the experience. Thought, in contrast, acts selectively, sometimes even almost willfully, focusing on specific aspects and characteristics of a given phenomenon. When looking at a rose, you may find many uninvited thoughts in your mind: that its smell is citrusy and refreshing, that the color of its pink petals is fawn, that the thorns are sharp and you can prick yourself on them. In addition to this, conceptual perception deals with objects indirectly, using language and a specific set of representations. When we simply see beautiful colorful flowers, such as the red rhododendrons that cover the mountain slopes around Dharamsala in spring, our perception is rich but undifferentiated. If we have specific thoughts about certain characteristics of a flower, such as “it is fragrant” or “it has large petals,” then our experience narrows and becomes more focused.
A great analogy usually given to young students is a cup of tea in their hand. Sensory perception is like holding a cup with a naked hand, and when carrying out thinking, we seem to hold a cup with a hand wrapped in cloth. The difference between one and the other experience is expressed very clearly here. In this case, fabric is a metaphor for concepts and linguistic constructs that mediate our perception of an object through thinking.
In Buddhist epistemology, many of whose provisions developed in the context of polemics with various non-Buddhist schools of philosophical thought, there is an extensive analysis of the relationship between language and thought. The two most significant figures of Buddhist philosophy of the Indian period are Dignaga (5th century) and Dharmakirti (7th century). During my study of logic and epistemology, I had to memorize the main sections of Dharmakirti’s famous work, The Foundation of Valid Knowledge (Pramanavartika), a philosophical treatise written in verse and famous for its strict literary style. I noticed that Western philosophy carefully studies the problem of the relationship between language and thought and considers the key question of this problem: whether thought is completely contained in its linguistic expression. Buddhist thinkers, while recognizing the close relationship between language and thought, in principle recognize the possibility of the existence of non-verbalized thought; for example, animals are thought to have the rudiments of conceptual thinking but not language, at least as we understand it.
I was extremely surprised to learn that Western psychology does not have a developed understanding of extrasensory mental processes. In doing so, I have discovered that most Westerners understand the expression “sixth sense” to refer to some kind of supernatural psychic ability. In Buddhism, this term refers to the mental sphere, which includes thoughts, emotions, intentions and concepts. In Western philosophy this gap is partly filled by various ideas about the soul in its theological understanding or about the “ego” in psychoanalysis, but it seems to me that there is no indication of the specific ability of the mind to comprehend mental phenomena. These phenomena include a wide range of cognitive experiences, such as memory and recollection, which, according to Buddhist beliefs, are qualitatively different from sensory perception.
Given that the neurobiological model reduces sensory and cognitive phenomena to chemical and biological processes in the brain, I can understand why it is not scientifically necessary to make a qualitative distinction between sensory perception and conceptualization processes. According to this model, the part of the brain that is responsible for visual perception is also involved in constructing a visual image in the imagination. Therefore, when it comes to the functioning of the brain, it makes no difference whether we see something with the physical eye or the “eye of the mind.” From a Buddhist point of view, the problem is that neuroscience, in its approach, overlooks one of the most important components of the mental process – the subjectivity of the experience.
The classical model of Buddhist epistemology does not emphasize a special role for the brain in cognitive activities such as perception. This absence of direct indications of the function of the brain as the integrative center of the living being and especially of its cognitive and sensory processes cannot but be surprising, given that Buddhist philosophy had a constant emphasis on empiricism, and the medical science of India had a very detailed knowledge of anatomy. True, Vajrayana Buddhism speaks of a channel that ends at the top of the head and is the main support of all energies that regulate the subjective experience of experiences.
In the future, I see room for fruitful collaboration between Buddhism and modern neuroscience in the study of perception and cognitive processes. Buddhism can teach us a lot about the neural mechanisms of mental processes, their neurological and biochemical correlates, the formation of synaptic connections, and the relationship between perception and certain areas of the brain. In addition, science has accumulated a lot of medical and biochemical knowledge regarding the functioning of the brain when its individual parts are damaged, and how exactly certain substances affect states of consciousness.
At one of the Life and Consciousness conferences, Francesco Valeri showed me a series of MRI scans representing horizontal slices of the brain, where areas of different neural and chemical activity that accompany certain types of sensory perception were marked in color. These images were the result of an experiment in which the subject was presented with various sensory stimuli (such as music or a visual object), and then the brain’s response to them was recorded in different situations (for example, with eyes closed or open). All this very clearly demonstrates the close connection between observable and measurable changes occurring in the brain and different types of sensory perception. This level of measurement accuracy and the possibilities that the use of such instruments opens up speaks to the enormous potential of scientific research. By combining the rigor and objectivity of the scientific method with rigorous subjective introspection, one can hope to develop an even more comprehensive approach to the study of consciousness.
According to Buddhist epistemology, the human mind has a natural limitation in its ability to recognize its object. This limitation is purely temporary and is due to the fact that the ordinary mind, not trained to apply the level of attention that is achieved by methods of meditative practice, is able to recognize a time interval of only a certain minimum duration – traditionally it is designated as the time of one blink of the eye or snap of the fingers. Shorter intervals of time may be perceived, but the mind is unable to fully comprehend them, and therefore they are not retained in memory. Another feature of human perception is the tendency to deal with things by generalizing the complexity of their composite nature. For example, when I look at a jug, I see a round shape with a flat base and decorative patterns. At the same time, I do not perceive individual atoms or molecules and the space between them, which as a whole forms this composite phenomenon. Therefore, we can say that the act of perception is not simply a reflection in the mind of something external, but a very complex process of limiting the excess of information.
But we also subject time itself to the process of such creative construction. The time corresponding to the duration of a finger snap is in fact also composed of many shorter time intervals, and even when we perceive an event that lasts such a short period of time, we merge all the moments that make it up into a single continuum. A good analogy used in this regard by Dharmakirti and offered as an example to students of Tibetan monastic schools is that if a burning stick is rotated in a circle at night, the observer will see a circle of fire. But if you look closely at this circle, you will notice that it consists of a series of flashes. I remember from childhood that while watching movies using a mechanical film projector, at some point I realized that a moving picture on the screen consists of a set of still images.
Questions about how perception arises and, in particular, what is the connection between the act of perception and the corresponding object have been the main area of interest of both Indian and Tibetan philosophy. There have been endless debates among various schools of Buddhist epistemology about how the perception of an object arises. As a result, three main directions emerged here. One school was of the opinion that just as there are multiple colors in a multi-colored object, in visual perception multiple perceptions arise when looking at an object. According to another position, perception can be compared to cutting into a hard-boiled egg. If we cut such an egg in half, we will have two identical halves; similarly, when the sense organ comes into contact with the corresponding object, the single act of perception is divided into subjective and objective components. Proponents of the third view, whose view was most widespread in Tibet, argued that, regardless of the multifaceted nature of the object of perception, the perceptual experience itself is one single event.
An important area of debate in Buddhist epistemology has been the analysis of genuine and false perceptions. According to Buddhism, it is knowledge, or right comprehension, that frees the mind from distorting states, and much attention has been paid to the question of what knowledge is. Therefore, an important problem for Buddhist thinkers was the question of how to distinguish true knowledge from false knowledge. In Buddhist philosophy there is an extensive analysis of all types of perception and the various causes of erroneous perception. For example, if, while in a sailing boat, we perceive the trees on the shore as moving, such an illusion arises on the basis of external causes, namely the movement of the boat. If we have jaundice, then even white objects will appear yellow to us; here the cause of illusion is already internal. If we are in a place where snakes live, and we see a multi-colored rope on the floor at dusk, we may mistake it for a snake; in this case, the cause of the illusion is both internal (our fear of snakes) and external (the shape of the rope and the limited visibility in twilight conditions).
In all of these examples, the causes of illusory perception are immediate. But there is a large category of more causally complex types of false perception, such as the belief in one’s own unchangeable and independent self or that conditioned phenomena can be permanent. In the process of the act of direct perception itself, it is impossible to distinguish between true and false. Such a distinction can only be made in retrospect. In fact, only subsequent experience, arising on the basis of an already accomplished perception, makes it possible to determine it as reliable or unreliable. It would be interesting to know whether neurophysiology can differentiate between correct and incorrect perceptions at the level of direct observation of brain activity.
I have asked neurophysiologists this question several times on occasion, and, as far as I can understand, no similar studies have been conducted. At the phenomenological level, we can describe the process of the mind’s transition from one state to another, its opposite. One might, for example, ask: did Neil Armstrong go to the Moon or Mars in 1969? After all, someone might believe that it was Mars. Then, hearing about the first samples being taken from the surface of Mars, such a person will begin to doubt his conviction. Once it becomes clear to him that no manned flight to Mars has yet been undertaken, he can move towards the correct conclusion that Neil Armstrong flew to the Moon. Finally, after talking with other people and reading reports about the expedition to the moon, he is able to find the correct answer to the question. In such cases we see the mind moving from complete delusion through the stage of doubt to right belief and finally arriving at genuine knowledge.
In general, in the Tibetan epistemological tradition there is a sevenfold classification of mental states: direct perception, inferential comprehension, subsequent perception, correct assumption, superficial perception, doubt and distorted perception. Young monks learn the definitions of all these seven states of consciousness and their complex relationships. The benefit of such study is that as a result of familiarity with such a classification, a person becomes more sensitive to the varieties of his subjective experience and to its complexity. Knowledge of these states greatly facilitates the study of the work of one’s own consciousness.
Much later in my education it was time to become acquainted with Buddhist psychology as systematically presented by the Indian philosophers Asanga and Vasubandhu. Most of the Sanskrit versions of these works have now been lost, but thanks to the enormous work of entire generations of Tibetan translators and their Indian colleagues, they have been preserved in Tibetan. According to some of my Indian Sanskrit friends, the Tibetan translations of these Indian classical works are so accurate that one can even reconstruct the original Sanskrit version from them. The Collection of Supreme Knowledge (Abhidharma-samuccaya) of Asanga and the Treasury of Supreme Knowledge (Abhidharmakosha) of his younger brother Vasubandhu from the very early times of the development of Buddhism in Tibet became the basis of knowledge in psychology there. They are considered the basic texts of two schools, one of which, derived from Asanga, is called the Higher Abhidharma, and the other, based on the work of Vasubandhu, is called the Lower Abhidharma. And it is on these two works that my knowledge of the nature, classification and functioning of the processes occurring in the mind is mainly based.
Neither Sanskrit nor Tibetan contains a word for what modern language and culture understands as “emotion.” This does not mean that the idea of having emotions does not exist at all in this culture, nor that Indians and Tibetans have never experienced emotions. Tibetans, just like Westerners, experience joy at good news, sadness at loss, and fear in the face of danger. Perhaps the reason for the absence of such a word in the language lies in the history of philosophical thought in India and Tibet, in the peculiarities of the analysis of psychological states. Buddhist psychology does not make the same distinction between cognitive and emotional states that the West makes between passion and reason. From a Buddhist point of view, the distinction between polluted and uncontaminated states of mind is more important than between cognitive and emotional processes. The discriminative consciousness, which is closely related to the intellect, can be impure (for example, when planning a murder), while the emotional state of mind can be very good and not associated with defilements. Moreover, emotions such as joy and sadness can be either polluted or uncontaminated, destructive or beneficial, depending on the context of their occurrence.
In Buddhist psychology, an important distinction is made between consciousness and the various modalities of its manifestation, to denote which in Buddhism the concept of “factors of consciousness” is used. For example, if I see my friend in the distance, this represents an act of consciousness that may appear to be a single event, but is in fact a very complex process. There are five factors common to all complex acts of consciousness: (1) feeling (in this case the feeling of pleasure), (2) recognition, (3) involvement, (4) attention, and (5) contact with the object. In this example, there may be additional factors, such as attachment or arousal, depending on the current state of mind of the observer and the particular characteristics of the object of observation. The factors of consciousness should not be understood as separate entities, but rather as different aspects or processes of a single act of consciousness, which differ in terms of their functions. Emotions as a category can be classified among the factors of consciousness, while consciousness itself is an independent category, separate from them.
There are various classifications here, but the standard list used in the Tibetan tradition was compiled by Asanga and contains fifty-one factors of consciousness. In addition to the five universal, constantly operating factors (feeling, discrimination, urge or direction of mind, attention and contact), there are five factors of object recognition: interest, attraction, mindfulness, concentration and comprehension, which are present at the moment when the mind recognizes its an object. Further, there are eleven beneficial factors of consciousness that accompany positive states of mind. These are (1) faith, or trust, (2) conscience, (3) shame (understood as taking into account the opinions of other people), (4) impartiality, (5) non-hatred (lack of desire to repay evil for evil, even loving-kindness), (6) non-delusion (including wisdom), (7) joyful diligence, (8) flexibility and obedience of body and mind, (9) mindfulness of one’s thoughts and actions, (10) equanimity, and (11) non-cruelty (including compassion). In this list we find several items corresponding to positive emotions, such as love and compassion. Conscience and shame are interesting in that the first quality concerns one’s own assessment of one’s thoughts and actions, while shame forces one to refrain from actions that are reprehensible in the eyes of other people, but in both cases an emotional component is involved.
The list of polluted, affective states of mind is much more extensive, mainly because they all need purification if a person wants to achieve what is called enlightenment in Buddhism. There are six root defilements or harmful affects of the mind: (1) attachment or lust, (2) aversion (including hostility), (3) pride or conceit, (4) ignorance, (5) doubt, and (6) false views. . The first three of these conditions include an intense emotional component. Further, there are twenty secondary defilements: (1) hatred (as the desire to cause harm), (2) resentment, (3) ill will, (4) envy, (5) cruelty (derived from hatred), (6) stinginess, (7 ) complacency, (8) excitement, including surprise, (9) concealment of one’s own shortcomings, (10) dullness, clouded consciousness, (11) distrust of facts, (12) laziness, (13) forgetfulness, (14) inattention, ( 15) boastfulness, (16) deceit, (17) dishonesty as a lack of self-control in relation to one’s own actions, (18) shamelessness as indifference to other people’s opinions of oneself, (19) recklessness, or carelessness, (20) distraction, instability of mind ( arising from the combination of ignorance and attachment). Obviously, many of the above factors include an emotional component. Finally, there are four more factors on this list called uncertain factors. These are (1) dream, (2) regret, (3) rough consideration and (4) detailed analysis. They are called indefinite because, depending on the circumstances, they can be morally good, bad and neutral.
It is very important to recognize the difference between the Buddhist understanding of the virtuous and unwholesome factors of the mind, and the Western understanding of positive and negative emotions. In Western psychology, positive and negative emotions are defined in terms of how a given emotional state is experienced by us. For example, fear here would be considered a negative emotion because it is accompanied by an unpleasant feeling of anxiety.
The Buddhist distinction between negative, or harmful, and beneficial mental factors is based on their role in motivating our actions, or, in other words, on their moral evaluation. For example, attachment may be experienced as a joyful and pleasant feeling, but it is nevertheless considered a harmful state of mind because it creates blind attachment based on self-centeredness, which can lead to harmful actions. Fear is a neutral factor, and indeed it is a changeable state of mind, since its result can be both good and unwholesome actions, depending on the circumstances. The role of all these states as motivating factors in human behavior is a rather complex problem, and its consideration occupies an important place in Buddhist scriptures. The Tibetan term for harmful affect, nyon mong, and its Sanskrit equivalent klesha , etymologically mean “something that causes internal torment.” The main characteristic of these mental states is the ability, when they occur, to cause anxiety and loss of self-control; as a result of their action, we lose the freedom to act according to our intentions, and our worldview is distorted. Since all these states are rooted in the deepest egocentration both in relation to others and to the whole world, as a result of their action we completely lose the breadth of vision.
Works on Buddhist psychology from both the Indian and Tibetan traditions contain extensive analyzes of the nature, changes, subdivisions, relationships, and causal dynamics of the factors of consciousness. The above list of Asanga should not be considered exhaustive; for example, it lacks the fear and anxiety found in other lists. But regardless of the differences in the methods of enumeration, the very organization of the lists of mental factors reflects their underlying main goal – to detect and eliminate harmful affects and develop positive states of consciousness.
I have been thinking a lot about how to relate the Buddhist system of psychology, with its concept of wholesome and unwholesome mental processes, and the understanding of emotions that exists in Western science. The reason for a deeper understanding of this issue was the next, tenth conference “Life and Consciousness”, held in Dharamsala in 2000. The theme of the conference was destructive emotions, and several emotion researchers from the Western scientific world came to Dharamsala for the week-long discussion. The meeting was chaired by my longtime acquaintance Daniel Goleman. It was he who first introduced me to scientific research establishing a close connection between the general state of a person’s consciousness and his physical health. At this conference I also met Paul Ekman, a psychologist and anthropologist who has spent decades studying emotions. Almost immediately I recognized him as a kindred spirit; At the heart of his approach was a genuine moral motivation: he believed that if we better understood the nature of our emotions and their universality, this would allow us to better understand the kinship of all humanity. Moreover, Paul spoke at a pace that allowed me to understand English without translation.
From Paul I learned a lot about the latest scientific work in the study of the psychology of emotions. In particular, I realized that modern science distinguishes between two fundamentally different categories of emotions: basic emotions and those called “higher cognitive emotions.” Scientists consider basic emotions to be those that are universal and innate. Just as in the Buddhist lists, the sets of these emotional states vary somewhat among different researchers; for example, Ekman identifies ten such emotions, including anger, fear, sadness, disgust, contempt, surprise, satisfaction, embarrassment, guilt, and shame. As with the mental factors in Buddhism, each of the above emotions implies a certain range of experiences. By higher cognitive emotions, scientists mean a number of emotional states that, while also universal, are nevertheless subject to significant cultural influence in their manifestation. Examples of such emotions are love, pride and envy. Observations have shown that basic emotions are accompanied primarily by processes occurring in the subcortical areas of the brain, while higher cognitive emotions are associated with the neocortex – a part of the brain that has developed primarily during human evolution and is most active in cognitive processes such as reasoning and argumentation. I understand, of course, that these are only preliminary results of a new and rapidly developing discipline, which may undergo radical changes in its approach before it comes to a final solution to these questions.
Buddhism recognizes the commonality of mental defilements among all living beings. The key defilements are considered to be craving, aversion and ignorance. In some species, such as humans, these conditions manifest themselves in quite complex ways; in animals such manifestations may be more primitive and bear a clear stamp of aggressiveness. The simpler a living being is in its organization, the more instinctive these processes are and the less they depend on conscious thinking. In contrast, the complex expression of emotions is highly dependent on various conditions, including language and sets of concepts. Therefore, the scientific assumption that emotions, which are classified as basic according to the classification of modern science by modern science, can find a response in the Buddhist worldview are correlated with parts of the brain that are more ancient in evolutionary terms, those that are common to us and animals.
From an empirical point of view, one of the differences between harmful affects such as hatred and benign states of mind such as compassion is that the former cause the mind to focus on a specific goal – a person we hate or a smell we desire. eliminate. In contrast, good states can be more extensive; they do not tend to concentrate on one object. Therefore, Buddhist psychology argues that good states of mind are more intelligent than harmful ones. There is also an interesting area for research and comparison with modern science.
Because modern emotion science is informed by neurobiology, its conceptual basis remains closely linked to evolutionary theory. This means that in addition to research into the neurobiological basis of emotional expression, there is an attempt to understand the origins of emotions in terms of their role in the process of natural selection. I even heard about the existence of a whole movement called “evolutionary psychology.” To some extent, I understand how an evolutionary perspective can explain the emergence of such basic emotions as addiction, anger, or fear. However, just as with neuroscience’s efforts to link specific emotions to specific areas of the brain, it is unclear to me how an evolutionary approach can account for the richness of emotional life and the subjectivity of emotional experience.
Another interesting idea that arose from my conversations with Paul Ekman was the problem of distinguishing between emotions on the one hand, and moods and character traits on the other. Emotions are usually quite fleeting, while moods last much longer, sometimes for a whole day; character traits are even more stable and sometimes remain throughout life. For example, joy and sadness are emotions that usually arise in connection with a specific occasion; on the other hand, happiness and sadness are moods, the exact cause of which is sometimes difficult to determine. Likewise, fear is an emotion, and anxiety is a similar mood, and a person can be so susceptible to anxiety that it becomes more like a character trait. Although Buddhist psychology does not distinguish between emotions and moods, it does recognize the difference between states of mind, both momentary and long-lasting, from underlying mental tendencies.
The ideas that certain emotions can arise as a consequence of certain inclinations of the psyche, that certain emotional states lead to certain actions, and especially the knowledge that positive emotions are more accessible to control by thinking than negative ones are all representations occupy a very important place in Buddhist practice. The main practices of Buddhism, such as developing compassion and loving-kindness or eliminating negative states of mind such as anger and hatred, are based on knowledge of psychology. A key aspect of these practices is a detailed analysis of the causes and dynamics of individual mental processes: the external conditions of their occurrence, the internal mental states that precede and accompany them, as well as their relationship with other cognitive and emotional processes. I have had the opportunity to discuss a wide range of therapeutic problems with psychologists and psychoanalysts more than once, and I noticed the interest of my interlocutors in the problem of the causes of emotions. And since these branches of psychology are aimed at freeing people from suffering, I believe that they have the same fundamental orientation as Buddhism. The main goal of Buddhist contemplation practice is liberation from suffering. Science, as we have seen, also has as its goal the reduction of suffering, including in the psychological sphere. This is a wonderful endeavor that I hope will benefit us all. But science moves on, touching on rather risky areas. It is having an increasingly powerful impact on the environment, on changing the conditions of existence of the entire human species. As a result, for the first time in human history, our very survival requires accepting moral responsibility not only for the application of existing scientific discoveries, but also for the very choice of the direction of development of science and technology. It is one thing to use the study of neuroscience, psychology, or the Buddhist science of the mind to make people happier and change their minds by gradually developing positive qualities. But when we begin to manipulate genetic structures, both in humans and in the environment, are we taking our scientific knowledge too far? This is a question that both individual scientists and humanity as a whole should ask themselves.
Read online. The book “The Universe in One Atom: Science and Spirituality in the Service of the World.” Tenzin Gyatso
Content
Preface. Introduction
1. Meditation
2. My encounter with science
3. Emptiness, relativity and quantum physics
4. The Big Bang Theory and the Buddhist Beginningless Cosmos
5. Evolution, karma and the world of living beings
6. The problem of the emergence of consciousness
7. Towards a science of consciousness
8. Factors of consciousness
9. Ethical problems of modern genetics
Conclusion. Science, Spirituality and Humanity