Mind in the Balance

Meditation in Science, Buddhism, and Christianity

B. Alan Wallace

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780231519700
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Comparative Religion

By establishing a dialogue in which the meditative practices of Buddhism and Christianity speak to the theories of modern philosophy and science, B. Alan Wallace reveals the theoretical similarities underlying these disparate disciplines and their unified approach to making sense of the objective world.

Wallace begins by exploring the relationship between Christian and Buddhist meditative practices. He outlines a sequence of meditations the reader can undertake, showing that, though Buddhism and Christianity differ in their belief systems, their methods of cognitive inquiry provide similar insight into the nature and origins of consciousness.

From this convergence Wallace then connects the approaches of contemporary cognitive science, quantum mechanics, and the philosophy of the mind. He links Buddhist and Christian views to the provocative philosophical theories of Hilary Putnam, Charles Taylor, and Bas van Fraassen, and he seamlessly incorporates the work of such physicists as Anton Zeilinger, John Wheeler, and Stephen Hawking. Combining a concrete analysis of conceptions of consciousness with a guide to cultivating mindfulness and profound contemplative practice, Wallace takes the scientific and intellectual mapping of the mind in exciting new directions.

[PART] 1

MEDITATION: WHERE IT STARTED AND HOW IT GOT HERE

Meditation is one of humanity’s best-kept secrets. If beings from another galaxy were to study us closely—reading our history books, watching our movies, scouring the Internet—they would get only the most superficial understanding of it. They would conclude the same thing most of us believe about meditation: it is a relaxation technique good for relieving stress and as a secondary therapy for certain illnesses. And—oh yes—certain religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, and a few others) use it as part of worship. And that’s all there is to it!

What’s been hidden is meditation’s role as a precision tool for exploring consciousness and the universe scientifically—that is, using empirical methods similar to those intrinsic to the scientific method. Since ancient times, meditators in different contemplative communities across the globe have systematically explored and reported their findings on inner reality and its connections to outer phenomena. Yes, they also discovered that meditation helped one attain a calm, serene lifestyle and had positive effects on mental and physical health. But these were only secondary benefits of their primary quest.

If some of these contemplatives deliberately kept their discoveries secret, the main reason the true origins of meditation remain hidden from the public today stems from the crude way we define “religion.” We generally think of religion as simply an attitude based on faith in authority (“Jesus or Mohammed or Moses said ‘X,’ so I believe ‘X.’”), and carelessly lump together those who believe without question the revelations of religious authorities and “religious groups” that question and explore in hopes of confirming and directly experiencing spiritual phenomena. There is a huge difference between the two. When we carefully examine them, we realize that regarding these two types of “religious” practitioners as identical makes as much sense as saying that the sun and the moon are the same because they are both in space.

This book presents a multicultural view of meditation—as a means for improving one’s lifestyle; a way to achieve deep insights into the nature of the mind and consciousness, resulting in unprecedented well-being; and as a basis for genuine altruism and compassion. Part I outlines the history and development of meditation, demonstrating its principal goals and methods and how it differs from purely faith-based religion. If this difference is not understood and taken into account, it will be difficult to discern the importance and enormous potential of contemplation for healing our troubled and divided world.

dp n="18" folio="3" ?

1

WHO AM I?

In the ancient story of the blind men and the elephant,¹a king gathered a group of men who were born blind and told them to examine an elephant and then describe what they found. One of them felt its head, while others individually touched its tusks, trunk, feet, and back. Depending on the part of the elephant they had touched, one by one, these blind men described it as being like a pot, a plough-share, a rope, a pillar, and a wall. When they heard each other’s different accounts, they immediately began debating and quarreling about who was right, some of them resorting to violence.

I am reminded of this story when I reflect on the variety of often conflicting answers given for the age-old question, who am I? Theologians, philosophers, and scientists have been trying to answer it for centuries, but only rarely have they agreed. How come? Could it be that their own particular biases have clouded the picture? Have their conditioned responses, their preferred sources of authority and methods of inquiry created a barrier to understanding?

We humans have had plenty of time to reflect upon our own identity. The Bible says that man is created in the image of God. If that’s true, this must be a good thing, for the Bible insists that God is good and that his creation is good. But there are plenty of Jews and Christians who emphasize man’s evil nature and our need to look outside of ourselves—to God or Jesus—for salvation from our innate defilements. There is abundant evidence throughout history and in today’s world to support the assertion that humans are essentially evil. But there’s no denying that there’s a lot of good in the world too. So which is more basic, evil or good? Or are we simply a mixture of both? Theologians have been debating these points for centuries, with no resolution in sight.

Biologists tell us that humans have slowly evolved by a process of natural selection from earlier primates. From one generation to the next, the species that are alive now have gradually adapted to their changing environments so that they could continue to survive and procreate. If an individual survives long enough to bear offspring, it’s an evolutionary success. If not, regardless of what it’s done during the course of its life, it’s a biological failure. So from a biologist’s perspective, humans are animals, leading our lives under the influence of our genes, instincts, and emotions, with the prime directive of survive and procreate. The words “good” and “evil” don’t mean anything scientifically, except insofar as they pertain to our ability to stay alive and make babies.

When psychiatrists, starting with Sigmund Freud, have addressed the issue of human nature, they have also emphasized our primitive drives for sex and domination over others. Their views tie in closely with those of evolutionary biologists and psychologists: while our conscious behavior may appear quite civilized and at times even altruistic, our subconscious impulses are dark, selfish, and brutal. But cognitive scientists are not completely in agreement on this point. Over the past ten years, the branch called “positive psychology” has arisen, which focuses on human flourishing and virtue. It’s a young field of scientific inquiry, not yet backed by much hard empirical evidence. But these psychologists are raising important questions and expanding the horizons of their field, which has focused for the past sixty years almost entirely on the mentally ill, brain-damaged, and people with normal mental health. Only recently have they begun to explore the highest potentials of the human mind.

For much of the first half of the twentieth century, academic psychology in the United States was dominated by behaviorism, which insisted on studying human nature only through the examination of animal and human behavior. Behavioral scientists made a point of avoiding introspection—the firsthand exploration of our own minds and personal experience. Then in the 1960s, as behaviorism began to decline, cognitive psychology appeared, seeming to take subjective experience more seriously. But this was also the time when computer technology was on the rise, so researchers in this field were quick to compare the mind to a computer.

During the closing decades of the twentieth century, advances in technology allowed the brain sciences to progress like never before, and since then, many neuroscientists have come to the conclusion that the mind is really the brain, or the mind is what the brain does. They claim that all our personal experience consists of brain functions, influenced by the rest of the body, DNA, diet, behavior, and the environment. In the final analysis, human beings are biologically programmed robots, implying that we have essentially no more freedom of will than any other automata. Our programs are simply more complex than those of man-made machines. But not all neuroscientists agree. Some are now exploring the effects of thoughts and behavior on the brain. Even they generally regard the mind as an emergent property of the brain, so what they are saying is that some functions of the brain influence other functions. To date, however, there is no clear consensus about the implications of the research conducted so far.

You may have noticed that in all those approaches, something crucial has been left out: our own personal experience of what it’s like to be a human being. Contemplatives in the East and the West, however, have explored the nature of the mind, consciousness, and human identity, and I believe they have illuminated dimensions of reality that remain largely unexplored in the modern world. Religion has become so hung up on doctrine, and science so materialistic, that contemplative methods of inquiry are often overlooked. And in the modern world, even when meditation is practiced, it’s often used simply to alleviate stress and to overcome other physical and psychological problems. But meditation may also yield some of the deepest insights we can possibly gain about human nature and identity.

In terms of our individual sense of who we are, most of us identify strongly with the roles we play in everyday life, for example, parent, spouse, child, student, or person in a certain profession. Such roles are important, and they define us in our interrelations in society. But apart from our specific relations to other people and the kinds of activities we engage in on a regular basis, what’s left over? Who are we when we sit quietly in our rooms, doing nothing but being present?

Let’s approach this question practically by setting out on a kind of expedition into the frontiers of the mind. I especially like the word “expedition” because of its roots. It derives from the Latin word expeditio, made up of the syllable ex, which has the connotation of “coming out” or “freeing oneself,” and ped, which means “feet.” So “expedition” has the connotation of extricating ourselves from a place in which our feet are stuck. The kind of expedition I have in mind is one in which we first recognize where we are stuck in old ruts leading nowhere, and then take steps to free ourselves.

We are living in a frenzied world in which most of us think if we’re not doing something, even watching TV, we’re wasting time. We get so caught up in our activities, relationships, thoughts, and emotions that we think that’s all there is to us. Let’s take a brief time out. Find a quiet place in your home and a comfortable chair to sit in for ten minutes. Without deliberately thinking about anything, see if you can simply be aware of your body and mind. Be silent, and, without reacting, let the sensations of your body and thoughts and emotions arise to your awareness.

Tick, tick, tick, tick. . . .

Can you truly be mentally silent when you want to, or does your mind obsessively spew out one thought after another? When thoughts arise, can you simply observe them, or do you find yourself compulsively caught up in them, your attention captivated by each mental image and desire? Is this mind of yours really under your control, or is it controlling you, causing you to confuse your thoughts about the world with your immediate experience of your body, mind, and environment? A calm and clear mind can be put to great use, but one that is turbulent and out of control can do great harm to ourselves and others. So the first task on the path of contemplation is to harness the enormous power of the mind and turn it to good service.

dp n="22" folio="7" ?

2

THE ORIGINS OF CONTEMPLATION

CONTEMPLATION IN THE WEST

Throughout this book I shall refer to theories and practices of contemplation stemming primarily from ancient Greek philosophy, Christianity, and Buddhism. As we shall see, although each of these traditions has unique qualities, they have important similarities. The English word “contemplation” derives from the Latin contemplatio, which corresponds to the Greek theoria. Both terms refer to a total devotion to revealing, clarifying, and making manifest the nature of reality. Nowadays, “contemplation” usually means thinking about something. But the original meanings of “contemplation” and “theory” had to do with a direct perception of reality, not by the five physical senses or by thinking, but by mental perception.¹ For example, when you directly observe your own thoughts, mental images, and dreams, you are using mental perception, which can be refined and extended through the practice of contemplation. How then does meditation relate to contemplation? The Sanskrit word bhavana corresponds to the English word “meditation,” and it literally means “cultivation.” To meditate means to cultivate an understanding of reality, a sense of genuine well-being, and virtue. So meditation is a gradual process of training the mind, and it leads to the goal of contemplation, in which one gains insight into the nature of reality.

Within the Greek tradition, the practice of meditation can be traced back at least as far as Pythagoras (c. 582-507 B.C.E.), who was influenced by the Orphic religion and mysteries, which were focused on freeing the mind from impurities and opening up its deeper resources. Pythagoras was the first to call himself a philosopher, “one who loves wisdom,” humbly rejecting the term sophos, or “wise man.” And in his wide travels throughout the Mediterranean region and beyond, he did indeed seek wisdom, understanding.

In about 525 B.C.E., after a search of many years, Pythagoras moved from the Greek island of Samos to the city of Crotone in southern Italy. There he established a religious philosophical society in which he trained men and women to lead a life well balanced in body and spirit while living in a community of self-reliant communism. In order to purify their souls, they were required to maintain high ethical standards, engage in physical exercise, practice celibacy, follow a vegetarian diet, and engage in protracted periods of silence and various kinds of abstinence. Their formal education consisted of training in music, mathematics, astronomy, and meditation. Because none of Pythagoras’s texts survive, we know little about the various kinds of meditation he and his followers taught and practiced.

Pythagoras is perhaps most renowned for the Pythagorean theorem, which pertains to the relative lengths of the three sides of a right triangle. Since this theorem had already been formulated in the eighth century B.C.E. in India,² it is possible that in his many travels, Pythagoras may have learned this and other branches of knowledge, especially pertaining to meditation, from Indian sources. He is also well known for his belief in reincarnation, according to which the soul is immortal and is reborn in both human and animal bodies. Legend has it that he claimed to be able to recall up to twenty of his own and others’ past lives. But we have no way of knowing whether his alleged memories were accurate, and if they were, whether he was born with this ability or achieved it through meditation. One of the quotes attributed to Pythagoras is “Learn to be silent. . . . Let your quiet mind listen and absorb,” and a primary focus of this meditative tradition was attending to the “harmony of the spheres,” which combined themes from music, mathematics, and astronomy. He believed that the highest life is one devoted to passionate, sympathetic contemplation, which produced a kind of ecstasy coming from direct insight into the nature of reality.

The possible Indian origins of the Pythagorean theorem and his belief in reincarnation have led some historians to conclude that Pythagoras may have been influenced by ideas from India, transmitted via Persia and Egypt. We owe most of what we know about the Pythagoreans to Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.). According to him, the Pythagoreans were the first to advance the study of mathematics, and to them all things in nature were modeled after numbers. Indeed, numbers were the first things in the whole of nature and pervaded everything. They conceived of numbers in terms of different configurations of units in space, and concluded on this basis that the elements of numbers are the elements of all things. According to Aristotle, “the Pythagoreans also believe in one kind of number—the mathematical; only they say it is not separate but sensible substances are formed out of it. For they construct the whole universe out of numbers—only not numbers consisting of abstract units; they suppose the units to have spatial magnitude.”³

Pythagoras was said to have admired Judaism, in which God is seen as the one supreme ruler of the universe, on which he imposes his divine laws. According to the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (37-c. 100 C.E.), the Jewish sect called the Essenes likewise admired the teachings of Pythagoras, for they followed a way of life modeled after his society.⁴ Members of this sect lived in Judea from the mid-second century B.C.E. until 70 C.E., when they were destroyed by the Romans. Like the early Pythagoreans, the Essenes retreated from mainstream society, lived very frugally, shared communal property, and believed that God was best worshipped not by means of animal sacrifices but by purifying their minds. Although celibacy was not part of the Hebrew tradition, the Essenes shunned marriage—it posed a threat to communal life—but did not condemn it in principle. They engaged in ritual baths in cold water, or baptism, and believed in a healing ministry in which power came through the hands. Deeply critical of the ethical norms of the Jewish and Roman societies of their time, they believed that the kingdom of God was soon to come and would be heralded by a cataclysmic war between the righteous and the sinful.

Since the nineteenth century, scholars have speculated on the possible connection between the Essenes and John the Baptist as well as Jesus, which would imply that Pythagorean practices and beliefs influenced the early Christian tradition. Indeed, John the Baptist’s lifestyle and teachings were remarkably similar to those of the Essenes. Leading a celibate life, wearing clothes made of camel’s hair, and living on an ascetic diet of locusts and wild honey, he preached in the Desert of Judea, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.” Like the Essenes, he baptized others as a ritual cleansing of their impurities and sins. When approached by Pharisees and Sadducees, he was harshly critical, calling them a brood of vipers.⁵

dp n="25" folio="10" ?

Foremost of all the Jews who came to John for baptism was Jesus of Nazareth, who praised him above all the prophets before him, saying, “Among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist; yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”⁶ Since Jesus was baptized by John, we may assume he accepted John’s teachings, and immediately following his baptis...