The Study of Consciousness and of Buddhist Meditation

This present work is motivated by an interest in Buddhist contemplative

practices as a means to gaining greater understanding of the mind, and

particularly the nature of consciousness. For people brought up and educated in

America and Europe, it would be quite reasonable to look first to modern

Western science for answers to questions about this subject; and indeed, in recent

years there has been a surge of scientific interest in a wide array of issues

surrounding consciousness. One assumption underlying this work is that Indo-

Tibetan Buddhist literature on the cultivation of sustained, voluntary attention

may contribute to our modern understanding of the nature and potentials of

attention, introspection, and consciousness. Despite four hundred years of

expanding knowledge in the fields of the physical sciences, life sciences, and

cognitive sciences, there is presently no scientific or philosophical consensus

concerning the origins, nature, causal efficacy, or fate of consciousness. Scientists

have yet to discover the manner in which consciousness arises, either in

primitive organisms or in humans. The general assumption is that consciousness

arises as an emergent property of matter and energy, but scientists do not yet

know what it is about certain configurations of matter and energy that enable

them to produce consciousness. Thus, the origins of consciousness remain a

mystery.

The nature of consciousness also eludes the natural sciences. There are no

scientific means of detecting the presence or absence of consciousness, either in

primitive organisms, such as a hydra, or in a developing human fetus. If such

scientific knowledge were available, there would be much more clarity and less

dogma, for example, in the ongoing debates about abortion. Moreover, there is

no consensus among cognitive scientists as to whether consciousness is a state, a

content, a process, or a system. Is it identical to certain functions of the nervous

system, or is it a distinct phenomenon that is produced by certain—as yet

unidentified—neurological processes? If it is in fact a natural phenomenon

distinct from the brain, what are its own unique characteristics? The nature of

consciousness remains an open question.

Subjective experience clearly indicates that states of consciousness

causally influence other mental and physical processes, as evidenced by the

placebo effect, and the influences of both unintentional and intentional mental

processes, such as the opening of capillaries in the face as a result of

embarrassment, and the intentional movements of the body. This very assertion,

however, is held suspect in contemporary cognitive science, which tends to

attribute all such causal efficacy to brain functions alone. If subjectively

experienced conscious states do in fact have causal efficacy, the mechanisms of

their influence remain unknown to modern science. Even without accepting

Cartesian dualism regarding the body and mind, it seems that some scientific

explanation should be sought to account for the fact that our mental states at

least seem to influence the body and mind; but the nature of that causal efficacy

remains a mystery.

Finally, although there is widespread scientific consensus that

consciousness disappears at death, this is a necessary implication of the premise

that consciousness is an emergent property of a properly functioning nervous

system. But given our lack of scientific knowledge about the origins and nature

of consciousness, both in terms of evolution and human embryology, it is hard to

avoid the conclusion that we are equally ignorant about the fate of consciousness

at death.

In short, although modern science is presently ignorant of the origins,

nature, causal efficacy, and fate of consciousness, the extent of our ignorance

about consciousness is often overlooked. This ignorance is, as it were, a retinal

“blind spot” in the scientific view of the world: it is a deficit in our vision of

reality, a deficit of which our civilization seems largely unaware. Thus, volumes

on cosmogony, evolution, embryology, and psychology are written with hardly a

mention of consciousness; and when it is addressed, it tends to be presented not

in terms of its own distinctive, experiential qualities, but in terms of other

phenomena with which scientists are well familiar, such as computer systems1,

brain functions2, and even quantum mechanics 3. Although the nature of

consciousness was long overlooked in Western science, over roughly the past ten

years there has been a rapid surge of interest in this subject not only in the field

of cognitive science, but in the life sciences and physical sciences as well.

Moreover, a growing number of these scientists are demonstrating an

unprecedented openness to insights from the world’s contemplative traditions,

of both the East and the West.4

1Howard Gardner expresses the view of many contemporary cognitive scientists when he

comments that the computer model is “central to any understanding of the human mind.”

Howard Gardner, The Mind’s New Science (New York: Basic Books, 1985) p. 6.

2Cf. F. H. C. Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis--The Scientific Search for the Soul (London: Simon

and Schuster, 1994).

3Cf. Roger Penrose, Shadows of the Mind--A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1994); Bernard Baars, “Roger Penrose and the Quest for the Quantum

Soul,” Journal of Consciousness Studies: controversies in science & the humanities. 1, 2 (1994) pp. 261-

3; Stuart Hameroff, “Quantum Coherence in Microtubules: A Neural Basis for Emergent

Consciousness?” Journal of Consciousness Studies 1, 1 (1994) pp. 91-118.

forum for a broad range of views concerning this subject.

Although there is certainly a comparable diversity of speculative theories

of consciousness among Eastern philosophers and theologians, there are also

many phenomenological accounts reported by contemplatives on the basis of

their own personal experience. The Indo-Tibetan Buddhist contemplative

tradition has produced an especially rich body of such literature. Not only does

it give accounts of the origins, nature, causal efficacy, and fate of consciousness,

it also provides specific instructions on ways of testing these theories

experientially. While Western cognitive science has largely dismissed

introspection as a means of exploring conscious states, the Buddhist tradition not

only uses it, but explains in detail techniques for making this a more reliable and

penetrating mode of observation. In particular, it asserts that the qualities of

attentional stability and clarity are indispensable keys to the introspective

exploration of conscious states. To take a modern analog, if one wishes to

observe a specimen under an optical microscope, one should first see that this

instrument is firmly mounted and that its lenses are clean and polished to ensure

high resolution.

The very notion of taking from Buddhism theories of consciousness and

techniques for developing sustained, voluntary attention and presenting them as

possibly true and useful runs against much of the grain of the Western academic

study of Buddhism. One reason for this is that Buddhism is widely regarded as a

religion, and such theories and practices are simply components of the doctrine

and rituals of that religion. Thus, the only acceptable way to present these topics

is to report them as elements of the Buddhist tradition; they are not to be

submitted as descriptions of the actual nature of consciousness or as means of

actually refining one’s introspective faculties.5 In the words of William Christian,

a distinguished philosopher of religion, as long as one is reporting on a religion,

speakers can be informative “when they define or explain doctrines of their

traditions, but not when they are asserting them.”6 Although scientists are

obviously granted the right to assert the truth of their theories, a different

standard is required for proponents of religion, for “the central doctrines of the

major traditions are not scientific theories, that is to say exact formulations of

uniformities said to hold in the apparent world, or explanations and predictions

derived from these laws of nature.”7

What are we to make, then, of Buddhist contemplatives’ exact,

formulations of uniformities said to hold true of states of consciousness and the

means they describe for testing those theories in experience? William Christian

comments:

Though conceivably a religious tradition might include among its

subsidiary doctrines some scientific claim (or something purporting

to be a scientific claim), oppositions of such doctrines drawn from

different religions are even less likely than opposed historical

claims...8

Some reasons for this are that

(i) all the major religions took shape in pre-scientific eras and (ii)

when they have had to assimilate modern science they have

learned (more or less, sometimes by bitter experience) how to avoid

introducing scientific theories into their doctrinal schemes. But as

6Ibid., p. 88.

7Ibid., p. 30.

8Ibid.

with historical claims the main reason is that religious doctrines

deal with a different range of problems than scientific theories do...9

This statement certainly holds true with regard to many problems that

clearly fall within the separate domains of theology or natural science, but these

two disciplines are bound for a head-on collision when it comes to the nature of

consciousness; for they both have a great stake in their doctrines, and neither is

inclined to sacrifice its beliefs to the other. Although it is obviously true that

Buddhism has taken shape in pre-scientific eras, the past four hundred years of

natural science have produced no consensus concerning the fundamental issues

around consciousness. Buddhism raises real questions concerning the origins,

nature, causal efficacy, and fate of consciousness; and it suggests means of

enhancing attentional stability and clarity, and of then using these abilities in the

introspective examination of conscious states to pursue the fundamental

concerning consciousness itself. Its theoretical and practical hypotheses are

either true or false, and if they can be tested in part by modern scientific

methods, this can only be seen as an advantage by Buddhists who are genuinely

concerned with the nature and means of exploring consciousness.

William Christian does allow for one exception to his guidelines for

making religious statements: in the course of supporting them, adherents of a

religion may make informative utterances about their own experiences “if they

are relevant.”10 Thus, this leaves open the possibility that contemplatives,

Buddhist or otherwise, may speak informatively of their own experiences; and

such reports may be taken seriously by others.

9Ibid.

10Ibid., pp. 88-89.

Approaches to the Study of Buddhist Meditation

On the whole, the Western academic study of Buddhism has adhered to

the guidelines laid out by William Christian, and its treatment of Indo-Tibetan

Buddhist techniques for developing sustained, voluntary attention is no

translation of Tsongkhapa’s most extensive discussion of meditative quiescence.

The introduction, translation and extensive annotations are standard examples of

the philological, historical, text-critical model of Buddhology. As C. W.

Huntington points out, this model “is accorded the greatest prestige—due, no

doubt, to its close association with what is taken to be the scientific method—but

it is also subject to frequent criticism on the grounds that it has become

altogether too abstract and sterile in its refusal to give sustained attention to the

problem of meaning.”12

While this model may rightly be called scientific with respect to the texts

and practical assertions of the texts is never even addressed. For instance, in his

introduction Wayman gives a summary of various paranormal abilities that are

said to be achievable once one has attained quiescence. These include flying,

physically moving through solid objects, the psychic manipulation of matter, the

psychic creation of physical illusions, recollections of previous lives,

11Alex Wayman, Calming the Mind and Discerning the Real: Buddhist Meditation and the Middle View

12C. W. Huntington, The Emptiness of Emptiness: An Introduction to Early Indian M› dhyamika. with

Geshé Namgyal Wangchen (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989) pp. 6-7.

clairaudience, and clairvoyance.13 To most modern Western readers, all such

claims must appear preposterous, but nowhere does he offer an evaluative

comment whatsoever. Do Buddhists take these claims seriously? Are there

accounts of people actually achieving any of these abilities? Is it possible to

attain quiescence, which is said to be an indispensable prerequisite to those

paranormal abilities? Is it possible to attain any of the nine attentional states

leading up to the achievement of quiescence? None of these issues are even

raised by Wayman, which may be seen as an indication of his refusal to look

beyond the meaning of the words to the philosophical, scientific, and religious

import of the text.14

This way of treating literature from non-Western cultures conforms well

with the current intellectual orthodoxy in the Western academic disciplines of

philosophy, anthropology, sociology, and history of religion, in which cultural

relativism and deconstruction are very much in vogue. Huntington, for instance,

approvingly cites Gadamer’s claim that

The text that is understood historically is forced to abandon its

claim that it is uttering something true. We think we understand

when we see the past from a historical perspective, i.e. place

ourselves in the historical situation and seek to reconstruct the

historical horizon. In fact, however, we have given up the claim to

14For further discussion of Wayman’s book, see Geshe Sopa, “Some Comments on Tsong kha pa’s

Sopa Replies to Alex Wayman” in Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, 3

Tsoº kha pa’s Lam rim chen mo”. Phi Theta Annual, Vol. 3 (Berkeley, 1952) pp. 51-82; Robert

Kritzer, “Review of Alex Wayman, Calming the Mind and Discerning the Real: Buddhist Meditation

and the Middle View” in Philosophy East and West 31 (1981) pp. 380-382. Also note Elizabeth

Napper, Dependent-Arising and Emptiness (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1989) pp. 441-473, for her

comments on Wayman’s translation of the insight section of Tsongkhapa’s Lam rim chen mo.

find, in the past, any truth valid and intelligible for ourselves. Thus

this acknowledgment of the otherness of the other, which makes

him the object of objective knowledge, involves the fundamental

suspension of his claim to truth.15

In describing his methodology for his introduction, translation, and annotations

to Candrakırti’s classic Madhyamak›vat›ra, Huntington comments that his own

approach takes for granted the insights of Gadamer’s concept of effective

history.16 The frequently noted limitation of Gadamer’s historical treatment of

texts, however, is that his own works are written in “disappearing ink”: that is,

as soon as his hermeneutical criteria are applied by others to his writings, his

own texts are forced to abandon their claim to utter anything that is true. On the

other hand, if advocates of his viewpoint wish to claim a privileged perspective,

superior to and unlike all others, they must stand at the end of a long line of

earlier proponents of all manner of religious, philosophical, and scientific

theories who make the same claim.

In a refreshing departure from this “self-erasing” methodology, Paul

Griffiths suggests that, contrary to the assumptions of our contemporary

intellectual climate, rational discourse is a phenomenon which operates by

recognizably similar rules and with effectively identical goals cross-culturally,

and is thus a tool available in a relatively straightforward manner for crosscultural

hypothesis the theory that “philosophy is a trans-cultural human activity, which

15H. Gadamer, Truth and Method . Garrett Barden & John Cumming, trans. (New York. Reprint,

16C. W. Huntington, The Emptiness of Emptiness: An Introduction to Early Indian M›dhyamika, p. 13.

in all essentials operates within the same conventions and by the same norms in

all cultures.”17 Whether or not this large claim can be accepted without

qualifying it in important respects, Griffiths rightly criticizes Western

Buddhologists who refuse to take Buddhist thought seriously; and he comments,

“We do the tradition a disservice if we refuse to move beyond the exegetical

mode of academic discourse to the normative, the judgmental.”18

Among the wide variety of Indian Buddhist literature on

meditation—ranging from highly experiential to highly scholastic

treatments—Griffiths focuses on systematic philosophical texts of Indian

scholastic Buddhism, and treats them as “large-scale and sophisticated

conceptual systems.”19 While he acknowledges that the “results of meditative

practice inform the philosophical views of practicing Buddhists with new ways

in which the philosophical system can be modified and developed,” in terms of

his own methodology, he refuses to address whether or not there actually are or

were virtuoso practitioners who claim to be able to enter the meditative state

called “the attainment of cessation,20“ which is the major topic of his work. 21

Moreover, this approach may easily give rise to the impression that Buddhists

meditate in order to devise sophisticated conceptual systems about meditation.

According to the Buddhist contemplative tradition, however, the reverse holds

true: conceptual systems about meditation are designed to guide contemplatives

to states of experience that transcend all conceptual systems. In effect, Griffiths

treats the topic of Buddhist meditation as if it is a dead (or never even living)

tradition entombed in ancient books, a methodology long familiar to Western

17Paul J. Griffiths, On Being Mindless: Buddhist Meditation And The Mind-Body Problem (La Salle:

Open Court, 1986) p. xvii.

18Ibid., p. xix.

19Ibid., p. xx.

20‘gog pa’i snyoms par ‘jug pa, nirodhasam›patti

21Ibid., p. 5.

Buddhologists at least since the Victorian era, in which the modern “scientific”

study of Buddhism began.22 This approach may be just as much a disservice to

the tradition as a purely exegetical mode of academic discourse.

On the basis of his erudite, text-critical analysis of the attainment of

cessation, Griffiths concludes that this meditative state is analogous to “some

kind of profound cataleptic trance, the kind of condition manifested by some

psychotic patients and by long-term coma patients.”23 If this is in fact the case,

what is the appeal of this soteriological goal for practicing Buddhists? If this is

regarded as a temporary state of mindlessness, why would Buddhist

contemplatives subject themselves to the arduous, sustained mental discipline

culminating in a state that could much more swiftly and straightforwardly be

achieved by means of a well-aimed blow to the head with a heavy object? On the

other hand, if this is regarded as a salvific state that lasts for eternity, it is hard to

imagine a more impoverished notion of salvation than this, which Griffiths has

attributed to the Buddhist tradition. Are there any Buddhist contemplatives

today who actually aspire to such a goal? If one feels that the texts compel one to

draw this conclusion about the nature of the attainment of cessation, it would

seem worthwhile to check with living members of this tradition to see if it

corresponds to their own contemplative goals. Although Griffiths does indeed

take the meaning of these scholastic texts seriously, he displays no comparable

respect for the experiences of living Buddhist contemplatives. Thus, while he

seeks to distance himself from the condescending perspective of some of the

early Western pioneers of Buddhology, such as Louis de La Vallée Poussin,24 the

distance may not be as great as he desires.

22Cf. Philip C. Almond, The British Discovery of Buddhism (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1988).

23Paul J. Griffiths, On Being Mindless: Buddhist Meditation And The Mind-Body Problem, p. 11.

24Griffiths specifically rejects Poussin’s judgment of Indian “‘ philosophumena’ as being

concocted by ascetic...men exhausted by a severe diet and often stupefied by the practice of

Regarding the general topic of the relationship between quiescence and

insight practices in Indian Buddhism, Griffiths sees this as “an excellent example

of the uneasy bringing together of two radically different sets of soteriological

methods and two radically different soteriological goals.”25 If one sets aside for

the moment the lofty (or simply vegetative?) attainment of cessation and focuses

on the basic training in quiescence presented by Tsongkhapa, it should be swiftly

apparent that this discipline is a reasonable preparation for the cultivation of

contemplative insight. Indo-Tibetan Buddhism regards the ordinary, untrained

mind as “dysfunctional”26 insofar as it is dominated by alternating states of

laxity27, lethargy and drowsiness on the one hand and excitation 28 and

attentional scattering on the other. The cultivation of quiescence is designed to

counteract these hindrances and cultivate the qualities of attentional stability and

clarity, which are then applied to the training in insight. Thus, the assertion that

quiescence is incompatible with insight at this early stage is tantamount to

arguing that a mind dominated by laxity and excitation is more suitable for the

cultivation of insight than is a mind imbued with attentional stability and clarity.

In her essay “Mental Concentration and the Unconditioned: A Buddhist

Case for Unmediated Experience,” Anne Klein, drawing from more than twenty

years of close collaboration with Tibetan Buddhist contemplatives and scholars,

discusses the stages of Buddhist meditation from a Gelugpa Madhyamaka

perspective. There she asserts that at some early stages of the path to

“Buddhist Hybrid English: Some Notes on Philology and Hermeneutics for Buddhologists”.

25Paul J. Griffiths, On Being Mindless: Buddhist Meditation And The Mind-Body Problem, p. 23. A

far more insightful discussion of the relationship between quiescence and insight in Therav›da

26gnas ngan len, dau˝˛ulya

27bying ba, laya

28rgod pa, auddhatya

enlightenment, concentration and insight are indeed antithetical; but in the more

advanced stages the relationship between them becomes

“complementary—meaning that the increase of one fits with and engenders

development in the other.”29 At least implicitly in response to Griffiths’s

characterization of the attainment of cessation as a state of complete

mindlessness, Klein comments, “...it is only those who do not understand the

extent of calm or the full potential of the internally engendered energy associated

with consciousness who are susceptible to misinterpreting the cessation of coarse

minds as cessation of consciousness.”30

It may be that the Therav›da, Vaibh›˝ika, and Yog›c›ra traditions, which

Griffiths analyzes, simply disagree with the Madhyamaka interpretation of the

attainment of cessation. Or it may be that by focusing on scholastic accounts of

meditation and ignoring the fact that the Buddhist contemplative tradition has

ever been a living tradition, Griffiths, for all his impressive erudition and

philosophical acumen, has produced a fundamentally misleading interpretation

of the attainment of cessation and the relationship between quiescence and

insight?31 An increasing number of Buddhologists are coming to recognize the

shortcomings of ignoring the contemporary Buddhist tradition. For example, J.

W. de Jong, a highly respected scholar of philology and textual criticism, writes,

“The most important task for the student of Buddhism today is the study of the

29Anne C. Klein, “Mental Concentration and the Unconditioned: A Buddhist Case for

1992) (Studies in East Asian Buddhism 7) p. 281.

30Ibid. 290.

31When trying to assess contemplative experiences that are said to be beyond the scope of the

intellect, it is well to bear in mind N›g›rjuna’s injunction: “What words can express comes to a

stop when the domain of the mind comes to a stop.” (“niv¸ttam abhidh›tavya˙ niv¸tte cittagocare,”

Buddhist mentality. That is why contact with present-day Buddhism is so

important...”32

Since 1959, when over 100,000 Tibetans fled from their homeland, which

had been brutally occupied since 1950 by the Chinese communists, an increasing

number of Tibetan Buddhist scholars and contemplatives have visited and

taught in the West; and many from the Gelugpa order have expounded on the

cultivation of quiescence. Geshe Sopa, for instance offers a cursory overview of

this discipline in his essay “⁄amathavipaŸyan›yuganaddha: The Two Leading

Principles of Buddhist Meditation.”33 Lati Rinpoche gives a similar, somewhat

extensive knowledge not only of early Indian Buddhist literature, but later

Gelugpa scholasticism as well. Jeffrey Hopkins, whom we have to thank for the

above two volumes, has also given his own presentation of the development of

quiescence in the “Calm Abiding” chapter of his Meditation on Emptiness; and his

discussion is of precisely the same genre as the above mentioned texts.36

All these presentations by erudite Tibetan scholars of Buddhism pattern

themselves closely after Tsongkhapa’s discussions of this topic in his two major

expositions of the stages of the path to enlightenment;37 and all of them are

33Included in the volume Mah›y›na Buddhist Meditation: Theory and Practice , Minoru Kiyota, ed.

(Honolulu: University of Hawaii, 1978) pp. 46-65.

35Geshe Gedün Lodrö, Walking Through Walls: A Presentation of Tibetan Meditation . trans. & ed.

Jeffrey Hopkins (Ithaca: Snow Lion Publications, 1992).

36Jeffrey Hopkins, Meditation on Emptiness (London: Wisdom Publications, 1983) pp. 67-90.

37Byang chub lam rim che ba. (Collected Works, Vol. Pa) & Byang chub lam gyi rim pa chung ba.

(Collected Works, Vol. Pha).

delivered within the context of Western academia. It seems safe to assume that

all the above Tibetan scholars—trained in the Tibetan monastic tradition and not

in “Buddhist Studies” in the Western academic tradition—take seriously both the

texts on quiescence as well as the experiential accounts of the development and

attainment of quiescence. Huntington characterizes this traditional approach to

Buddhist literature as “proselytic,” and he disparages this methodology as

constituting a violation of the very texts that are studied.38 In light of the fact that

Buddhists have been transmitting knowledge of their tradition in this manner for

more than two millennia, it seems somewhat harsh to judge them all as violating

the very texts they hold sacred. And Huntington’s approach of refusing to look

in such texts for any truth valid and intelligible for ourselves seems an

unpromising alternative.

The chief limitation in the previously mentioned Tibetan scholars’

methodology is that while they take Buddhist texts and contemplative

experience seriously, in presenting this material they do not apparently take into

account the cultural backgrounds of their audience. It is as if their lectures on

Buddhism are sent to us in envelopes marked “Occupant,” anonymously

directed to whatever audience might receive them, regardless of time or place.

With no regard for modern Western views concerning the mind, attention, the

role of consciousness in the universe, or any of the natural sciences, these Tibetan

teachers describe the nature of quiescence and the means of achieving

paranormal abilities and extrasensory perception. The vast chasm between their

assertions, which they present as uncontested facts, and the prevailing Western

views on these subjects is never even acknowledged. Thus, while Western

Buddhologists commonly fail to take Buddhist literature and experience

seriously, Tibetan teachers commonly fail to take the Western world view

38C. W. Huntington, The Emptiness of Emptiness: An Introduction to Early Indian M›dhyamika, p. 8.

seriously. Allowance for this oversight must be made for senior Tibetan scholars

and contemplatives who visit the West with little or no knowledge of Western

languages and culture. But it is to be hoped that younger generations of Tibetans

and Western scholars who adopt their approach will take on the difficult

challenge of bringing the Buddhist tradition into meaningful, informed dialogue

with the modern West.

All the above treatments of quiescence are presented within the context of

the modern Western academic world. But Buddhism is also being taught in

Buddhist “Dharma centers” and monasteries around the world; and here the

emphasis is on seeking not only theoretical understanding but personal

experience. It was in this context, in a Buddhist monastery in Switzerland, that

the late, distinguished Tibetan Buddhist scholar and contemplative Geshe Rabten

taught quiescence to a group of Westerner monks and lay students in his lectures

published in the book Echoes of Voidness.39 Likewise, after living as a Buddhist

contemplative recluse in the Himalayas for roughly twenty years, the Tibetan

monk Gen Lamrimpa delivered a series of lectures on the cultivation of

quiescence to a group of Western students as they were about to begin a one-year

contemplative retreat under his guidance in the United States. These lectures,

which appeared as his book ⁄amatha Meditation,40 were followed by his

individual guidance to each of those in retreat as they applied themselves to this

training over the next year. Among the range of treatments of quiescence cited

above, this approach may be deemed the least scientific with respect to Buddhist

literature, but the most scientific with respect to Buddhist meditative experience;

for the participants in this project actually put the Buddhist theories concerning

39Geshe Rabten, Echoes of Voidness, Stephen Batchelor, trans. & ed. (London: Wisdom

Publications, 1986) pp. 113-128.

40Gen Lamrimpa, ⁄amatha Meditation. B. Alan Wallace, trans. (Ithaca: Snow Lion Publications,

1992).

attentional development to the test of experience.41 The working hypothesis for

this project was that not only philosophy, but meditation is, to use Griffiths

words, “a trans-cultural human activity, which in all essentials operates within

the same conventions and by the same norms in all cultures.”42

Buddhology and the Modern World

For all the variety of discussions of quiescence in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism

by Western and Tibetan scholars alike, their impact on modern philosophical and

scientific understanding of attention, introspection, and consciousness remains

negligible. For example, more than a century ago, William James, founder of the

first psychology laboratory in the United States, concluded on the basis of the

best available scientific research that voluntary attention cannot be sustained for

more than a few seconds at a time.43 The last fifty years of scientific research on

attention have relied primarily on measures of performance, that is, on the effects

of attention on some type of behavior. Following this approach, the quality and

duration of attention can be inferred only indirectly from behavior. This method

is particularly problematic when it comes to assessing scientifically the kind of

41When Herbert Benson, a Harvard physician with an interest in meditation, offered to conduct

objective scientific research on the participants in this one-year retreat, Gen Lamrimpa

respectfully declined on the grounds that such research might interfere with the meditators’ own

training. He proposed instead that such research be conducted during some comparable future

retreat; then by comparing the two, one might ascertain the extent of interference experienced

due to such scientific research.

42Gen Lamrimpa commented to me at the end of this year that before he began leading this

retreat, he had little hope that these Western students would be able to progress significantly in

this training; but after collaborating with them over the course of the year, he was impressed at

the progress many of them had made. At the conclusion of this project, the majority of the

participants told me that , for all its difficulties and challenges, this had been the most meaningful

year of their life.

43William James, The Principles of Psychology (New York: Dover Publications, 1950) I:420.

attention developed in the training in quiescence, which is not directly linked to

behavior.

Gregory Simpson, a contemporary neuroscientist who has specialized in

the study of attention, comments that it may be accurate to say that the effects of

the highest levels of attention on outwardly manifested performance are not

typically sustained for more than one to three seconds.44 Although focused

attention may be enhanced for only one to three seconds without additional

stimuli or other external assistance, relatively high levels of attention may be

sustained for many tens of minutes.45 Due to the lack of engagement between

scientists and Buddhist contemplatives, it is not clear whether the kind of

attention cultivated in the training in quiescence is of the “highest level,” which,

according to scientific research can be maintained for only a few seconds, or

whether it is the kind that can commonly be sustained for much longer periods.

What can be said is that experiments that have measured transient, focused

attention on the basis of the performance of simple sensory tasks indicate that

this transient, high level of focused attention lasts between one and three

seconds,46 which agrees with James’ claim more than a century ago.

James also assumed that one’s attentional faculties cannot be significantly

refined by any type of discipline. Rather, the degree of one’s attentional stability

is most likely a fixed characteristic of the individual.47 Since he made this claim,

44Personal correspondence, June 4, 1995.

45Cf. N. H. Mackworth, Medical Research Council Special Report no. 268, (London: H.M.

Stationary Office, 1950); J. F. Mackworth, Vigilance and Attention, (Penguin Books, 1970); and A. F.

Sanders, (Ed.) Attention and Performance I, (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Co., 1970).

46M. I. Posner, Chronometric Exploration of Mind (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1978).

47William James, Talks to Teachers: On Psychology; and to students on some of Life’s Ideals , Intro. by

which the things in question are woven into association with each other in the mind.” (Ibid., pp.

90-91.) In light of the fact that the same term, sm¸ti, is used in Buddhism for both mindfulness

and memory, it would also be interesting to determine scientifically whether Buddhist techniques

for developing sm¸ti do in fact enhance either mindfulness or memory.

very little scientific research has been conducted to test this theory, and the

present attitude among cognitive scientists remains very close to James’. In

contrast, a central claim of all Indo-Buddhist discussions of quiescence is that

with training the attention can be voluntarily sustained for many hours in

succession, without the slightest interference by laxity or excitation. These

discussions also assert that one’s introspective faculties can also be enhanced to a

high degree, resulting in exceptional states of cognitive and emotional balance. If

there is any truth to the Buddhist claims concerning these issues, they have not

been demonstrated to scientists who study the nature, functioning, and

potentials of human attention, introspection, or consciousness.

This situation is typical of the relationship between the academic study of

Buddhism and the rest of the academic and scientific world. Huntington rightly

points out that this insularity of the academic field of Buddhology “is supposed

to preserve the integrity of the discipline as a legitimate, autonomous Fach, but

by now it has become clear that both the concept of an isolated discipline and the

techniques used to define it (the guarantors of purity) are no longer necessary or

desirable.”48 A great strength of the natural sciences is their cross-fertilization

from one discipline to another, but the study of religion and the study of science

are separated by a vast chasm of silence, each one insulated from the other,

apparently by mutual consent.

A remedy for this dysfunctional relationship was long ago proposed by

William James, who was trained as a scientist and also wrote major works in the

fields of philosophy and religious studies. James was a premier example of a

man of science who refused to adhere to the articles of faith of scientific

naturalism, and a deeply religious man who rejected religious dogma.49 His

48C. W. Huntington, The Emptiness of Emptiness: An Introduction to Early Indian M›dhyamika, p. 5.

49Cf. Bennett Ramsey , Submitting to Freedom (New York : Oxford University Press, 1993).

Throughout this work, I am using the term “scientific naturalism” to denote a creed that

approach was to take a genuinely scientific interest in the precise, open-minded

investigation of the entire range of human experience, including religious

experience.50

James proposed a science of religion that would differ from philosophical

theology by drawing inferences and devising imperatives based on a scrutiny of

“the immediate content of religious consciousness.”51 He envisioned this as an

empirical, rather than a scholastic, rationalistic approach, that was to focus on

religious experience rather than religious doctrines and institutions. He

elaborates on this point:

Let empiricism once become associated with religion, as hitherto,

through some strange misunderstanding, it has been associated

with irreligion, and I believe that a new era of religion as well as

philosophy will be ready to begin. ... I fully believe that such an

empiricism is a more natural ally than dialectics ever were, or can

be, of the religious life.52

Such a science of religions, he suggests, “can offer mediation between different

believers, and help to bring about consensus of opinion”53; and he pondered

identifies itself with natural science and that adheres to the metaphysical principles of

physicalism, reductionism, and the closure principle (the assertion that there are no causal

influences on physical events besides other physical events). Natural science, in contrast, is a

body of knowledge acquired by means of empirical testing of hypotheses through observation

and experiment, and as such, it is not inextricably tied with any one metaphysical belief system.

50Cf. Henry Samuel Levinson, The Religious Investigations of William James (Chapel Hill: University

of North Carolina Press, 1981).

51William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (New York:

Penguin Books, 1902/1982) p. 12.

52William James, A Pluralistic Universe (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1909/1977) p. 142;

Cf. William James, “Pluralism and Religion, Hibbert Journal, (1908) 6, pp. 721-728.

53William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature, p. 456.

whether such a science might even command public adherence comparable to

that presently granted to the physical sciences.54

With a return to empiricism as opposed to dogmatic religious and

scientific rationalism, James’ perspective on the future interface between science

and religion was optimistic:

Evidently, then, the science and the religion are both of them

genuine keys for unlocking the world’s treasure-house to him who

can use either of them practically. Just as evidently neither is

exhaustive or conclusive of the other’s simultaneous use.55

James’ proposal for an empirically scientific study of religion has itself

been a subject of academic study, but it has hardly been adopted as a

methodology in the field of religious studies. One scholar who has challenged

of religion is always unsatisfactory and insufficient because it does not

investigate the validity of the phenomena it studies, and often wrong because of

incorrect implicit evaluation.56 Staal proposes two parts to the scientific study of

mysticism: the study of mystical experiences and their validity, and the study of

the interpretations mystics and others have offered to account for these

experiences. A rational, theoretical and experimental approach to mysticism is

necessary, he says, if mysticism is ever to become a serious subject of

investigation.

54Ibid.

55Ibid., pp. 122-3.

56Frits Staal, Exploring Mysticism: A Methodological Essay (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press,

1975) p. 92.

It is Staal’s interest in mystical experience that draws him to the study of

meditation, which, he says, stands most in need of experiential, or subjective,

study. While various meditative experiences certainly may be deemed mystical

in nature, one disadvantage of classifying meditation as mystical practice is that

one thereby tends to ignore aspects of meditative experience that are not

mystical. For example, the entire Buddhist training in quiescence consists of

theories and practices concerning the nature of attention, introspection, and

consciousness; and none of these phenomena are intrinsically mystical. Such

practice may be deemed “pre-mystical,” and yet it forms a crucial element of

Indo-Tibetan Buddhist meditation.

Perhaps due to this too narrow assessment of meditation, Staal dismisses

physiological research into this subject as providing insignificant results about

unexplained, physical side effects, without detecting the effects of meditation on

the mind.57 At present, the psychological study of mysticism, he says, is in an

even more unsatisfactory state than its physiological study; but he regards the

outlook for the future as very promising. While Staal is probably right in his

evaluation of physiological research into mystical experience, it may,

nevertheless, yield significant insights into the psycho-physiological

transformations that take place during the more basic, non-mystical training in

quiescence. Yet even here, he is right in asserting that the methodologies of

cognitive psychology are likely to provide a clearer evaluation of such

meditation practice.

In proposing his methodology for studying meditation scientifically, Staal

draws a strict distinction between (1) followers of a guru, adherents of a

particular sect, or people in search of nirv›na, mok˝a, or salvation and (2) genuine

students of mysticism: “While both have to share certain attitudes, the student

57Ibid., p. 110.

has sooner or later to resume a critical outlook so that he can obtain

understanding and make it available to others.”58 The uncharitable, and not

entirely justified, assumption underlying this distinction is that religious people

who practice meditation are incapable of resuming (or ever adopting) a critical

outlook on such practice and are therefore incapable of obtaining understanding

and making it available to others. The student of meditation, he proposes, can

learn the necessary techniques of meditation only by initially accepting them

uncritically. However, once those methods have been learned, the critical

student must “be prepared to question and check what the teacher says, and

introduce new variables and experimental variation.”59 With keen insight, he

points out:

The doubts which we entertain with respect to very unfamiliar

events are largely the outcome of prejudices shaped by our

experiences with more familiar events. Too much doubt at the

outset will accordingly hold us back and prevent us from entering a

new domain. Therefore we should suspend doubt if we wish to

learn something new. But if we do not resort to analysis and

critical evaluation at a later stage, we move into the new domain

like sleep-walkers, without gaining any knowledge or

understanding.60

What he fails to note, however, is that a similar view is advocated in traditional

Buddhist discussions of religious practice as a whole,61 and it may well be that

58Ibid., p. 130.

59Ibid., p. 146.

60Ibid., p. 134.

61See the discussion of these three phases of practice in the following discussion of Tsongkhapa’s

methodology.

this approach is encouraged in other contemplative traditions as well. Although

the types of critical analysis of the practice applied to the practice may differ

between aspiring mystics and students of mysticism, it is certainly unfair to

characterize the former as sleep-walkers devoid of knowledge or understanding.

Staal claims that it is the task of students of mysticism, rather than

mystics, to evolve the best theories about mysticism62; and it is the former who

must explore whether the latter have actually attained the goals they think they

have.63 Such claims may be nothing more than an expression of his bias against

religious mysticism, for one of the expressed aims of his book is to show that

mysticism need not necessarily be regarded as a part of religion.

While Staal provides in the first part of his book excellent critiques of

earlier comparative studies of mysticism, showing how they fail due to their

dogmatic biases, the methodology he proposes seems to fall under the same

sword. The dogma that underlies his approach is one that is dismissive of the

relevance of religion, philosophy, and ethics to mystical experience. It is the task

of his idealized student of mysticism to distinguish between “valid instruction

into a practice, such as meditation, which cannot be learned in any other way,

and the religious or philosophical superstructure which is added and which is

often meaningless if not worthless.”64 Moreover, he cautions that many of the

required or recommended methods are likely to be irrelevant, “because they are

religious or moral paraphernalia.”65 Staal asserts his dogmatic bias most

distinctly when he says of such “superstructure” that since “they generally

involve religious or philosophical considerations, differences between them need

62Ibid., p. 63.

63Ibid., p. 148.

64Ibid., p. 147.

65Ibid., p. 135.

not reflect differences in mystical experience.”66 Thus, he declares, “a good

teacher will emphasize practice, a bad teacher will expound theories.”67

The simple truth that is ignored in this dogma is one that Griffiths rightly

identifies: while the results of meditative practice influence philosophical and

religious theories, it is also true that “philosophical beliefs shape meditative

techniques, provide specific expectations, and thus have a formative influence on

the kinds of experience which are actually produced...”68

The root of Staal’s aversion to religion may be traced to his perception of

institutionalized religions as being chiefly concerned not with the religious or

mystical experience of individuals, but “with society, ethics, morality, and the

continuation of the status quo.”69 This fundamental sympathy with mystical

experience, coupled with antipathy towards the religious and philosophical

theories about mysticism, is an attitude shared with William James. James

comments that in writing his The Varieties of Religious Experience, he had two

aims: first, to defend “experience” against “philosophy” as being the real

backbone of the world’s religious life, and second, “to make the hearer or reader

believe, what I myself do invincibly believe, that, although all the special

manifestations of religion may have been absurd (I mean its creeds and theories),

yet the life of it as a whole is mankind’s most important function.”70 Staal and

James seem to differ, however, in that James places a high value on the religious

practices of ethics, prayer, worship, and so on, whereas Staal apparently

dismisses these as aspects of the useless superstructure around mysticism.

66Ibid., p. 173.

67Ibid., p. 149.

68Paul J. Griffiths, On Being Mindless: Buddhist Meditation And The Mind-Body Problem, p. xiv.

69Frits Staal, Exploring Mysticism: A Methodological Essay, p. 165.

70The Letters of William James , ed. by Henry James, Jr., (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1920) Vol.

The opposition that Staal sets up between traditional meditators and

modern students of mysticism raises fundamental questions concerning the

degree of difference that separates the religious from the scientific mentality.

Although this is far too vast a topic to treat adequately in the present context, it

may be worthwhile, before bringing this discussion to a close, to note James’

perspective on this matter. In his provocative essay entitled “Faith and the Right

to Believe,”71 James challenges what he calls “intellectualism,” defined as “the

belief that our mind comes upon a world complete in itself, and has the duty of

ascertaining its contents; but has no power of re-determining its character, for

that is already given.” He identifies two kinds of intellectualists: rational

intellectualists who “lay stress on deductive and ‘dialectic’ arguments, making

large use of abstract concepts and pure logic (Hegel, Bradley, Taylor, Royce); and

empiricist intellectualists who “are more ‘scientific,’ and think that the character

of the world must be sought in our sensible experiences, and found in

hypotheses based exclusively thereon (Clifford, Pearson).”72 In this light, Staal’s

student of mysticism seems to bear all the earmarks of an empiricist

intellectualist, while more traditional Buddhologists, such as Griffiths, appear to

be rational intellectualists.

Intellectualism, James says, asserts that knowledge of the pre-given

universe “is best gained by a passively receptive mind, with no native sense of

probability, or good-will towards any special result.”73 Moreover, it assumes

that “our beliefs and our acts based thereupon...[are] such mere externalities as

71William James, “Faith and the Right to Believe,” in Some Problems of Philosophy (New York:

Longman’s, Green and Co., 1948 (1911). Posthumous, ed. by Henry James, Jr. pp. 221-131. Also

in The Writings of William James: A Comprehensive Edition, John J. McDermott, ed. (Chicago:

University of Chicago, 1977) pp. 735-740.

72Ibid., p. 735. In this essay James is specifically targeting the views of William K. Clifford

expressed in the essay “The Ethics of Belief” in Lectures and Essays (1879); Cf. William Kingdom

Clifford, Lectures and Essays by the Late William Kingdom Clifford, F. R. S (London: Macmillan,

1901).

73Ibid., p. 736.

not to alter in any way the significance of the rest of the world when they are

added to it.”74 Here is the classic “disinterested” perspective that is widely

deemed necessary on the part of all scientific researchers, whether they are

examining texts or experience. James acknowledges that the postulates of

intellectualism work well as long as the issues under investigation are of no

pressing importance and that by believing nothing, we can escape error while we

wait. It is a different matter, however, when the subject is of pressing

importance. In such cases, he writes,

...we often cannot wait but must act, somehow; so we act on the

most probable hypothesis, trusting that the event prove us wise.

Moreover, not to act on one belief, is often equivalent to acting as if

the opposite belief were true, so inaction would not always be as

“passive” as the intellectualists assume. It is one attitude of will.75

Philosophy and religion address issues that many regard as urgently important,

and for these, he suggests, the intellectualist postulates may not obtain. As an

expression of his pluralistic philosophy, James proposes,

The character of the world’s results may in part depend upon our

acts. Our acts may depend on our religion,—on our not-resisting

our faith-tendencies, or on our sustaining them in spite of

“evidence” being incomplete. These faith-tendencies in turn are

but expressions of our good-will towards certain forms of result.76

74Ibid.

75Ibid.

76Ibid.

From this perspective, intellectualists’ condemnation of religious faith is itself

nothing more than an act of faith in the intellectualists’ theory of the constitution

of the universe.

In terms of James’ distinction between intellectualism and pluralism, it is

evident that advocates of religion as well as advocates of science may be either

intellectualists or pluralists. Likewise, while one adheres to articles of a religious

creed, the other may just as tenaciously adhere to the metaphysical principles of

scientific naturalism. James acknowledges faith as one of the inalienable

birthrights of our minds, but he cautions,

Of course it must remain practical, and not a dogmatic

attitude. It must go with toleration of other faiths, with the search

for the most probable, and with the full consciousness of

responsibilities and risks.

It may be regarded as a formative factor in the universe, if

we be integral parts thereof, and co-determinants, by our behavior,

of what its total character may be.77

All of us are presently endowed with consciousness, but for most of us, at

least, the origins, nature, causal efficacy, and fate of this phenomenon, so central

to our very existence, remain a mystery. Is it possible to explore these features of

consciousness by means of introspection? If so, is it possible to enhance our

attentional and introspection faculties so that such research may provide reliable

and incisive results? Given the centrality of consciousness to our whole

existence, and given the brief and uncertain span of human life, the fundamental

77Ibid., p. 737.

questions about consciousness may well be regarded as ones of pressing

importance.

The following work, then, is written for those who share this sense of the

importance and urgency of discovering the nature and potentials of

consciousness. They may include Western philosophers and cognitive scientists

concerned with attention, introspection, and consciousness, historians of religion

interested in the connections between quiescence and analogous techniques

taught and practiced in other traditions, professional Buddhologists, and

practicing contemplatives interested in implementing Tsongkhapa’s instructions

on the cultivation of quiescence. Finally, I hope that this work may encourage

the growth of the community of scientists and contemplatives willing to join

their efforts in probing the nature of consciousness by drawing on and

integrating the methods and wisdom of the East and the West, the ancient and

the modern.