Transcript Genuine Happiness: A Buddhist Science of the Mind

What Makes Us Human?
Scientific and Buddhist Views
B. Alan Wallace, Ph.D.
Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies
(http://sbinstitute.com)
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7/17/2015
Scientific View
Neurologist Antonio Damasio:
“We are generally taking the person as a whole, a
brain and a body. We can [use] the
metaphor…that human beings are brains that
have a body on their backs.”
Cases of Severe Brain Damage
• A 10-year-old girl from Germany was born with
only half her brain, for the right brain hemisphere
failed to develop while she was in the womb.
• Dr. Lars Muckli: “The brain has amazing plasticity
but we were quite astonished to see just how well
the single hemisphere of the brain in this girl has
adapted to compensate for the missing
half…Despite lacking one hemisphere, the girl has
normal psychological function and is perfectly
capable of living a normal and fulfilling life. She is
witty, charming and intelligent.”
• Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
on July 20, 2009.
Cases of Extreme Brain Damage
British neurologist John Lorber documented over 600 scans of
people with hydrocephalus and breaking them into four groups:
• those with nearly normal brains
• those with 50-70% of the cranium filled with cerebrospinal
fluid
• those with 70-90% of the cranium filled with cerebrospinal
fluid
• and the most severe group with 95% of the cranial cavity filled
with cerebrospinal fluid.
Of the last group, half had IQs greater than 100.
Case of Brain Death
• In 1991, when Pam Reynolds was diagnosed as
having an aneurysm in her brain stem, requiring a
radical procedure called hypothermic cardiac
standstill.
• She was anesthetized with a heavy dose of
barbiturates, resulting in a very deep comatose
condition, and her core body temperature was
dropped to sixty degrees, completing stopping all
activity of her heart and brain. The surgeons then
drained the blood vessels in her brain and
successfully operated on the aneurysm.
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Case of Brain Death
• Pam Reynolds the next day gave accurate visual and auditory
reports of what occurred in the operating room during her
operation from a perspective above her body.
• Neurosurgeon Robert Spetzler, Director of the Barrow
Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona, who conducted
this procedure, responded, “She really had a sort of bird’seye’s view of what was going on. Now whether that image
came from somewhere else that she then internalized
somehow, I don’t think there’s any way to tell. But it was sort
of intriguing with how well she described what she shouldn’t
have been able to see.”
Anesthesia Awareness?
• Anesthesia awareness: the claim that patients under general
anesthesia can still hear (but no claim that they can see)
• Controlled studies provide no convincing evidence that
adequately anesthetized patients retain any conscious memory
of events during surgery.
• Partial awakening does occur in about 0.1 to 0.3 percent of
general surgical procedures (Heier & Steen, 1996; Sandin,
Enlund, Samuelsson, & Lennmarken, 2000), but these
awakenings are altogether different from NDEs, and generally
extremely unpleasant, frightening, and painful (Osterman,
Hopper, Heran, Keane, & van der Kolk, 2001; Spitelli,
Holmes, & Domino, 2002.
Cases of Past-Life Memories
• Dr. Jim Tucker, from the Division of Perceptual
Studies at the University of Virginia has studied
cases of children who allegedly remember an
intermediate period between the end of their past
live and their birth in the current life. Such
children tend to make more accurate statements
about the previous life they claim to remember
than do other children who allegedly recall their
past life, and they tend to recall more names from
that previous life.
Scientific Versus Buddhist Views
• Such evidence suggests that the factors that
contribute to the uniqueness of human nature are
not confined to the brain, genetics, and the
physical environment, but also include influences
from past lives that somehow intermingle with
biological processes in this life.
• To account for the transference of birthmarks
from one body to the next incarnation, Dr. Ian
Stevenson postulated the existence of a “field”
that retains memories and dispositional
characteristics of the deceased. He called this
hypothetical field a “psychophore.”
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Buddhist Views on How We Become Human
• The human mind emerges from a subtle
continuum of mental consciousness known as
the substrate consciousness, carrying
memories and other imprints from past lives,
human and nonhuman.
• Following conception it is configured by the
body and environment and after birth by one’s
upbringing.
What Makes Us Human?
• Humans have the ability to distinguish
between hedonic pleasure and genuine
happiness.
• We have a unique capacity to cultivate genuine
happiness by developing exceptional mental
health and balance.
• We can gain insight into fundamental aspects
of reality and thereby dispel the fundamental
cause of suffering, ignorance.
• For this, our faculty of reason and abilities of
speaking and understanding language are
crucial.
The Ultimate Ground
• Buddha spoke of an ultimate state of awareness
experienced by those who realize nirvana, which he
called “consciousness without characteristics,” for it
is undetectable by all ordinary states of perception.
• It persists even after one who has achieved nirvana
has died, and this unconditioned, timeless dimension
of consciousness is imbued with immutable bliss.
• In this inconceivable, timeless, radiant state of
awareness one is completely freed from physical
embodiment. The ordinary mind and body have been
transcended and vanish, leaving no traces.
Modes of Sentient Existence
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Gods
Demigods
Human Existence
Animals
Hungry ghosts
Denizens of hell realms