Transcript PowerPoint - University of San Diego

The Dalai Lama:
Science, Religion and Ethics
Lawrence M. Hinman, Ph.D.
Professor of Philosophy
University of San Diego
EthicsMatters.net
[email protected]
University of the Third Age
January 20, 2012
Overview
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Brief Historical
Overview of the Dalai
Lama
Buddhism, Christianity,
and types of religion
Science and religion
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A
Few
Facts
Fourteenth Dalai Lama
Born on July 6, 1935 in Tibet
His religious name isTenzin Gyatso, shortened from Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe
Tenzin Gyatso, born Lhamo Dondrub.
Chosen as the reincarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama when he was two years old, choice officially
confirmed when he was fifteen.
Fled to India in 1959 as a refuge
Nobel Peace Prize, 1989
In 2011, resigned as head of the Tibetan government in exile and urged a freely-chosen political
leader
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The Dalai Lama and
Science
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Tends to be friendly to
science
Loved playing with
telescopes and scientific
instruments as a boy
Considers the Buddha to have been a scientist, studying the
nature of suffering and compassion
Particular interest in neuroscience and meditation
Gave a talk at the annual Society for Neuroscience Annual
Meeting in Washington, DC, in 2005, at the invitation of
Richard Davidson, who studied the effect of meditation on
Buddhist monks.
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The Four Noble Truths
• The Four Noble
Truths deal with
– The inevitability of
suffering
– The sources of
suffering
– The elimination of
suffering
– The paths to the
elimination of
suffering
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Two Ways of Reducing Suffering
• Suffering arises from a discrepancy between
desire and actuality
–change the actual world--Western technology
–change the desire, extinguish the individual self-Buddhism
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What Issues Does Science Pose to
Religion?
Science seems to challenge religion
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Galileo and the view of the universe
Darwin and Evolution
The Four Horsemen of the “New” Atheism
Religion seems to challenge science
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Miracles challenge natural laws
Religious explanations challenge naturalistic
ones
The story of Adam and Eve
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Compassion and Suffering
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Advances in the neurosciences have a
profound implication for our understanding
of what it means to be human.
Mirror neurons: the neuroscientific basis of
empathy and compassion.
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In the early 1990s, Giancomo Rizzolatti and others at the
University of Parma, Italy discovered that certain neurons
fired in the brain not only when a monkey picked up a piece
of food, but also when it saw a human being pick up a piece
of food.
V.S Ramachandran at UC San Diego argues that mirror
neurons--what he calls “Gandhi neurons”--provide the
foundation of compassion and empathy.
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Reincarnation
• Personal self moves through the
wheel of existence like a flame being
passed from one candle to another.
• Karma: each individual action helps
to set free or bind us to the personal
self.
• Moral commandments are
generated by demands of karma.
• In Buddhism, we may be
reincarnated in other forms, not just
as humans.
• This blurs the line between humans
and animals.
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Religions:
Monotheistic, Polytheistic, and Non-theistic
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Monotheistic
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Judaism
Islam
Polytheistic
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Christianity
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Native American
Ancient Greek
Hinduism
Non-theistic
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Jainism
Buddhism
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The Manipulation of Suffering
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Science not only enables us to understand better the
mechanisms of suffering, it also allows us to manipulate
suffering.
We already have numerous ways in which science
reduces suffering. Take one easy example: anesthesia,
which allows us to undergo such things as surgery
without the intense suffering that would usually
accompany it.
Yet matters become more complex when we consider
the ways in which we can now erase or at least dampen
painful memories, removing their painful (and
sometimes tragic) sting.
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Surgery example
PTSD
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How Religion Can Help Science
Instead of seeing religion and science as enemies
constantly contesting each other’s territory, we might
imagine ways in which religion could be helpful to
science.
Consider the question of erasing or dampening
painful memories.
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It is a scientific question how we can manipulate such
memories;
It is an extra-scientific question--perhaps a religious one--to
ask whether and when we should manipulate such
memories.
Notice that this question is particularly relevant to
Buddhism, which sees suffering as the central fact of
human existence.
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The Manipulation of Compassion
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As we gain greater understanding of the neuroscientific foundations of
compassion, we will then be increasingly able to manipulate a
person’s capacity for compassion.
The sociopath seems to be a person who lacks the ability to
experience the pain of others, to feel that pain as his own pain.
The severely depressed person is sometimes the individual who
experiences the pain of others all too acutely, who feels
overburdened, overwhelmed by the pain of others.
What if we can manipulate the individual’s sensitivity to the suffering
of others? Would this be a good thing? How would we use this ability
wisely?
Once again, we encounter a question whose answer is not purely
scientific. Science cannot tell us if we should manipulate the
sensitivity of others to suffering, it can only tell us how we can do so.
Perhaps here too religion can help us to answer the questions raised
by science but left unanswered.
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This Presentation will be on the Web
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This Presentation will be available at:
http://ethics.sandiego.edu/presentations/usd/dalailama/u3a/
January 20, 2012
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