Buddhism and Modernity: Conversations at the Edge, all three panels [Video]

Today the Mangalam Research Center posted video of a post-conference seminar following the June 3-7 Mindfulness & Compassion conference at San Francisco State University. The topic, “Buddhism and Modernity: Conversations at the Edge,” drew a variety of responses from top academics in Buddhist studies and philosophy, psychologists, practitioners, and others. 

Below are the videos with brief notes and impressions.

Panel 1: Buddhist Philosophy and the perennial concerns of Western philosophy

Stephen Jenkins, Humboldt State University
Steven Stanley, Cardiff University
David Brazier, International Zen Therapy Institute

Stephen Jenkins sets the stage by discussing the ways that Buddhist ethics differ from what we often search for in the West, noting especially our (academics looking at Buddhist philosophy at least) “over-privileging of systematic discourse and under-privilege of narrative materials” earlier citing the Jataka tales. He also offers a wonderful caution about taking Buddhist teachings out of context. Buddhism does have a universalist nature to it which makes extractions of key ideas appealing, but this, he warns, can lead you as a scholar to “make an ass of yourself” if you’re not careful.

Urging for academic humility, Jenkins suggests that scholars looking back at us in 100 years will probably look at us the way we look at Buddhologists from the early 20th century, noting that we really haven’t gone as far as we might think we have.

Steven Stanley followed, describing a certain shift of perspective toward a more critical look at how “Buddhist thought and practice is being adapted and understood in our present day, modern context.” He says that the way many of us are looking at Buddhist thought today follows from the direction set out long ago by Descartes and Locke; namely Descartes’ epistemological dualism and Locke’s empiricism which likewise suggested a dualism between the outside world and our inner sensing of it. As such he thinks a sort of representationalism is “coming back into Contemplative Science.”

He continued that he has a real concern that Theravadin literature, namely the Sattipathana Sutta, is being interpreted through the lens of cognitive behavioral science. This is worrying, he says, because these dominant modes of talking about psychology and now Buddhism are “entirely compatible with Descartes’ aim and concern to be masters and possessors of nature.” His concluding point is that the sources of technological innovations are crucial to how science is working today and that we must be cognizant of the cultural, environmental, and economic foundations of our science, nodding to the climate change activism discussed by one of Bhikkhu Bodhi’s students in the conference.

David Brazier next discussed the way we try to translate concepts today vs past masters such as Dogen or Shinran, who approached texts not seeking the “right way” to translate it, but rather the “possibilities” presented by that text. “Buddhism is an opening up rather than a narrowing down,” he said, and defended the translation of skandhas as “aggregates” as in some ways a bad translation but in some ways also a very good one because in fact all things we see as singularities are actually pluralities or aggregates or sets.

Going on to talk about Buddhist ethics, Brazier suggested that we in the West are looking for things like justice in Buddhism, but this is not a very Buddhist term, and that in itself reflects different values in Buddhism from what we have in the West around things like the individual and society. For instance there is plenty about interconnectedness one can find in Buddhism if we want. Yet individualism is also important in Buddhism as a lifestyle where one stands on his/her own two feet; whereas in Western thought it is much more “about posing as an individual for an audience.” So while their is clearly a complexity of ideas in Buddhism, we tend to come to the religion with our own Western agenda(s) and mining the material to justify our own position.

In the Q&A it was re-emphasized by Jenkins that ambiguities must be accepted and explored, not avoided or papered over, drawing from as broad a context as possible.

Comments: I really appreciated the remarks from all three of these panelists. Stephen Jenkins I know from two excellent lectures on Buddhist ethics from 2009 you can see here and here. David Brazier I’ve known for years through friends in the UK and a wonderful recent guest post on Buddhism as a religion. I think their comments flowed well with one another, taking away the principles of humility and opening up through our exploration of Buddhist texts. Steven Stanley is new to me, but I found his remarks tracing contemporary approaches back to the epistemologies of Descartes and Locke interesting and wonder what contemporary cognitive scientists would say in response to that. And his concluding remark, that we look not only at the scientific effects of neuro-technologies, but their broader environmental and social impacts was, while not central to the topic, really a breath of fresh air.

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Panel 2: The role for the transcendent dimensions of Buddhist practice and teachings in a disenchanted world

Lisa Dale Miller, Private Practice
David Lewis, Independent Researcher
Jack Petranker, Mangalam Research Center

In this video David Lewis begins with a discussion of the very difficult to talk about and to study area of the subtle body, sambhogakaya, the effervescent, etc. He suggests, after some back and forth with an audience member, that he hopes that cognitive science can be a way to do that.

Lisa Dale Miller spoke next, noting that transcendence is a part of Advaitya Vedanta, but not the Buddha’s teachings. However, the paramis or paramitas (usually translated as ‘perfections’) can be translated as ‘that which goes beyond’ – “and that way,” she said, “transcendence is part of Buddhist traditions.” From there she described the application of the sixth paramita, transcendent wisdom, in her work as a clinician, guiding patients through subject-object duality.

Jack Petranker responded with a discussion of the various ways of knowing that people bring to this topic and possible approaches to terms like ‘transcendent’ and ‘disenchantment’.

In the Q&A, David McMahan notes that “I imagine that the way you were using the term disenchantment was in the Weberian sense… he says the modern world has been disenchanted, we no longer believe in spirits and gods and mystery in a sense has been taken out…” Whereas in Thich Nhat Hanh and such there is a move to re-enchant the world.  Likewise, however, consumeristic imagery that we are bombarded with is enchanting; so care must be taken in looking at how we are enchanted vs disenchanted today. Lisa Dale Miller responded that physical experience we all have each day is already deeply enchanting, but not on the fear/greed, gain/loss level, which is a product of delusion.

Comments: It may be just that it’s getting late here, but I find myself with much less to say about this panel; but I did very much appreciate Lisa Dale Miller’s remarks – I know the idea of ‘transcendence’ is contested heavily in Buddhist scholarship and I think she did a great job of incorporating it into the Buddhist scheme of virtues or perfections. Likewise, Jack Petranker’s remarks on approaches to these key terms and David McMahan’s comments on ‘disenchantment’ added greatly to the discussion.

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Panel 3: How insights from the fields of science studies/history of science/continental thought might shed new light on the dialogue between Buddhism and science

David McMahan, Franklin & Marshall College
Cliff Saron, University of California, Davis
Kin Cheung, Temple University
Geoffrey Samuel, University of Sydney
Linda Heuman, Brown University/John Templeton Fellow

David McMahan began by situating the historical context of Western interpretation of Buddhism – the context of colonialism. In response to this, Buddhists began to select from their own texts ideas that could be matched with Western science, presenting them most famously at the 1893 Parliament of World Religions in Chicago. This then attracted many Westerners who were seeking a ‘scientific religion’ in contrast to Christianity. This ‘scientized Buddhism’ along with a move toward meditation set the stage for discussions like the ones we are having today around Buddhism, mindfulness, and science. It also has brought meditation into a sort of Western representationalist epistemic model where reality is ‘out there’ and we need to find a way to get to or understand it objectively (free of subjective feelings, cultural prejudices, etc). However, Buddhist thought might be better understood as phenomenology, where mind and world are inseparable. With this approach, a better language might be developed to get Buddhist meditation out into the world, as opposed to the individualistic, separated approach that seems to have dominated.

Cliff Saron followed, discussing the scientistic nature of so much of the discussion. He described a study done that showed that a poorly written, factually weak article with a picture of an fMRI was judged as better than a well-written, tightly argued article. He went on to say that “reverse inference,” where you look at an fMRI image in order to know what a person was experiencing doesn’t work. So, he suggests, science must be understood more as an art, “and not at the surface level that is in the public sphere for the most part.”

Kin Cheung spoke next, saying that studies going back to the 1920s fail to give an explicit definition of “health.” This matters today as we think of issues like homosexuality, which was considered a mental illness at one time by psychologists, and on the other end sufferers of chronic fatigue syndrome and migraines who have had to fight to have their conditions recognized as disabilities (as “unhealthy”). How then do scientific studies of meditation consider Buddhist models of “health?” Elements of ethics and karma are included, as are demons and the balance of the four elements – are these considered? How and why or why not? So we need multiple perspectives, which we can each hear and bring back to our individual departments, etc, to expand out our definitions.

Geoffrey Samuel then spoke about the relationship between science, materialism, and Buddhism. This is important, he notes, because in materialism we can at least talk about things; whereas away from materialism, where mind or consciousness is foremost, things get more difficult to talk about (e.g. what gets ‘reincarnated’?). So if we cannot reduce mind to brain activity, how do we talk about it? Some attempts have been made in the past, but it’s not clear how far they might go, and we may need still an entirely new perspective to speak from.

Linda Heuman spoke last, trying to unpack some implicit assumptions in the topic of the panel, making them explicit. First of all, the topic (How insights from the fields of science studies/history of science/continental thought might shed new light on the dialogue between Buddhism and science) assumes that these fields might shed light on the dialogue and that this might constitute some sort of progress. It further assumes that the dialogue needs some light shed upon it and that it’s somehow stuck and in need of new direction. In 2012 she was awarded a grant from the John Templeton Foundation to break new ground in the dialogue between Buddhism and Science and she has worked at length with Buddhism publisher Tricycle Magazine.

She notes that as Buddhism and science have set aside differences to enter into debate, they’ve set aside their own foundational principles. This creates an illusion of compatibility between the two and the arising of ideologies of scientific triumphalism and ‘subtractionism’ (where progress is discussed in terms of ‘shirking off old/past’ ideas). How do we overcome this? By decontextualizing the decontexualizer, or looking at the roots of the scientific worldview – something that thinkers in the continental tradition have done for over 100 years. Buddhists should talk with these thinkers (and vice versa). She concludes with some interesting comments on Buddhism’s universality and the way we talk about bringing mindfulness and Buddhism into new contexts, sometimes losing sight of the validity of other traditions already there (e.g. Christianity).

Comments: There’s a ton to unpack here, and I can’t possibly cover it all in a short space. Perhaps in a future post and/or in responses to your comments below…