Buddha's Brain

Third, brain science can highlight which of the hundreds of traditional methods are likely to be most effective for individual needs. This helps intensify practice, especially for householders who don't have the benefits of the all-surrounding environment and close guidance of monastic life.

Further, the great variety of brains and thus minds is a diversity issue itself, which underscores the value of the appropriate individualization of practice. For example, there is a wide range of temperaments, and for a person who's naturally spirited, understanding and normalizing the hungry-for-stimulation systems in his or her brain can lead to emphasizing certain forms of meditation in the development of steadiness of mind (e.g., tracking the breath as a whole rather than at just one spot), and to feeling more self-accepting.

Fourth, the developing brain/mind map can suggest new and effective methods to build upon established practices. For instance, some teachers are drawing on the research literature in attachment theory, empathic attunement, and mirror neurons to refine the methods of interpersonal mindfulness. (For more examples, please see our website, Wise Brain.)

Of course, any scientific enhancements of traditionally skillful means must be balanced by virtue and wisdom. Further, the ultimate fruit of practice, Nibbana, transcends all methods. Nonetheless, the Buddha taught that attaining Nibbana [Nirvana] required a dedicated training of mind and heart, which means a transformation of brain and body. Even if the apple falls by grace, its ripening comes from water, sunlight, and fertile ground.

Cautions

The meeting between Buddhism and science brings many opportunities, but also some potential pitfalls, and understanding these could help you sift out the information that is personally useful:

• Getting neurologically reductionistic -- While simplifications are sometimes clarifying, they need to be held in perspective. If you find yourself reading about the amygdala and fear, mirror neurons and empathy, oxytocin and lovingkindness, high-frequency brainwaves and meditative concentration, etc., it's always more complicated than that.
• Glamorizing science -- As the Buddha said, "See for yourself." The ultimate test of practice is whether it works, and it has for millions of people for thousand of years. Buddhism does not need the endorsement of science to prove its validity.
• Over-generalizing from group data to individuals -- In the press and even the scientific literature, you'll often find statements like these: "Men have enhanced visual-spatial abilities compared to women," or "Meditators react better to stress." Yes, the average man could be slightly better at visual tasks than the average woman. But it's not correct to equate everybody in a group with its average, and then make categorical statements about all its members. Many women are more visually adept than many men . . . just like many meditators can get pretty stressed out!
• Over-valuing the physical -- For example, genetic factors usually account for less than a third to a half of our personality, intelligence, happiness, satisfaction with relationships, lifetime earnings, or spiritual growth. The rest is due to the influences of our own self-direction and the ways we interact with our environments, which is very, very hopeful. And since the normal brain can hold both horrible and wonderful thoughts, desires, etc., it's the contents of mind that usually count most, not the physical organ that enables them.
  
  Further, appreciating the integration of mind and brain does not mean reducing mind to brain. To be unavoidably technical: mind is patterns of information represented by patterns of matter. Since much mental information can be represented by any suitable neural circuit -- much like a picture can be represented by any available RAM on your computer -- it is functionally independent of its physical substrate. Second, this independence enables thoughts (and other aspects of mind) to be the fundamental cause of other thoughts; the brain carries thoughts but it does not necessarily cause them. And third, mind can cause changes in matter through its representations in matter; for example, immaterial thoughts of gratitude are embodied in cascading physical processes that can trigger physical circuits that dampen the release of stress hormones.

• Under-estimating what the brain can do -- The wonders of the mind do not necessarily require an extraordinary -- call it mystical -- basis in addition to the brain itself. For sure, it's reasonable to think that an extraordinary phenomenon requires an extraordinary explanation. For example, seeing the extraordinary differences between humans and other animals, many people concluded that we must have been created by an extraordinary God. But today, it's understood that humans evolved by ordinary causes -- notably, DNA molecules and survival of the fittest -- unfolding via zillions of organisms over several billion years. A lot of ordinary causes can produce an extraordinary result.
  
  Similarly, when you take an ordinary synapse -- basically, a simple on-off switch -- but then multiply it by 500 trillion or so, usually firing many times a second, with tremendous inter-connectivity . . . well, you can get extraordinary results, like understanding these sentences, or cultivating lovingkindness, or becoming aware of awareness itself. As the capabilities of the brain become even better understood over the next hundred years, we predict that most (if not all) of our experiences -- the rich soil of the path of practice -- will be revealed as entirely enabled by the physical brain, and not due in any way to extraordinary mystical factors.
  
  For us, this view is not mechanistic or stifling. It makes us profoundly grateful for evolution's gift of the brain, sensitive to our own responsibilities to shape it over time, and inspired by its potential for extraordinary goodness, love, and realization.