Giuseppe Pagnoni of Emory University (pictured) is doing fMRI studies of zazen (newspaper article ), comparing 15 experienced meditators and 15 controls, with a focus on attention and inhibition.

Pagnoni has also done neuroimaging studies of social interaction.

According to the newspaper article, Pagnoni is taking a more experimental approach than usually seen. Instead of simply looking at meditators’ brains and seeing what parts “light up”, he actually plans to put neurologically damaged subjects through a meditation training program so he can compare them to people with normal brain functioning. This is the kind of experiment we need many more of.

Brad Warner recently wrote about participating in this study (blog entry). Apparently Pagnoni is doing EEGs on meditators after having them do some cognitive exercises, followed by fMRI scans the following day involving the subject entering a meditative states and “doing some weird computer tasks”. The combination of EEG and fMRI sounds potentially fruitful. But how can you do mental exercises while “in a meditative state”?

Richard Davidson, the Dalai Lama collaborator who scanned Tibetan monks’ brains, was named to the Time 100, the newsmagazine’s list of 100 people shaping our world.

Time noted that “his research legitimizes, for scientists as well as monks, the study of internal states of consciousness by linking them to the objective reality of electrical activity in the central nervous system. It also gives us a handle for understanding spiritual experiences that have heretofore seemed purely subjective and beyond the reach of scientific investigation.”

One can hardly imagine a better demonstration of the how the importance of the study of the biology of religion is increasingly being recognized in today’s world, but hopes that research on important neurotheology topics other than just the biology of meditation, which is Davidson’s focus, will also be given priority in the future—the biology of belief, to name just one.

Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion (Amazon) is a snappy, readable book about, basically, how God doesn’t exist (or exists only with vanishingly low probability). Greater minds than my own have already reviewed the book (NYT ) and pronounced it brilliant or stupid or flawed or whatever. Here I’ll confine myself to neurotheological and Buddhist aspects.

The most basic problem with this book is that it completely fails to take into account the connection between religion and any process of personal development and/or the biological “correlates” of that process. To the extent religion is to some extent a highly corrupted version of meaningful, biologically-based insights about how to be happier, many of Dawkins’ points would need to be modified or recast.

On p. 37 Dawkins claims he will not be “concerned at all with other religions such as Buddhism or Confucianism. Indeed, there is something to be said for treating these not as religions at all but as ethical systems of philosophies of life.” That’s a great distinction to be made, but at the same time Buddhism and Western monotheism are similar in that they are both socially dominant systems of belief and thought, and rather than arbitrarily excluding one, why doesn’t Dawkins incorporate Buddhism into his thinking as a way to better define the topological contours of religion and religious behavior ?

Surprisingly for a biologist, Dawkins mentions “neurotheology” only once, in a dismissive tone. On pp. 168-169, he says:

The proximate cause of religion might be hyperactivity in a particular node of the brain. I shall not pursue the neurological idea os a ‘god centre’ int he brain because I am not concerned here with proximate questions…If neuroscientists find a ‘god centre’ in the brain, Darwinian scientists like me will still want to understand the natural selection pressure that favoured it.

This seems like a particular devious way to dodge neurotheological questions. Perhaps the existence of a ‘god centre’ (more accurately, religiously-connected neural circuitry or structures) can be considered a “proximate” issue, but attempting to understanding it, rather than simply ignoring it, could help in grasping the “ultimate” cause, which for Dawkins is the Darwinian one. Would Dawkins focus on the evolutionary reason for the existence of the visual faculty without bothering to learn about the structure of the eye?

The cutest idea in this book, new at least to me, is that religion survives due an evolutionary tendency for children to believe what their parents say. This provides a scenario for a gradual decline over decades and centuries of Bible-thumping religions, as in each generation some percentage of believers, however, small, discard the religion of their parents and produce non-religious kids, as I did—to the extent that one day my oldest son came home from elementary school and asked me, “Daddy, who is this guy they were talking about in class today called ‘Cheeses’?”. Compare this to Dennett in Breaking the Spell, who provides no roadmap other than that people will or should stop believing just because he thinks religion is so stupid.

Note: to counter comment spam, hyperlinks in comments have now been disabled. To include a link in comments, please simply specify the URL, and the reader will have to cut and paste.

Mario Beauregard has fMRI’d nuns having semi-mystical states and found that a whole range of brain regions (including the right medial orbitofrontal cortex, right middle temporal cortex, right inferior and superior parietal lobules, right caudate, left medial prefrontal cortex, left anterior cingulate cortex, left inferior parietal lobule, left insula, left caudate, left brainstem, and extra-striate visual cortex), demonstrating that mystical experience (or at least the memories of mystical experience these Christian nuns called forth) were involved, thus supposedly disprovnig the “God spot” theory.

Beauregard’s article in Science Direct uses the term “spiritual neuroscience,” which I had never heard before. We’re all eager for good new terms to replace “neurotheology,” but I don’t think this suggestion will fly. It evokes images of scientists in white coats having spiritual experiences as they do their neuroscience research.

I guess political correctness is catching on in the neurotheology biz. Here’s Beauregard’s disclaimer from the article:

With respect to this issue, it is of paramount importance to fully appreciate that elucidating the neural substrates of these experiences does not diminish or depreciate their meaning and value, and that the external reality of “God” can neither be confirmed nor disconfirmed by delineating the neural correlates of RSMEs.

Beauregard also uses the term RSME, for “religious/spiritual/mystical experience”. Is this well-known terminology, or something he invented? It seems useful.

The research was supported by Metanexus , an organization which “advances research, education and outreach on the constructive engagement of science and religion.”

WebMD provides a brief overview of the research.

It can be a shock leaving a first-world country and going to a third-world one.

We are to travel on our destination country’s bankrupt national airline. We leave the plush lobby in the gleaming steel and glass airport we’re departing from to board a decrepit 30-year-old plane. The inside of the plane is a harbinger of what’s to come: depressing, dirty, and dark. The aircraft rumbles shakily down the runway, barely making it into the air and nearly shaking itself apart in the process. After nine hours in the air and two skipped meals—one hardly wants to look at, much less eat, the substances that culture calls food—our plane swoops down into the teeming, steaming metropolis that is our destination.

How sad it must be to live in a country like this. We can’t even leave the plane when it lands because the immigration people haven’t showed up for work yet. Once we do disembark, the airport seems to date back to the 70s, if not the 50s. Grime is caked on the walls and floors. Ceiling panels dangle. Paint is peeling. Sullen, bored immigration officials stamp our passports without making eye contact, after we have waited far too long in unreasonably long lines. Even then, our baggage still has not made it from the belly of the plane to the claim area—doing that in less than half an hour is apparently beyond the capabilities of this country and its lethargic denizens. Finally, the luggage does start to flow onto a cramped carousel, piling up everywhere, until obese locals materialize, grabbing the bags and tossing them onto an empty spot or dumping them unceremoniously on the floor.

We finally manage to escape the airport and wander out into the dank, muggy air of our destination country’s second largest urban conglomeration. At the taxi stand, natives are lounging on and around their filthy, broken-down vehicles, and we grab the nearest one. No more than a block from the airport we encounter the first of the ubiquitous street dwellers and beggars, looking so rancid one can almost smell them from within the taxi.

How did this country find itself in such dire straits, blessed as it is with bounteous natural resources and a hard-working populace? One major problem: the country’s autocratic leaders spend an inordinate proportion of the country’s wealth on their military, perhaps because they’re scared, perhaps because they want to push around other countries, or perhaps because it’s a good way to funnel money to their friends (and back to themselves). The country can drop one of the precision bombs it bought on an enemy—but it can’t get the homeless off its streets. They build up the military, which tempts them to use it, thus “justifying” yet further build-up.

What wealth wasn’t taken by the country’s military establishment was plundered by the rich and corrupt who have taken over its government, democratic in name only. Big companies—whether in the area of natural resources, manufacturing, or drugs, simply buy the legislation they want and the business they desire. The ultra-rich, living in their mansions in gated communities, pay virtually no taxes, due to bizarrely skewed tax laws.

The entire country is on the verge of a horrific health crisis. Hospitals are underfunded and understaffed; many are closing. People can’t use the hospitals that do exist since they have no way to pay for the services—neither the government nor sometimes even their company, should they happen to be lucky enough to be employed, offers medical insurance. Infant mortality, of course, is sky-high—higher even than in Cuba!

The younger generation—the hope for the future—is stuck in a massively dysfunctional educational system, most of them not even graduating from high school, even the ones that do unable to read and write their own language.

What country is this? What has happened to my country?

Truth Unfolding: an annotated translation of Dogen Zenji’s Genjo Koan (PDF, 180KB)

I’m pleased to present a new annotated English translation of Genjo Koan, Dogen’s definitive, elegant exposition of the importance of practice, one of his primary themes. Dogen was the 13th century Japanese Zen master who launched the Soto school of Zen Buddhism in Japan and penned Shobogenzo, a collection of nearly a hundred essays renowned for their power, clarity and poetic beauty.

The intent is to provide an accessible introduction to Dogen’s writings for the English reader. This objective governed the translation policy, and the nature of the commentary.

The translation approach taken was to emphasize accessibility and readability, while maintaining the greatest possible fidelity to the original. Dogen presents formidable challenges to the translator. He wrote in a medieval Japanese with unfamiliar syntax and vocabulary. His writings are sprinkled with innovative stylistic devices he used to drive home his message. And the concepts he is conveying can at times seem very opaque.

Soto Zen has taken firm root in the West over the last three decades. This has been accompanied by half a dozen or more English translations of all or part of Shobogenzo. These translations are the fruits of the labor of esteemed Zen masters and scholars. Still, there is ample room for new translations with new insights. The density and interrelatedness of Dogen’s writings means that each hour or day or week or month spent pondering a phrase or sentence or paragraph can add value to the enterprise of rendering Dogen into an English which accurately conveys his meaning and style. This translation is yet another such effort.

The concept of fidelity operates on many levels. One such level is vocabulary, which is mapped precisely here, even in cases where this requires the use of unfamiliar words or Buddhist technical terms, which are then explained in the notes. Examples include both Chinese Buddhist terms which are mapped back to their Sanskrit equivalents, such as dharma, as well as native Japanese words such as satori. A second level is style, which is mirrored in these translations to the absolute extent possible. For instance, repetitions which might not usually be found in English are carried though. Where Dogen omits a word it is omitted in the English as well. If Dogen is in a lyrical or poetic mode, that should be mirrored in the translation as well.

One level which is not mapped religiously, on the other hand, is that of Japanese syntax, the mechanical mimicking of which simply yields wooden, awkward English. Japanese is Japanese and English is English. Assuming that the original Japanese was accessible and readable, which in the case of Dogen it certainly was, an “accurate” translation should replicate that accessibility and readability in English.

The most important question in terms of fidelity is meaning. Ideally, if the words and syntax and style are carried through to English, the meaning will follow. Even if the original is ambiguous, or even if it has multiple meanings as is sometimes the case in Dogen, a skillful translation can reproduce that same ambiguity or multiplicity of meanings. There are times, however, when circumstances force the translator into a particular interpretation. In that case, it’s important to take full advantage of every available clue, including syntactic details, character usage, and, notably, the relationship to preceding and succeeding sections—in other words, the flow. What should not factor into the interpretation is the translator’s preconceived notions of what Dogen “must have been talking about.”

Another major source of insight in interpreting Dogen is the extensive body of translations available both in Japanese and English, as well as commentaries, mostly in Japanese. There are, however, limits to their usefulness. Some translators have laudably taken it upon themselves to translate large volumes of Dogen’s writings, such as Shobogenzo in its entirety, which reduces the amount of time they can spend on any given essay. In other cases, apparent mistakes in interpretation are propagated from one commentator or translator to another. In any case, in addition to referring extensively to preceding translations and commentaries, we present those alternative translations to the reader (in the form of footnotes to avoid disrupting the flow of the notes), less to criticize potentially misleading translations as to give the reader the opportunity to draw her own conclusions. Given that objective, attributions to specific translators are often omitted, since the intent is not a scholarly review of previous translations.

Finally, to make Dogen more accessible to those getting to know him for the first time, the decision was made to accompany the translation with extensive translator’s notes. The annotations are not in general meant to elucidate the essay’s deeper meaning. Dogen can speak for himself if only given the voice to do so. Rather, the focus is on pointing out interesting or challenging aspects of Dogen’s prose and possible alternatives for interpret-ing or translating it. This opportunity to clarify aspects of Dogen’s writings in the notes makes it possible for the translation itself to adhere more closely to the original. The annotations also present historical and cultural background to enhance the reader’s understanding. The translated essay is first given by itself, to avoid distracting the reader with the annotations. The translations are then repeated, this time interspersed with translator‘s notes. Perhaps the reader will find it useful to read the stand-alone version, then the annotated version, and finally return to the stand-alone version to experience something akin to what readers and listeners in the 13th century did.

This translation supercedes my earlier attempts, including “Unfolding Puzzle.” I welcome comments and criticisms.

[Picture is of an “ojo de dios” by Jay Mohler.]

MIT World has put up a video here of Jeff Hawkins talking about Numenta and his Hierarchical Temporal Memory (HTM) model.

It’s a bit strange. On the one hand Jeff is a kind of naive realist. But then he develops a theory of brain functioning critically dependent on top-down, inside-out feedback and guidance systems. In other words, he says we see donuts because we already know what donuts are supposed to look like. He “understands” that “we” are copartners in constructing our experience of reality—but doesn’t “understand” that he “understands” it.

The same point, from a Buddhist, cognitive science standpoint, is the argument made in The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience by Francisco J. Varela (details ), Evan T. Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch. They present a post-cognitivist, post-connectionist view, integrating subject and object, which they call “enactive cognitive science”. Theirs is a “middle way”, between a mechanical view of cognition as a set of robotic sensors, and a simplistic “it’s all in your mind” mentalism. Varela, of course, is the late Chilean biologist known for, among other things, inventing the word neurophenomenology. This book may be one of the few philosophy books in the world with a lengthy explanation of animals whose visual color space is 2-dimensional, or even 5-dimensional (some birds)! The authors’ call for science to incorporate personal experience into its methodologies echoes that of the Dalai Lama—not surprising, since Varela was a student of Tibetan Buddhism.

Of course, Dogen is talking about exactly the same thing in Genjo Koan , where he tells us:

When we experience sights and sounds, body and mind outstretched, we do so directly, not as reflections in a mirror, not as the moon and the water.

The “outstretching” of our body and mind here is precisely the feedback loop down from our beliefs and learned patterns. The word “directly” is 親しく (shitashiku), which could probably also be translated as “intimately”. Dogen is giving us his basic model of cognition, still clear as a bell after 750 years. (Although you could never tell this from other translations.)

The last two phrases are not mere throw-away Zen-like images. Dogen is specifically contrasting his model with two alternatives. The first, “reflections in a mirror”, is the robot eye. The second, “moon and water”, is the “Matrix”-like simulacrum.

Dogen is saying, in other words, our outstretched body and mind provide a context which shapes and interprets sights and sounds—meeting reality halfway.