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Author, scholar and renowned expert in Tibetan Buddhism B. Alan Wallace was meditating in a cabin in the California desert when he received an offer he could not refuse. He was visited by a lawyer and a contractor Adam Engle, who asked if Wallace would like to serve as an interpreter and translator for a summit meeting between the Dalai Lama and a group of eminent scientists handpicked in the fields of physics, neuroscience, biology and philosophy of science.
The year was 1987, and Wallace was definitely the ideal man for the job. He had spent 14 years in India as a Buddhist monk, ordained by the Dalai Lama himself. And he just finished a degree with honors in physics and philosophy of religion at Amherst College, submitting a 500-page thesis that would give birth to two books. He would later earn a Ph.D. in religious studies from Stanford University.
"There were hardly any people fluent in Tibetan with a scientific background," says Wallace. "And I had just come out of the oven, after spending two and a half years immersing myself in physics, mathematics and related fields. I was very attached to my meditation practice, but the Dalai Lama was my main teacher since 1971. So I told Adam that if the Dalai Lama wanted me to come and serve as co-interpreter, I would come out of my meditation retreat. . I will drop everything and be happy to come. And the Dalai Lama said, "Yes, come."
The result was a historic moment in the annals of mindfulness, the first of what will prove to be many Mind and Life conferences, as we would know them. The Dalai Lama had spent several years setting up this first meeting, working with Engle and Francisco Varela, a prominent biologist, neuroscientist, philosopher and philosopher from Chile. The goal was to forge a common ground between Western science and the age-old wisdom and meditation practices of the Buddhist tradition – and to find out if there were ways for each area to benefit from it. ;other.
This company has long been at the heart of the 14th Dalai Lama, leader of the Gelug sect of Tibetan Buddhism and revered spiritual leader around the world. As a child in Tibet, he developed a keen interest in western technology and science, dismantling and winding wristwatches and becoming fascinated by automobiles. In adulthood, he became a passionate student of science. "The specific scientific areas that I have most explored over the years are subatomic physics, cosmology, biology and psychology," he said in 2005.
Quantum physics, in particular, has moved Western science away from a strictly materialistic understanding of reality. And Buddhism encourages its followers to question everything, even the Buddhist doctrine, taking nothing for granted in the faith, much like scientists. The Dalai Lama has found fertile ground for rapprochement.
"At the end of the last century, science and spirituality seemed incompatible," he said. "Now they have come together."
For example, Varela, Engle, and Wallace visited the Dalai Lama's home in Dharamsala, India, in October 1987, alongside neuroscientist Robert Livingston, cognitive scientist Eleanor Rosch, and computer scientist Newcomb Greenleaf. Thupten Jinpa, a longtime English translator of the Dalai Lama, co-starred with Wallace. A graduate in philosophy and religious science at the University of Cambridge, Jinpa, like Wallace, had a lot of Western academic merit. The two men ended up playing an active role, along with translators, in the proceedings.
"We went to India for that," remembers Wallace; "High in the Himalayas. It's not easy to find. We were in this very calm environment – essentially the Dalai Lama's living room – with five scientists, a philosopher and the Dalai Lama. "
The meetings were held over five consecutive days in front of a very small invited audience. "Scientists," said Wallace, "were blown away by the intelligence, provocation and insight of the questions posed by the Dalai Lama, often suggesting lines of research they had not yet seen. And of course, the Dalai Lama has also sometimes expressed ideas; theories on the Buddhist side. This meeting was a very rich, respectful, interdisciplinary and transcultural dialogue. It was just a wonderful experience. "
The meeting gave rise to the founding of the Spirit and Life Institute, which has organized 29 subsequent conferences to date. "They have covered topics ranging from quantum physics to compassion through cosmology and destructive emotions," said the Dalai Lama in 2004. "I've discovered that while scientific discoveries offer an understanding In more depth areas of knowledge such as cosmology, it seems that explanations can sometimes give scientists a new way to look at their own field. "
The size of conferences has grown exponentially since this first intimate meeting in 1987. At the event organized by the Mind and Life Institute in Boston in 2014, approximately 1,700 delegates from 38 countries participated. The final Mind and Life Dialogue, scheduled for October 2017 in Montreal, will focus on primary education and health care.
Wallace has remained an active participant in these conferences for years but has recently started his own research. The roots of his work in this field go back to 1992, when he accompanied a team of scientific researchers in the Himalayas to study Tibetan yogis who meditated in small huts. But he came out a little frustrated.
"We found that the cultural barriers were very big," he says. "One of the things I've learned from this is that if you really want to do a study of meditation, you have to invite meditators who speak your own language and understand your world view. So you invite them as collaborators and not just as subjects of study, as if it were guinea pigs or patients. "
Parallel to his quest for a more multicultural approach, Wallace also felt that most scientific studies on meditation were not thorough enough. Most were based on very rudimentary meditation techniques, such as the MBSR, taught on subjects over relatively short periods, such as eight weeks.
While these studies demonstrated all the positive effects of meditation, Wallace sought to know what would happen if people were taught more in-depth meditation techniques over longer periods.
It is in this spirit that he initiated the Shamatha project in 2007 with neuroscientist Clifford Saron of the University of California at Davis. During two intensive three-month retreats, Wallace taught several meditation techniques to 60 people, who practiced meditation alone about six hours a day.
Shamatha, also known as "absolute calm," is the name of a basic Buddhist mindfulness meditation that Wallace taught at the same time as several others. Saron led a group of research scientists who conducted a battery of tests on meditators, including EEG scans, blood tests, and interviews and psychological questionnaires.
"We had psychologist Paul Ekman, who did a lot of research on the correlation between facial expression and emotions," says Wallace. "He developed some very sophisticated measures of filming people's facial expressions as they watched movie clips designed to elicit certain emotions. We also had a lot of cognitive-behavioral measures for attention, memory, and mindfulness. And we had people writing every day, which was very informative.
The study showed that the meditation practices taught by Wallace encouraged clear improvements in areas such as attention, perceptual sensitivity, emotional well-being, and empathic ability. The tests also highlighted health benefits, such as a significant elongation of telomeres – the "longevity" enzyme that protects DNA during cell division – among meditators, compared to a control group. Wallace is confident that the findings will inspire further research on the benefits of meditation.
"It's a growing industry," he says. "I think you can count on it. If you develop your attention skills, you will be better at education, athletics, creativity and analytical skills. You will be able to concentrate with continuity and clarity. So it's something that sells very easily. "
All this is not just an esoteric science either. Wallace sees several vital applications of the real world for meditation training, especially in an increasingly technocratic society.
"It's something that I think should be passionately introduced into the public school system," he says, "because it has no religious connotation. So from fundamentalist Christians to very hardcore atheists, hardened atheists, this is something that would be beneficial for everyone. Problems now like ADHD [Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder]General anxiety disorder and depression have become so prevalent. And rather than sweeping the fundamental problems under the carpet with drugs, which remains the main intervention, we should turn to the old aphorism: the best cure is prevention.
"So you solve these problems to the cervix, even before they begin to appear, by introducing basic meditation to children. We must recognize that we are changing the map of human civilization very, very quickly. And since we have generally given vaccines to our children when they are young, they never contract various diseases. In the same way, we should give them psychological vaccines, so to speak. "
For Wallace and other experts in the field, scientific research on the benefits of meditation is still in its infancy. "A study is about to be done," he says, "and I think it will not wait much longer. It takes a longitudinal study, conducted over 10 or maybe 20 years, of people of average age, who teach them meditation and see what happens if they meditate regularly for 10 or 20 years. Statistically, will this have an impact on their propensity to develop senile dementia or Alzheimer's disease?
"There are a lot of people in my generation, baby boomers, who are becoming seniors. It's probably never too late. If you are 65 years old and have no signs of senile dementia and are starting to meditate seriously at age 75, this could have a significant impact on maintaining your memory, your clarity of mind, your abilities. analysis, etc. This study should therefore be quite long. But I think that will happen.
Wallace's next step was to launch the international Shamatha project. Inspired by the Human Genome Project, Wallace's initiative aims to create a global network of experienced meditators and teachers from all Buddhist traditions who will collaborate with each other and with leading scientists to develop and discover meditation methods better adapted to the modern world and its needs. Wallace is creating a center in Tuscany where monks and other seasoned meditators will be living full-time or for multi-year periods. There, they will interact via Internet with scientists and other contemplatives, on the spot or in isolated places.
"What we're looking at is a kind of paradigm shift in methodology," says Wallace. "We are creating a center where we are professionally trained contemplatives and we invite professional training scientists to meet us as colleagues and collaborators. We seek here to address the following major questions: what is the nature of the mind? What is the nature of consciousness? How does it fit into the body? When does consciousness emerge for the first time in the development of the fetus? And what really happens to consciousness at death?
Thus, the seed planted by the Dalai Lama, Francisco Varela and others at the first meeting, Mind and Life in 1987, will continue to bear fruit for many decades. But Wallace is adamant that big issues can only be solved if the East-West dialogue is truly equal and respectful.
"For Western scientists, consciousness is a mystery because they have not developed any method to explore it directly," he says. "They study the brain and behavior rather than consciousness. But Buddhists have been studying consciousness for 2500 years. It's not a mystery to them. They have made many discoveries that Western science ignores. Western scientists speak much better with Buddhists than listen to them. I would like to see a lot more listening on both sides. "
It has been proven that mindfulness, a very simple form of meditation, increases calm, reduces depression, and helps combat the anxiety of our increasingly rampant existence. In this special guide, the technique is explained in plain and fluent language, with additional information about its spiritual roots and current application. Purchase a copy today.
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