The 2nd Mind & Life Conference 
Newport Beach, California
October 5-6, 1989

An edited selection of dialogues from this conference has been published as Consciousness at the Crossroads: Conversations with the Dalai Lama on Brain Science and Buddhism.

Buddhism and neuroscience have parallel but quite distinct traditions for examining consciousness and its relation to the body. These traditions go back at least 2500 years to the Buddha and Hippocrates. While both disciplines place great emphasis on experience and reason, their methods of research and verification are radically different. While neuroscience examines mind-brain processes largely objectively, using increasingly sophisticated technology, Buddhism pursues its research chiefly by enhancing stability and clarity of subjective awareness, and directs that awareness toward the exploration of cognitive events and other phenomena. Each discipline has its own clearly prescribed techniques for testing hypotheses. However, due to their radically different methodologies and isolation from one another, their views have remained quite disparate and incommensurable all these centuries.
These dialogues on mind and life confront the questions: Are these disciplines simply incompatible, or might they rather be regarded as complementary? Are there scientific ways of testing Buddhist theories and Buddhist ways of testing Western science? This meeting enables experts in philosophy, psychology, psychiatry, neurology, neuroscience, and Buddhist theory and practice to clarify key concepts in neuroscience and Buddhism for the purpose of improving cross-cultural understanding among Buddhist scholars and Western scientists. 


Scientific Coordinator
Robert B. Livingston, M.D., Professor of Neurosciences Emeritus, University of California, San Diego

Participants
Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness, the XIVth Dalai Lama of Tibet
Patricia Smith Churchland, B. Phil., (Oxon.) Professor of Philosophy, University of California, San Diego
Antonio R. Damasio, M.D., Professor of Neurology, University of Iowa College of Medicine
J. Allan Hobson, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
Lewis L. Judd, M.D., Director of the National Institute of Mental Health
Larry R. Squire, Ph.D., Professor of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego

Interpreters
Geshe Thupten Jinpa
B. Alan Wallace

Program


October 5, 1989 

Presentation: Issues Concerning Mind and Brain
Dr. Patricia Smith Churchland
We have mental states such as perceptions, memories, thoughts, and
intentions. We also have a physical body that has mass, grows, gets
bruised and so forth. A traditional question has focused on the relation
between mental states and states of the physical brain. Are there really
two kinds of things, or only one, but one whose organization is very
complex? Can consciousness and memory exist independently of a
nervous system or are they features of the nervous system and die with
it? Are other primates conscious, and is it possible that someday a
machine might see and be conscious? Evolutionary biology,
neuroscience, and computer modeling suggest that mental states are
things in the brain-that they are actually states of the physical brain. This
has important implications for how we understand mental states, how we
understand ourselves, and how we plan technology. 

Discussion theme: Minds and Brains
What kinds of techniques might be used to discover the nature of minds
and brains? 

Presentation: How Brain Damage in Specific Brain Regions Affects
Perception, Recognition, and Language
Dr. Antonio R. Damasio
Damage to specific brain regions can alter the experience of color, the
recognition of faces, and the ability to translate thoughts into language or
vice-versa. The cognitive and neural study of patients with such disorders
reveals new aspects of brain organization and indicates that complex
psychological functions depend on relatively separate collections of
interacting brain regions. 

Discussion theme: The Neural Basis of Conscious States 
What can knowledge about the brain structure and function tell us about
consciousness? 

Presentation: Memory and Brain
Dr. Larry R. Squire
How is experience stored in the brain? What happens to the record of
experience when specific brain structures are damaged? Is there one
kind of memory or many? Newly developed technology and new
experimental findings are providing the beginnings of a sketch of how the
brain accomplishes learning and memory. 


October 6, 1989

Presentation: Brain Control of Consciousness States
Dr. J. Allan Hobson 
The current knowledge of the control of the states of waking, sleeping,
and dreaming by the brain stem will be reviewed. The way the brain is
activated and how the source of information processed is switched will be
detailed. The neurobiological data will be related to details of the
experience such as dream visions, dream thinking, and dream feeling.
Techniques for dream collection, incubation, lucidity, and control will be
reviewed as will some of the history of these techniques in Western
science and religion. 

Discussion theme: Relationship of the Theories of State Control in
Western Science and Tibetan Tradition 
In what ways can Tibetan understanding about state control be measured
by Western science? How can Western methods of state control be
incorporated into Tibetan practices? 

Presentation: New Concepts of Mental Illnesses Based on New
Information from the Neurosciences 
Dr. Lewis L. Judd 
During the last 25 years, Western concepts and practices for diagnosis
and treatment of mental illnesses have changed radically. Many
once-mysterious mental disorders, such as alternating high and low
moods and schizophrenia, are now perceived as psychobiological
processes which result from complex interactions of constitutional and
environmental factors. Developments in neuropsychopharmacology have
helped establish a broad and expanding array of medicines with proven
effectiveness for treatment of specific mental disorders. Clinical
management strategies for specific mental disorders now combine
psychotherapy and medications. These advances have given rise to
increasingly systematic and effective treatments for mental disorders
throughout the Western world, and they should have beneficial
applications in other cultural settings as well. Many aspects of mental
illnesses still elude our understanding and control. These shortcomings
appear to reflect both the lack of sufficient empirical research and the
limitations of Western theories of mental illnesses. Thus, an exploration
of commonalities and differences between Tibetan medicine and Western
mental health approaches will be mutually beneficial. 

Discussion theme: Exploration of the Commonality Between Tibetan
Buddhism and Western Neuroscience with Relation to Understanding
Mental Disorders and Their Treatment 
Does Tibetan Buddhism, which underpins Tibetan medicine,
conceptualize mental disorders as having biological roots as related to
dysfunctional brain mechanisms? Can clinical practices in both traditions
benefit from a thorough exchange of theories and empirical research
findings?