Open Presence, Selflessness and Compassion: Perspectives from , Neuroscience, and Complexity Theory January 7-11, 2009, Upaya Center

Upaya’s 2009 program on neuroscience and meditation explores two core Buddhist practices: compassion and open presence ( in Zen, in , choiceless awareness in ). In recent years, neuroscientific studies of Buddhist meditators who practice the cultivation of compassion and non-referential presence, and the application of mathematical complexity theory in biology and neuroscience, have provided interesting perspectives on the Buddhist concepts of emptiness, , codependent arising, selflessness, and nonduality. In this retreat/seminar, Zen teachers, leading scientists who have contributed to this growing field of research (and are each long-term meditation practitioners), a philosopher, and a neuroscience writer, interactively share their perspectives on the relationships between Zen practice, Buddhism, neuroscience, and complex systems theory. Talks and discussion examine how these areas of scientific research are relevant for practice, and how experienced meditation practitioners can help sharpen the research questions being asked. Talks and discussion will be embedded with practice throughout each day.

Science Journalist, author, and frequent New York Times contributor Sandra Blakeslee will provide an overview of how recent developments in neuroscience have changed the way we view the impact of various practices, including meditation, upon brain structure and function.

Pathologist and biomedical scientist Neil Theise, M.D. (Albert Einstein College of Medicine) will explain how complexity theory has provided a new approach for understanding complex biological processes, and how these processes have intriguing relationships to Buddhist theory.

Neuroscientist Richard Davidson, Ph.D. (University of Wisconsin) will provide an introduction to relevant aspects of brain science, and will describe his recent electroencephalographic and neuroimaging studies of long-term Buddhist practitioners, and of persons who receive short-term training in -based stress reduction. In this description, he will explore the ways in which complexity theory may help in understanding the patterns of brain physiology he has observed, and the development of compassion in long-term meditators.

Clinical neuropsychologist and neuroscientist Al Kaszniak, Ph.D. (University of Arizona) will provide perspectives on the relationship of neuroscience and complexity theory to the cultivation of empathy, compassion and realization of selflessness in Zen practice.

Philosopher and cognitive scientist Evan Thompson, Ph.D. () will discuss relationships between complex systems theory, the phenomenology and neuroscience of consciousness, and the development of insight in meditative practice.

Clinical neurologist and neuroscientist James Austin, M.D. (Washington University and University of Colorado) will examine how neuroscience may help to understand the realization of selflessness in Zen practice, drawing from both his experience as a long- term Zazen practitioner, and as a clinical neuroscientist interested in relating brain science to an understanding of Zen transformative practice.

Roshi Joan Halifax, Ph.D. will both guide Zazen practice periods throughout the retreat and provide reflection upon the relationships of scientific approaches to Zen tradition and practice.

In discussions following scientific presentations, participants will have opportunities to both ask questions and to reflect on how the ideas and research described relate to their own experience in meditation practice.

Bibliography

Austin, J.H. (1998). Zen and the brain. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Austin, J.H. (2006). Zen-brain reflections. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Austin, J.H. (2009). Zen brain, selfless insight. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Begley, S. (2007). Train your mind, Change your brain. New York: Ballantine Books.

Blakeslee, S., & Blakeslee, M. (2007). The body has a mind of its own: How body maps in your brain help you do (almost) everything better. New York: Random House.

Davidson, R.J., & Harrington, A. (Eds.) ( 2002). Visions of compassion: Western scientists and Tibetan Buddhists examine human nature. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Davidson, R.J., Kabat-Zinn, J., Schumacher, J., Rosenkranz, R., Muller, D., Santorelli, S.F., Urbanowski, F., Harrington, A.,, Bonus, K., & Sheridan, J.F. (2003). Alterations in brain and immune function produced by mindfulness meditation. Psychosomatic Medicine, 65, 564-570.

Ekman, P., Davidson, R.J., Ricard, M., & Wallace, B.A. (2005). Buddhist and psychological perspectives on emotions and well-being. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14, 59-63.

Hameroff, S.R, Kaszniak, A.W., & Chalmers, D.J (Eds.) (1999). Toward a science of consciousness III: The third Tucson discussions and debates. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Kaszniak, A.W. (Ed.) (2001). Emotions, qualia, and consciousness. London: World Scientific.

Lutz, A., Dunne, J.D., & Davidson, R.J. (2007). Meditation and the neuroscience of consciousness. In P. Zelazo, M. Moscovitch, & E. Thompson (Eds.), Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness (pp.499-551). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Lutz, A., Greischar, L.L., Rawlings, N.B, Ricard, M., & Davidson, R.J. (2004). Long- term meditators self-induce high-amplitude gamma synchrony during mental practice. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 101, 16369-16373.

Nielsen, L., & Kaszniak, A.W. (2006). Awareness of subtle emotional feelings: A comparison of long-term meditators and non-meditators. Emotion, Vol. 6, pp. 392-405.

Siegel, D.J. (2007). The mindful brain: Reflection and attunement in the cultivation of well- being. New York: W.W. Norton.

Theise, N.D. (2006). From the Bottom Up: Is science rewriting emptiness with the emerging field of complexity theory? What Buddhists can learn from ants, atoms, and physics. Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, 15 (2), 24 – 27.

Theise, N.D. (2005). Now you see it, now you don’t. Nature, 435, 1165.

Theise, N.D. (2003). Science as . Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, 12 (3): 81.

Thompson, E. (2007). Mind in life: Biology, phenomenology, and the sciences of mind. Cambridge, MA: Belknap/Harvard University Press.

Brief Faculty Biographies:

Joan Halifax Roshi, Ph.D. Joan Halifax Roshi is a Buddhist teacher, Zen priest, anthropologist, and author. She is Founder, Abbot, and Head Teacher of Upaya Zen Center, a Buddhist monastery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She received her Ph.D in medical anthropology in 1973. She has lectured on the subject of death and dying at many academic institutions, including Harvard Divinity School and Harvard Medical School, Georgetown Medical School, University of Virginia Medical School, Duke University Medical School, University of Connecticut Medical School, among many others. She received a National Science Foundation Fellowship in Visual Anthropology, and was an Honorary Research Fellow in Medical Ethnobotany at Harvard University. From 1972-1975, she worked with psychiatrist Stanislav Grof at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center on pioneering work with dying cancer patients, using LSD as an adjunct to psychotherapy. After the LSD project, she has continued to work with dying people and their families and to teach health care professionals as well as lay individuals on compassionate care of the dying. She is Director of the Project on Being with Dying and Founder and Director of the Upaya Prison Project that develops programs on meditation for prisoners. For the past twenty-five years, she has been active in environmental work. She studied for a decade with Zen Teacher Seung Sahn and was a teacher in the Kwan Um Zen School. She received the Lamp Transmission from Thich Nhat Hanh, and was given Inka by Roshi Bernie Glassman. A Founding Teacher of the Zen Peacemaker Order, her work and practice for more than three decades has focused on applied Buddhism. Her books include: The Human Encounter with Death (with Stanislav Grof); Shamanic Voices; Shaman: The Wounded Healer; The Fruitful Darkness; Simplicity in the Complex: A Buddhist Life in America; Being with Dying; and Wisdom Beyond Wisdom (with Kazuaki Tanashashi).

James H. Austin, M.D. James Austin has spent most of his years as an academic neurologist, first at the University of Oregon Medical School and later at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. He is currently Clinical Professor of Neurology at University of Missouri Health Sciences Center. Dr. Austin's cultural background includes the first sabbatical spent in New Delhi, India; and the second spent in Kyoto, Japan, where he began Zen meditation training with an English-speaking , Kobori-Roshi, in 1974. He has a keen interest in the experimental designs and findings of investigators who are studying meditation and related states of consciousness. His early research background includes publications in the areas of clinical neurology, neuropathology, neurochemistry and neuropharmacology. Dr. Austin is the author of more than 140 professional publications, including three books on Zen and the brain (1996, 2006, 2009; All published by MIT Press).

Sandra Blakeslee, B.A. Sandra Blakeslee received her undergraduate education at Northwestern University and the University of California at Berkeley. She is a regular contributor to The New York Times, specializing in the brain sciences. She has co-written several books, including Phantoms in the Brain with V.S. Ramachandran, On Intelligence with Jeff Hawkins, Second Chances: Men, Women and Children a Decade After Divorce with Judith S. Wallerstein, and The Body has a Mind of Its Own with Matthew Blakeslee. As the recipient of a Templeton Journalism Fellowship, she spent several weeks in the summer of 2007 at Cambridge University in England, discussing science and religion, and recently wrote an article on the neurophysiology of spiritual experience.

Richard J. Davidson, Ph.D. Richard J. Davidson received his Ph.D. in Personality, Psychopathology, and Psychophysiology from Harvard University. He is currently Director for the Laboratory of Affective Neuroscience as well as the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research is focused on cortical and subcortical substrates of emotion and affective disorders, including depression and anxiety, using quantitative electrophysiology, positron emission tomography and functional magnetic resonance imaging to make inferences about patterns of regional brain function. A major focus of his current work is on interactions between prefrontal cortex and the amygdala in the regulation of emotion in both normal subjects and patients with affective and anxiety disorders. He has also studied and published several papers on brain physiology in long-term Buddhist meditators, and in persons receiving short-term training in mindfulness meditation. Among his several books is Visions of compassion: Western Scientists and Tibetan Buddhists Examine Human Nature (2002, Oxford University Press), co-edited with Anne Harrington.

Alfred W. Kaszniak, Ph.D. Al Kaszniak, received his Ph.D. in clinical and developmental psychology from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1976, and completed an internship in clinical neuropsychology at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago. He is currently Head of the Department of Psychology, Director of Clinical Neuropsychology, Director of the Arizona Alzheimer's Consortium Education Core, and a professor in the departments of psychology, neurology, and psychiatry at The University of Arizona. His research, published in over 150 journal articles, chapters and books (including edited volumes on consciousness and science), has been supported by grants from the NIH, NIMH, and several private foundations. His work has focused on the neuropsychology of Alzheimer's disease and other age-related neurological disorders, memory self- monitoring, the biological bases of emotion, and emotion response and regulation in long-term Zen and mindfulness meditators

Neil D. Theise, M.D. Neil Theise is a diagnostic liver pathologist and adult stem cell researcher in New York City, where he is Professor of Pathology and of Medicine at the Beth Israel Medical Center of Albert Einstein College of Medicine. His research revised understandings of human liver microanatomy, which, in turn, led directly to identification of possible liver stem cell niches and the marrow-to-liver regeneration pathway. He is considered a pioneer of multi-organ adult stem cell plasticity and has published on that topic in Science, Nature, and Cell. Subsequently, while continuing laboratory and clinical research, he has extended his work to areas of theoretical biology and complexity theory, defining a "post-modern biology." These ideas suggest that alternate models of the body, other than Cell Doctrine, may be necessary to understand non-Western approaches to the body and health. Current laboratory investigations focus on nerve-stem cell interactions in human livers, melatonin-related physiology of human liver stem cell and regenerative processes, and aspects of human liver stem cell activation in acute, fulminant hepatic failure.

Evan Thompson, Ph.D Evan Thompson is Professor of at the University of Toronto. He received his B.A. from Amherst College in Asian Studies, and his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Toronto. He is the author of Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind (Harvard University Press, 2007, and the co-editor (with P. Zelazo and M. Moscovitch) of The Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness (Cambridge University Press, 2007) He is also the co-author with F.J. Varela and E. Rosch of The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (MIT Press, 1991) and the author of Color Vision: A Study in Cognitive Science and the Philosophy of Perception (Routledge Press, 1995). He is currently working on a new book, titled Waking, Dreaming, Being: New Revelations about the Self from Neuroscience and Meditation.