Outline of Compassion and Selflessness: Zen, Neuroscience, and Complexity Theory Retreat, January 7-11, 2009, Upaya Zen Center Compassion and selflessness are central in the Mahayana Buddhist tradition in which Zen resides. In recent years, neuroscientific studies of Buddhist meditators who practice the cultivation of compassion, and the application of mathematical complexity theory in biology and neuroscience, have provided interesting perspectives on Abhidharma, including emptiness, impermanence, and codependent arising. In this retreat/seminar, Joan Halifax Roshi, a Buddhist scholar, and four scientists who have contributed to this growing field of research, and are each long-term meditation practitioners, will interactively share with participants their perspectives on the relationships between Abhidharma, neuroscience, and complexity theory, how these areas of scientific research are relevant for practice, and how experienced meditation practitioners can help sharpen the research questions being asked. During the retreat, presentations and discussion will be embedded with Zazen practice throughout each day. Clinical neuropsychologist and neuroscientist Al Kaszniak, Ph.D. (University of Arizona) will provide an overview of the relationship of neuroscience and complexity theory to the cultivation of empathy, compassion and realization of selflessness in Zen practice. Retreat participants will be encouraged to reflect on how the ideas and research described relate to their own experience in practice, and consider ways in which future research might more accurately capture this experience. Buddhist scholar John Dunne, Ph.D. (Emory University) will describe the concepts of emptiness, non-self, impermanence, codependent arising, and compassion as contained within the Abhidharma and particular sutras (the Avatamsaka sutra). He will also explore how meditative practices, in Zen and other Buddhist traditions, enable the cultivation of compassion and selflessness in the practitioners day-to-day activity. 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 complexity theory has intriguing relationships to Buddhist metaphysics. His discussion will encourage the contemplation of how new models in biology may help to bridge Euro-American medicine and the understanding of bodily phenomena from Asian traditions. Neuroscientist Richard Davidson, Ph.D. (University of Wisconsin) will describe his recent electroencephalographic and neuroimaging studies of both long-term Buddhist practitioners, and of persons who receive short-term training in mindfulness-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. Clinical neurologist and neuroscientist James Austin, M.D. (Washington University and University of Colorado) will provide commentary on the presentations, 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.
His books, Zen and the Brain, Zen-Brain Reflections, and Zen Brain, Selfless Insight, have been an extraordinarily rich source of hypotheses for neuroscientists who study long-term meditators. Joan Halifax Roshi will both guide Zazen practice periods throughout the retreat and provide reflection upon the relationships of scientific approaches described each day to Zen tradition and practice. In discussion following scientific presentations, and in Council Circle at the close of the retreat, participants will have opportunities to contribute to the formulation of scientific hypotheses that will influence how the nascent relationship between Zen and the human sciences develops into the future. 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. (2008). Zen brain, selfless insight. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Begley, S. (2007). Train your mind, Change your brain. New York: Ballantine Books. 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. Dunne, J.D. (2004). Foundations of Dharmakirti’s philosophy. Boston: Wisdom. Ekman, P., Daidson, R.J., Ricard, M., & Wallace, B.A. (2005). Buddhist and psychological perspectives on emotions and well-being. Current Directions in Psychological Science, Vol. 14, pp. 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). Longterm 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 wellbeing. 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, Summer, 2006, pp. 24 – 27. Theise, N.D. (2005). Now you see it, now you don’t. Nature, Vol. 435, p. 1165. Trujillo, L.T., Peterson, M.A., Kaszniak, A.W., & Allen, J.J.B. (2005). EEG phase synchrony differences across visual perception conditions may depend on recording and analysis methods. Clinical Neurophysiology, 116, 172-189
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 Zen master, 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. 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 brain physiology in long-term Buddhist meditators, and in persons receiving short-term training in mindfulness meditation. John D. Dunne, Ph.D. John D. Dunne, Associate Professor (Department of Religion, Emory University), was educated at Amherst College and Harvard University, where he received his Ph.D. from the Committee on the Study of Religion. Before joining Emory, he served on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and he previously conducted research at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland and Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies (India). His work focuses on Buddhist philosophy and contemplative practice, and he is a co-director of Emory's Collaborative for Contemplative Studies as well as the Encyclopedia of Contemplative Practices. His current research focuses especially on the concept of "mindfulness" in both theoretical and practical contexts. 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, 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.