The Dalai Lama at MIT

Brief:
This is one of the most rewarding books I read on Buddhism, and the connections with the modern sciences like psychology and neurology.
Some prominent Western scientist meet Buddhist monks under the roof or MIT, and discuss topics of interests for both parts, as well as means of better collaborating in the future. Main topics are:
- attention and cognitive control
- imagery and visualization
- emotion



Some thoughts:
- attention as a relaxing state of mind (effortless process)

- how can we possibly experience compassion for a person who engages in evil, especially if this very harmful behavior is directed toward ourselves

- emotions in Buddhism: the concept of emotion as we know it plays practically no role in the Indian and Tibetan Buddhist discussions of the mind. There is no term in the traditional Buddhist vocabulary that resembles our notion of emotion

- the connection between feelings and afflictions is crucial in Abhidharma: on the basis of our misapprehension of the self, we become entangled in the compulsive attitudes that lead us into suffering.

- the possibility that certain emotions such as anger, that we normally consider destructive might contain some root component that is valuable, that can be used skillfully to overcome obstacles. What is the evolutionary role for what Buddhists would consider nonvirtuous emotions like anger and fear?

- What is interesting is that ordinary people have so little insight into the sources of their own well-being and happiness. Both traditions agree on that. There isn't a lot of mystery about why Westerners believe that transitory pleasures should last. We live in a consumer society. It's meant to maximize consumption, not our happiness. We want to maximize our happiness and the society wants to maximize our consumption, and so we are taught that our consumption will bring us happiness. It turns out to be a lie, but we dies soon enough and then a whole new generation gets to believe it.

- Even if the trained introspectionist were able to pierce the veil that hides the fast-moving, subtle changes that occur in brain and body, the person would have great difficulty in sharing that information with others. Perhaps nature wanted these feelings to remain secret, locked in each agent's sense of his being. "I've often mistrusted the spoken word. You give a quick tug on a line and out they come from the dark continent of the mind, those little rasps of sound that jostle together, shoulder to shoulder, that are supposed to be able to five shape to what you really think, feel, or know. But words easily miss the point. They drift in the wrong direction, or they insist on providing a clear shape for something that, by its nature, is lost when it's pinned down." (Julia Blackburn)

- Buddha's teachings: "you are right to doubt, because you double that which should be doubted - because you don't know. When you hear something being expressed of this nature, you shouldn't accept it just because it's widespread news that everyone thinks this way. You shouldn't follow it just because it's what your parents do. You shouldn't follow it just because it's the lates new thing. You shouldn't follow it just because it 's cited in scriptures. You shouldn't follow it just because it is hammered out by logic or by inductive or deductive reasoning. And you shouldn't follow it just because it appeals to common sense, or because of the credibility of the speaker, or even because it's your own teacher who's saying it to you. If you take something and apply it, see whether it leads to benefit for peaceful, more harmonious, more benevolent? Then take it and use it. If it makes life more difficult and more harmful for yourself and others, than leave it aside."




Suggestions of reading:
- Abhidharma: one of the oldest Buddhist textual traditions. It contains the earlier texts in which Buddhist concepts were developed, as such it has been the source of most philosophical developments in Indian Buddhism.
- Howard Cutler - "The Art of Happiness": "The systematic training of the mind, the cultivation of happiness, the genuine inner transformation by deliberately selecting and focusing on positive mental states and challenging negative mental states, is possible because of the very structure and function of the brain. But the wiring in our brains is not static, not irrevocably fixed. Our brains are also adaptable" (Dalai Lama)