Numinous Nonsense

I’m looking forward to read Alan Wallace’s new book Contemplative Science: Where Buddhism and Neuroscience Converge. In the meantime I saw a cool interview on Salon.com with Alan, Buddha on the brain. He goes over some cool stuff related to Buddhism and Science, and a new field that he is trying to help create, Contemplative Science, which consequently we discussed with Alan recently when recording an interview for or forthcoming project, Buddhist Geeks.

Here was an interesting question from the Salon folks and Alan’s answer regarding peer-review in the Buddhist tradition:

Well, let me ask you about that. I know there is a tradition, particularly among advanced contemplatives, that you have your meditative experience, and then you talk about it, you analyze it, and your peers critique it. Does that really happen? When someone comes out of meditation, would someone else say, “Sorry. You didn’t do it right”?

Absolutely. You know, Buddhism, like any other tradition, is subject to degeneration. So if you and I headed off to India or Nepal or Tibet, we’d find plenty of Buddhist meditators who are simply going through rote ritual, who are just trying to come up with the right answers at the end of the book. But when Buddhism is really thriving, it’s exactly what you described. You go into a three-year retreat, where you are meditating eight to 12 hours a day. You’re training the mind. You’re investigating the nature of the mind. But you’re probably not doing that in entire isolation. You’re in consultation with a mentor who’s going to review your experience and help you deepen your experience. You’ll be questioning your insights. So [your] relationship with your mentor is analogous to working on your Ph.D. with a mentor. If at any point your research becomes flaky or not up to snuff, the mentor is there to say, “No, that’s a dead end. This is not good research.” This happens frequently in the Buddhist contemplative tradition when it’s really robust and healthy.