Dalai Lama's Templeton Prize press conference
By Mark Vernon on Monday, May 14 2012, 11:30 - In the news - Permalink
I was just at the press conference with the Dalai Lama, organised before he receives the Templeton Prize 2012 this afternoon in St Paul's Cathedral, London.
It was inevitably a little frustrating: journalists think in headlines, so I just shouldn't expect an in-depth exploration of science and spirituality, much as it would be fascinating to get deeper into the now commonplaces His Holiness champions in the west - the honesty, truthfulness, warm-heartedness that builds an inner self-confidence and peace of mind, for all the pain that life throws up. It's only when you think that life should be easy that you get frustrations and violence, he remarked. We need to research the causes of events like the economic crisis, he said in response to another question, and not just the economic causes but the moral causes too.
The main theme on the science and spirituality front was that the psychologists with whom he has worked (Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson were on the panel too) have gained useful insights from Buddhist psychology that they have then explored in a scientific frame. Plus, the Dalai Lama's very presence in debates about mental health catalyzes all sorts of interest across the scientific community. This was the significance of his presence at the 2005 meeting of America's Society for Neuroscience.
And perhaps it's the presence that counts most of all. He is disarmingly direct, attentive, undefended, even in front of a bunch of sceptical journalists seeking a headline. That felt remembrance of time with him perhaps matters more than anything he actually says. It communicates a certain way of being human, not otherwise conspicuously evident in the world today. Call it divinity, saintliness, or just happiness. It's arresting and inspiring.
I asked Daniel Goleman afterwards how to think about the relationship between science and spirituality, not least as many scientists might think the two are opposed, or at least regard the spiritual element as a colourful surplus. What is lost when insights from religious or spiritual traditions are stripped from that setting and reconstructed in the secular sphere?
He said there were losses and gains. The gains are the insights that might be applied to develop discrete interventions, particularly in a therapeutic context. Mindfulness and CBT together are shown to be particularly potent, for example, when tackling depression.
But that is not to say the spiritual quest inherent in Buddhism or Christianity is not worthwhile. It is just that the science is not interested in it - is theologically blind, in a way.
(As an aside, I was struck again by how much Christianity disables itself by presenting itself as a belief system, not a practice, such as you find in Western Buddhism. The beliefs matter in Buddhism, of course; but they are typically seen as the summary of a life's experience, not the necessary starting point and hence obstacle, as so much talk about the need for conversion implies amongst Christians.)
I do wonder how much the holistic context of a religious way of life matters. Isn't the western, secular way of life itself responsible for so much ill health, and so doesn't that have to change? After all, mindfulness is just one element out of eight in Buddhism. Or in Christianity, you have the daily effort to shift your attention towards others and God too.
But I guess you can't force it. Perhaps the science is simply at the stage of helping us realize that Aristotle, Jesus and/or the Buddha were right all along, more or less. Western culture must find its way, make its own mistakes - manifest in the pain and joys of a million individual lives. If we sense the need for the spiritual dimension, then it won't be lost.
Comments
"Perhaps the science is simply at the stage of helping us realize that Aristotle, Jesus and/or the Buddha were right all along, more or less."
It would be nice if it were, but I think this is to co-opt science into the mystical view that "All religions are one". It is more correct to say that science is increasingly the yardstick by which we evaluate other belief systems and deem them worthy of consideration. Do you think there will be research into the Buddha's descriptions of
"the case where a monk wields manifold psychic powers. Having been one he becomes many; having been many he becomes one. He appears. He vanishes. He goes unimpeded through walls, ramparts, and mountains as if through space. He dives in and out of the earth as if it were water. He walks on water without sinking as if it were dry land. Sitting cross-legged he flies through the air like a winged bird. With his hand he touches and strokes even the sun and moon, so mighty and powerful." - ?
How exactly do we deal with the beliefs in Buddhism? Especially as the main man said repeatedly that Right View was of paramount importance, and also said that mindfulness was dependent upon it.
Bravo that he brought up the moral component of this corporate-induced misery.
It's easy to moralise when you own nothing. It's those poor (spiritually speaking) millionaires I feel sorry for.
I'm very sceptical of the whole 'religion as ritual' approach. To me, this just makes it another lifestyle choice along the lines of drug-use or sun holidays, ie 'whatever works for you is good'. Christianity is a set of beliefs about the nature of existence and its believers act accordingly. If every religion is boiled down to mere ritual, then there's nothing to distinguish one ritual from another, one act from another; it all becomes equally meaningless. Furthermore, one of Christianity's main hopes is that the evil and misery of the world will somehow be 'redeemed' and wiped away by an all-loving God. Such a position obviously implies serious commitments as to eschatology and ontology. So Christianity cannot, therefore, become just a form of self-help ritual.
With very rare exception Christianity is now an entirely exoteric religion. This is especially true of all of its Protestant forms. As such it is entirely a self-help religion, although many of its adherents would like to pretend otherwise. Further proof of this is the fact that there are over 30,000 different and differing Christian denominations, sects, and sub-sects, all competing for market share in the market place of consumerist religion. The vast majority of these sects would be of the Protestant variety.
What such religions provide is consoling social associations and optimistic talk, perhaps in combination with self-applied tecniques that people can use as a means of consoling themselves.
All God-ideas come from the ego which is by self definition and self action entirely Godless. Such God-ideas, being mere ideas actually reinforce and console the state of egoity, and, in fact, subordinate The Real Divine to the ego and the ego's search and purpose. This is especially true of the ego in its collective form as in organized religion.
The purpose of such God-ideas is to account for the presumed objective world and the presumed separate self - by presuming the objective world and the separate self as the FIRST, and even irreducibly existing, matters of philosophical/theological importance.
However in the Real Process of Esoteric Spiritual Religion, the first matter of philosophical importance is the PRIOR transcending of the mind-created illusions of the presumed objective world and separate self.
Such a lived presumption inevitably leads to an entirely different way of Life and culture - a culture of Divine Life.