Buddhist Philosophy in today’s world
On the televised media, on May 10th, I heard the President express the importance of using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to update the dhamma preached by the Buddha some 2500 years ago. I would agree with him in so far as the dire need to make that ‘Quantum jump’ made possible by modern technology permitting what was preached then to be objectively verified in some of its aspects. This would allow an objective scientific scaffolding to be placed to further enhance the veracity of the Buddha’s teachings.
Functional Magnetic Resonance Scans (fMRI) done on meditating monks with over 30,000 hours of Vipassana bhavana experience, brought by the current Dalai Lama from Tibet to a lab in the University of Wisconsin-Madison USA, were scanned repeatedly while meditating. The data so obtained is now available to those who wish to correlate the Dhamma with these findings. Correlating these to the brain’s neuronal networks is revealing. A Default Mode Network (DMN), in which network most human beings spend much of their time ruminating about the past and worrying about the future, is a survival network geared for self preservation, which leads to thoughts, words, and deeds that create Kamma. Vipassana meditation encouraging the ‘being’ to live in the ‘now’ is facilitated by the brain switching to a Central Executive network (CEN), and persisting living in the CEN causes the DMN to attenuate. There is fMRI data in the current scientific journals published from 2001 to 2024 to this effect.
The ‘Conditioned self’ is a neuro-biological result of ongoing Neuroplasticity in the brain from childhood onwards to survive. It is the culprit, as it facilitates living in the ‘I-me’ narrative using autobiographical memory of the brain, i.e., the DMN, with a Bava-Tanha background of attachment to life.
Recently, a zoom discussion was organised by Prof. Madduma Bandara, former Vice Chancellor of the University of Peradeniya, some erudite monks from the Pali and Buddhist University at Anuradhapura, and Prof. K. N. Jayatilleke’s daughter, who is researching at the University of Alberta, on this very topic.
(For further detailed expansion, read my 150-page book in colour, ‘ Buddhist Philosophy and Neuroscience’ reprinted by popular demand, priced at Rs 800 and available at BPS Kandy and Sarasavi Bookshops.
This book is published for the Migara Ratnatunga Trust. The finances accrued from the sale of this book will be entirely used to fund needy medical students at the University of Peradeniya).
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