Tibet
July 27, 2018 DOI: 10.4324/9781315122649-4 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that Tibetan lamas were an ideal group with which to begin the scientific study of the healthy mind and the stream of consciousness, and that the author's lama interviews are empiricizing the traditional Buddhist proto-science of the healthy mind and transforming it into a modern science. |
Abstract
This chapter explains why and how this research on the healthy mind is being done with Tibetan lamas. It begins with a narrative account of a moment in the summer of 1994, when I was wondering alone through the Chang Tang—a virtually uninhabited and mountainous plateau in northern Tibet. One day, as I was trekking through the Chang Tang, a single lama on horseback materialized out of nowhere, and the two of us spent an afternoon together in a place where there probably wasn’t another human being for fifty miles. That meeting is presented as a metaphor for what it has been like to do research with Tibetan lamas. Chapter 4 unpacks that metaphor and makes vivid what it has been like to do research on a sophisticated premodern proto-science from another time and world. The heart of the chapter introduces the principal reasons why Tibetan lamas were an ideal group with which to begin the scientific study of the healthy mind and the stream of consciousness. One of the most interesting sections of this chapter is a series of three excerpts from my lama interviews that illustrate how our research is empiricizing the traditional Buddhist proto-science of the healthy mind and transforming it into a modern science.