Religion and Science: Buddhism on the brain

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670 NATURE | VOL 432 | 9 DECEMBER 2004 | www.nature.com/nature

One of the first things people discoverwhen they meet His Holiness theDalai Lama is that the head of

Tibetan Buddhism likes a good laugh. “Hejokes all the time,” says Fred Gage, a neuro-scientist at the Salk Institute for BiologicalStudies in La Jolla, California, who met thespiritual leader for the first time in October.“He has a great sense of humour.”

This is probably a good thing. The occa-sion for this meeting — a research confer-ence held at the Dalai Lama’s headquarters inDharamsala, India — included a presenta-tion of evidence that people in good spiritsare better able to control their blood sugarlevels. Other talks suggested that meditationcan transform emotions and that daily expe-riences can alter the expression of genes.Gage presented his research into how thebrain can remake itself throughout life.

It was the 12th time since 1987 that theDalai Lama has convened leading psycholo-gists and neurobiologists to hear the latestscientific thinking in fields related to thehuman mind. These meetings are organizedby the Mind & Life Institute in Louisville,Colorado,which was established in the 1980sto promote communication between scienceand Buddhism. But much of the credit forthis open communication goes to the DalaiLama himself.

Spiritual linksIn accordance with Tibetan tradition, thecurrent Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, was recognized as the 14th reincarnation ofthe Bodhisattva of Compassion in 1937,when he was only two years old. Gyatso haslong had an interest in science. When heaccepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, hecommented: “Both science and the teach-ings of the Buddha tell us of the fundamen-tal unity of all things.” He once said that ifhe had not been a monk, he would havebeen an engineer.

Enthusiasm for science seems to extendbeyond the spiritual leader.Tibetans,surpris-ingly enough, were the most strongly repre-sented ethnic group working on the HumanGenome Project: although they account for only 0.1% of the world’s population,Tibetans made up about 10% of the project’sworkforce (see Nature 425, 335; 2003).

For many Buddhist monks, this interestin science is focused on an intense curiosityabout the workings of the brain.Monks typi-

cally spend hours in meditation each day, apractice they say enhances their powers ofconcentration. Highly trained monks reportbeing able to focus on a single object forhours without distraction and to recall com-plex scenes in exquisite detail. A questionthat deeply interests the Dalai Lama, andindeed some neuroscientists, is whetherthese phenomena have a biological basis.

Gage studies the ability of the mammalianbrain to change and adapt in adulthood.Before the late 1990s, it was thought thatadult brains were more-or-less complete.Learning involved the development of newconnections — but no new neurons wereborn, and when these cells died they weregone forever. Now it turns out that new neu-rons do grow and our brains are much moreflexible than was once believed.As a key com-ponent of Buddhist belief is that meditationliterally transforms the mind, Buddhists arekeenly interested in scientific advances thatcould help explain this observation.

Gage’s talk on 18 October in Dharamsala— seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile

since 1960 — kicked off a five-day privateconference on ‘neuroplasticity’. Gage gave ageneral primer on the complexity of the nervous system, and then launched into atwo-hour presentation of his research targeted at a lay audience. Next to him, theDalai Lama listened intently, making occa-sional use of two interpreters to translateinto Tibetan things he didn’t immediatelygrasp in English. Also in the audience werethe six other presenters and a handful ofBuddhist monks.

Lessons learnedAlthough the group did not come to anyEarth-shattering conclusions about cogni-tion, they did reach a higher understandingof each other, which was the main point ofthe exercise. For the monks, the sessionsmay help them deal with modern questionsnot addressed in traditional Buddhistteachings, such as the issue of the moralityof stem-cell research (see page 666). Scien-tists in turn have plenty to learn from themonks — after centuries of inner contem-plation, Buddhists claim to know a thing ortwo about how the mind behaves.

Richard Davidson, a psychologist at theUniversity of Wisconsin, Madison, and thecoordinator of the Dharamsala conference,has learned from the monks through study.He found that certain neural processes in thebrain are more coordinated in people withextensive training in meditation,an observa-tion that may be linked to the heightenedawareness reported by meditating monks (A. Lutz et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 101,16369–16373; 2004).

Gage says that what particularlyimpressed him was the Dalai Lama’s empiri-cal approach. “At one point I asked: ‘What ifneuroscience comes up with informationthat directly contradicts Buddhist philoso-phy?’,” says Gage.“The answer was: ‘Then wewould have to change the philosophy tomatch the science’.”

So far that hasn’t been necessary.And if thereported benefits of laughter are correct,thereis no need for the Dalai Lama to rein in hissense of humour either. During a discussionof how our childhoods shape who we are, heobserved that he liked to play with toy guns asa child and even picked on his brother.“I wasthe mean one,” he said, thereby stabilizingblood sugar levels throughout the room. ■

Jonathan Knight writes for Nature from San Francisco.

Buddhism on the brainMany religious leaders find themselves at odds with science, but the headof Tibetan Buddhism is a notable exception. Jonathan Knight meets aneurologist whose audience with the Dalai Lama helped to explain why.

Science with a smile: the Dalai Lama has a deeppersonal interest in research developments.

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