[Buddha-l] Singing brainscience

[Jayarava]

Hi Erik,

> she claims to have experienced something akin to the Buddhist nirvaa.na,
> during the period that the left part of her brain was not working. So if 
> she is right nirvaa.na is nothing but a switch off of the left brain. 
> This has serious consequences Buddhist ontology, which is mainly 
> idealistic or at best dualistic.
> Does she have a point?

I'm glad you asked this Erik! Her name is *Bolte* Taylor, and she makes no reference to Buddhism or nirvana in the presentations that I have seen and read. When I suggested the similarity to her in an email, her reply seemed to it play down.

People familiar with descriptions of mystical experiences generally will note some similarities with what Jill describes. A suspension of subject/object distinctions in which she felt at one with everything, and overflowing bliss. I thought it sounded very much like the descriptions of the Awakening of Sri Ramana Maharshi, and like some LSD trips that have been described to me. I recall reading about some scientists inducing the same experience using strong magnets taped to the side of someone's head...

"Buddhist ontology" strikes me as an oxymoron. Ontology was introduced into Buddhism by lesser men some centuries after the Buddha. Noa Ronkin's book (Early Buddhist Metaphysics) which I am ploughing through at the moment has a good overview of the process. That said ontology is sometimes taken awfully seriously for some reason, almost as if you can say something definite about what exists and what it is like as distinct from the experience of it. I don't see how that can be the case.

I see the whole problem that the Buddha was addressing as one of experience: we have experiences, we misinterpret them, we experience suffering, etc. ad infinitum. The world, objects, Reality, etc are neither *in* question, nor *the* question (a phrase I borrow from Sue Hamilton). The ontological status of experiences is indeterminate and it is not essential to the Buddhist project to try to pin it down. The focus is on experiencing and knowing - ie drawing the correct inferences from experience.

One way of looking at Jill's experience is to say that by suspending her analytical mind, along with her ability to use language, and some motor functions, she was thrust into a state of experience where she could not draw the wrong conclusions. She was not dividing things up the way our left brain does because her left brain had ceased to function. 

It is certainly fun to speculate as to what might be an equivalent state in Buddhist technical terms. I suspect that far from it being Nirvana, she experienced something like the 4th dhyana; or perhaps something like samadhi. Nirvana? No, I don't think so. Why?

She does seem to have come to the conclusion that we could all live that way, that we all have the potential, and she herself is able to return to it at will. But she has no idea how *we* might do that. Sadly Dr Taylor's experience involved severe brain damage and took her 7 or 8 years to recover from - I note that she doesn't actually do brain science any more. Talking about her experience and writing about it seem to be her livelihood these days. I won't labour that point. Her experience is not repeatable and no one in their right mind (or is that left mind) would want to undergo what she has, even though she's made the best of it. She has the experience but not the insight into how others can have that experience. This is why I don't think we can ascribe any great attainment to her. She talks in a very interesting and (for some) inspiring way about what it was like to have that experience, but so what? Perhaps something like this was the origin of the
 idea of a paccekabuddha?

Ultimately we'd have to spend a lot of time with Dr Taylor and see what kind of person she is as a result of her experience to know whether it had any significance in Buddhist terms. I suppose it raises some questions about the relationship between consciousness and the brain, but one can get more insight reading something by Antonio Demasio (for my money), and again I don't think the brain is in question or the question.

Cheers
Jayarava